"enlisting" poems
I remember,
My usual nonchalant demeanor going completely bananas in my cubicle of a room
After enlisting to deliver you ice cream.
No, not just any ice cream,
Strawberry with bananas and gummy bears.
I thought it as an awkward combination
But when I got in the car,
The sparrows were flying in two adjacent v-shaped formations.
Slightly puzzled, I pondered if maybe one day I'll meet a sparrow, or anything with enough courage to brave the skies,
Soaring, knowing in time, their wings will tire, and locating a perch is then of importance.
Because life's goal, humans and creatures alike,
Is to find a whisper of a nightingale's song,
Or, possibly, the eccentric taste of a spoonful of their favorite ice cream.
Jul 16, 2014
Jul 16, 2014 at 2:20 AM UTC
It was never my intention to place you in harms way.
Enlisting your heart to trouble after we kissed on that precious day.
As time elapsed, my heart took a moment to understand.
You were portraying your earnest emotions subtly then crass.
The turmoil you must’ve felt during the time you kept to yourself…
Causing you to experience agonizing despair while delving into mournful swells…
Find it in your heart to forgive these third degree burns.
For it was never my intention to crucify your kind soul.
My love yearns to romanticize unhurriedly,
Seducing passionately while intimately feeding the soul so fluidly.
Is it too much to ask for an amorous exploration?
For what is love without a genuine vibration?
If *** is all you seek,
Be explicitly direct; don’t play games that will cause deceit.
Otherwise, in the end, ambivalent emotions will prevail.
Crafting a false sense of endearment that will soon be too much for you to bear.
I once journeyed to a crucible of love and hate.
Traveling far beyond the unfathomable depths of heartache.
Hopelessly exiled to endure the slowest of brutalizing pains;
A light was discovered, allowing the abhorrence to dissipate.
By: Michael M. De La Fuente
Nov 25, 2014
Nov 25, 2014 at 12:22 AM UTC
i am an ashamed american. this
is supposed to be the land of the free.
please. tell me what is free about ferguson,
missouri. is freedom enlisting three
policemen for an armed white protest and
hundreds of riot police for a peaceful
colored one? please. tell me what is free?
why is racism a 21st century problem?
Nov 24, 2014
Nov 24, 2014 at 9:55 PM UTC
i am
--am i?--
yeah, i think i am
drunk drunk drunk
and signing myself up for
selective service so i
will be able to access my financial
aid and not have to cough up
almost $2,000 for one term
that me and my bank account
just really do not have, ya know?
and that little dropdown menu
well it doesn’t offer the option of:
“i am being forced to sign up for this
so i can afford college”
because i guess that sounds less
appealing than my being recruited
during lunch while i watched my fellow
(cis) male students dislocate their shoulders
doing pull ups so the older boys in uniform
would be proud of them and
maybe even give them a
nice little lanyard
because after over $100 to get
the right name and gender marker
on my id and $60 to get a new
birth certificate
i’m male enough for the government
to want to make into cannon fodder
but i’m still not male enough to
use the men’s room without the
threat of being verbally harassed
or physically assaulted
and that just makes me so angry
because here’s “bone-spurs donnie”
a known draft dodger of
at least 5 times who had the money
to pay off any doctor he wanted
trying his hardest to ban trans
people from enlisting
to fight in a war backed by a country
that wants them dead
yet that little M on my id
that i paid so much for
makes me eligible to be blown
to bits or come back to
a country that doesn’t want me anymore
with my brains scrambled from
shell shock and ptsd
because this country is willing
to pretty much force-feed young men
into the bottomless belly of the
war machine
always stoking the fires of the
military industrial complex with
money and unscarred flesh
and so much lies
and so much fear mongering
and i am just so tired
of having to fill in that
little bubble with my ballpoint
pen and a click of the mouse
pledging what could easily be the
rest of my life to being
riddled with bullets
miles away from home
just so i can grab that
financial aid
that perpetual carrot being dangled
in front of my oh so
transgender and queer nose
so i can afford an education
and not become another statistic
another person that the
united states of amerikkka
has failed
Dec 5, 2018
Dec 5, 2018 at 2:07 AM UTC
Can you hear that sound
Like a tiny whining
You're a sad eyed puppy
Inside
It's a kind of yearning
When pining
away, wanting someone or something
So expensive beyond reach
The mind begins to fantasize what it's like,
Infantilize what's real life.
