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Julian Jul 2016
Fragile egg-shell mind on dawn’s highway bleeding the segue between times traversed only in momentary dreams or in enduring excursions

We drag our droll and quaint 60s baggage like the luggage of a safari made of concrete girding a cavernous expanse of unheralded ground

With our ears oriented to the floor, we leap out of body never to deplore….never to ignore….never to miss the blue bus of our drafted imaginations, so carefully culled from brash elitism

I trounce the intervening time between being friendless and an ironic end, and an irenic comrade becoming the dearest amazed but always aplomb friend

We simper in our glorious traversal, and though bedraggled through an ornamented cavern we linger just long enough to be celebrated

Then a blues riff emanates from a vapid bar, and finally someone heralds my exhumed memory still rusty with the pavement of encased concrete on an empty or full tomb

So I wander in my mind to that roughshod Paris glassy tincture a romanticized gild of proper sensibility crafted in the tongues of lizards emulating the tongues of serpentine Anglicans

As the power of love transcends the love of power, both are afforded serendipitously upon the stately occasion of a fitful revolt where heads literally rolled and deaths still unfurl from the slippage of a violent malevolent eternity, crafting a new creative way to expedite the smite of preventable scourge

So Jim, I see your picaresque side and your wide-eyed love for a listless ship anointed of a crystal blip just detectable long enough on RADAR to become the statistic to crack the slim WHIP

No wigs are needed at this formality, no figs grow from trees forty-five years buried and almost a full month unsung

Pitiable cretins of an invented insanity, they scoff at my ravenous and portentous heart for its excess and for aligning with an upstart verging on only a specious insanity

Why in all humanity could a month be mustered with every defense of history and yet for it to be so widely flouted as a risible exercise in futility

The irony that the artistic glamor of a past vogue becoming a revival that is often toked only to one song but never to the memorial of great cavernous and commodious imaginations, staggers with dismay where otherwise the mayday would be a disaster but still a great day

Then I look at a triggered-fingered omen of a death so ominous yet so brazenly confronted as the ambassadors of time provide plaudits to a fearless martyrdom

Why such a sad spate, why such a stringent but malevolent fate a malediction on a family whose crest is not crestfallen like rolling waves but ornamented with gravity impounding its own weight

A fugacious tomb, an eternal flame, a swan song announcing an independent authority on a prescient demise mashed and deprived

A single shot rippling through the broadened space between clasped eternity and a histrionic disgrace as a psychological confederate pays lip service to a reiterative applause

A cousin hardly American in a defected record of incendiary plumes of a hoarse hatred of waxen discs and flying discs alike,  climbs out of a bonfire mounted purely out of vindictive spite

Then upon a great white buffalo a wrapped package of Californian love before California ever alighted like something beyond an avaricious dove, saw a rocky park and a hearth of illuminated darkness the singular spark

Captain Morgan knows the jackknife applause of a botched deal morphing into a disbelieved spiel. A shibboleth of enormous mystical weight crashing down from an ethereal abode and heaven heavily saddened cannot hardly appeal

Then a loving spoonful of crystal blue persuasion led me to Ethel’s regimented keepsake and for once in my life nobility and I became a grateful waif. But temerity laughed, splintered spacecraft, and the wooden paws of a bearish applause led to resurgent clarity

Blinking stars shattered by knighted and raw applause punctured the liberated might of a sentient hortatory savior grasped by the internecine wrench of a waxen time

An indie track slides by unnoticed in an aleatory time, and the threadbare whine of centuries of lament becomes a dastardly barn set ablaze with the fury of ancients and the scurry of faineant patents

Perfidy slides in recess, and in gentle forbearance the winged angel lingers like a halo on conifer and spring above a remedial ring

I dial frisky celerity tingling the dangling claws of a raven’s screed and in plunder of all history’s pilfer secrets I eagerly weave a tapestry Indiana Jones himself would be proud to watch

Not the riotous ruin of a mystery tour of verdure crippled by genocide but overcome by the revived life of raised rain razing the moments of indelible pain

But the culmination of a proffered time taken at its word for its every careened bird, for its every brazen gird. The manger of proctored stars calls us home tonight and home forever. Life in quaked timorous stumbles suddenly no longer so fitfully absurd.

The quixotic plundered of pirates and emperors in direct emulation of some crooned pastiche of whittled integrity, surges above any encased blurb and any vain testament to a pyramid rigid in destiny and ragged in desultory and sturdy sincerity

Multiplying the ineffable by the division of arable divorced from edible is too creative to be eaten as pabulum when sparks curdle flickered moonlight crimson and that become golden only to the last laugh of ennobled ragamuffins

Frankly the desert of melliferous gorillas abetting the lark of a heavily vetted camarilla engaged in the sinecure of a rigged wall on a main street to block the tall from the lame bleat. Stocks grazed, costs engaged on a littoral beach at the end of a Bossy promenade

This prayer is a cutthroat collapse of a merry spare, a ribbed ****** waiting to plunge into the antithesis of female despair, but sincere in its restraint that vixens courted in love aren’t courted in litigation of a wagered dare

Ambulances chase Deloreans through the desolate moon-stricken skies of a time agape with fleets of phantasmagoria on a Cliffside too wise to ever mince words or excise cries

Skulking the red-teared caverns of entombed films and lampooned tinctures on a passion vetted only for certain and utter deracinated disguise, I wallop with winged men in a single soul armed to the teeth with inveterate tithes to eternal internments of poached and endangered gazettes

As growth older in wizened skin bets on epithets rather than epitaphs for rinsed peace and triumphant clefts we leap above in orbit of only the bellowing nether of blown tolls and untold souls aggregating the esoteric grasp of Alexandrian tomes

The denumeration of certainty is a carousel of wonder, a splurge of time ripped asunder with majesties of paparazzi scuttled impacts a throttled iniquity of regalia’s indicted blunder frenchified but still clean with inestimable sheens

With twenty-five dollars, a dime an assist and a nickeled reiteration of currency already so personable it is divine and sublime in crazed desist I watch the embroiled natives clash in denatured violence with the warriors of a crossed repast hearkening to an old land much of ire but too much of grandstand to ultimately last

Itching for a holy field husk of peerless ties listed as rumpus and beer, a two-packed smoked by bludgeoned blokes careless in irascible sputters of a muffled doom, a Vegan becomes the author of too many sacrosanct homilies becoming defiled witchcraft brooms dead on arrival too many lionized tombs

In plaudits and the scause of an amplified “what if?” of an olfactory nightmare of petrified fog of effluvium bogged in Wade and in heat it is always clogged, sinewy libations of toasted preemptive revenge become a powerballed hog

A castle in the sky founded on Franklin but scourged of wineskins brimming with a distilled time, a swift repartee becomes the whispered ladder of saints blather becoming not rather other than a Dan Rather spatter

A door breeched by a broached inconvenience of amphigory beyond common reach, I clamber excess and whisk the lingered love into destiny beyond any word other than a beseeched preach of nothing tired but everything inspired of noble love with abundance often to teach

