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Our souls
are one thousand firecrackers
each stick waiting to burn.

Sometimes our souls are quiet,
and the firecrackers are stagnant
and wet.

And sometimes we burn slow,
the firecrackers smoldering sweet and terrible,
the ashes falling in poetic teardrops to the ground.
We are tied down and the firecrackers
are screaming to burst out with a jubilant
expression of WOWWW!

But they are denied.

Until that one moment when all the pieces are set
and finally the firework of our soul is
let loose and explodes with loud, sulfuric glory,
spreading its light and smoke and wonder
across the quiet plains.
The sweet, honey colored love
that pours from every cut
every other girl made on you
You let me kiss it better
inhale its sweetness.
In turn, the salt that pours from my own wounds
from black eyes dealt
and flesh cleaved for the pleasure of greedy wolves
it mingles with your flavor
and I hope it sets you onto the same dazzling track that I find myself on.

I use the word 'fireworks'
'firecrackers'
those two words
they have leaked into everything I write
because it is just how I feel
How I used to hate dance music
and now my hips sway to a beat that you showed me
showed me to smile
and I showed you where to cry
right here, right with me

Those sparkling lights over the ground
blasting off in gold and white
burning and glowing
and not stopping
a constant barrage of color and splendor
We were buried up to our necks just before we dug out
and now we're here
barely missing the stars
holding hands
and becoming

Honey
and Salt
and Firecrackers
Firecrackers to frighten the animals.
Shadows of mountains run
On the surface of the fords.
Frisk Jul 2014
my mind is like firecrackers
explodes with thoughts
of you.

- kra
******* for not having the ability to feel loss.
Robin Carretti Aug 2018
Hearts another beat a second
A+ made the grade rare meat
Why is everything told to
us in a heartbeat
This is getting way too sweet
"Lips took Beeswax" bittersweet

Someone got stung B-
Strong sound muffler
Joyride Owl Hoot clever
Sweet and sourpuss
honey babe

Her mustard lips of custard
Hot temperature rising
The spicy lady opening
up new horizon gate

Too many sad rides
empty plates last joyride
Gas empty blame the county
Why did we call this joyride
without knowing
your fate

The others are more noticed
Fashionably they came late
Dine and the Wine joyride
romanced money upfront
advanced

Lips like jewels left their stale
You were the chosen one taken
for a ride from
a crooked male

Like bushel big loot basket
Rock the Kasbah rocket
Golden joyride ticket the
pickpocket
Getting away with ******
****** lips in the gasket

The joyride so beat looked
disheveled new love
unraveled
So messy but **** neat
looking, Lexus,
She looks mighty fine like
Venus, I beg you to zoom

And the love after all the treats
Sherlocked in his room
The devil made me do it
All flushed and deep red
Hearing his joyride of beats
What was really going
through her head
Hard rock ambient
painter deviant

The holiday like racing hot rod
Harvest Halloween of a joyride
Two peas in dark maze pod
Igniting a hot fire
Her lips need to decide
Who was underneath the
fumes of his fire

The coffee taste accelerating
Do we feel the pulsing beat
What a high anxiety peak
High intense flavor
You waiting for his joyride
Christmas and Hannukah
Tree to decide that's easier
But wait for true love above all
the gifts to deliver
Like bedrock meeting
Monster ride plant-eating Bug
More slugs my chinch
Inchworm of books at Joyride
College Dorm horn alarm
Manifestation enjoying
her joyride
What a conniver
Greece with my niece
vacation
Basil New rival tea
Pomegranate Cherry-bomb
Blonde Bombshell
Culture novelty joyride
Ring my servant bell
Met their sanity tomb

Her hand's dainty they shine
and sparkle
Her lips know how to jingle
Arace for hearts of stories
and memories
Always the death hand takes
a ride to the winding road of
the cemeteries
Just stay for the moment
think about the
Joyride forth of July
Our firecrackers went off at
the same time
Brie cheese favorite time
English tea and crackers
Like two lips sublime read
her diaries in his designer dockers

Going to the end of the earth lips
light up New York City galleries

Needing the fresh corner
Sunset taking lowrider Boulevard
Hollywood Oh! No world
Wildly satanic or the carefree type
Her joy smile he's sold on skype
Benevolent triad remembering
The mad magazine
MLM Maserati longevity Master
Of the joyride gun blaster
"Lips build like a Pyramid"
Becoming irresistible
Not to humble

Lips race Joyride to gamble
Nothing weakens to crumble
Baking a crumb cake its
doable stays together but
things unnamed not like
a marriage

We get blamed joyride
got damaged
We become gullible
What becomes of the broken heart
someone isn't reliable
Lips are not responsible
Leadership has you cornered  
To stumble upon her lips
Rendered steamboat surrender
How he tumbles
Mr. Grey Poupon Mustard seed
He plants her like his
only joyride
In need
We are all Jupiter the moon
joy to the world
All the boys and girls being
taken for joyrides

The Beach boy's video games
Spy lips whose to blame
Phillip screwdriver
But they take a ride
All you could pick a hot buffet
feasting she is still wearing
hot lipstick
Men have their choice of
they're next
Joyride Bride about the money
Wall-Street cars of hobbies
investing
Yeah right?
Lips take a joyride can we all please take a moment lets decide what we will do.
Is it really up to you for the road always him light that fire trim lips glow joyride fires out you tell the world what it is all about?
AprilDawn Jul 2015
in the distance
Really ?
today is July 6
a slight breeze flutters
through sweetly bedded petunias
my shirt waves freely
after a long  day
of  goodbye
your
battle wearied  body
in  limbo
every hug ,tear and laugh
your  legacy of love
spans  the globe
fills  rooms
with memories
and regrets
that clock
is not your friend
it ticks away
menacingly
marking the last moments
spent in our midst
seems
not that long ago
we all watched
firecrackers
together
on your front porch
rip gary
Green Eyed Blues Apr 2017
I've got the taste of Black Cat firecrackers in my mouth
Tongue trapped by
Exotic fruit instead of cheese  
Now nothing has a taste
Mary Gay Kearns Oct 2018
The orange leaves on viridian  
Dripping trails of season shade
Tangerine carpet sweeps path
Roads runs on a white stripe.


Oh such making of nature in change
Birds find mellow mist on their wing
And firecrackers zoom towards skies
Where the bonfires explode and burn.

Love Mary ***
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2017
for any of my work to have any meaning, i can only suggested browsing Empedocles (of Acragas), in saying that, i suggest the name, primarily it's a form of philosophy, written in poetic form... in that it exhausts the need for poetic technique: i.e., there's more to see, than actually hear.

