My pink mechanical pencil
Is sitting right beside my computer

The brand and lead size
is worn off, from all the use

The eraser has been changed
Countless times

There is graphite dust
in a few places in the grip

My other pencil
the same but purple

Lost its clip
I wiggled my pencil too much

Which is why the purple one
Is out of order

When I'm bored
or anxious

I'll pick up my pencil
Spin it, wiggle it, open and close it

Take apart
and put back together

Anything that can be done to my pencil
Will be done

Thanks to my constant need
for motion

Pulling
stretching
An oxidizing elasticity
all the while
a morphing
of shape and size
a marble of muted grays
resurfacing itself
and the pages it touches
with a softness that cannot
be touched
only destroyed
back into a density
to take away
the mistakes
better left
unseen

We are a puzzle with missing parts
That is why we make art
It is a healing start

We are all dream chasers
Until pencil meets eraser
Until boat meets glacier
Reality we must face her
When we sacrifice imagination
For societal integration
We search for placation
In lonely play stations
And through vacation
We experience migration
When the results are doubtful
And the response a drought mold
Because people are skeptical
Until there's a shiny scepter sold
Then you're put on a pedestal
And have your pecker pulled
By various industry tools
Loading you like a mule
With expensive jewels

Art must be the only motive
Not climbing any totem
Because once you're dead
Your art can still be read
Audiences may still be fed
But there's a frivolous influence
So you must be vigilant and prudent
To cut that from your life
So art may be your wife
That works to end strife
Yet that kind of help
You can't put on a shelf

I strive to make my art timeless
Though my pockets are dimeless
We live in a world of depression
That carries the risk of regression
My art could help push past it
Now that would be classic

It feels good to know how the head looks like
I have a green pencil
The head is the eraser
In the nite time she picture the future
She painted them green
There are plenty pencils but different eraser
This pencil is breath taking,full of life
With the pencil it feels good that anything is possible
Yes!!! anything is possible

Let's make a new kind of pencil, so that anything can be possible
We can decide to erase the old one,
With a new kind of pencil
We can believe in the new world of ours
Ours is a generation of unending love
Let's stay all night designing a new kind of pencil
Let's be creative, let's be green.
Though we are going to be misunderstood,cause people don't like trying new things
The universe is waiting for us down the lane
I hope we do it right. . .

I'm like a pencil
My lead has run out
And my eraser is threatening to be done

Everytime I try to help
Or fix something
It wears out more

I'm wearing thin
Paper thin
I'm afraid that I don't have any more to give.

I never got to thank you
Mister electronic pencil sharpener
I never got to thank you
Mister mechanical pencil
I never got to thank you
Mister dull pencil, because your eraser still works
And mister pencil without an eraser, because you’re still sharp

That big, pink eraser you see?
I wish it were a hundred times grander
So I could erase all the days
All the wasted months of my life.
I'd be capable of erasing every individual day since I was born.
No,
I take that back...
I'd drop the eraser when I hit November 25th of this year.
That was the day you told me yes
Hidden under ***** and heaps of paper
Lay that rounded eraser,
Smeared with numbers and photos.
Something I thought would never happen did
And an enormous switch on the creases in my brain flipped on
My heart went through the clouds for the first time ever
It'll never go back down to that eraser...

if you want to make a mark on the world,
remove the marks placed upon thyself,
by thyself,
thus skilled,
then erase others.

be an eraser,
then
a bother-in-arms.

no typo,
bother the world
by your
arms,
your reach around,
arms extended.

freedom begins when first seeing the greater good.

making goodness greater,
frees oneself to free the others,
all the days of your life.

mark them how you free them well,
being a eraser,
then a re~marker
upon each other.

he who erases the marks of others,
makes his mark upon the world non-pareil.

His soul was woven
From a fool's whispers
By the hands of a ghost
On a loom of lies
          . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
                 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
                        His condemnation
                        Was not so much
                        Predicated on the Lord
                        Or what part of his body
                        The Devil had enjoyed
                                 eaten and spit upon the street
               The whispers
               The echos of whispers
               Troubled him the most
               Especially at night
               When light breezes
               Muted the voices
               In an interruptive cadence
               Leaving the words unconnected
                        The burden
                        His own
                        To fill in the blank spaces
                        Connecting the dots
                        With a broken pencil
                        And an eraser
                        Worn to its metal edge