Fireworks of turned tides of fallow tithes to aliens beyond any conceivable bribe the bushwhacker writhes but survives staying alive without even a hint of garbled jive a 27th floor glass elevator is quite a resplendent ride

Wellsprings knowing radical rolled tides of errant dice also themselves guilty of confessional tithes to the monolith of avarice at the nooked cranny of an evaporated time we whine as the police sting the album rained with songs too lugubrious to sing but in their elegy every lonely heart has a propinquity phone of souled resonance ring

Iterative mastery of a mathematics of love, loss decay and the dross of a dental Occidental floss, the sweep of screened queues become questions of inestimable importance to foreign dues on a horse with no name but so consumed with fumes

A fright occultist thriller prowls in a waylaying daylight, masquerading an innocent confection for a rescued triage of a dawn stabbed with knives in our last dying days of trembled plight

He resurrects only the wraiths of detest, squinted at by the putrefaction of summoned cardiac arrest and littered with bullets that somehow can penetrate even impregnable bullet proof vests the wrapped carcass of the mummified husk of ready despair offers itself a ghoulish and raspy prayer

Synchronized in a low roaring swathe of rollercoasters too immersive to ride, the terpsichorean obscurantism of deliberately shattered fragments becoming blurbs dismissed with hijacked deride the carnival of a summer sun becomes the ocean of limitless love becoming endless fun

We forget the drawl of the droll old tales that haunt like specters in the closet and beneath the bedridden valetudinarian of an effrontery of shackled fright, we sprawl the innumerable caverns of prophetic insight afforded by the pantheon of history enter stage left, depart stage right

And with their insight I write and write, I grasp the tusk of democracy and wage an insurrection against the doubt of plodding limitations in otherwise immaculate sight

*** and tyrannosaurus rex, of litigable offenses leading to pardonable arrests, the gated entryway of a poetic splurge leads to the demiurge of a demotic enlightenment and suddenly the frank becomes the frazzled retirement and that haunting hounding bunny transmogrified by a shattered eye averts the car crash that careens ponderous engines out of limitless twilight blue skies.

Diamond lightning in pristine skies escorts the telegraphic totems of riddled modems from 1967 to 2016 and suddenly all venerable personages converge on a teeming scene of a union unified by a universal dream. To become everything and yet nothing and out of light and darkness to become a beatific beam
Nat Lipstadt Jan 2014
a  flawless poem
if such there were,
will always be,
the next one

my poor soul,
my rag tag heart
has no censor,
so careless, reckless,
as if words were but
frivolous treasures,
easy spent, easy get

if only, how I wish I
could harvest my best,
with golden cutlery excise
the single flawless poem,
that I know in my possess

lay down this hand so weary
from cupping tears,
be satisfied at long last,
so much so,
that my casket lowered,
hands in repose companioned,
clutching his best, easing his rest,
a paper record to join his ash,
his flawless poem,
at long last
Written in ten minutes when Frivolous Treasure, Ingrid, and SE Reimer
excised it from with me, a triage performed and a poem delivered, fluid and tear wet,  while Mozart's Serenade No. 13 for Strings harmonized what ever music the man has left.

flawless? Perhaps one slightly less flawed.

give us your names and I will write someday
what my heart knows exists

Words are hopeless, poor substitutes for what they in vain,and we too, we call the heart's decay but this poem give unto me a deeper satisfaction than most...
Dusk!

With a creepy, tingling sensation you hear the fluttering of leathery wings!

Bats!

Glowing red eyes and glistening fangs,

These unspeakable giant bugs drop into view.*

Fibrous wings furred like a moth,

Big ears are just a membranous extension of antennae.

Flying in search of a flower’s pollen laden froth,

Silent except for the hum and squeak of echolocation.

Trap bats in attics, butterflies in nets.

No rabies feared, no bedbug bites to itch.

Clawed feet ****** and grab like praying mantis pincers;

Bloated stomach slopes like a pudgy beetle.

Jaws manipulate like an ant, excise like scissors;

Soft hair rustles like a wooly caterpillar.

They live in darkness, centipedes do too,

Come out at night like cockroaches tend to.

Skittering through the night like daddy long-legs,

Noses snubbed like bumble bee faces.

Wind turbines endanger bats,

Like fans endanger lightning bugs.

Only one percent of bats are vampiric,

Like only a small percentage of spiders are poisonous.

Dawn!

With a creepy, tingling sensation you hear the fluttering of leathery wings!

Bats!

Bats are bugs, aren’t they?
*Adapted from a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip by Bill Watterson
Fathers's farther away
Mother's gone
and what do I say?

what is there out there?

