Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Westley Barnes Dec 2013
Bright windy November
with the slap of cold sun sending frowns
and the absent rain not beating down
choleric substitutes of alcohol withdrawal
and spatial omissions of home fires stoking
empty remembrances of faded potential and
misplaced amorous regret
Haunted by the lingering smell of the souls of
last night's GUINNESS intake staying swell in
the nostrils which is in reality the gulf breeze blowing
gullshit down the river Liffey giver of life.

...And here I am Dublin pillaged and funded
en route to the hour-rate slog
shiny white commerce bleaching out of
windowsills distracting from rooftop
Chiaroscuro  serenading a sky
which old ****** forgotten Sons and Daughters
will die under.

Boots tapping mock-goosestep to the ground
past a girl who speaks on her IPHONE to someone
who presumably not only wants to be seen speaking
to someone on their IPHONE but who also cares enough
to listen as the girl announces to all-and-sundry
human dodging on Bachelors Walk this fateful morn
that "I realised what my problem is Now! People
think i'm saying N when I'm really saying M!"

.....quite an existential crisis you got there, EH DOC?

("This girl's SITUATION belongs in a scenario in the TV show GIRLS which young
Woman Europe-wide have embraced as their spiritual saviour in an era of Consumer
impulse control. By placing the mundane generalities and perceived social failings
interpreted by young American female comediennes as instead representing a means of
self-forgiveness and attempted new-wave soft-core feminist self-celebration young American
actresses are inspiring a new generation of young woman to speak openly in a more in-depth level about everything that usually happens to themselves or some girl they know"-From "The Post-New Male Gaze: Interpreting Critiques of Stereotypically Feminized Pop Culture in Westley Barnes's "Notes on a Rant: The "Took Me Up To Dublin Where It's Famous" Notebook
:2013
)

This is the new white noise.

White Irish Male Critiques perceived socially-announced problems of White Irish Female over White Technology on a white morning in a grey city.

A grey city which subliminally stinks of shame and left-over guilt and of spending too much money on tecno-toys and new-improved nullifying debauchery and even rent during a significantly rough stretch of fiscal years. After a lot of years of white nonsense, really.

But this is where I took myself, and this is what happens once you take yourself here and this is where its famous for it.
Dublin,
Once Monto-based FUNDERLAND for the rich and royal turned over-waxie infested tenement slum district and second city of an industrialised economy waiting for the rest of the world to pay its way.
Dublin,
capital of green and squeaky saviours of the third-world who made some money and forgot about everyone else they used to know back home. Mr Poverty, Mr Humbleness, Mr Sense of Catholic Shame.
Until the rents got too high and they had to move home again.
Dublin,
no matters what it achieves, always putting itself down.

But I can adapt.
I've lived in Rathmines and Portobello before living in either was a
really hip decision to make.
I can find somewhere else before its gets gentrified
(after I find some job that's not worth complaining about
or I eventually leap into becoming to middle-class
to complain about it.)
enough that its a headache living there, too many men wearing the same winter
jackets. Too many packed restaurants and your local actually preparing the tables
in the run-up to the Rugby game on Saturday.
The less of all that, the better for me.

I used to day dream about all of the above, honestly, but I
somehow managed to regain my innocence by living through it.

As for the girl who discovered self-realisation on her (through her?) IPHONE?
She'll be alright. If that's how she starts wading through the floodwaters of relating
herself to the world, misunderstood syllables, name-fails and all, this time in twenty
years, she'll be laughing. Don't worry yourselves, she'll adapt with the times.
Sure, Dublin's famous for it.
reflectionzero Jul 2015
When I was nine a boy told me I looked like a ******* the playground. I cried and beat him until my knuckles turned white. At the time, anything like a girl was deserving of two things: disrespect and objectification. I write in the past-tense in the hope that this mentality is on its way out with corsets and Truck Nutz® .