I hadn't been there in ages, hadn't visited, I had no reason to
But then the Covid virus struck and Dublin where I was working was put into quarantine
I wasn't allowed to go up there anymore to work,
And I had no computer at home and no broadband/ WiFi at the time
So they sent me down to the Old Town
It was nice driving down the motorway, it was Autumn and the leaves they were all changing colour
The different shades of red, brown green and yellow
With the sun shining on the mountains and on the bay
It felt almost like I was going on my holidays,
The Old Town it had changed so much, there were all these new buildings,
Retail parks on the outskirts, hotels, new schools, civic buildings... coffee shops
It was lovely and clean and tidy
Like those living there were really proud of it,
The old town I'd known it was there also, in the background, a bit dusty now
There was the big old gothic church my Dad used take us to, to Mass some Sundays
There was the Port and the big ships along the Quay
There was the secondary school I was meant to go to... had we stayed...it looked old, a bit dilapidated now
I wondered was it still being used as a school,
In the Main Street there were still old names of shops that I recognized
The shoe shop where my Mom used buy us shoes
The chemist where my brother got his glasses... the Bakery
The cinema where we seen our first movie "The Magnificent Seven", it was all done up now... all different...
In the office things were... well...weird! ghostly!
A big modern office and some days I was the only one there, just me all on my own
Was like something out of a Sci-fi movie
Other days maybe two or three might come in to join me
All the others of course, they were all working from home,
Often I'd find my mind just filling with old memories and nostalgia...
I could hear the old ghosts calling, calling me to go back
I knew... I knew I had to go back there
Back to where it had all begun for me
The little seaside village where I was born.

So going home I took the coastal road not the motorway
Just the sight of the headland and the blue mountains sloping down to the sea
With the lighthouse there at the end
Just seeing them again gave me an old feeling of my father, my Dad
And then the village itself, the seafront... all the colourfully painted shops,
Sweet shops & novelty shops, the amusement arcade, pubs and hotels and B&B's  (Bed and Breakfasts)
After being away for nearly fifty years, it still looked...it still looked pretty much the same, was hard to believe
I stopped my car and went into a little supermarket shop to get a sandwich for the next day
As I looked around, I seen these two mature ladies there, they were around my own age
I thought to myself 'I might have gone to school with you once many years ago, one of you might even have been my wife had we stayed here and not moved away
I might have lived a more normal, a different life'
But then I thought 'Life is never that simple, is it'.
Outside I decided to go for a walk, to look around and reminisce.

There was the path, the pavement I used go to school on with my brothers
It was like returning to the scene of a crime
How I used to dread going to school sometimes
There was a teacher, a lady teacher that used scare me a lot, she terrified me so
I remember I got sick in class on several occasions
She put me outside once sitting on an upturned bin
I can still remember sitting there on that bin in the sun, feeling so lost and that I was a really bad boy, wishing I was home
I remember I used to get hives, itches on my skin
My Mom used keep me at home
She was afraid, she thought I'd give them to the other kids
I missed the addition and subtraction tables at school because of this
To this day I still don't know what 7 + 5 is, instead I bring it to 10, I know 5 is 3 + 2, so I say 7 + 3 is 10 and 2 is 12
And I know all the doubles, 7 + 6 is 6 + 6 is 12 and 1 is 13, funny that
How I used to dread going to school
Until that was... until one day I did well at something and I received some praise
Then things seemed to change after that, I wasn't as bothered anymore, I think then I realized I was doing better than some of the others in my class and that seemed to make a difference
I remembered sitting beside pretty little girls who used have lovely pink pencil cases with lots of fancy colourful things
Whereas me I barely had a pencil, a rubber (eraser) and a ruler
They were strange lovely creatures, the Girls with their lovely long hair and their cute little faces...
I remembered walking home on my own, with my little schoolbag on my back with all my books in it
It was such a beautiful place, the view with the beach and the sea and the faraway blue mountains
And yet, I used to worry about so many things
It's like even then it was all about...all about survival...
There was the big Chapel on the hill
Once before the Summer holidays they were looking for altar boys and someone put my name forward
Then on the first morning back to school after the Summer holidays
The teacher said you better get down to the church right away, like fast!! you're on the altar this morning !!!
I was terrified, I didn't know what I had to do, no one told me anything
So there I was on my own kneeling on this cold hard marble altar and it was hurting my knees something terrible
And the priest he's talking about God and the Devil and Evil or Hell or whatever
And all these people, the whole congregation their all staring up at us
And I'm petrified, and I started to get faint and nauseas
The priest had to stop the Mass
I can't remember if I got sick or passed out
I was so embarrassed and thought afterwards I was such a terrible bad person, I knew it'd be all around the school the story.