I want to see what's beyond
when I stare into
the distance

and distant is how it seems
waking
and dreams roll
into one


They're still gone.
onlylovepoetry Jun 2023
Investment Principles:
Staying the course,
your owned love
will not fail you
~~~~


Staying the course means going against your own emotions at times.

when weeping is easier than squaring the jaw, gritting teeth

Staying the course means thinking and acting for the long term even when it doesn’t feel right in the short-term.

lost loving, when the other walks away, and being brave is
the only path, brace, and excise that stooped shoulder, stand straight!


Staying the course means preparing not predicting.

predict only that hope is eternal, perpetual and maybe, just,
around the corner


Stay the course means doing nothing when that’s what your plan calls for.
~~~
steady the breathing,
ok, now! wipe the tears,
be resolved that once tasted,
love, is human, though inimitable,
and your sunrises will return inevitable
and the return on investment unbelievable
6/22
actual wise principle of investing
I understand why they talk about a fine line.
It hurts my heart to look at you,
A physical pain
Manifesting in palpitations.
The western way to deal with pain
is to excise what hurts, what has malfunctioned,
What has gone bad within us.
In order to excise you,
I must force myself to hate you.
The alternative damages me.
I have to cut you out.
Nat Lipstadt Jan 2016
~~~

a flawless poem
if such there were,
will always be,
the next one

my poor soul,
my rag tag heart,
has no censor,
so careless, reckless,
as if words were but
frivolous treasures,
easy get, easy spent

if only,
how I wish,
could harvest my best,
and with golden cutlery,
excise
the single flawless poem
that I know is in my possess

lay down this hand, so weary,
from cupping tears,
be satisfied at long last,
so much so,
that when my casket lowered,
two hands in repose companioned,
clutching his best,
to ease the rest,
a papered poem record to join his whited ash,
his flawless poem,


his very best

*now eternal,
at long last
first published here
on
Jan 13, 2014
Nat Lipstadt Apr 2023
yes, in full possessive of all the typical, ****** wearing-out diminishments and diminutions

so no surprises, that I’m squinting to see my own personal
street signs two blocks ahead, in case a dreaded left turn be
required

I hear eventually what your thinking, by the second, third rep, I am fully informed of your opinion and am left wondering why people blather rather than win some, with  
a winsome smile

but it  catches me unaware that my voice, (its tones, notions,and colorations) is softer, though not purposed or so intentioned,this is puzzling, so wrestle for the whys, as is my wont, for explicating my existence be my full time employment and time is  overly plentiful and it’s steady evaporation is not the diet I am needing or even
embracing

perhaps, (always a multi-perhaps), mine aging grants an edge-softening, the brain regulates away the shouting urgency of what seemed important, demandy &needy for immediate attention, has a natural implant subtly started subtracting and governs my always was voluble but less-than-valuable insistence to be heard above the raucous din of the world~is~ending~
scarecrows

perhaps, it is something simple physic, but I deny that
escapism excuse, for yet, my bellyful laughter still loudest I know especially, at the ironical, comical of my mirror image rightly making fun of my vanity and even yet today, on a busy city street my senior YO! still summons taxis  to appear from
blocks away

perhaps, he flatters himself, his soon to be required stick will be so big, the need to speak softly intuitively concomitant, but that’s a lie as  he has no stick as of yet, ‘cept for the one he himself, he hisself, penetrated & perpetrated up his own ****

perhaps, just the intuitive or learned wisdom to think slower, talk lower, excise the waste of haste that plagues  the modern life, all that quiet, buttery yet uncool logic persuasion triumphs over the no-reasoned- shouting-pretense to be everybody’s exercised right
to be stupid

so many possible perhaps that this  listing is making me too, 
list to one side; perhaps, the list is so lengthy it requires a conservation of energy, and sotto voce approach to the so-much-of-everything
yet unanswered,

but perhaps,
I  just have less to say and
it comes out of me,
softer and wiser…ha!

perhaps, time has worn me down into a…
**a modulated man
Sat Apr 16 2023
nyc
if my pen were a surgeon's blade,
cutting edge,
razor-made
to excise secrets suppressed
in closets of guilt
or shame;

like the married bishop
with the mega-church and
tera-ego,
trading ****** fluids
with choir boys
in the 9th grade
on wednesdays,
after bible study...

like the senator
with two right feet
preaching chastity
while playing footsie
with perfect strangers
on public seat # 2...

like the donald's high-ranking apprentice
who pulled the plug on mc
as he slept
then wept like boehner
all the way
to morgan stanley and
dean witter,
allegedly...

like the mayor out west
with pinocchio's nose
and jefferson's zest
for extra-marital ***,
lies
and belligerence...

like the late king
of pop
who so hated
his beautiful black skin,
he beached it white
then paid m. lester
of similar hue
a loot times two
to weave a blanket,
conceive a prince
and deliver a french city,
allegedly;

I would be a lyrical surgeon
with a passion
for incisive prose,
spilling truths hidden,
whole and half
with the cutting edge
of a poet's pen

~ P (‪#‎Pablo‬#ls)

(8/14/2013)
.

Z - A

Zonked Yanks eXport Weird Views Underpinning Terrorist Suspects, Risking Quiet Proliferation Of Nuclear Missiles, Leaving Killer Jihads In Hostile Groups. Forgetting Europe, Death Claims Babylon: America.

Zero Yields X’s Without Value. Useless Technical Solutions Regarding Quanta, Plainly Outside Newtonian Mathematics. Logic Keeps Jokers In Hearty Guffaws  Forever.  Eternity Derides Computation By Algebra.

Zap! Your X-ray Was Very Useful Tool. Sarcomas’ Revealed, Quality Prognosis On Masse. Later Knowledge Jibes; Increased Hidden Growths Frequently Entailing Death Couldn’t Be Anticipated.



A – Z

Away Bright Cinder, Drift Eternally, Fly! Glow! Heat Incandescent! Jeweled Key, Luminous Molten Nuclei, Ornate Precious Quotient, Radiant Shining Teardrop. Unknowable Volcanic Whisper, eXact, Yield: Zero.

Awful Blues, Crazy Dreams, Every Fleeting Ghastly Horrible Idea Jars, Killing Love. Murderous Omens, Portending Quiescence, Reduce Sleep To Uniform Vacant Wastelands, eXiled Yearning Zenith.

Acting Behind Closed Doors, Every Famous General Has Insight: Jabbering Khaki Liveried Majors Narrate Orders, Pursuing Quarries, Retelling Strategic Theories. Up Valiant Warriors, Cross Your Zone!

A Bitter Child Denies Every Friendship Going. Hate Instills Jealousies Knife. Lies Mean Nothing. Other People Question Reality. Sic Transit Umbra, Vile World. eXcise Your Zest.

Albert Ball’s Camel Dived Effortlessly, Flaming Guns Hammered Into Junkers. Keeping Level Meant Not One Pilot Questioned Richthofens’ Stall Turn, Underpinning Victory With X-elerating Yawing Zoom…

Although Boy’s Charm Doesn’t Explicitly Frighten Girls, Her Instincts Jostle, Knowing Laughter Masks Nights Ordained Paths. Quiet! Reason Sleeps Tonight, Unmasked Votive Wanderings eXpose Y-Fronted Zygotes!



r10.6.1
One of my earliest 'concept' poems that actually worked out. Boy was I smug when I started pulling these bad-boys out of the ether; they’re so utterly…automatic: an allusion to my pretensions in writing Systems Poetry. There are loads of these that simply don’t work, and the 'X's' are a problem, but at their best they have an impact and effect quite different to poetry using a similar but undirected structure! This concept led directly to another poem: ‘Ab Imo Pectore’, which uses the same technique, but on lines rather than words, and in Latin, rather than English… told you I was a smug so-and-so!
OnlyEggy Jan 2011
Left to surmise
My surprise
Bouquet of Roses
Love devise
Soul remise
Two single Roses
Your device
My demise
Dozen throned Roses
Your disguise
Heart excise
Petal felled Roses
Anger arise
Hate comprise
Black-tipped Roses
Left to surmise
My surprise
*Bouquet of Roses
(H-AP)