- just like i don't understand people who fake doing the maestro whenever they listen to classical music, in the same vein: your greengroccer... your plumber... your electricians.... god forbid you t.v. guy....  don't translate that oddity in, modern music and imitating drummers... i get air guitar, i get air maestro... no one really bother the drumming brigade, when i listen to classical music, i am looking for a maestro, when i listen to contemporary music i, want a drummer, bad; ****! St. Thomas' gospel is becoming real... like i really, really, need a *** change.... never mind the 50cl of whiskey waiting for me, or sasha foxxx's eyes... the job? hammer in a thousand nails... industrialise ***, what do you get? a **** economy... why would god enter the equation if all the problems are theological self-made-heresy? it's not even that *** sells, and god gives gives rise to stampedes... what with the Koran and oil, are we counting to state the same arithmetic... i mean: the industrialisation of ***... nothing that hurts, nothing but a quip... that sorta of definition belongs in China or India with a billion participants... what we have is a case of mouthing off the competitors, when you're actually chihuahua in the Sahara of expectation.... i'm as mad as the numbers say i am... personal stories are non-essential.... i included mine for added effect... or a presumtpion that i might: acknowledged as having said anything in total....counter to english existentialism, so wholly preoccpupied with zoos and biology as the only scientific resource... i can't agree to it making sense, in the standard item-basis-list of following-up an argument... that dire, fake or indeed couch-sloth desert-prune is only half of *σ
... i mean there's a tendency of a natural disparity, to ensure a dialectical health of any if all argument... σ = per se... it's because there no single, identifiable argument, the one current is a vogue argument, in the realm of zeitgeist parameters... it's not the only one... the world will move on... it's only that at the zenith of civilisation, we are only bound to industrialise ***, and art is, as according to W. Benjamin, in a state of: ditto, in the age of machanical, reproduction... easier said than... and so done... i feel the anaesthetic needle doing the suggested thing, of numbing me... it's not when art is given onto this Moloch-like altar... it's when *** is industrially-scaled to require cinema... and the quickie-dip of dimension having repertoire in threes... i have no care to ensure there's a narrative and a frenzy... i just care to say: there's a narrative, and a frenzy.... that one has no insurance, and that the other has all the resources that would otherwise invole a familial life... which now, evidently, is prone to same-*** affiliations than compliment-*** affiliations... meaning less art from the **** realm, and more art from the hetero or h-quasi realm (origin ****)... you need to talk about the cushions, if you're going to sleep in the bed, ****'s sake! -

to really live by the "rules" of existentialism,
to live an existential doctrine,
is to really: live an uneventful life,
or should i say: rather ordinary?
  well... i wouldn't go as far as saying it
might be boring, just... un-spectacular.

and all it takes it five beers and, oh, about
6 miles of wet wintry cement,
   and o.t.t.'s album blumenkraft,
with the crescendo song: billy the kid strikes back...

walk 6 or 7 miles in winter
and you come back into a warm abode
and you have skeleton hands...
numb from the cold...
but in england winter is different
than on the continent...
a wet winter (which is very english)
is worse than a dry winter (which is
continental)...
  as honesty goes... -18C in a dry winter
is probably not as bad as -1C in a wet
winter...
    so there's me, completely
****-faced watching the t.v. series
this is us, and one of the characters is
a black kid that gets adopted by
a white family when
    one of the triplets of the white family
dies in child-birth,
and he finds his biological father...
and also a mid-life crisis:
white folks told me to excell,
so he does,
   black daddy was a poet and played
the piano...
and he experiences a mild
schizophrenia... see, it's not a scary word,
i mean: without the extreme symptoms...
   a split-mind...
thankfully i cushioned mine on bilingualism...
and i have been ever since: bilingual -
nothing to be proud of,
   after all: there's the genius polymath...
but it's not about that: it's about winter...
winters in england are so different to
winters on the continent...
the grey skies? oh, that's here all year...
    talk about being a weather man
in Saudi Arabia, most of them moved to England:
where the action is...
          
but really, i can't imagine why existentialism
as a movement, culminated in the zenith
it achieved (precursor movement?
phenomenology)
        oh yah yah: were nieche, very Kensington,
very, Chiswick...

but to really appreciate an existentialist
dogma, a truly uneventful life...
   and given that existentialism in the French
vein akin to Kant but not so much Heidegger
lends itself to the cartesian maxim...
well... that's because it kinda has to,
but not really...

  Kant took out i think and merely focused on that,
his biography goes along the lines of:
a ritual walker, stayed in one place,
    a rook of the clock, i couldn't exactly call him
a pawn... nonetheless...
             a very uneventful life...
why? thought.
    
    what's the most interesting thing i've done today?
i thought, or, i had a thought (a / the article scissors
cutting off the -ism)...
and that's about it...
    had a thought...
                   i hit the gong that thus translates into
the post ergo / therefore of i am,
   and then i realised: i wasn't motivated enough
by my thought: to do much!
              
historically speaking, my writing can only be placed
into a dynamic of being called post-existentialism,
it's not boasting, it's just a plain fact,
   like Monday will be St. Valentine's day, 2017...
and some men collect stamps,
   and some men like fishing,
    and some men have the habit of writing about
things that are, a bit like Avogardo's constant,
meaning they'd love to speak about these things
over, and over again, and never get bored of them,
or for that matter: start families.

strange how it works, have it all...
       or have none of it, to later only have that one
vector that's opposite of mortal, ******...
        or have both, in a way,
and be later traced to some Shakespearean controversy
about a mistaken identity...
well... there's that too.

that must be it, existentialism, and the most,
ordinary life...
         pause for what, akin to something else i wrote
about beginning the thought catching
up to the walk a few days earlier which began
with z and i and diacritical marks,
how northern slavs wouldn't necessarily disrespect
the already present diacritical mark
on the ι (iota), i.e. regarding acute z (ź),
and how if z & i appear together, i.e.
    z and immediately after it, i... you don't bother
writing an acute version of z,
   as a southern slav (balkan) might,
with his caron (ž)...

or a bit like stating the old chestnut of universals
vs. particulars...
   well... they can say what they like about
the cheapness of writing in this medium
but there is nothing so gut-wrenching as a deleted
passage, that will never return...
    immediate heartache... there on the screen,
the computer decides to "have a mind of its own"
moment by either your carelessness
          or the computer's defects and: ****!
gone, a shift+ and suddenly... writing while not
looking at the keyboard, as you do... ****!
gone... gone baby... gone...
    and if that's not analogy of: a lesson
in placing your hands correctly onto the computer
does me: you're looking at the keyboard
and not at the screen...

  how about writing with my eyes closed?
  haven't seen anyone attempt that...

here goes:

    and with that i give you hades...

not bad, i should try it more often... it's not believable
because it's actually correct and has no mistakes....
*******.

alternative? and with that i give you sheol...
   still the same... double *******.