I walked on...our house was gone, knocked down, where there used to be three houses together attached, now there was only the end house
Our house used to be the middle house
It didn't look right now, the symmetry looked all wrong
It was like there was two missing teeth
Why did they have to knock it down ? I wondered. It saddened me a bit...

At another house I stopped, this used to have a shop, a small shop,  the shop was no longer there
This was my Best Friend's house, all the days we used to play football together in the back garden
Kicking the ball to each other
With our jumpers/ sweaters as goalposts
The first to score ten would win the game
I...I usually won
I always found you easy to read, it's like you only ran in straight lines,
I think you were a bit in awe of me for some reason
Maybe you wouldn't have been my friend if you'd beaten me
How did we become friends anyway, I wondered
I suppose coming home from school
We lived on the same road and were in the same class, we'd have met each other
I had two older brothers whereas you were the oldest
So our families would have had a different dynamic
I remember you had a delightfully silly younger brother
I remember your Mom, she was very pretty, she was a lot younger than my Mom
You used bring me in and give me a meal sometimes, we'd all sit and watch TV
There was a different feeling when I was in your house...a different atmosphere
But when your Dad would come home, he was a bit scary
And I knew it was then time for me to go home
You'd wonder afterwards what the lovely Mom saw in the scary Dad, adults they were a bit peculiar.

We were inseparable in those days, many mornings you'd hear the knock on the door
And the familiar greeting
"Hello Mrs B---, Is G---- in, is he coming out to play?"
We were always playing soccer up the garden
Or down on the beach, going out for miles to meet the tide, catching *****, looking under  stones to see what we might find
I remember we were very entrepreneurial
In the Summer we used collect returnable glass mineral bottles, Orange and Lemonade and Coca Cola
And we'd bring them back to the shop and get money back for them
And then we'd have a royal feast, we'd buy bottles of Orange and bags of crisps and ice cream pops and chocolate bars,
Remember all the different Ice pops there used to be, Choc Ices and Brunches and Orange splits, 99's... Ice cream cones
Chocolate bars, Smarties and Malteasers, Milky Bars and Milky Ways, Dairy Milk chocolate bars, fruit gums and Love hearts with little love messages written on them
We used hang around the amusement arcade, play the slot machines, maybe help some old lady collect her winnings, she might give us a tip
There was the bumper cars and the swingboats and music playing all the time on the jukeboxes
It was the seventies (the 70's) and glam rock was all the rage
Marc Bolan and T-Rex, and Slade and The Sweet and a million others
So many great songs, we couldn't wait to grow up and become one of those amazing creatures we saw on the telly
I'd never lived since as intensely as I did back then,
We'd stay out till late
We were like young hustlers going around,
It seemed the days they were never long enough, all the things we got up to,
We'd Caddy in the local golf course
And retrieve lost ***** from the ditches...
Heh! Remember... remember that time... the Brennan sisters, we were up one day near the school
There was building work going on
And there was this big high mound of clay
So we climbed to the top to take in the view
And then the two Brennan sisters came over
They lived nearby
They were in our class at school, we knew them only to see
They were smiling and laughing and giggling
They beckoned for us to come and follow them
We went wondering what was going on here
They led us back to their house, I think their parents must have been out
One of them came up to us and smiled
And then she pulled down her pants and showed it to us in all its wonderful glorious splendour
It was amazing... incredible... such a sight
Her beautiful...her splendid... her lovely... bare Bottom!
I remember thinking it was like a lovely ripe pear
One of Life's great mysteries had just been unveiled
And her there with this huge impish grin,
When we were going home we promised each other we'd not tell anyone, our parents, not even the priest in confession
About that great vision we'd just witnessed
It was the height of naughtiness
Yea! Those were the days...

I wondered, 'Whatever became of you Old Friend ?
I looked you up online but couldn't find your name anywhere, couldn't find anything about you
Were you even still alive ?
50 years was a long time, I'd barely made it this far myself, and I had a lot of scars to show for it
I thought rather amusingly that I should knock on your door
Maybe you were still living there,
But what was I hoping to find ? I wondered...
"Whose at the door ?", a woman's Voice inside might say,
"Just... just some crazy guy talking about 50 years ago" her dutiful husband would reply
That's probably how it would go
I felt like I was Rip Van Winkle awakening after being asleep for 100 years or in my case 50 years
What did I hope to find
What did I hope to see, an old man now just like myself
And I bet you'd tell me your opinions on the government and the economy
And how the village had changed over the years and how other old schoolmates of ours had got on in life
But No! that's not what I wanted to hear or see
I wanted to see you there again just like you were as a little kid
Your lovely youthful face smiling back at me
And you'd say, "I'll get the ball and we'll have a game, the first to ten wins"
This was what I was looking for, this was what I wanted to hear.