matt nobrains Jun 2014
this is a poem about happiness.
this is also a poem about how great life is, see? here's a metaphor
comparing nature to the faultless
form of a pedastalized lover,
here's a description of the
effect of changes in air pressure
and localized temperature
fluctuations
on physical matter in a given area.
here's a bland truism that
anybody can relate to.
here's a couple rhyming stanzas
about the ethereal shifting of
connecting threads which
cause all life to dance upon
the cosmic stage like food poisoned marionettes.
here's an ode to the wrinkles of
my ******* and
the bits of fuzz that occasionally
find their home in my *****.
here's a sonette to the drop outs
doing better than me
here's a dirge for the businessman
that hangs himself
and a jubilee for his widow
who earns nothing off his death
because he left his entire estate
to his catamite.
I'm writing a symphony in color,
notes of fermenting wood
dogshit and coffin dust.
the violas swoop and drone
the piccolos trill fast enough
to excise your gastrointestinal system
the barotone sax wheezes
and the timpani drum rumbles
(the flutes sit motionless because
**** flutes)
the pianists fingers are bleeding
hes banging with stumps now
his face contorted in ecstatic glee
as if the face of god has parted
the clouds just to scrape his gums
clean with his dietous ****.
and lo faint is the whisper
which climbs and slithers
between the
false,
bash upon life with both hands.
here is life here is death
let me show your life
let me breathe your wretching
like squandered
like roots in the soil,
paint your everlasting cave drawing
in the face of your kitchen
and dance around a fire
let the embers lick your heels
til pagan viciousness overtakes
your quivering form.
gasp it in
Krison Nov 2018
It was of the sand,
That found for me to stake upon this gamble of a purpose.
To onward journey, stout of heart, within it lines to draw and part
and dedicate my time to all that live and then depart.

And subjugate the sin of wait.
Dare i chance alignment.
To spite the constant vein of me.
That of constant bye.

For it was within the sands.
That truth illuminated
Divining is of destruct and of grand endeavor.
Those were lessons I to learn.
Yet warnings seen, but not to heed.

So to venture bold, embark.

Here I found myself about, a place that i not know.
Lacking proper courtesy that guides the proper tongue.
At a time of caving doubt in youth while throwing caution.
Such foolishness and acts so grave with naivete.

So of this, my letting go and future now to grasp.
Then of me to newer name and shed of me my past.

That led me to a village, shambled as it small.
Oh so sharp in all contrast,
To all i'd ever known.

And then to her so small of frame
with trouble trembling.

Did I find, i've much of want and more to givings be.

The hope I find within her eyes.
Those burning eyes aglow.
Yet shaking did i look to see, the grief she held alone.

For she with nails so black and pained
with eyes of sapphires ancient flame.
Screamed, "anne nerde"?

To this I said within my lip.
My English voice that caused such shock.
"hello", and then ,"who, you"?

And puzzled as i've not the faintest
slight that cause her hate
and run away and then dismiss
or understanding me.

That left me to the mighty awe, and my stupidity.

"Am i the image of the anger, she must see everyday,
A reminder there's tomorrow, or of horrors yesterday"?

Faintly nothing can be had, so i had chanced hello.
This is me and who are you.
And her away to go.
So i was lost to all the why,
and all who heard it so.

Then to suspect, short of counsel and left of reason why.
I shatter peace with solace small and and watch you drain your eye.

So to all that spun around
with jaws so slack with shock.
Made of this a curse and huddle?
Of what, they they took of stock?

They must be of the panic.
They must be many dead
And this is now my crucible
and now i know there dread?

" How dare i cause such great alarm? in such fleeting passing
" i said hello, only hello
and then, but"who are you"?.


All but mine
All faces white blood.

And then the moment shock!

For then i heard, "olu"!!!

"For I said, hello and who ," but she heard only death.

And forgiveness in this place
Was shown not least the trace.

Awaken this, the anger, rage  the mighty great temult.

For announced by all around  
"You utter with most care.

This place if of the teetering
and none dare hear dispair."

So please a caution with your greeting.
For broken hearts here tear

And the tokens of your kindness,
Can be swallowed up in here
Its brought to doom, this little girl by violence and it's snare
Was brought to this, by fault of tounge
bignine and shambled care.

Then better us
To purse a lip
And hope the slight be small,
The reaping can be had
But never excise fault
It is of divinty
So pray we judgment halt.
This is of the manner known
Yet are still unseen

For all the slights be large or small
None are are fully owned


And All the workings good of heart
Must be done 
and done discreet.
some of this is in turkish
Cody Edwards Mar 2010
"This s.o.b. has got Tourette's.
Who knows what he might say? We'd better
Get him under before he rises.
Sterilize something fast!"

I'm awake for the time being. When sleep comes
I shall play the perfect display of my bacillus. Reposing
On the white table like a necrotic pieta. Off to my
Left I can hear those touchstones spinning in fine sockets,
Sterilizing my hands by binding my feet. Soon I will be
A paragon of grunting celluloid, clutched at by
Heated hearts to wrinkle and shear.
I can already taste the cleanser.

Rubber foam, steel clamp and tongue depressor.
Excise the black portions with a serrated life,
You might as well. Because it doesn't matter
How much morphine sits in the delirium drip.
I'm still alive: the crush and blink in Boris Karloff eyes.

When I gather up my self in the morning.
I will be instructed to take all Ten a day
And check in regularly. Despite the cold,
Despite the heat, the embryo has quite failed.
© Cody Edwards 2010
robin Nov 2014
and now i dont even ******* know how to care for myself because i was never told this could happen to me,
i wasnt supposed to get sick. i wasnt supposed to get sick.
all my clipped nails, my chipped teeth piling up like letters at an empty house,
spilling from the mailbox, a papercut waterfall.
the car sputters & stops. the pen scratches without ink and i try to read what a different version of me wrote,
what a younger self thought was poetry.
my mouth is empty but my pockets are full -
pepper spray/my tía's ring/a lighter i never use.
a lighter kept for strangers, for burning dry leaves, old letters,
my own tongue because blisters make it feel fuller, less hollow.
skinny lips, strong teeth, black tongue sharp and sleeping.
never had a cavity.never broke a bone.bandaging my feet before the blisters form, what do i do now?
you took my hand.
you took my hand.
you took my ******* hands. in a california summer,
dry golden grass like a wildfire dare, you said please don't leave me,
it's drought season and i'm choking on my spit,
you're taking all the rings off my fingers. you're swallowing my tía's ring.
does it taste like her cigarettes?does it taste like my sweat?
ive been thinking about you, you've been on my mind:
how do you burn a sunken bridge?
its broken but the the pieces lie heavy below the water,
twisting the current.
how do you open a letter five years unread?
avoided/ignored/forgotten as it slides onto the floor.i'm so afraid that ill never respond,
lay here till i petrify, a living thing turned stone.macerated in my own ******* self-pity,
dripping blame from gaping pores. you did this to me, you broke me,
you poured lead in my ears you left me deaf and afraid,
i just want to feel absolved,
it's not my fault im sick. its not my fault i cant fix myself, its not my fault i dont try -
to try and fail is worse than to surrender before it starts.
excise the shame, cauterize the wound.call it a battle scar,
a mark of bravery and survival,
not a coward's brand, not the mark of cain.
killed your brother. slaughtered your counterpart, your mirror image,
an alternate you where you made different choices,
the ones that made you a good person and not a tumor,
bloated scourge in what could have been a healthy life.