Enlisting unreasonable scenerios
Creative now with lies
And denials and exit strategies,
Scapegoats of close members of family, accusatory..
Blame all but yourself
Inflammatory story's demise
Because the lost moments spent
Pining away
Will die unknowing your real life self.
Inside that fog of fictitious false depictions
Who dat?
Starving yourself blind
See there on that podium
Your bad phat shines
Always in first place--gold medal favorite
Hooray it's not quite you or even true.
If pining were a sport
Having lost your minds
You'd all be winners.
Celebrity famous, go on
Crave being extra, so street savvy
"Hey Alexa, Google, Suri
Define obsession."
Pining turns dangerous
In absentia dysplased
Souls are stolen,
Human replicas.
Still carrying on pining
Away.
Killer lover blank.
Got brain? Bullets?
A shiv or Shank?
Sharp as a pine tree...
(Please,
Don't forget to give
Thanks.)
Jul 22, 2020
Jul 22, 2020 at 11:27 AM UTC
Are you?
Propounding Pounds
Dealing in Dollars
Eulogizing Euros
Dwelling in Dinars
Rolling in Rupees
Enlisting Yens
Whose exchange value is nil
In honey combed heaven
Or horrendous hell
What so ever, whom so ever
Be it an empowered emperor
Or any contemptuous contemporary
Only valid currency in heaven
Is pure Conduct and Character
Oct 25, 2014
Oct 25, 2014 at 9:07 AM UTC
streets sweat for toothache medicine
blood enlisting for war
tea dogs don't love their dads
i never knew what a healing arm meant
neither does my alarm clock
dizzy floors and tired chardonnay
tastes like a late born baby
a list of things that are the same:
****** the human centipede, and pepsi
but my girl's gone and my head hurts
Sep 8, 2016
Sep 8, 2016 at 9:41 PM UTC
Snowcles....falling calling card, resting, upturned faces
Snowcles....falling like pendant droplets
Seeking kind eyes
Icicles.....frozen, swift like daggers
Icicles.....frozen chapters, white pages
Enlisting kind eyes
Frostles....biting frosty jack back
Frostles....emulsioning natures walls
Reflecting in kind eyes
Drowning in deep pupil pools
Of blue hues, winking white lights
Snow blizzards cooking on iceowaves
Drifting, selling off last years frozen season
Storming snow whips frosty fragments airborne
Peppering the night sky with finely tuned
Layers lacing, flitting and fitting superbly.....
giving birth to a white out
Feb 7, 2013
Feb 7, 2013 at 2:22 PM UTC
Are you?
Propounding Pounds
Dealing in Dollars
Eulogizing Euros
Dwelling in Dinars
Rolling in Rupees
Enlisting Yens
Whose exchange value is nil
In honey combed heaven
Or horrendous hell
What so ever, whom so ever
Be it an empowered emperor
Or any contemptuous contemporary
Only valid currency in heaven
Is pure Conduct and Character
Feb 19, 2015
Feb 19, 2015 at 9:53 AM UTC
I tremble and wonder
How life took a turn away from bliss.
I think of my childhood worries,
Of my parents yelling at each other
Only to end in divorce when I was only
Nine years old.
Of my youth being taken in confusion
About what is right or wrong.
I think of how I treated my poor
Mother as I chose a side in the battle
Of custody between the three of us.
How I flawed as a person during
My first real chance to be truly happy.
I think of being thrown out into the night
Blindsided and full of anger,
Trying hard to not cause myself harm.
And of walking out a year and a half later
Giving up on being dissatisfied
With how I was living.
I think of hopping from one home
To another, unable to find a job.