We were very close, were going to grow up together, go to the same schools...college
We'd always be friends
We'd meet all the trials of life together....
I hope Life worked out well for you, my friend
In a way...in a way I almost didn't want to know
If I learned you did well in Life I'd probably only get jealous
I'd start to think I was better than you and that I should have had those things you had
Life, this world it makes enemies of us all... eventually
It divides, is all about competing and comparing... and beating (I suppose).

I still remember that last night before I left forever
We were down on the beach, it was twilight, the tide was coming in... the waves slowly advancing
Just like in life I had no power to stop it, to change things,
I had no say, I didn't want to go and leave you Old Friend
No! I didn't want to go....

Thank you...thank you for being my friend, for being there
For all the time you gave me, I hope I didn't hurt you in any way.

I have a photograph, one solitary old black and white photo of the two of us
We're sitting on a barrel in our back garden on either side of my Dad whose in the middle
You look a bit uncertain, unsure of yourself, probably lost in the dynamic of my family,
I look at you and I think
"Whatever happened to you.... Beautiful Friend, whatever became of you"
And then I look at myself as well, and I think, I whisper
"Whatever became of me as well".

This whole thing is one big typo.

It’s supposed to tell you how much I love you.

But instead it’s just another boring poem.

How lame.

The girl i liked
she's the one with eyes starry
like the night sky
a mouth red and cherry-like
her smile
is the springtime rain
that gently awakens hundreds
of flowers
i don't know when exactly
i fell in love with her
the love germinated
perhaps concealed in the bashfulness
during high school
i knew it's love
when her head's on her desk
glasses on one side and sleepy-eyed
i couldn't help but take one more glance
my love for her
was hidden in a piece of eraser
in her little piece of bread
the feeling of liking her
is when i remember her smile
either with friends or alone
it is also after we parted ways
the feeling of missing her
couldn't forget and couldn't let go
she appears in my dream
running to me
the girl i liked
her name is so special
i still hope i can meet her
even if it's just one time
i will no longer hide
my love
i hope the thread of fate
pulls us together
love essentially
is the miracle of destiny
the girl i liked so much
her name contains neon and beverage
it's been inscribed here
since forever.

I was told by my peers that letting my voice be heard was preferred, yet they say the words I speak are absurd

What's the point of freedom of speech if my words still have a safety lock. The day I will be happy is the day I find the key to chains around my throat

I don't want to drown in this ******* but just stay afloat. if I always wrote by putting my pencil on paper, why does someone else have to be my eraser

I am a chaser of dreams and a speaker of my thoughts. I will untangle the knots that they keep tying. I will preach my beliefs even when I'm dying.

Bored at work
I take a razor to a white eraser

I slice an x down the marble white
So sharp the lines are invisible
Until I bend it

It will take much friction to hide what I did
But if I am too rough
It will break

small waves speckle shore rocks and summer sun erases

O Exam! Have you ever seen my face
When you fall on my head like a case?

Look into my eyes, fear is wandering
And you, with no compassion, are mocking

Day and night you tie me to the chair
And put a knife on the table for horror

Don't you know to drink juice I fumble
And at each attempt for outing I stumble?

On the wall your silhouette does flicker
That keeps me awake to use my eraser

O Exam!  Why you come once and again
Compel me to exhaust my much heavy brain

Open your wings and skim over those hills
Where no school stands and flow only rills

Please go on long holidays out of the sea
Reside and visit only once a year like a buddy

Let me learn and fill up my mind with knowledge
When  I walk don't shake my study's bridge

You're an inspirational exciting jolt
Like an invitational lightning bolt
I'm suddenly shocked by the results
When I am blocked by your revolt

You have my beating heart in your hand
Holding me hostage where I silently stand
Staring at your ****** butcher's cleaver
That morphs me into a landlocked ******

You're a two-hander
Like a sledgehammer
Or a radar jammer
I start to stutter and stammer
When I see your weekly planner
And the lack of my presence
Because I'm incessant
You hold a pencil and an eraser
You delete when I become a tracer
And start to draw a better replacer