((   ((
    
and that's all it takes... the part where you let go,
because you have to:
  the regret can be there, but soon has to
be overruled...
   it mattered at the zenith of logic,
it was really there, for such a brief moment,
i could call it a study in how you can ****
a very lucid moment, and then have to "resort",
but, rather: merely accepting it as having no place
in the overall composition...
    so to the windowsill, finishing off
blackbeard (whiskey and coca cola and
a cigarette)... changing the aura from
o.t.t.'s album taken home from the "marathon"
(yes, the prime existential tool is the transcendence
of synonyms, encouraging misnomers
or: how to not build dams, or become custard
beavers, looking for words...
    the river, every time, always looking at a river...
the sea and the people and time...
   rivers occupy an infinite concept of space
and the change within such a Thermopylae,
as it might give you indigestion,
or the highest serving rank of memory...
the sea and the people don't scare me,
and it's hardly a thing of admiration...
its just a sight of pulverisation, a headache...
the river, the solitude, and the fact that local
newspapers have adverts of only lonely women...
sure, read a national newspaper and there
are women seeking men, women seeking women,
men seeking women, men seeking men...
but look at a local, a local newspaper: only women
advertising themselves for candles and firecrackers...
it seams men were always programmed (a priori)
        into the gravitas of solitude...
what i really meant to say: existentialistic writings
can appear foreboding with the ditto...
with the perception that there's this ulterior,
dark-seeded motive...
      i just thought about bypassing the thesaurus,
like some writers do,
    you can spot it when they do,
a word they looked up from their labour
of lumberjacking the keyboard
sticks out like a modern statue, or a broken finger,
a word: right off the pages of a thesaurus...
   i just mean that there's nothing sinister enclosed in
the said "brackets"...  there's nothing additional about it,
but as narratives go... you sometimes want to bypass
Sherlock Holmes and write a synonym-antonym,
you want to bypass the thesaurus, content with your
own vocab riches, but too "lazy" / engrossed in
what's actually coming...
say, that interlude, a cigarette, finishing off the whiskey,
with the glass freezing and having a layer of ice
around it... and: why i'll never be part of the nirvana's
or the doors' cult...
     pearl jam's indifference, from their second album.

so it's sometimes thereuputic letting go,
  after all, no one built a house on the summit of Everest,
if i wrote something of such clarifying quality,
and lost it... i can only apply an imagery of having seen it,
the best i can suggest that i wrote something
akin to 1 + 1 = 2, and then accidently deleted it...
and that's the sad part,
universals as vowels, particulars like consonants,
    even numbers akin to 2 and odd numbers akin to 1
(divided into decimals, or the wormhole of 0.123456 etc.) -
it was a beautiful sight, and then, again: ****!
gone... like a magician doing a trick
   and then... the sadness of having lost the technique
to recreate it...
well, the best i can do to recreate it is based
on a short argument...
   if universals and particulars (relying on the fact
that both have a plural form,
  i.e. so not 1 in 1, but the many of 1,
   and akin to: the 1 in many, and the many in many,
and the 1 in 1 / focus, something identifiable) -
or loosely universals like vowels, and particulars like consonants,
but given the two experience diacritical distinction /
additions... i could best remember what i wrote
as: 1 e.g. particular, if divided: fractions, and after
fractions: decimals...
                2 e.g. universal, if divided: whole numbers,
and after whole numbers fractions, and later decimals...
   so on and so forth with 3 (particular), 4 (universal),
     5 (p.), 6 (u.)...
                 a bit like having your own telescope
and microscope, just looking at what we make silence
of, our two ways of encoding what could have,
or should have been said, that was nonetheless said,
transcending our contemporaries as, what can only
be described as... an echo, lost in the caves of aeons...

this promenade begun with something to z & i...
or z, i, ι, ź and ž (what a nice pentagram,
i was watching the six nation's match
between wales and england,
and lo! behold... a goat at the fore!
  mind you, i took a cigarette break when they scored
their two tries).
Cardiff? yeah, been there once...
         Poland v Wales qualifying match,
donning a polish football shirt, got approached
by two young welsh girls saying: your team is ****...
started giving it the local... how fast they ran away...
and they say we laugh more than we cry,
   and i could be the one to snigger a sly laugh at
that memory, but cinema memory says to me:
time to usher in the reverse-psychology,
calling white black, and laughter crying...
        or as i like to call it, the paradox marriage
that has, literally not tentacle hold on the world,
   the bilingual marriage,
             lodged deep inside my head,
most recognisable by my theory study of diacritical
marks, or actually having noticed them,
and having no real, authentic accent to remind me
that i belong in either geography...
         whether from beginning, or toward an end...
some call it acting, some call it faking,
  i call it: just what i was given, or, more precisely:
what i earned... and that was to no good use...
        unless... this is the best expression of what the foundations
look like.

what was i thinking of? ah!

   it just involved the σ                       ς roundabout...
the aesthetic variation for one,
but on another investigation, well, sigma, total, sum,
and how be obey it like a golden ratio or pi,
   it's just auto-suggestive of how we are never truly
synchronised in our arguments...
   but, "paradoxically", or should i say: by a miracle,
make up the greatest potent to have an argument...
  we can never truly really synchronises ourselves
to fill the boots of expressing an utopian dream,
otherwise we wouldn't dream... period...
  so bye bye Freud and that method of escapism...
     we already ensured that, if they be our creation,
the gods are already at war with the Titans...
      i'll actually acknowledge that in an age of
pop philosophy in that Greece was, a place of allowing
a fertility of thought and later popularising it
(we don't live in times where there's a fertility consecrated
on the altar of thought, or what philosophy is, thinking per se /
for itself... innovators! scientists! up-starts!
or as some might say, the other pronoun battle,
the one without genitals involved,
as could only be sooner said:
  per se, or per per...
                       in in...
nothing sexualised... it's only that there's a limit in pronouns,
per se / in itself must come across the muddle
regarding the moment when people lose their
identity and begin their life with: ? thought
rather than i think,
       i can't place it anywhere else than inside my head,
better there than in the genitals,
   or wasn't Jesus circumcised and the zeitgeist
of St. Thomas' gospel and the transgender movment?
    the church is old, and counter-authoritarian,
it's just a tired institution, so it has no actual authenticity
over the current changes in society,
    might as well call onto Islam to move the chess pieces...
or that's what i'm currently seeing...
   i was just thinking about a logical limit in language,
e.g. timbaland's song the way i are...
   there really is a logical limit on how far you can
suddenly just forget grammar...
            so why begin with per se?
                 at best described as a cogitans (
Chinese Firecrackers

Celebrate New Year with firecrackers|
lunch time is good
the smell of food mixing with gunpowder|
loud noises
drown out the clack of chopsticks
red paper
strewn around is all that's left
apart from the ringing in the ears


Malcolm Davidson Feb 12th 2013

Chinese New Year**

Chinese New Year is all around
red lanterns hanging from the trees
people laughing, boisterous
everyone goes home for the holidays
to share rice together
one big family
you can feel it in the air.

Malcolm Davidson Feb 1st 2013
Jedd Ong Mar 2015
Dad
Muelle de Binondo Street,
Barangay San Nicolas,
Old Manila.

My dad's fate
Will always be muddled
With nostalgia:

The mid-afternoon
Traffic of fruit vendors,

The toothless strains
Of my grandfather's voice,
Bouncing off
The warehouse walls
Like folding cardboard,

The ceramic gallops of horse-
Drawn kalesas taking him
From school to
My grandfather's offices,
Every day and back,

Up and down
The cardboard box river
To Tondo. There, he hurriedly
Buys ten
Asado buns
From a stall across the
Street from their
School - a voracious
Schoolboy
Forever late for class, forever

Putting on basketball jerseys
Too wide for him,
Basketball shorts too
Short; body
Always too gangly,
Too long-limbed, wide eyed
And fleet footed
For his dreams to catch.

He once could dunk.