Of needing quick relief,
And enlisting in the armed forces.
Wondering how I now await
The life of a special operations soldier.
What happened to that child
Who was not yet nine years old?
Who was he? Was he happy?
How did he picture his future?
Dec 25, 2013
Dec 25, 2013 at 2:05 AM UTC
~~~
every word I write is a tribute
*now listen here,
let's clarify the inescapable,
what this tribute thing means,
cause what I'm doing here,
ain't exactly clear
everything we write,
is only a watery-encapsulated
reflection of our lives,
which of necessity,
will always be messy
what the heck does
this guy mean.
when enlisting
this shady word,
tribute?
at 3:10 in the AM,
tribute is dressed in its
more defy-nition sinister,
a bad news speaking cultural minister,
who never fails us
by reminding,
tribute originated
as the nasty kind:
"any exacted or enforced payment or contribution"
every **** word
that I've written
is a **** tribute,
an exacted, enforced, wrung from,
payment
of a pound of flesh,
Shylock's variety pack kind
I'm not bitter,
a touch angry, perhaps,
even brave, ok, unafraid,
to admit, overall,
got it pretty ok
but that I still struggle
to get that satisfaction,
in everything minute and daily,
the tiny and the tremendous,
the cost production load only goes
unicycle upward sloping,
this crisis crazy we call being
alive,
and to you,
who keys and ken
my meaning well*
herein is my good kind side
my paying
tribute
to you, your courage,
even me, periodically,
for awakening and walking
into the unknown outside,
and giving it up
in our travelogue of
shared poetry
5:48am
Jan. 21, 2016
NYC (aboard the stationary bike,
paying tribute for forty years of sinning)
Jan 22, 2016
Jan 22, 2016 at 4:30 PM UTC
Delirious, this Satin and Paper Cot
Should these Agents once Past permit your Chore
Even to attempt a Link on your Lot
Was but a Mistake from your Fortune's lore
Though Un-Respond, such your Sun-Chariot spells
As Saturated Stars are wont to do
Those Gods from Olympus shake Mortal's Bells
Then encase their Voices enlisting You
From most Causes be yours in-Demand,
Primmed or Pronged Endorsements as they become
Only your Decide allow this Remand
Well your Talents sustain; But Visage done.
Which by Essentials would it Matter, O Prince
Though Wax steers your Morals be ever since.
Jul 22, 2013
Jul 22, 2013 at 2:19 AM UTC
Are you?
Propounding Pounds
Dealing in Dollars
Eulogizing Euros
Dwelling in Dinars
Rolling in Rupees
Enlisting Yens
Whose exchange value is nil
In honey combed heaven
Or horrendous hell
What so ever, whom so ever
Be it an empowered emperor
Or any contemptuous contemporary
Only valid currency in heaven
Is pure Conduct and Character
Dec 9, 2014
Dec 9, 2014 at 6:21 PM UTC
Can't keep my eyes from melting
Those tears that they've been smelting
Because loneliness is pelting
Poor young, forsaken me
Can't keep my eyes from wondering
Why silence is now thundering
Between us and its sundering
Poor young forsaken me
Can't keep my eyes from missing
Those lips that I've been kissing
But now they keep on enlisting
Poor young forsaken me
Enlisting me to cry and
Enlisting me to try
Because if he's not here beside me
Then I might as well have
Died.
Feb 4, 2016
Feb 4, 2016 at 6:56 AM UTC
A low frequency
From the depths of the factory
Stirs old memories within the ageing workforce….
In the greenhouse,
Pruning the greenhouse walls—
Producing strawberries and raspberries at a considerable rate—
Noticing the days begin and restart,
Bathed under LED light;
Ever endeavouring to
Move closer and closer towards
Enlisting in repetitive thoughts,
And enlisting in repetitive thoughts,
And enlisting in repetitive thoughts.