You hold the scales of justice
Though I claim you're unfit
You say add that to the list
From the throne where you sit
And there's no avenue for any recourse
When your other hand holds so much force
I must deal with your actions
So I can stay in your faction
For my heart's attraction

I am never right
So we never fight
And we never might
Understand each other
When we're taking cover
From exposing vulnerability
An exploding soul is filling me
Because the cold mist killing steam
Between us until you are only a dream
And my mind starts bursting at the seams
Until there's a monster barely mentally caged
But the bars shake when it is constantly enraged
When your saccharine emotions are cynically staged
My bustling brain will unfortunately always be plagued
By your neutral reactions which I'll never be able to gauge

You hold two hands behind your back
Will it be an attack?
Our two hands should meet
Instead I'm trampled by feet

I walk
down the
street
in the summer
sun
and the person
I nod to,
walking past,
does not see me
and I do not
see
him

I wish I had a life's moments eraser
To erase all the bad moments from others memories
But I would like to keep them in mine
They give me humility
They give me the charm and qualities I have now

I wish I were beautiful
So that I could not be so nervous when I talk to people

I wish I were a better writer
So that I could be famous for it

I wish I were a better vocalist and that I were musically talented
I can sing already I just want to be better

But I'm the exact opposite
I can't erase my bad moments
I'm not beautiful
And I'm an alright writer, I'm just not the best of them
I can sing good, but I'm just not great

*But I wish most of all to be able to have children someday

after everything you've done
this is what i'm grateful for
this is my silver lining
or blue lines in a notebook
you are the reason i first put pencil to paper and i'd like to say that i hate you for firmly making me grab the eraser
you make me write symphonies in my head
but sometimes i want to rip them to shreds
when I see you in the audience, the put in my stomach grows
as you listen and you know
but it's not about you
it's about me
because this is the only way that I feel free
and it's scary
because i also love you
for destroying me
and leaving me with a jar of ink
this is my form of expression
to escape from this feeling of depression
i put down every single thought
and i find that you appear a lot
so i transform you into words
and butterflies and chirping birds
and nightmares and the single cloud always hanging over my head
that is you
and when people say
"oh it's creepy that she writes about him"
i think it's only fair
you completely shattered me
and the least i should be able to do is write some poetry
because it's the only time that i can breathe
and maybe all these feelings will leave
and i know that they often grow
but when i transform you on paper
that's when i know
that it's okay to feel this way
i'll hate you and love you
and the only reason for either one
is because you gave me this gift
and sometimes try to take it and run
so i guess what i'm trying to say is that writing about you comes easy
even though getting over this was not
you were not what you seemed
and i hate and love it at the same time
for example, this poem wasn't meant to rhyme
but then all of my thoughts combined and there you were
so yes i write about you
and you can tell all your friends too
this wasn't meant to glorify
it was just trying to simplify
the equation of me
and to do that
i'll use poetry
so i'd like to thank you
for introducing me to me

I was going to write some
Raw truth
Alas the backspace overpowered
And my ugly truth
That I fail to accept

was erased

It is a fun game
That this keyboard
This black ink on this temporary white screen
Can so easily disappear
Can so quickly be erased
Without a single trace of it

And I pity this page
My page
That can so easily be erased
By this electronic eraser
That clears my ugly truth
That I can never seem to...

And ****!

You will never know the words I was going to say
For they were just erased
And deleted
From this electronic white page
By my electronic eraser
That distorts my ugly truth
That....

****


It's like a magic trick
This thing
You'll never know my final stanza because
Of my contemplative fingers
That too easily erase.

**** **** ****
The writers' fingers go
They race
I can hear those backspace buttons ringing through the air
Of this dead, echoing night
Erasing their thoughts
Because of
hesitation
Doubt
Contemplation
The worry that they won't care
About that last line you were itching to write

Tell me
Do you hear them
Loud and clear
In the drumming air

****! ****! ****!

The writers' words
That will
Infinitely
Be
erased.

Rhetorical ambiance –
Marker writes 2D in 2D
On white windows.

“Does he see the fish
in the murky river?”
I do.
“Of course not.”

I CAN’T ESCAPE
no one, teacher screams
shattered board
a hole through –
nefarious, nebulous faces
eat light

Anyways,
eraser goes down
Teacher writes 3D in 2D
I reel with lack of –
Sleep.

Birds flee the coop
Clock strikes the red one
Hickory-dickory dock
And I, in my creative
Hickory-dickory ship,
slowly leave

A poem short and straight
A few spaces and phrases
Mistakes, need not be afraid.
I can undone the done.