He is still a baby boomer -
Scared of firecrackers,
Weird penchant
For popped collar shirts,
Pointed shoes, and
Sequins - he, was an avid

Lover of stars - his old
Dust-strewn bed posts
Giving way, I imagine,
To iron bars caging
The luminous starry night,
Floating high above
The sewage
And the freight trucks
That weigh him so.

They sang to him.

In the tune of
My mother's voice -
The only album
He ever possessed.

Song set from
His favorite band.

"Apo Hiking Society."

His favorite word,
Was "leap."

A disciple
Of MJ, Dr. J,
And Magic,
Samboy, and Jawo,

Icarus on hardwood
And leaping
From the free throw line.

"Son," he once told me,
"You gotta leap
"If you wanna live."

He was always afraid of heights.

It wasn't until 41 that
We made him ride a roller-coaster,
That he had even seen a roller-coaster.

"You gotta leap
"If you wanna live."

I think my favorite
Memory of my dad
Is still him wringing my fingers
At Space Mountain with
Eyes so tightly shut
That we forgot
Our fears,
And screamed instead:

So.

This,
Is how the stars look like
When unbolted
By folding cardboard,
And iron bars.
It was also my violent heart that broke,
falling down the front hall stairs.
It was also a message I never spoke,
calling, riser after riser, who cares

about you, who cares, splintering up
the hip that was merely made of crystal,
the post of it and also the cup.
I exploded in the hallway like a pistol.

So I fell apart. So I came all undone.
Yes. I was like a box of dog bones.
But now they've wrapped me in like a nun.
Burst like firecrackers! Held like stones!

What a feat sailing queerly like Icarus
until the tempest undid me and I broke.
The ambulance drivers made such a fuss.
But when I cried, "Wait for my courage!" they smoked

and then they placed me, tied me up on their plate,
and wheeled me out to their coffin, my nest.
Slowly the siren slowly the hearse, sedate
as a dowager. At the E. W. they cut off my dress.

I cried, "Oh Jesus, help me! Oh Jesus Christ!"
and the nurse replied, "Wrong name. My name
is Barbara," and hung me in an odd device,
a buck's extension and a Balkan overhead frame.

The orthopedic man declared,
"You'll be down for a year." His scoop. His news.
He opened the skin. He scraped. He pared
and drilled through bone for his four-inch screws.

That takes brute strength like pushing a cow
up hill. I tell you, it takes skill
and bedside charm and all that know how.
The body is a **** hard thing to ****.

But please don't touch or jiggle my bed.
I'm Ethan Frome's wife. I'll move when I'm able.
The T. V. hangs from the wall like a moose head.
I hide a pint of bourbon in my bedside table.

A bird full of bones, now I'm held by a sand bag.
The fracture was twice. The fracture was double.
The days are horizontal. The days are a drag.
All of the skeleton in me is in trouble.

Across the hall is the bedpan station.
The ***** and stools pass hourly by my head
in silver bowls. They flush in unison
in the autoclave. My one dozen roses are dead.

The have ceased to *******. They hang
there like little dried up blood clots.
And the heart too, that *******, how it sang
once. How it thought it could call the shots!

Understand what happened the day I fell.
My heart had stammered and hungered at
a marriage feast until the angel of hell
turned me into the punisher, the acrobat.

My bones are loose as clothespins,
as abandoned as dolls in a toy shop
and my heart, old hunger motor, with its sins
revved up like an engine that would not stop.

And now I spend all day taking care
of my body, that baby. Its cargo is scarred.
I anoint the bedpan. I brush my hair,
waiting in the pain machine for my bones to get hard,

for the soft, soft bones that were laid apart
and were ******* together. They will knit.
And the other corpse, the fractured heart,
I feed it piecemeal, little chalice. I'm good to it.

Yet lie a fire alarm it waits to be known.
It is wired. In it many colors are stored.
While my body's in prison, heart cells alone
have multiplied. My bones are merely bored

with all this waiting around. But the heart,
this child of myself that resides in the flesh,
this ultimate signature of the me, the start
of my blindness and sleep, builds a death creche.

The figures are placed at the grave of my bones.
All figures knowing it is the other death
they came for. Each figure standing alone.
The heart burst with love and lost its breath.

This little town, this little country is real
and thus it is so of the post and the cup
and thus of the violent heart. The zeal
of my house doth eat me up.
Sam Hamilton Jan 2014
Pick up the bones
Littered on the ground like a necklace
You made when you were five
Out of sea shells and mermaid hair
Wishing that you had scales and that you could swim
Because little girls don’t play in sandboxes anymore
But in their mothers’ makeup
Pretending to get fake injections in their face
Popping Smarties that they wish were diet pills
While they wait for their ******* to come in
The ones like Barbie’s: disproportional to her body—
A twenty pound weight that forces you forwards
With puckered lips and wrinkled spine—
Setting them up for disappointment and therapy
That comes in exactly the same shade of pink as the doll house
That promises real answers and quick fixes
Which figurines can’t convincingly lie about
Because they are more real as a plastic piece of childhood
Than the science behind depression and the statistically-backed  
positives of fancy water with antioxidants.

Pick up the bones
While little boys play with firecrackers and rocks
Popping them at the feet of faceless passersby
Wondering if the snaps are anything like the guns
From COD instead of WWII
Hoping that the girl next door will grow up to be a ****
But more interested in her mom being a cougar
That cigarettes will stop being bad for them
Because Indiana Jones made them look so cool
And leather jackets will always be in style
So they grow bored with legos and G.I. Joe’s
Because there’s no ***, no violence in imagination—
Not real violence anyway.

So bend down and pick them up
The shattered remains of what was left of the pretend baby
You thought you wanted
What was left of you before you remembered to dye your hair
And to darken your eyes with black smudges
What was left of your brother before he joined the army
Before he fell inside a scotch bottle and drowned
In the amber liquid that reminded him of *****
Passed down from your father.
Clutch at what was left of your sister before she wasted away into
The shallow shell of what she thought was beautiful
To the point of emaciation
Because pointed elbows and sunken cheeks
Will get her the movies she thinks she wants
And that you know she won’t get because she’s
Become too fake, too plastic to play a’real-boy.’

Now put them in your pocket
Because the wind is blowing and you’re afraid they will fly away
Afraid you will too without them to weigh you down
To keep you here.

Tuck them up and wrap them in mermaid hair and sea shells
And wish that you could be the person who played in sandboxes
And only cried if she got shampoo in her eyes
The one who made necklaces instead of doctor’s appointments
And laughed at herself instead of being tired all the time.