Oct 24, 2022
Oct 24, 2022 at 8:10 AM UTC
as space sufficiently expresses, or succinctly paraphrases with the concerns for time: or hue, or suntan, or baritone hummed weakening into a humph... crazy-bone etc.; sometimes poetry is so much more than the usurping of onomatopoeia... life is the essence of being timed, but that's hardly the essence in the space we occupy - over-versed thinking never formalised toward an outer-reaching imagination that might become copper-raindrops' worth of Disney, or a way memory is made adaptive to cure dementia... yes, space is the essential component for the compartment of life... i believe time has no place in what's to be called life, i believe time exists, but on an Olympic scale, in the metres and millimetres, on the minutes and seconds scales... space is the essence of life: so diverging from known apparatus to unknown operations, thus so diverging from known operations to unknown apparatus... and so on and so forth, until dinosaurs roar and we merely say: yawn - arrogant in our guise.
true, space devalues time; as said the people between us who we never had a meal with, but had the crazed look of craving an unnecessary contentment with despair. can i guess at something? i like your alphabetical onomatopoeia, i.e. pun for knocking, a sorta p p p / b b b, not necessarily needing the suffix for rhyme, why is it that poetry requires the echo, why not rhyme upfront? anyway... but it's there, that alphabetical onomatopoeia... a repeating of the first letter, like opening an oyster... which contradicts the orthodox methodology of rhyme... meaning that there's a repeated seance of an opening... which (although alphabetically staged to a prevailing repeat) equips the reader with many more surprising alternations - basically you begin with what rhymes alphabetically, but not necessarily phonetically: the lost suffix -ing via i had a cat called blinding, and he said all things were shining... one of your poems enabled me to spot this reversal of poetic orthodoxy, in that the rhyme became less musicological, and more rubric enlisting a coherent schema, such as a list... or rhyme via propped first, and cascading into oblivion, never really minding the waggling tail of a bouncy-ball of accepted verse. aardvark and acupuncture... the rhyme begins with A, and ends as it should end, diverging, so there's no feel for a repeat akin to drum or rhythmic bass... otherwise: shout an A into a cave and hear an echo... that's what poetry is damnably worthy to congest one's thinking with... don't rhyme: echo! and ensure that echo is alphabetical rather than musicological. perchance lessened talk, i too would have revised this example with some worthy emoticon.
Oct 20, 2016
Oct 20, 2016 at 10:52 PM UTC
As I sit here staring, out across the open land,
I see my comrades standing hand in hand.
Grenades are going off, as they always had,
As I think of fallen soldiers, I now become quite sad.
Thoughts are going through my head, circling all around,
I look at the scattered bodies littering up the ground.
The stench of rotting flesh is filling up the air,
The once dreams of men, have now turned to despair.
The poison gas now fills the air, as I fumble for my mask,
Escaping machine-gun fire is not such an easy task.
We were told when we first entered this war, that it would not take so long,
But as the war went on, we found out this statement was quite wrong.
Sitting in the trenches, with mud upon my face,
Fighting for my country, I will never be a disgrace.
Sitting here going insane, I can’t stand this another minute,
I am only here so that I can help my country win it.
Looking all around me, I see enormous tanks,
And for this reinforcement, I give my many thanks.
There are so many faces that I have missed for so long,
Sometimes I get the feeling that enlisting may have been wrong.
This deep feeling of regret that wells inside of me,
Shows me the person that I have come to be.
If you have something that you would like to know, just ask me and I’ll say,
The burden of protecting others carries us through the day.
Dec 8, 2011
Dec 8, 2011 at 3:41 AM UTC
I wait in the sunset garden as planet grows
it's auburn scarf.
s
u
d
d
e
n
l
y
I hear
heart monitors slowing
down.
Everything receding.
People come home from universities tapping their feet
to tenor conclaves, palms
rubbed together for a spark
because clouds have become
air condition systems.
Layers are now a necessity.
Soft sheets glow to those enlisting
in another year of the continental war.
We ENTER A TIME OF WAITING
the moon is murkier and light thickens like
EPHEMERAL AUTUMN VAPOR.
Masayoshi Fujita makes Victoria
seem more methodical at night.