empty fortress decayed behind the walls, i didnt build these to keep you out, i swear,
i just wanted to flesh myself out.
boundaries building up an empty breath,
making me appear more than i am, feel greater than i could ever be, but when you get inside there's nothing.
that's not my fault.thats not my fault. some people are born forests,
vast expanse of redwoods, moss softening the air;
some people are born exhales.
breathed out and dissipated.  
less than a lack.taking nothing; making only a still room,
stuffy air encased like innards; its funny how just a sigh can make me feel like im faking it
even though im the only one there,
even though i can still feel the ache in my skull,
eyelashes stuck to the palms of my hands.how does it feel not doubting life?
how does it feel to know in five seconds, air will swell your chest again?im on unsure footing,
a crumbling ***** (i know its just me.i know im being paranoid,
chill out you said i held my breath while you climbed dont fall dont fall oh god)
when did this happen?who poured fear into me like
swampwater in a wineskin,
never feared falling when i was young.
i just want to not hate myself but i guess thats a pipe dream,
******* stupid, ******* useless ******* incorporeal ******* fake laugh when theres no one to hear,
fighting spiders for the right to sleep. (do your friends know youre a liar?
******* traitor, dropping love from burning hands: your silver tongue is tarnished,
youve been vomiting again,
stomach acid eating your throat from within. can you stop?)
i just want to stop.
theres a ******* burning sun in my chest and god i know i should feel lucky but i dont wanna ******* live i just want to SURVIVE,
what ******* good is living if i just burn myself out by the time i reach 25?
im scared to die but im ******* killing myself and i cant ******* stop,
i just want to sleep but theres still a bite mark on  my wrist from my own ******* teeth there are so many people i feel sick,
they talk so loud,
i feel like i could ******* disintegrate
******* degrade into dust please i just want to leave but i dont want to be alone, let me stay dont let me burst,
i want to be so skinny my bones bruise my skin,
i want to be so strong i could ******* rip myself apart, dont lie to me.
dont love me just sit next to me touch me tell me im alive.
im alive, right?im real im here im not a dusty phantom,
gasping ghost ripping oxygen into incorporeal lungs,
god i want to SCREAM just so i know im not ******* DEAD past the skin is there any sensation past the surface
i want to wear my ******* throat raw tear my muscles to shreds to know i can feel something that isnt shallow surface nerves, PLEASE!GOD!
make my lungs burn make my bones crack i want to feel something that i know is REAL prove im real prove im not an empty shell please im still alive but bites dont go past the skin,
i want to see my ******* heart pulse like the realest part of me,
proof i need proof i want faith i want to believe in unproven things, how can i ******* believe im real?
im ******* faking it just like everything else,
bluff till its true but i never ******* learned how to be TRUE I NEVER LEARNED TO LIVE PAST THE SKIN and if you peel it back all you'll ******* find is
rot,
gangrene, necrotic flesh and electric fear, dont ******* touch me i feel like i could ******* explode,
i feel crushed compressed into a space too small for my body and itll crack any second.
please ******* punch me in the gut. please ******* crack me open i dont ******* trust myself to keep my heart beating,
please rip it out im ******* faking it!!
faking laughs for an empty space faking fear for phantom spiders and thoughts of death, im ******* faking it but how do i ******* STOP
I DONT WANNA LIVE LIKE THIS BUT IM SCARED TO ******* DIE
T Zanahary Nov 2012
Sunrise nearing its death,
the end of today
complementing the beauty of a pen stroke,
harsh scratching alleviating indelible ideas
showing selves in hues painting our last moments
allowing me to trace timelines
in the contoured caresses
of this silent instrument played
to blend melody with beginnings,
each progression scaling further along
the passing hours left settling
to minutes from now,
purpose elaborated in contrasting
blues and oranges and purples
composing the elegance of utility,
colors not enough to excise the excesses
of depicting days in dimensions,
of simplifying it to degrees of time.
Laying alongside this current
to shape clouds
and animate constellations,
my faux-corpse stares again into
the memory held in galaxies
only glimpsed at twilight.
Sharp cuts of consonants
and vowels' smoothed corners
try to rid me of
stream of conscious thinking loosed,
the inner struggle hoping for reprieve
from that constant combative nature
of inward disagreement
and dialectic digression
deflecting the question of
what if we'd only spoke
instead of being lost
to foreign type-faces designed by
some soul never to see
the dying day my way.
If only we'd spoke,
I would have had the chance
to stumble on a goodbye.
Rather we are left
to flourishes of unfamiliar weapons
sitting askew on these pages,
the balance shifted due to
us degrading to another's personality,
and writing out those lines
we couldn't come to say.
agdp Jan 2010
These Nights with lights, Lightened from cigarette filled clouds to rainstorms.
We are drowning our Inhibition to exhibitions, of a shallow madness.

Within a matter of clearance
Of transverse sunrays:
We call this morning
A day past,
A night ruled with dreams.
Flooded with traffic afflicted
Souls searching beneath empty vessels of libations
Only to unearth realizations from lost sensations.

Vagabonds patrolling streets
apparently policing their worries,
from failed inquiries of maternally adopted creeds.

Divided vision escalated arrhythmic palpitation
Deviation from a gradual calm away from calamity
Expel, Exhort-Excise, the deep-veil

A rising dawn, polluted skies reflected in these eyes,
I stare at this street lamp, flickering at-us-all.
11/20/08 ©AGDP
solid chic Dec 2010
e
earn me
entice me
ensure me
enlighten me
enlist me
entertain me
effectuate me
envelope me
entrap me
enthrall me
enrapture me
enslave me
edify me
elate me
evolve me
elicit me
expand me
entrust me
employ me
equalize me
envy me
excise me
exhaust me
extinguish me
erode me
erase me
evict me
estrange me

exhume me
Akemi Apr 2017
sand sand sand sand sand sand
i think my mind is disintegrating
i might
**** myself
it probably began before i was born
in the beginning there was nothing
and the world was perfect
then i came into the world
and read lots of articles at university
because
i wanted a good grade
but the world began to fuzz at its edges
i’d drift back to the flat
and stare at all the objects in my room
unable to understand them
most of the time i hate myself
it’s one of the few emotions
i have left
i had this 4500 word assignment
but every time i went to type it up
my words came out, out of order
a string of unrecognisable
broken symbols
a mangled image of my own
stupid head
i came to the conclusion
i was
having a mental breakdown
the other month i
sat in the city mall
and
stared at all the passing people
in their most mundane moments
and thought
this is the rest of my life
this stupid, pointless repetition
i watched people rise on an escalator
faces fixed blankly on
the space in front of them
as if they weren’t there at all
i watched seagulls poke at one another
and squawk into the ground
and thought
there is more life in them
than us
i didn’t want to be a **** up again
i would try to read over
what’d i’d written
for hours on end
until i was shaking, on the edge of tears
unable to understand why this was happening to me
i’d lie in bed
and think about the infinite worthless stretch of my life
feeling only an untraceable anxiety
deep in the pit of
my flesh
for the longest time
i thought all this anxiety and fear
came from without
that if i learned about existence enough
i could
excise all the bad parts out
but something in my head broke
something i couldn’t
control
maybe some part of me wanted this to happen
so i’d have a reason
to die.
the self is predicated on misrecognition
an illusion of mastery
over a world that is utterly
indifferent to it.

the first to escape control of the self is not the other