You put them in your pocket
And pray that someday you’ll figure out how to put them back together
Stand them up like a statue
One that you can make wave or frown
But not smile because you can’t remember what theirs looked like
(And it wouldn’t be realistic anyway)
So that you can make-believe
they never fell apart in the first place and that you never fell apart with them.
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2017
i actually like the way slavoj žižek understands fascism, given the fourth movement of Beethoven's ninth symphony... as it stands: i really had to take pleasure in my suffering... i once called it: an exquisite pain... it's not that acknowledging pain is difficult, what's difficult is taking pleasure in it... on a whim... nothing as flamboyant as baron sacher-masoch's take on it, transcending toward the ****** thesis... i am the grey matter, the everyday comparison to a factotum sort of analogue of what pain constitutes... and i'm actually free from depressive apathy... i am sometimes prone to laugh like i might be experiencing what the Fore women experienced... the kuru "disease", otherwise known as the creutzfeldt-jakob "disease"... yes... mm... uncontrollable laugher... akin to St. Vitus' dance... sydenham's chorea.. it's hard to see why there should be any cure to the experience... given that the experience is so liberating and has no materialistic mono-mania of a well tended to economy... cannibalism really has a great array of noun-arsenal... a bit like the poetry of Christianity it's akin to... to really believe this *******: you have to take it to the extremes and make every word: utterly isolated, and in a sentence utterly meaningless... it's like a swarm of wasps honing in on a body of a bear that mistook its ash-phlegm nest for a beehive feast... sometimes it happens... but sure as all else concerning: why not take pleasure in an anti-cross crucifixion, i.e. a sick-bed? sure, it's less theatre and many less marble statues worthy of a church... but, if according to žižek / rzirzek / really? ź ż vs. ž... a fascists takes pleasure from suffering... i must be in this club, since i do, the pain in my brain with its sizzling quiz of blood emeshed in synapses has moved to my *******... ******* ahoy! i sit in a chair, and when drink (esp. when drinking): they are goosebump prone, titilating me... amusing me... all the pain concerning my brain has moved into a pleasure reaction bound to the testicles... i couldn't have foreseen this waterfall if i didn't explore the word fascist beyond the communal horror of spotting an orthodox practitioner in either street or cyber-space...

e.g. the fore of papua new guinea
(ghee-knee... later the debated about
quinoa... apparently it's not qui-
       or french agree, we-noah...
  but something else... oh, it's related to a quiz
asking me whether i could possibly be a 5% liberal
elitist... well, if you were reading
the sunday times magazine: it would ask you
that... i did cut it apart as qui- -noa...
  but apparently it's pronounced:
kin-wah...                 once again my point:
you don't use highly concentrated phonetic
units, i.e. diacritical marks...
you're bound to leisure in this linguistic hell
of constantly "correcting" people....
just saying... what's the matter, toad stole
your burp?)

   and i really wanted to write a neat poem...
poems like this emerge,
you go to a shop, by the cheapest whiskey
two cans of beer and a bottle of cola...
it's early February... the cars parked
have the eerie circumstance of jack o'fogfrost
breathing onto the windows...
    your fingers itch from the cold...
you start to really see a skeleton walking
rather than something resembling protein
fat and carbohydrate...
    thankful for winter: to naturally imagine
a skeleton walk in the cold
   smoking a cigarette and drinking the beer
while the whiskey cools in your rucksack...
all you end up needing is
   a square mile, and outer English suburbia...
and a look into that forest you once frequented
walking as if with gauged eyes into
the custard darkness...
   then sitting on a stump, taking all the clothing
items from your torso and listening in
as something neared, cracked a branch
and you uttered into the forest:
  no animal would dare come so near...
      
... (man has to drink, take a break...
         sneaky ******* get to see
a work in progress... lucky them...
           too much of a sober me)...
hey! i'm warming the stove, it's not going to
shoot out firecrackers made from words
into a
     hoghmony celebration.... oh look...
another googlewhack!
      http://tinyurl.com/z8xeqpsn
(billionth of another! this is how i play the "lottery")
ah freckle feckle ****... scoot for new years...
hogmaney...  hogmoney...
  hagmanny...
                 ­  ****! Hogmanay!
    what was i "saying"?
                            
ah wait... i know... i know...
i was watching this film goat (2016)....
with james francko doing cameo but mainly producing...
if anything could put you off going to
university, well, notably an american university
it's this film... now i drink, i really do, heavily...
but what went on in that film was nothing short
of happens when people lack any respect for liquor...
i could watch the roman empire in a zoo...
what i witnessed in this film was:
well... can't see a point of caging a lion,
but i can see all the reason for caging man...
but the problem arises with:
you can take children to a zoo...
          you couldn't even want a child
to experience this sort of Iraqi **** made in
America...
                       i drink, i really do...
i slurped on a prostitutes ****** when drunk...
hell... i even wrote this...
          and i am really starting to believe
that going to university was the worst mistake of my life...
i left it, educated as a chemist,
without a clear move toward a career as a chemist...
    would i care to learn the use of language
to university level? i.e. get an english degree?
      not if i were a middle-class woman
   who's daddy was a doctor or a dentist...
                            people from my background,
double that up with a father who works in construction
and me being of immigrant stock (when will i get
to say expat?) -
  it was the biggest mistake of my life...
you see... other immigrants start to get jealous...
     they say you have to die: for raising for head
above the water...
         a bit like they kicked the hell out of
Jamie Redknapp's career in football...
now he's a pundit... but not a football player...
they smacked him about...
good thing my grandfather was a Silesian miner
for some time... i decided to dig trenches...
yes, metaphor: write poems...
   because i still can't see what nature ordained me
to possess... and why these little hitlers decided wasn't
fair for their "sense of worth"... oh i can name them...
one of them, a childhood sweatheart of a friend,
egyptian / persian, used to call me during
weekdays and sing to me over the phone...
   apparently he could ******* 20 times a day...
i tried 4 times in one day... nothing came out...
      the other was an add on to being in school from
the age of 16 to 18... a paddy-sikh...
   loved barrington levy and driving a car while
******... loved the whole gansta gimmick...
a complete *******...
                           and to think i was fooled into their
little of jealousy... this will make absolutely no sense
to you... given we (a) never spoke outside the realm
of my tornado... and (b) had a coffee?
               well... let's just say: one stupid move on
my behalf while intoxicated on marijuana
aged 21 taught me all i needed to know...
  from the age of 21 through to the age i am now:
some could consider me a monk...
                 or that infamous word: cenobite -
oh i'm just obsessing about how i want to
put my top 3 picks into classic.fm's hall of fame,
and write 3. christopher young's something to think about,
2. christopher young's something to think about...
1. christopher young's something to think about...
as i realised the past two days...
  collecting a personal library of classical music
makes no sense... unless it's Händel... (æ, i.e. :)...
and classical music only makes sense
with a d.j., and yes: a radio...
            there's no point being poncy about classical
music when you collect it...
        unless it might be something by Hans Zimmer
or any other movie soundtrack...
      and you can just sit back, listen to the radio,
and the classics just come and come...
i spent today lying in bed, because classic.fm
was playing from about 6am to about 1pm...
  and then i extended it to 3pm because
of aled jones and the voice so necessary as
that of alexander armstrong... in between?
                     bill turnbull... a news anchor
if i'm not mistaken... couldn't handle it...
  no, not the voice: the choice of music...
but even such people are absolutely necessary...
and would anyone care to remember
the ****** megastore on oxford street?
  the classical music department?
does anyone remember is being sealed off by
   glass like an aquarium from all the other music
genre departments in the store?
   a bit like walking into a lunatic asylum:
everything had to be cork-lined waiting for a Proustian
novel... first you had to appreciate
and build up a palette for silence... before
some concerto could be "ate" like refined sushi...
    radio and classical music does work,
i might have made a mistake collective obscure tastes,
i.e. proto-folk examples in Polish and compositions
of German industrial music...
   i might have done that... yeah, so true with the jazz...
but you have to have a Houdini weak-spot...
so in bed... rummaging through the radio and
television listings and reviews...
   after doing a bit of a crossword (which i can't
for the love of god) and a 6 x 6 su doku...
        now that's definitely sunday activity...
looking through the radio and tv listings...
   esp. noting the day's programme of bbc radio 4...
well, it's not that i'm a convert, with a house
in south-west london...
                i just heard that england is famous
for its eccentrics... i wanted to experience
    the most eccentric practice on these isles...
      tending to a garden would have made sense...
if it wasn't February...
   so reading the listings and reviews was the next
best thing...
    what with confusing Aled Jones with Alex Jones...
that famous britpop bassist turned cheese-maker.