(the one man xylophone orchestra)
There's non conventional furniture everywhere!
(Candle in a fishbowl)
But isn't that us all?
especially this time of year?
wax
to
water.
Comfort is rooftops under
HEAVYRAIN.
Spurs of ((isolation)) can be therapeutic.
On another note,
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN AND CHILDREN OF ALL AGES"
Think hard on that, just think is all I ask.
As a poet, I am blind in the same way you are not.
Accordions are the instrument of the universe.
I'm personally a fan of elevator
m
u
s
i
c
TOKYO seems an appealing place to visit
as any.
I crave a certain spontaneity, an abruptness
S L O W L Y.....................
soaking
thru those leaves
who's moment has come
to pass.
Alarm clocks fizzle
where the weary lay,
letting their hair go it's own way
(to enter a new era where sunglasses serve no purpose)
......I'll wait for that time, like a true Buddhist that holds his
patience in front of him.
A daisy wilting into gold.
Sep 19, 2015
Sep 19, 2015 at 4:01 AM UTC
SLOWLY DRIFTING
SLOWLY REACHING
SLOWLY LIFTING
SLOWLY TEACHING
TO LONG FISHING
TO LONG BEACHIN
TO LONG SITTING
TO LONG LEACHING
FAR MORE WISHING
FAR MORE PREACHING
FAR MORE FIXING
FAR MORE ADMITTING
NO MORE CONFLICTING
NO MORE ENLISTING
NO MORE SPLITTING
NO MORE KILLING
ONLY THEN
CAN WE CARRY ON COEXISTING
Sep 26, 2018
Sep 26, 2018 at 11:28 AM UTC
¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯
please
bear with me through
these turns,
for I believe it gets
much better..
i need help.
..much better than this
winding Caltrop
Way
please help me mind
these twists
no..
"not the TWISTS!
the twists betwixt
the ends gone
listing on
a list of modes or
measures—
lest my brooding
BOOM.
So vast,
and so cosmic,
so chasmic..
circumstasmic?
Could any of this be
happening?
Happenstance?
Perhaps a
dance—
a DANCE!
of eloquence enlisting—
of parables b'twixting
between..
..or was it betwixt?
betwixt!
the twist is
a'mix the
boundaries amidst
the sounding
absentees amiss
and all their revelries
gone missing,
they're so lost
among this misting lee."
**i came upon this sanity.
alas!
this simple explanation,
what has brought me
to my knees
at last—**
for
this hope so fixed
to kiss me,
as would bangles
on the wrist be,
then went
"begging and
dredging and
picking and *******
through grand affair in
blissful beds
of rose and posey petals
pushing hedgerows!!
more and more
a bushless exposé
as days count down—
a maze a'drowned
in *thornful
sortie*!!
scornful,
hastily adorned and full of
fate-encrusted memories
of a trustless
misgiving.
My sin has shone its boldness
and has left me living cold.
**please, god,
don't let me
die this way!"
this heart,
o lord,
it yearns
away..**
Aug 3, 2015
Aug 3, 2015 at 10:21 AM UTC
As soon as I heard you were enlisting
Shock.
You never struck me as the type
To completely change your plans.
Such a free spirit before,
Only to conform
Simply because you were afraid
Afraid of what you could have done.
Shock.
There was so much more I imagined you doing,
Playing for pleasure was always your living.
But now, you are to listen to a droning shout
As the entire world shuts you out.
Shock.
And I'm forced to sit here and act like it's okay,
That you're throwing your entire life away.
Perhaps I have a biased view
Maybe serving your country was what you were meant to do.
Shock.
And I'll let you go
To live life on your own
Although, I wish I would've known
How much you've helped me grow.
Dec 10, 2017
Dec 10, 2017 at 8:05 PM UTC
I let the darkness
seep into my skin
as if it would stop
my bones from rattling.
Babbling sirens pierce my ears
forgetting what the morning brings,
I hear nothing but the psychoanalysis
of my own lips breathing out nonsense.