The legalization of same-*** marriage has made it so that I'm given a [somewhat] equal level of rights to that of a heterosexual, and it created an air of safety on the streets in which saying things like “******” might now be on par with the word “******”. People might start to feel more socially obliged to say sorry to me for saying it-- but not because they actually are.

For that I'm grateful, but the integration of the homosexual identity in the media is being largely focused through the male lens, and that's a problem.

The 'coming out' sports stars and picket-fence gays in shows like Modern Family completely overshadow women-- in the same way that all aspects of our society do.

I still hear that insecure nine-year-old echoing in the byzantine recesses of my twenty-something brain, “you look like a girl” and I cringe. For society to make sense of my sexuality as a male attracted to other men, I was feminized and subsequently devalued. “If you like men, you must be like a girl” and conversely the same would be applied to a lesbian, “If you like women, you must be like a boy (but probably confused and you'll change your mind, because you're a woman)”.

The problem was, that at some point, I was expected to join the cheerleading squad or football team and play with Barbies or Army figurines. I was born into a gender straight-jacket that aimed to suffocate my expression as a male into singular shade of blue, and I'm rather fond of pink.

But everyone knows that pink is the weaker and more pathetic color.

The expectations of a woman to be barefoot preparing dinner for her drunk and abusive husband has been alleviated, but there is still a monster of an elephant lurking in the kitchen.

For a movement which parades a diverse banner of colors and proclaims acceptance, therein lies the patriarchal monster rearing its head once more. For example-- Grindr, the gay male social networking app that has been all the craze. Amidst the headless torsos looking for partnership among strangers (NSA ***), the unifying demand (literally almost every profile) is masculinity.

A demand that our partners appear more physically masculine as to avoid further social isolation.  A request which directly results from the hurt of being feminized as gay men; it's a request that represents the patriarchal society which ostracized us in the first place for “being like a girl” (and I cringe once more).

Flashback to some age between nine and twenty asking myself, “What's wrong with being a girl?” Well, I suppose we could go the biological route and say that they are in fact smaller and less capable of lifting heavy things. Then we could also look at college graduation rates of females over males and scale the weight of each genders brain and figure out which is superior. (Did you know women exceed males in college education?) They do, and since they're aren't many sabertooth tigers to club over the head anymore-- men should probably pick up the pace.

Then I realized-- there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a girl, feminine or gay. There's something wrong with being a man.
not a poem
CR Apr 2013
there's this 1945 jacket that i have, this military-grade thing, and it has these white paint splatters on it from probably 1968, or at least i hope that's when they're from. i like to think this jacket that i have has seen the revolutions i missed, on the shoulders of a soldier that i knew in his white-haired days, whose nose is feminized on my face--it's too big, but it's his, and so i like it there--and who learned to walk a second time without flinching, whose goodness never needed flowered language, and whose goodness i take with me where i go. and then on the shoulders of a soldier's son whose legs hyperextend like mine, who falters unforgivably and breaks what he loves like i do, and who also loves wine and music, and who loves the best he can. there are all these pockets in this jacket that i have, and these rows of buttons that take forever to line up, and a little tiny hole in the elbow, and strings all at the wrist. i pull the strings like i pull up grass and i pick at what's healing and when i was a little girl i wiggled my baby teeth before they were ready to fall. i forget that 1945 was a long time ago and every string i pull is one string less for the next soldier, or soldier's son, or soldier's son's daughter who tries. one string less for the next revolution, one string less for the picturebook wedding, one string less for the girl-on-the-side. but this jacket that i have, it's still stoic, and it's still good. the soldier that i knew in his white hair is good still from where he is, and i can still see his blue eyes in mine, and i can still see that the soldier's son loves even though he falters, and so do i. i try to pull out fewer strings, and i try to be a soldier--a good soldier--i always try.
Cory Ellis Apr 2013
New Notices
of the others like me
Us;
continuously reincarnated creeps

The Whiskey woman
w/ nothing
but a bourbon banshee scream
the sufferer
of love
her death
an ****** odor