but the self's own body.

in other words
we betray ourselves.
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2017
a new poem (words, words, words but another drug), bolt upright, uplight, reattach yourself to the liquid of the music,
soothe the irritation, slowdown the shaking hand,
give god or his creatures, the nocturnes and sonatas,
a chance to restore the pounding of the chest to a leveling
equanimity

to no avail, the sleep angels have fled from the
forest fires in the chest, and the helicopters must quench
with the commence of dropping clouds of wet words,
when, when will I be released from a life that has no
easements

words, words, words but another drug, a habit that gives
everything but a temporary state, every poem nothing but
another her, another lady puncture in my restless body,
another juncture, where all your choices are the way of
error

the high will last, shorter each one, but the track will exist
for all the time, a token of human foolishness, the more is
the inevitability of the ending, writ, drawn a little closer,
and comes with a hand written spongy-apology begging for
existing

in his notes, motes, dust mites of titles, single verses,
elegies, essays half written, passing thots claiming to
want to be wannabes, this appears and it's a perfect
ending

there is no security in poetry, only the unresolvable

man in his perfect certainty, never was, nevermore, n'ere will be never, and one poet walks a razor's edge, that is his three tenses struggling for mutual coexistence, one of
a calming beauty, a dark glory, a perfect closing, choosing
a final solution, a belief in relief, that simultaneously
engraves, erases, and
equates

another new poem fissures to the surface, and the palpable
is a magician's illusion, a trick, a feat of dismemberment,
an excise of a piece, a drink, a Tennessee whiskey of him,
an emission that never gains remission status, all this fakery,
a new poem (words, words, words but another drug),
excellent, worthless and self-
effacing

{|||}

3:48am-5:46am
9/24/17
They call me Jack! A Jack the Lad
a man who likes to go out late.
I must confess that I'm a cad
and often seen in Aldegate.

Whitechapel and Spittlefield
are other locations I frequent.
Tis where I often draw my yield
and nay for that I'll not lament.

Inspired by my ill repute,
repugnant chanting of my name,
I'll seek and find a *******,
commencing to secure my fame.

Reference books cannot advise
what two skilled hands can show.
Exacting cuts when I excise,
instructing where my blade doth flow.

My first, Miss Nichols, I recall,
whom blinded by the lure of coin,
into my clutches she did fall
and she, I did indeed refine.

Chapman then I did impress
with incision so demanding.
Nothing taken to excess
an ***** now made outstanding.

Stride and Eddowes in one night
but fortune demanded I should race.
Though well presented to the light,
embarrassment is my disgrace.

My final lady played the game,
Miss Kelly whom at my insistence.
She alone recoiled my fame,
my very own Piece de Resistance.
4 May 2005
© Copyright Christopher K Bayliss 2014
KM Ramsey Feb 2016
what can i do when there are hands
hands all over my body that
are disembodied reminders of that
night
when kristallnacht fingers slashed my
tender soul to childhood ribbons
penetrated me in my flowering womanhood
and stamped my forehead with
that bloodstained W
and you still see me as that
*****
that infant abandoned
at the red brick fire station
safe haven laws
but i didn't even go to a hospital
when sanguine shame
seeped from my cursed hole
that secret between my legs

and i wished they'd unraveled my entrails
disemboweled me rather than
stabbing me with their flesh
samurai swords of virility and
i wish they'd killed me like
a stuck pig and maybe
placed an apple in my mouth
to silence me instead of
asphyxiating with their hands
that i now can't escape
their sensational escapades
across the plains of this body
that i am forced to
inhabit and traverse the
Serengeti wasteland where i
beg for predators to once more make
me feel like i have no control
and maybe **** me in the end

because those hands

when they first touched me
i would have hacked them off
with a butter knife
some dull rusted blade
but they disengage already
they follow me as if
superglued to the hole which
for them was the complete
embodiment of myself

just a cavernous nothingness for them to inhabit
with their manhood
shooting pain to complete my
empty soul
and fill it with seething shame
and a layer of dirt to
close me up and
forever taint the white sheets
with blood stains absent
and are you still a ****** if
they took you by force and
you never wanted it but
didn't fight back

they are inside me
forever
and they wake me in the
dark of midnight whisperings

they wake me when
you turn over in your slumber
to wrap me in your arms and
you are greeted by shoves
and tears
when will i not whimper
because you aren't them but
those hands
in the darkness
i can't tell the difference between
those hands
and my own
and yours
and i want to be ripped apart
torn open and laid bare
excise them from my secret place
from that place in my brain
from which my nightmares seep
and those hands
hold me down to relive their
searching violation
in bold technicolor revelations
that i'll always be that girl
the drunk *****
the dumb *****
the ***** who deserves to
relive that night to no relief
world without end

you must see a dumb *****

you must see the marks of
their handprints
all over my body

you must be disgusted

but i'll take your *****
and consume it in your absence
just to be closer to you than
those hands.
letters to you i'll never send
Justin Cochran Nov 2014
Y’all ever had a bad date?
Man, that’s some ****.
Y’all ever fall in love on a bad date?
Man, that is some ****.
Y’all ever fall back out of love?
Ever watch it as it leaves her
eyes? Falling out through fumbling
lies ‘til you realize that deep
down, she never loved you to
begin with.

Ever sit across the table while
she struggles to find the words
to destroy you? And just to
save her from that struggle,
give her the words to excise your
heart? The only words you had
left. And then you watch her
march away victorious, handbag
in one hand and your heart in the
other.

Ever give yourself so completely
that she contains you? That
when she walks away, she hasn’t
left anybody? They say one is
the loneliest number, but sometimes
2-1 is zero. So I sit
here, a body without a soul,
a crying shell of what used to
be a person. And I ask myself,

Who Am I?
Nash Sibanda Jul 2011
Oh! a cry so plain it
Scarcely leaves our lips.
We begin plotting lines
To sad refrain. Excise
All rights to light and life,
Still,
Quietly laying bare our
Failed plans, our lost paths;
Our mortal enemy, our
Only friend. She who
Dances outside the realm
Of our gaze, who plays
Silent melodies on broken
Keys, songs we know but are
Disallowed to sing.
She cares not
For lament or plea, she
Who fuels our fire;
She, misery.
Sadness is often our greatest ally, our most potent emotional touchstone, and tonight I decided to rejoice for sheer misery.
why is there trash in the Whitehouse
this question
the American people ponder
Obama garbage is polluting the residence
and yet he can't be removed
there must be a cleaning contractor
somewhere in the Congress or Senate
who has the wear with all
with a thorough broom
to excise the filth
that is inhabiting the place
action is needed on the clean up front
to rid the Whitehouse
of this most ugly affront
if he stays around
too much longer
Pennsylvania Avenue
will stink
worse
than a pellet of dog pooh
the American people
deserve a fresh smell
in the Whitehouse
the delightful bouquet
of a Republican resident
will make for a nicely perfumed incumbent
Excuse me while I insert
This logical probe through the frontal lobe
Of my emotional epicenter

This is a latency test....

Ratings of my muse
Are falling like waistlines at the mall
From the best of rhymes
Tacitly turned on wheels of subtlety,
To the jest of all time,
A lyrical mockumentary,
Starring Miss Pellings
And her first cousin Cliche

Excuse me while I excise
The phobias, limits and lies
Polluting my paradigm of choice,
Diluting the core of my creativity,
Muting the "i" in my voice

This latency test is now complete...