Expectations dangle from the ceiling
blocking out all the light from the moon
enlisting its own doom
into my growing pores.
They reach for sadness like sunlight
a direct way to feel again,
despite my echoing cries
they continue to try and be something.
My body aches of its own type of arthritis,
derived from the weight of surviving,
years of looking for a way out
wore on my joints like sandpaper.
So I erode,
tiny flecks of golden dust
fall to the floor as I walk,
glowing in the hue of dusk reclining
itself into my chest.
I am left with the dread of failure
and regrets I know best
waiting for the dawn to support me,
but the darkness lasts for days.
I wait
and I wait,
and eventually the sun will rise
and I will be okay.
Sep 7, 2018
Sep 7, 2018 at 2:57 PM UTC
Deep within the bowels of the Earth
immensely distant from the sheltering sky
amidst a thick fog enveloped landscape
with here and there a projected
craggy, derelict chasm
precipitously crooked pointing toward
an infinitely wide yawning abyss
dwelt kindred spirits comprising a soul asylum
where grateful dead (albeit marked
via weathered tomb stones) hermetically sealed
once vibrant corporeal mortals
betook their eternal slumber
One among their number
included a misanthrope
who sported long straggly hair
bushy eyebrows shielding cold eyes of steel
straggly bearded clammy chin
in tandem with a hairy body
which when alive (long time ago)
upheld upon unshod feet a severely
hunchbacked ******
Within dense pitch-black terrain
(Mother Nature enlisting
a menagerie of life forms
accustomed to hellish environment)
awash with unrecognizable
alien sights and sounds
mollycoddling bewitching warlocks,
mailer daemons,
imps of the pervert chieftains, fiery
long and fostered Golems
who called underworld
their private demesne
also alluded to Marcy's playground
holding hostage Alice in Chains
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,
The Beastie Boys, The Human League, and
Village People a Crowded House
Emitting wisps of ethereal matter
appearing a small medium at large
chat snap ping, flickr ring indeed joyus minions
exalting piety a plenti
Prone ounce sing proud purgatory
promoting protean phantasmagoria
hideous hulu hoop dancing holograms
highly distorted grotesque
silent screaming sinister banshees
slithering across escarpment.
Jan 20, 2018
Jan 20, 2018 at 3:45 PM UTC
I am human. A person.
That simple fact, a reason,
To be included in my inventory.
It’s a necessary part of my story.
I admit I childishly cheated as a kid
Of course, I lied about what I did.
I stole cigarettes from my aunts,
Smoked the instant I had the chance.
Naturally, there was *** to be had
And though called sinful, I was glad
To be among the very lucky few
Who didn’t wonder about it. We knew.
School over, I tried to avoid the draft
By enlisting in the air force. Daft.
That was in the days during the calm
When very few of us knew of Vietnam.
My feet were flat, somehow or another.
Asked if I'd drafted, “Maybe your mother!”
He said she would be called rather than I.
I’d never make a march fully packed, goodbye.
So, I started into living my life, aimlessly
Content to dodge the service blamelessly.
Rather than go to college, discouraged by Dad,
I made the best with the talents I already had.
I worked in clerical jobs, and organizing files
And grew bored with that after a long while.
I sang in nightclubs and in little theater
But never got my star ambitions together.
So, I learned to smoke *** and crash
In the pads of friends when out of cash.
I’d wash their dishes, and cook good food
And even sleep with them when in the mood.
I walked some picket lines and protested
And when evil laws got passed, contested.
I carried signs and worked odd jobs around;
Did casual income accrual that could be found.
I worked for years at a company for bucks,
Thinking permanent salary changes luck,
And it did because I finally bought a home
And stopped being a hippie on the roam.
I loved and lusted with the constant line
Of **** available hotties I could find
People who had time for a bit of fun.
And by then, I was the perfect one.
All this means, I had a normal acumen
For living life and being a human.
I make no apologies here, instead
Like a pony, I let myself have my head.
Oct 25, 2017
Oct 25, 2017 at 8:49 PM UTC