then how do you begin taking fatal
mortal steps, simply motivated by biological
dynamics? i could have ended that
servitude to the waterfall, or should
i correct myself: required it to continue...
      but then interludes in the case of opera
leave me peasant-like, most ignoble...
      there's the 15 minutes were no fame is mentioned,
and no one forces art to become advert...
   since we're talking of the thin-red-line,
i can't but help myself reading more book reviews
in English, than actual books in Polish...
because i care for the cognitive labourers,
i really do... i think they are needed
to bypass actual books, meaning they do all
the work... or should i say arbeiten?
well.. enough critics about, you get to
dissociate yourself from the actual origin...
     a bit like waving your hand at god
and embracing the "awe" inspiring profusion
of the human tongue becoming over-bearing...
not even bearing grudges...
  but no gratitudes either...
                it just is what you care to make of
germans the sole originators of
   the proto "bayeux" tapestry given a.i. -
but then you treat the germans as they
are currently given the sway,
and you awake a humanity in them:
a humanity only germans know how
to acknowledge: a collectivisation -
germans know no concept of individualism
akin to the late-removed isle Saxons...
i.e. the English... the English are always
blitzkrieg specific about the individual,
the fact that so many individuals get a chance to vote
leasves me with blisters of what i can best
estimate as noted to being conscience...
          the germans are best appropriate to
express the volk... the english are like stuffed
animals worshiping the name Byron... Milton...
Blake... Newton...
         and let's leave them there, because if they
finally manage a homogeny of an ethnic
accord to give a momentum unto it via their lack
cohesion... i am assured a passage to
the houses of parliament to laugh,
as a test of my carve to veto, rather than vote.
mainland europe calls them: the islanders!
you can't help but see a care to blow up
the tunnel la mange... the channel tunnel...
because if a 2nd ****** arose...
the tanks would flod that serene countryside...
     i come across foxes all the time...
once i picked a dead fox near the bus station
in romford using two bin bags from the nearby skip...
and walked with it home, weighed it,
just under 10 kilograms... i weighted myself first,
then with the dead fox enclosed in the bin bags...
then i walked with the fox and threw it into
a meadow... i was thinking along the lines:
at least the sanitation officer will have a day off..
  obviously i was tattooed with the idea that
i was some sort of shaman, given two people witnessed
me picking up the corpse...

900 gull herrings eating their own...
      chimanzees also take to a nibble...
        banana slug females are fond of eating
"******", when the mating gets heavy...
not ever, as ever, but with Darwinism had i ever
managed to see a woman like a mantis...
  sorry... looking at the ***-hole of nature like that
will eventually leave you paralysed and
not even awe-struck but fear-woken...
             because it really can't be so much a desire
to look at it as if it was necessarily needing
incorporation, but was necessarily incorporated
nonetheless...
         the ogasawara incident... 1945...
       yoshio had a fine fine palette...
                          cannibalism was never suggested
as equivalent of a war crime...
  and one said: human thighs tasted like chicken,
another said: a bit like raw tuna...
          judeo-christian food prohibitions...
    well... once the prohibitions come along with
the poetry... left can mean right...
and right will evidently mean left...
                 during the yuan dynasty...
         pedohpiles were more or less reductive in
their transgressions... they ate more: than they ******.
two freedoms then, china prone to omnivore status
and hindustan prone to vegetarianism...
               both examples lead to a success rate of
a billion examples...
                       it's only these pest-like infections of
mono-this omni-that are keen to always give their
i love yous as politico dictates...
  maxims even... so very fond they are: of their maxims...
they even infected their youth in the 21st century
stating that: no one is akin to us,
if not in his youth, having been ***** by abou10
10 favourite maxims... most kept, hardly any employed...
1261 edict: when children were asked to stop
plucking out their eyeballs...
   horror films are therefore, equivalent to soft-core
******... history is thrice over the real horror movie...
    but given our faculty of memory is so
(putting it mildly) "biased"... i think we're over-sensitive
in giving imagination the scenes from both
horror and Disney... we've already gave the former
and the latter we have just sold...
           but hey! a placentta fry-up like a setting sun,
illuminates with more choice of hue than
noon and the "dehydrated" shadow (yes,
i know, a better word would be suited, but i have
no time to ascribe it to a tailor-fitting, a neat and tidy
resonance... treat dehydrated as a dwarf shadow,
mingle that with photon and phonetic -
that light illuminates, and traps things into bites,
like H or He denote hydrogen and helium
respectively... and qui- and -noa denote
necessary argument of what sound goes where,
rightly)...

evidently i did take the quiestionnaire about
whether i am a liberal elite...
it had to be done... why would i otherwise read a sunday
newspaper?
            end result? 0-50 (norm), 51-100 (aspiring),
    101-150 (not quiet there), >150 (elitist snob)...
(ref. the 5%, charles murray, coming apart,
   the bell curve... superzips)
q1: what is the top prize in the thunderball and when
is it drawn?
   a1: i play the googlewhack lottery.
      alt. a1: 0 (alright), 5 (days rights), 10 (what is thunderball?)
             talk of chav tax...
q2: how many people in your vicinity voted for
    Brexit?
    a2: i just had an opinion... voting is cheap
when you can't express a ballot veto.
   alt. a2: 0 (all of them), 5 (one or two)... 10 (aghast at the question)
              a bit ******* obvious, no point explaining....
q3: what is your favourite dish on th
Chris Voss Nov 2013
I.
Well you know that I sip on my sadness, my dear,
filthy palms, filled to the brim.
And I know that you watch trains
passing by, dizzy eyed, still drunk with sin.
Your teeth reek of reality lately,
You smile facts, figures and cracked calcium.
Now, once more with cupped hands
leaking, shaking delirium up to your chin.

Well I know that I’ve missed the point, honey
I should get it tattooed on my wrists,
but you know you talk like firecrackers
so flinching gets awful hard to resist.
I make believe that I’m right like craters
make moons believe.
So I’ll comment on comets and ignore
truths popping between parentheses.

My delusion has your lips liquored up,
but I notice your tongue...

II.
You say,
“It’s fiction we live in. You play in pastels
and fake hollywood rhythms and I’m tired,
staring up at your screen.