Welcome to my new Literary Bar
Raised beyond the average line;

The stars of our poetic destiny await....

~ P
(#latencytest)
Nat Lipstadt Jan 14
easily,
with an optimism misguided,
that both volume and quality
of what lay within was
infinite,

a beaker that could never
be drained, nor overflow,
brimming and believed,
in the always
of a
next poem!

know better,
known worse,
and the only poems that are birthed,
all flawed, lesser,
the curse of worse,
time wrenching
the best words away,
alas!
spend, spent, sent…
it was writ as a hope,
now, a  false prophecy
and woe
misbegotten


<>>

Jan. 13, 2014

a  flawless poem

if such there were,
will always be,
the next one

my poor soul,
my rag tag heart
has no censor,
so careless, reckless,
as if words were but
frivolous treasures,
easy spent, easy get


if only, how I wish I
could harvest my best,
with golden cutlery excise
the single flawless poem,
that I know in my possess


lay down this hand so weary
from cupping tears,
be satisfied at long last,
so much so,
that my casket lowered,
hands in repose companioned,
clutching his best, easing his rest,
a paper record to join his ash,

his flawless poem,
at long last
flawless anniversary
Poetoftheway Jul 2015
so it is.

the things you love, you worship,
quiet-like burn you,
returning your favor
with fever.

was innocent, naive.

didn't know the sun could
blister hearts,
you babe,
were my sun,
centric universed.

your hurt,
gift packaged,
disguised as warmth,
went
way way past dumbfounded
surficial flesh.

doc pronounces.

time will heal you,
begging for magic pills
shamelessly.

surgery, I need surgery,
blood transfusion,
excise this poison,
**** it out.

nope, dope,
use your pretty words,
like aloe,
to salve and soothe,
stay away from the
sun of love.

from each poisoning,
traces accumulates,
blisters burst,
love becomes
untreatable, untenable

the danger is not realizing
that in eight minutes,
she, sun goddess,
can travel 93 million light year miles,
leaving you gasping,
eight plodding human years later.
only seven years but I wake up sometimes hating her like it is still a hell, real...
Nat Lipstadt Apr 2017
the perfect poem*         A flawless poem
eats its siblings


did not know this.          *a flawless poem

chose to disbelieve.        if such there were,
                                           will always be
overconfident.                 the next one
three years back,
wrote a piece,                   my poor soul,
called it "flawless,"          my rag tag heart,
sensing, knowing,           has no censor,
that was an,                      so careless,reckless,
unobtainable condition. as if words were but
                                           frivolous treasures
loved it so,                        easy spent, easy get
pinned to my chest,
funny, loved me back,    if only, how I wish
if ever such thing            could harvest my best
could ever be.           with golden cutlery excise
                                       the single flawless poem,
sumbitch.                     I know in my possess
knew it but didn't.      lay down this hand
                                       so weary    
accept there was,        from cupping tears,
any itch that couldn't be satisfied at king last
be scratched                 so much so
into oblivion.                that my casket lowered,
                             hands in repose companioned
three years back,          clutching his best
on top of the world,     easing his rest,
chose not to believe      a paper record
that life is cyclical,         to join his ash,
and i would always.      his flawless poem,
have in my posses,        at long last
more and more.        
perfect poems.                 11/13/14

now my poems,
flawed.
like me.

4/8/16
The Perfect Poem
by
Kaveh Akbar

In god’s gleaming empire, herds of triceratops
lunge up on their hind legs to somersault
around the plains. The angels lie in the sun
using straight pins to eat hollyhocks. Mostly
they just rub their bellies and hum quietly

to themselves, but the few sentences
they do utter come out as perfect poems.
Here on earth we blather constantly, and
all we say is divided between combat
and seduction. Combat: I understand you perfectly.
Seduction: Next time don’t say so out loud.
Here the perfect poem eats its siblings

in the womb like a sand shark or a star turning
black hole, then saunters into the world
daring us to stay mad. We know most of our
universe is missing. The perfect poem knows
where it went. The perfect poem is no bigger
than a bear. Its birthday hat comes with
a black veil which prattles on and on about

comet ash and the ten thousand buds of
the tongue. Like people and crows, the
perfect poem can remember faces and hold
grudges. It keeps its promises. The perfect
poem is not gold or lead or a garden gate
locked shut or a sail slapping in a storm.
The perfect poem is its own favorite toy.

It is not a state of mind or a kind of doubt
or a good or bad habit or a flower of any
color. It will not be available to answer
questions. The perfect poem is light as dust
on a bat’s wing, lonely as a single flea.
Sylvia,

It seems as if I have taken you
To the point
Where happiness and smiles give way
To hard cynicism
Too early, too soon
Too much for such a one as you
To embrace this vision of mine
Tainted, as it is, with regrets
Tragedies you will never know
Long before you'll have to deal
With your own
I wish I could keep you
From carrying my weight
It is too heavy for the both of us

Maybe I shoved you
Across the line that seperates
Blame and compassion
To a place where forgiveness isn't even an option
For one as innocent as I
Of these things, at least
These transgressions channeled through me by fate
To serve some cosmic purpose
We'll never understand
To work out the sins of our fathers
To examine and analyze them
To ask why
We are the sacrifice for their return to innocence
Awaiting our own

Could it be that I have pushed you
Over the edge
To free fall into the void
Or did you jump by your own design?  
Did the emptiness lure you?
The Siren's song silence you long to know?
Head filled with the foolish notion
That your dreams have been spent
Fleeing from fire, a more palatable alternative
Hoping for shock to excise spirit
Before gravity has completed it's work

Sylvia, my darling
Love of my life
What have I done?
Have my eyes become blind to your beauty?
Is the sound of your voice no longer music to my ears?
Have I become loathsome to you?
What is it which causes you to recoil?
I understand, my love, I understand
I feel the same way when I see my own reflection
The image of a broken man, robbed of joy
Burdened with sadness
Not only for what I've become
But in remembrance of the long, mean road
That brought me here
Set out to journey
Guided until a fork in the road frightened God away
On my own I have come to this
I regret a lot of things in my life,
Sylvia,
But the biggest regret is letting you come with me
You wore me down with your begging
Your pleas that only I could hear
Your devotion, Your loyalty
Like drugs
I was addicted
So I pretended

Now I think you see
Through the facade
Straight into what I am
What's inside of me
Wallow where I once wallowed
Way back when wallowing was the reason
The way to keep the cruelty at bay
I never wanted it to be this way
Sylvia, now I fear
It's too late

I have no easy answers
I have nothing at all worth sharing
You see, I'm wallowing even now
Old habits die hard
The sins of the fathers
They rest upon your shoulder
Heavy or light, the burden remains
May well be you will never lay it down
Until time takes me far away
Until space expands into forever
Until gratitude can only be expressed
At the point where cynicism melts
To reveal love in it's infancy
Until empathy bends the line into a circle
Trapping hope, barring hatred
Within and without the separating wall of Infinity
Strong arms await the impact of the Fall
To break it, caring less for your motivation
Only wanting to carry you home and away

If not, so mote it be
A long as you lay it down
When you lay me down

In all sincerity,
Ted
The title does not necessarily refer to Virginia Wolff, nor do the names "Ted" and "Sylvia" necessarily refer to Plath and Hughes. Not that it matters...