The thin blond man
He can't see in the dark
He sees forever
him
the image:
death of the old world
Oh how it aged
its bone turning grey
as it began to decay

Myself
The rugged beast
lithe and light
lingering on the edge
of transition
yearning
to bring them
to the new age
inviting them through
healing the social
feminized dysfunction
w/ my smoke gurgled breath

The hypnotized flower
w/ wide dark pupils
so feminine
so beautiful
the master of harmony
reaching for the cosmos
and they are content
to let her tune them in
to Gods radio

We've gathered
just like in the past
when Uranus chills with Pluto

We will realize our goal
w/ scholarly
perfect precision
We bring you wisdom
w/ our tragic vision
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°­°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°­°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Ken Pepiton Oct 2021
Gunda, the lifecycle of bacon, I watched that
the first seven minutes in real time
then at ten second slides,
a fine modern invention for redeeming the time, we need
to know the life cycle of pigs,
we do,
I agree, and I applaud the audacity of the art, that allows
this expectation of the audience
to make of this the message pigs send in their plight, eh

they say, we got no clue, we are but food,
be sure to fool life hierarchical procedures, id est,
cook this white meet to death
to insure
no extra human life forms
whom we host with all benevolence,
as all life is welcome to whatever is digestible
and useful for nothing but humus,
final form, dried to dust…

the lowest of living substances once fed the highest minds.

Gunda ist dada in new medium,
fertile soil for feminized seed… turned with the compost
into us, mental pig thoughts, grunts,
once, chemistry is the witness
we are made
of the same stuff as pigs.
ConnectHook Apr 2019
Enough of angry fixes, ***** streets
incoherent poems and arrhythmic beats,
drug-addled mystics and feminized fools
who compose no further than breaking rules.
Junior Dadaists, after the fact;
dull poetry’s second, third, and fourth act.
Actual poetry exists for the page
and ought to be able to last an age.
Real poems are NOT composed on the tongue,
as are the ravings of the angry young.
Diarrhetic voidings, awash in words
that rain down upon the poetic herds
are not the same as life-giving waters
fit to refresh our sons and daughters.

**** it up with your existential vacuum
from off the floor of that San Fran backroom.
PROMPT 28:
try your hand at a meta-poem of your own
(Meta-poem = a poem about poetry)
ConnectHook May 2022
mid-morning shot of lawns in suburbia/something about baseball or football or summer camp/bumbling fool in pleated khakis with mediocre-length hair/unforeseen encounter with blonde in commercial zone[PRODUCT PLACEMENT] familiar boomer-rock or soul music lulls the viewer/neurotic feminized white father loses it over middleclass trivialities/funny overweight guy befriends main character[PRODUCT PLACEMENT] assertive mom obsessed with hokey career too emotionally repressed to nurture her kids/sassy alterna-child presented as wiser than its parents listens to new “edgy” rock-rap/stereotypical Latinos shown eating spicy food and being passionate and colorful/token religious figure prays superficially[PRODUCT PLACEMENT] noble black mentor capable of guiding the primitive unspiritual Caucasians/working-class single mom abused by her ****** boyfriend[PRODUCT PLACEMENT] neurotic dad realizes how good he has it/rebel alterna-kid admits it loves its parents/cringey dance scene to another familiar boomer-era pop song[PRODUCT PLACEMENT] reference to Hollyweird-style New-age Judaism-psychic-pop-mysticism-chaos-theory/sophisticate girlfriend mentions her abortion/enter dangerous crackpot gun-toting extremist citing Bible verses[PRODUCT PLACEMENT] someone befriends gentle new Asian neighbors/constant references to brand-name pop culture during bar scene/funny overweight friend offers main character homely wisdom[PRODUCT PLACEMENT] emo-rock theme with super-bass boost plays while credits roll
Ken Pepiton Aug 19
Such tellings as are catalogued folk tales,
and sorted on similarities of plot or character,
from child holdings realized as old, stories, reready
common creatures come alive, the Bremen Band
led by a *******, is all I recall,