You're addicted to this diction. My voice is lost,
screaming these words you keep stealing
and twist for yourself what they mean."


III.
Your lips liquored up,
but I notice your tongue's not numb.
Drink deep, darling. Let's inoculate.

IV.
And you say,
“It’s fiction we live in. It’s intended for men
like you, bottled, up-ended,
but I've watched you drain out in my palm."


It's this clothing, from bedpost to box-spring,
It's all wax-coats and smoke screens,
live lit-candle lasting
When did skin begin to fit wrong?


V.
So they say, one day
Or, one day, they say,
we’ll find ghosts sewed to the seams
of Fringe Wolf bones picked clean
who waltz wicked and crooked a foxtrot to show
that sometimes loss is beautiful.
And when I ask for your hand you’ll look tragic
like this dance was only ever for me
and my feet always fall off beat
Like I beat off any discreet romancing
To pretend that this dancing was
Anything more than masturbatory.
I guess I do dance the way I drink:
Heavy handed and troglodytic
And a little listless, but I always fight it.
So while you walk away, I’m drowning drunk in cinderblock boots; Toe-tapping a slurred S.O.S. like some song you kept whispering.
You keep whispers like keepsakes.
You speak so soft but
Baby, your voice sticks with me
like sickness.

VI.
And you say,
“It’s fiction we live in. It’s intended for men
like you, bottled, up-ended,
but I've watched you drain out in my palm."


Alright, it's fiction that we live in
It's intended for men like me, bottled, up-ended,
but at best I just seeped through your teeth.

VII.
I stitched script to my chest like a scarlet letter vest that attests there's no Soul here worth Saving but ******* come save me anyway.
Your voice sticks
to my ghost-sewn, sea-floor bound foot steps like sickness.
Tread lightly, my love. Let's inoculate.

VIII.
So when they ask for me at the after party
With neon eyes and harlot tongues,
You can tell them I traded this stale air in
For forest fires and tornado lungs.
Because I’ve been reading up in matchbooks
how to dance with disastrous fate,
and I'm finding my rhythm so wake silent
or sleep long, my love. Let's inoculate.
devante moore May 2015
He lost his arm
By a cooked bomb
His world lit up like firecrackers
He was engulfed in fire and metal shards
Then his body went numb
So he was stitched up
And sent back home
There was a new brand of limbs
So he volunteered to be experimented on
For a prosthetic arm
As he went through new trials during the day
He suffered at night
He had night terrors about where he was evacuated from
Seeing himself holding a ticking time bomb
While bullets whisked past above  
The bomb sunk into his hand like a solider in the slums
And as the time ticked one
His arm turned to glass and exploded
The shards from his arm imbedded themselves in his skin
This was his dreamed
He beg to be fixed
But even though they could give him a new arm
They couldn't fixed what he saw when he closed his eyes
A L Davies Nov 2011
i guess there are
some people
who just don’t realize
how preposterous they sound when
using social media.
yeah, maybe you’re one. no one
is safe from suspicion:
-the comedians (their own biggest fan types)
the witty commentators
                    jumping in from the far corner.
(you wonder how
someone who learnt every word they know
     from about six Archie comics is allowed to
use social networking)
-oh and the girls
                   who post new selfies
every day. (in fact there’s one,
i swear, posts so often
                      so regular
                                      i barely need a watch.
“here’s the three-fifteen cleavage shot.”
—she’s long since been hidden!)
and wait here’s that
fella who speaks out about injustices;
firecrackers taped in a doberman’s mouth,
which is awful, sick, repulsive—and bravo
for making the universe aware, i applaud thee,
but it’s the rambling included about what you’d do
if you ever caught them
(curbstomping, mutilating, beatings)
that gives
me goosebumps.
i don’t wanna see this kid’s mug in
the paper next week/point & say
“christ i knew it!”
..so maybe keep the ****** fantasy off the web, eh?

& then of course the weirdness
too weird to
properly recall
example:
an acquaintance's call for attention “i need a hug :(“
and the random girl
probably th’sister of a friend
(which is bizarre in its own right,
adding a friend's younger sibling..
but i
won’t bother delving
there tonight)
who replies:
“hey you should come here instead
and see the skunk that just came
by my window
if you wanna?”

—what is this absurdity?
and hey here’s an answer
to your original call:
internet hugs don’t work.
    computers don’t hug in binary, man.
0110101110101101111001010010101011011010110101110101010101
 ­                                        >—O—<

—i’ll never understand it.
absurdity everywhere i browse..

gonna put this up for a while & see what people think. i don't tend to write many rant-esque pieces so this is definitely a change-up.
MdAsadullah Nov 2014
It is victory of light over darkness.
But his eyes filled with bleakness.
It is victory of hope over despair.
But a poor child with no one to care.

Jam packed are shops of sweets.
But pitiful child has got nothing to eat.
Crackers stealthily they all buy.
His stomach is empty, lips are dry.

Bursting firecrackers, light and sound.
Hapless child quietly sitting on ground.
To burn people have enough buck.
But not enough for burning stomach.
Celebrating something you briefly learned and you expect a few dozen people in the plaza, calm and content celebrating the May revolution that happened over 200 years ago.

You step off the subway, walk up the stairs to the sidewalk and it's foggy from firecrackers and grills filled with chorizo. Banderas waving with Eva and Peron's faces. Drums pounded as the people sing VIVA LA PATRIA.

You're alone, but somehow not afraid because even though this holiday isn't yours, you recognize the nationalism they sing of. A nationalism only a porteno could possibly know and love and understand and feel and celebrate. But for that day, you overcame your extranjero and smiled at the kids waving their flags, your friend using two hands to eat choripan, the hunt for locro, and the mosh pit that was trying to get the closest view of the concerts and firecrackers.

When you return to the states they'll remember it as Memorial Day, but you have learned how to celebrate 25 de mayo.
Juliana Jun 2012
A chain of beautiful accidents
light up like strings of Chinese firecrackers.

I follow trails that may or may not be blue.
They tip toe to the coast and snake around wild peacocks.

Funny things happen when you close your eyes,
lines from A to B are never completely straight.

I come for the sun and stay for the drinks.
Sometimes my thoughts make spider webs in my eyes.

Twelve doves like fingers walk in and out.
Off centre circles revolve around shapes caught in my throat.

For the long nights I played movies
that I wanted and hated as much as cinnamon jelly beans.