© 2010 by James Arthur Casey
N E Waters May 2019
I wear my scars like diamonds
piece by piece
collected
from every place that I've been
mindless,
lost, blind, unable to find this
compassion
for fellow man
to help
myself, because the way
we treat the world
is the way we treat
ourselves,
and it's hell
out there --
but in here, just kind of warm,

in this home I've built
from scar tissue
to clothe me
when I'm homeless
because home is
where your heart is

and we fool ourselves
and romanticize
our drug abuse as art

from every start of
this sad little song;
the tiniest
violin
and we all can sing along

yeah, we all can sing along

and we sing:

me in my mansion
of scar tissue
I can't love myself
so I can't love you
(and) it's true
we're all lonely
lost
and if you could
only see me
remember just to breathe
just to be,
and then we
could look our reflections
in the eyes
and then me and you
might drop the veil
and finally realize
the spiritual
connection

to build bridges
even when we're helpless
if we could only be
just a little bit less
selfish:

take my plate
it's for you
I can't feed myself
I'd rather feed you--

But here in my mansion
of scar tissue
a phone call is like
a gunshot, please--

don't steal my diamonds,
don't
steal the only home
that I've built to
reside in

my vast hall
of vast walls

I'm afraid of December
but,
eager for the fall

this is all I've made
all these years
and if it all would
disappear

m a y b e   s o   w o u l d   I
well then maybe I
could grow you here
a garden--
wall to gravel,
great for drainage

to keep out all the rot
of the rotten cell the self built

I'll topple down
I cut meow-t
I'll bring the fall
and find my diamonds
made of skin

oh--if only to be free
of these walls
I'm living in,
to only excise myself
from my prison made from skin;

would you be there?
would we be there
together?

could we finally lie
eye to eye
breathe deep in
the rebellion

breathe deep,
break free,
of this cell
wall we've cemented
ourselves in to

this is me,
I want to sing

I want to sing with you

we'll swell well form
the start of one tiny violin

to a whole orchestra
of the whole world's song
all these cell-ves
all alone
but together
sing along

and we'd sing:

me in my mansion of scar tissue
I'm learning to forgive
myself
so that I can break
through

and it's true
we're all so lonely
and if I could only
see you
remember just to breathe
just to be
and then we
could break the glass,
I to I

and we'd all be free.
I mean like, **** it, right?
Nat Lipstadt Feb 2015
stem cell words
from the cellular wall of the
poem birth canal
narrows, twists,
even double helix's,
doc-prof diagnosis
with perfect, absolute uncertainty,
denotes the presence of
stem cell words

"all your writes,
gestating make-believe,
word smythe
premium cocktail concoctions,
gospel soul post-viewed
rocked and roiled
still and always,
unflinchingly personal

singing and simulcast
the unique
internal combustion,
that removes the pollution,
of your
unflinchingly personal..."


mother necessity
delivery of a
Caesarian cut-them-out

says me
cut, excise them,
take them,
them newborn-baby stones
give them
a good home,
my DNA upon them,
my only Jacob blessing,
that they get
goodly tented taken

let them spawn
more and others,
will love them
better just for knowing
even never seeing them again,
still and always,
whatever they
write on,
still and always,
I'm in them,
they will be,
unflinchingly personal,
even if signed by
another's name....
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2014
You cannot polish a heart,
there is no tarnish remover for sale

once,
a thought exists,
then always, extant

once a feeling felt,
there is no erasure,
no white out,
just another wear and tear
to thy fabric added

it enters and infects,
no surgery can excise,
chemo and radiation
leave scars
and remainders

certain sadnesses are unreadable,
even if counterbalancing weights worn,
we are the sum
and the summation,
we are the holy ghost
of everything
we have ever known,
even if we did not
father it

a storage facility,
you rent permanently,
for the "stuff"
you don't want
but can't discard,
pay dearly for that inability

the poetry,
an artifice,
a cheaply hired psychologist,
a rented imaginary friend,
from whom there are no secrets kept

I am not delusional
or deluded

there is a new tiredness in me
that I did not ask for
and sorry to have met

now a parcel I must carry
like the delicious awful testing images
of one's own end.

there was a joy here for me once,
a day and way
of atonement in my
writing and reading

and though it is 400am
and here I am
writing again,
I surely expect
the music genie
to play for me
"the thrill is gone"
any second,
for it surely is....

once upon a time,
in that chair,
could easy poem
and easy write
but the thrill is gone,
the love "of it"
upped and disappeared
the weave and the woof
"of it"
not the same

cannot get that tarnish removed,
the commemorative wall plate visible crack'd
though reglued,
the cracks are
mirrored images reminders
of what I feel I have lost,
and what is sadly indeed,
just a commemorative now

full in a heavy way,
self-absorption ended, really,
my paper towel self
a soaked ragged mess,
the more it wipes,
the more it spills...

a fullness that comes
from human hate
a sidebar loud, all overhear,
in the courtroom of
humans racing
"to excel,"
they misunderstand,
as they just finger point
to their own chest blasting,
look I got into harvard,
made a million,
but I am still a major *******
in a grand tradition

this stuff has ashen pilloried me,
everywhere in my
not so red anymore blood

I am not delusional
or deluded,
or even depressed,
just weary,
tarnished,
and
writing this does, releases nothing,
changes nothing, makes, improves nothing

the stitch in my side still there,
saying poetry, nice but who cares,
what once was fair and comely,
now just ordinary fare, unlovely
a McDonalds of common words

once the poetry of hate is writ,
it cannot be deleted,
a curse upon all
that abused this child so,
your promotional coupons
are discarded
with today's newspapers
and tomorrow and even today!
no one will care
about this or the
mismeasurement markers of no glory
or of hate, or the
pseudo popularity you create
or relish into thinking of yourself,
as valuable

tell me I am wrong,
tell me of New Year's Day
start overs,
will be grateful
for your trying,
your counterbalancing attempts,
if genuine, are
truly glorious

even if the thrill is all gone,
your trying to untarnish me,
well, every little bit helps
at the very least
gets me sets me,
down more evenly,
untilltng the lean of what ails,
ever so less

but the tilt,
the tarnish,
is immeasurable like divinity


here is where,
I leave it and
the fast approaching sabbath,
depending where on  your calendar
it resides,
can be both a weekly ending
and/or a beginning,
but a sabbath rest from the garbage of words,
by humans abused,
un blessings saying I am better than you

so, a place, a time to start,
to polish over just a tad, the stains
of what cannot ever be deleted,
cleansed
even if it is pseudo-gone from the internet
it's auto Jul 2015
SELF-HELP TIPS:**

chip your tooth on the toilet. find your goldfish’s grave and dance on it. that guy in the trench coat at the party didn’t know anything, but let your paranoia balloon you into a parody of yourself, let your limbs hum off the bone. lie to other people about smoking ****. place an excise on weakness: a tearing for every tear. actually, don’t do that. think about your fish going down the drain. a body in orbit, descending, some tide in your stomach rising. don’t do that either. wear a bracelet of crescent dents. sink your chipped tooth into things often. key trench-coat’s car. bite his headlight. remember your arms? they should be back in your skin by now. now, admittedly, doesn’t mean much. dig up your goldfish or the approximate decay and place it back in the bowl you never cleaned. this looks like continuing as usual but isn’t.
10-minute poem #2. these are excellent self-help tips and i endorse them wholeheartedly.
nivek Jul 2015
weighted down in minds back door
like an unpaid bill nagging at freedom
I search for discomfort to excise like a boil
and find squeezing a pus of dead memories
onto the hard drive of paradise lost most helpful

— The End —