then this old cat that comes around
come to mind, ai winking
but as Al exists to recall it all,
"What's got in your way, old beard-cleaner?"
asked the donkey,
as a significant kind of character,
direct descendant from Balaam's, who was
predecessor to Francis the Mule, who was last
of the eloquent *****, less famous nowadays,

magic is not what it once once was, supposed,
posed superior to lesser knowings, proposed
to be the very instructions from the knowing
tree forest whose reach into the tombs,
breathes gaseous weforms from earth wombs,
once once
seppuku - no, Hopi navel of the world- aigotit
Sipapu - spirit forms become Katcina

we see and say so using idle words you own,
and we trust our assisting intelligences own
means of translating our merged minds own

original intention, was to be renowned, famed
for slaying dragons of any non Christian kind,
daemons and demons unionized, to assist
using the psychology of the guy on
Christian radio, Dr. Dobson, dare to discipline,

oh, there, thence rose daddy wounds, perhaps
five long generations deep, military minds run
down this branch of my family tree,
chthonically rooted back to Phrygia,
flip the dime, who holds both sides?
how were these magic dimes made so?
By cleansing the sillohuette of old John D.

"Buddy, can you spare a silver dime?"

When the March of Dimes began,
all dimes were silver dimes, all values
were redeemable in silver, but those days

and those ways, do not function efficiently,

ef-fort effi fine-ancially fiscal police rules,
fi- gimme a reason
hard currency, abused since ever was a magi
with a convincing story told invitingly,

come and see,

Let us order our days from today,
while it remains today, to and fro, let us go
upon the face of the world, the home of our we,

we, in spirit form, find ourselves in words and music,
mused first, of course, in sequence of humane events,

we agree to become, not feminized, but wise, using
Wisdom's feminine form from all ancestral knowings,

she seduces wise men ***** by glorious old boys,
whose only war was Kriegspiel - we all can be heros,

or so the hero makers say, follow us, learn to **** at will,
on demand, you know the drill, onward, Christian Soldiers,
into faith as strongly wrong as your own, sincerely

what sin, the idea first fit to a word, once made
sacred, original intention of the sound chata makes

means error, does not fit future need to know, do over,
glitch, try again, Cain, chata is always possible, hamartia
claim blame, fame and shame
aitia, we invent in mind games, as a she formed from Wisdom,
modeled by sheform statues
of Freedom in Phrygian caps,
on County seat town greens
all over preboomer America,
all meaning lost, until today.

Liberty nods.

I may have made a child that I never met,
and whether ever has a fee for that innocense,
I chose to think I don't believe I know, for sure.

Imagine that, in magical terms, in my bubble
being edge wise superior from every point,

never viewed from until the tech we have today,
left preceptual connections where disconnects,

are as commonly real as
back when Grace Murray Hopper
lived in the upper crustean realm
of education, time records a genius Sidis,
coabode on Earth with her and Bucky Fuller.
William James Sidis, self normalized,
to collected trolley passes,
and let the bosses be bosses,
and that is all,
we know we may yet
imagine the mind used to live true,
whose gaming mind may imagine,
the opportunity,
to visit each trolley ride, in this
version in Sidis's philological vendergood voice,

fourth dimensional assisting ***-umphed if I'da
known, focus on the navel, really, think it through,

we yawn, and wonder,
how long a tale is told, tells a lot about a tale's use.

We reckon, we re co know agnostically religamental
right usual working ways we try, you know

to spy an eye in time tuning spacy gazy lazy
let's see, when last we came upon an option

go, or stay, think it through, or edit the art part,
make it meet the American Rhetoric of 1968,

Cathy sent me letters from the convention,
she was still mourning Bobbie, I was in Long Binh,

being crazy enough to shoot, back home, here,
I was the guy burning actual ****, in the rear,
there then,
I could see the jail go up in smoke from here,
me and the Papasan's found it abnormally strange.

Recognizing a stoner survivor's version of riches
from the total shitshow through to this one today,

across all potential four dimensional codes,
we signal something sibilantly whispering, see.    

Well, imagine imaginary people,
beautiful mind alternative points
from which any fractal forms a whole

truth held self evidently, for show,
to prove, you know, you did go,
you did pay for going, your choice,

bet your life, at any pre myelinated
phase of cognitive natural fructifity,

presume resumption was begun
passively requiring secret rights,

the  hand shake, with out the thumb
nailed it, dead serious, sincerity
definitely now we both know this:
Sincerely
There has been a temptation
to see the first element
as Latin sine "without."
But there is no etymological justification
for the common story that the word means
"without wax" (*sine cera),
which is dismissed out of hand by OED,
Century Dictionary ("untenable"), and others,
and the stories invented to justify
that folk etymology are even less plausible.
Watkins has it as originally "of one growth"
(i.e. "not hybrid, unmixed"),
from PIE *sm-ke-ro-,
from *sem- "one" (see same) +
root of crescere "to grow"
(from PIE root *ker- (2) "to grow").
De Vaan finds plausible a source
in a lost adjective *caerus "whole, intact,"
from a PIE root meaning "whole."


----------------
Whole truth original intent…

Entertaining lost minds,
following trolley tickets

to find the genius in Sidis,
to retrace those long ago
trolley tracks, in old down
towns, not the status tracks

those were the tracks that ran
by the slaughter houses and
packing sheds, south of town,

out in the boondocks, swhat
some called wrong sides of towns,
uptown and downtown, one stop light
on the Mother Road to California,

there, is a sip-appertaining to news

adapted to, fret not, some fail now,
yet today remains today every where
at once, each time you pay mind, here

is where what we are come alive.
One reader makes it work,
a we thought flies free.

We laugh, or we worry.

All the players in the Bremen Band
were old when the opportunity arose.
Where else can one not fear rejection and so, sow such unorthodox seed?
Satsih Verma Feb 2017
This was a perception defict
when only a suicide could stop you.
From where to where we
Have come in traumatized stake.
Black tongues always ruled. No
rite of passage, where money changers
speak. How will you cover yourself now?

Feminized, the dance of wolves.
Do not throw the chunks of flesh
in arena― for hubris will
bring the nemesis.

The flint makes a pledge.
When the red rains come and
overwhelm the innocent earth,
we will make the tools again.
Travis Green Feb 2022
He careened my dimension
Had me inebriated on Grey Goose and Hennessy
He commanded my limbs
Had me in a tight spot
As he stole my heart
Chiseled his deepest
And amorous fantasies on my chest
Emblazoned enchantment on my ***

His love was strongly enthralling
Super stimulating and contagious
His straightness riveted me
Such a manly, luscious gaze
Sensual sexiness
He shifted my system
Calibrated my intelligence with his
As he took me down to his country town
Gave me a straight up dope ****
Took over my mind and body
Swathed me in his scrumptious chocolate enchantment

He was flowing poetic bliss that weaved my body
His sea of ecstasy swept through me effortlessly
He absorbed my gorgeousness
He gave me the hottest *** session
As I watched him conquer me
He was so lost in my world
He couldn’t stop ******* me
He feminized my frame

He had me screaming vicious vowels
With my hands fused to his dreadlocks
He had me constrained in his chamber of intenseness
My thirstiness for him escalated even more
As I wanted to be wrapped around
His milky hot chocolate body for eternity
To feel my temperature emerging
To be in unanimity with his nation
Travis Green May 2021
I want to press my skin
Up against your bare back
Grasp your manly ***
Caress your canvas
Play my hot song
Upon your neck
Make you feel comfortable
Color your world
With feminized images of bliss
Call you my bae
As you crave my vibe

— The End —