I don’t really know what brought me here.
Perhaps I’ve fallen through the rabbit hole, but

Maybe it was only a chain of beautiful accidents.
http://poemsaboutpoetry.blogspot.ca/
Holly Salvatore May 2013
This is for all the men
Who tell me I am beautiful
I can't hear you
Through all those years
Of being an ugly duckling
This is for my dog
Big blue eyes
My baby snugglebug
Sniffing for donuts
Chewing my hands in the morning
And the nail biters
And the chefs
Who lose fingers to the meatgrinders
And the farmers
Staking lives
On a drop of rain
I am vain
This is for the men
Who have faith
I am not the ****** Mary
Just another pretty face
Another lacy thong to take off
This is for the underwear makers
The firecrackers
This is for the characters
Who explode in the night sky
Like the fourth of July
And ordinary people
Are blinded by the colors
This is for the mothers
And the big brothers
And the Prozac poppers
This is for the bees that have stung me
I've eaten their honey
And my cakes would not taste
So sweet without it
This is for the surgeons
And musicians
And fishermen
For the men who have bought me dinner
And never seen a return
On their investment
This is for the beards
And chest hair
This is for my little sister
Who is finally growing up
The word "love" on her tongue
And this is for America:
Land of the free
Home of the mancave
Beauty is only as deep
As your mineral rights
The copper and coal mines of your eyes
Beauty flies as high as kite
Melts away like cotton candy
After a baseball game
This is for the men who called me beautiful
For all the beauty in the world
All the beautiful
This is for you
So I sort of got "Shake the Dust" stuck in my head and then I got this flow going and I started feeling pretty and this is what happened. You're all gorgeous. I hope you like it.
glass can Jun 2013
I want to smush my face in a big fat delicious frosted cake,
and blow out candle after candle and watch ice cream melt

as I dig through the moist sugary cake-bread with my fists,
and I eat everything I want in this delicious, nice restaurant

I want to pout at anyone else who makes grumpy faces,
I am the **** queen so it's my gosh **** party, dang it

I want to drink until I almost throw up and then do drugs
and grab ******* and scream with laughter and true fun!

I want to flash strangers and get birthday kisses and hugs
I want to smear lipstick all over my face, I want GLITTER

I want to roll in checks from relatives in far-off places
with the clothes and money and drugs that I will buy

I want to cry big crocodile tears over wrapping paper
and wear a pretty crown and take pictures, please yes

I want to smile so hard my cheeks hurt, ouch, and get away
with being a little ******* because I'll say sorry tomorrow

I want firecrackers and free things and fun fun fun fun fun fun fun
because it's my birthday, and I get to do whatever the **** I want!
IT'S MY BIRTHDAY *******
JR Falk Feb 2016
When fireworks implode above us,
I understand why people say
"When I kiss you, I feel fireworks."

At first, it's like sparklers.
Small, short, but entertaining enough
to make you want to try again.

Then it gets up to firecrackers.
They get you heated, they make you
wanna throw a party.

Then they're fireworks.
It feels like you're exploding and
you can't help but be in awe.

And it's beautiful.
It's a moment you wish
you could catch on camera.

It's what keeps you waiting for
the grand finale.

It's what keeps me wanting
you.
2.22.16
10:36am
I have a fear,
it's not that I'm afraid of the future,
I'm afraid of a realization,
one I had last week.

What if...
What if it's downhill from here?

My childhood was amazing,
my parents were excellent,
but the real issue was my friends.
The fun we had was real,
it's just not the same,
academic discussion,
scientific deduction,
dissection of stories and ideals,
what's it all mean?
My favorite memories are not of discussion,
but action,
actions I keep written on a piece of paper,
strapped tightly to my chest,
a eulogy of youth,
time spent as kids.
Through the haze of years I see,
low rate movies,
bonfires burning just a little too bright,
Wendy's runs in the dead of night,
skinny dipping out on the lake,
firecrackers bursting over head,
roman candles,
no small talk,
real talk,
girls,
near death experience,
you were there right?!
Mario Kart,
video games,
disgusting food combination,
skating behind the moped,
sledding behind the SUV,
basketball on black tar,
mustard spilled all over the car,
splints and broken wrists,
word games,
collective humor,
stupid and indecipherable,
socks with sandals,
up all night talking in the basement,
not a care in the world,
no ambition,
dumb little kids,
messing around doing dumb things,
throwing common convention in the fire-pit,
flickering flames,
nostalgia on release,
gone our separate ways.

I had realization last week,
those guys weren't my friends,
they were my brothers.
A.P. Beckstead (2013)
Paul Morgana Jun 2014
Civilized mankind has a unique way,
To party and celebrate a most special day.

Potassium and sulfur, mixed with some coal,
Can reduce a mountain into the hill of a mole.

Gunpowder is thought to have China as a start,
Ceremonies commence, fireworks a part.

I always thought, it amusing to find,
Warfare and festival are two of a kind.

Powerful explosions that disable and destroy,
Have the ability to give the masses such joy.

Here we go, let the bash begin,
Guaranteed to give, your face a grin.

Let's add some luminosity to this summer blast,
Firecrackers and sparklers make the jubilee last.

Pinwheels are nailed safely to a tree,
Furiously twirls colors for all to see.

An aerial assault aloft, hear them roar,
Yellows and greens, in the air they will soar.

Flash flaming fluorescence, blue and red,
Envelop your eyes, dancing in your head.

See the trail of a missile, zipping in flight,
Shiny illuminations, all through the night.

On the ground at the end of a fireworks show,
Blazing stars and stripes, a flag created, watch it glow.

The fourth of July is America's time,
A birthday blowout, drinks with lemon and lime.

This frolicking is filled with food, family and fun,
Independence day, I wish it never was done.

Please visit poemsbypaul.com
C G Andrews Feb 2012
For you it is red, white and blue; firecrackers,

cookouts and American beer. How easy it

must be to assume that by saying “God Bless

Our Troops” you are patriotic. I have an

entirely different view of the 4th of July.



Every boom is an IED, every pop a ******

round. If your God was present when my

brain was shattered he did not show up to

see me through my recovery. You presume

that every soldier is a Christian like you.



I was an American soldier. I’ve bled and

killed in service for this country. I left behind

pieces of myself in faraway lands. It was my

choice. Do not use me to support your moral

propaganda. I am a veteran. I am not your

political stage-prop.
Coop Lee Oct 2014
rotting horse carcass.
green glowing filament by moonlight ******
& mistrust us.
radioactive drums of waste &/or dreams.
boys swimming.

fistfights at night
by headlight & tooth crackle. (spit) then bonfire pallets
lit & danced upon.
plumes
of gas-can outcries.

the days & abuelitas
& ghosts
pinched cheek - pinched cooler - grandaddy
on the grill.
his gasping yellow dogs.

judy is in the underbrush with a walkie-talkie
& a p.b.j.
desmond leaps from high rocks; he
descends into another world by way of molecular-mishap.
dove deep.
riding the portal boar.

wasps hover above spilt wine
& declare war upon brothers with b.b. guns
& firecrackers
& spf 50+. the saturday/sunday sagas
between beams of heat laughter breakdowns
to knees, to bees,
honey.

homecoming queen dead & wrapped
in plastic.
body found with
turtle bites.
fungi.
the slabs of granite.
old iron tractors bent & held by tree wives.
toast.
jam hewn hwedges of crisped bread.
previously published in Deluge Magazine by Radioactive Moat Press
http://www.radioactivemoat.com/deluge-issue-three.html
Graff1980 Jan 2015
The crimson flame
Of firecrackers
Snipping and snapping
Biting at your skin
Tempting terror’s sweat
To pour sweetly  
With an adrenaline rush

Running recklessly
Till the asthma
Catches up
Till you can’t
Catch your breath
Killer Cramps
Cramping your style

Slight cuts
That glide across the skin
Thin lines of bleeding
It was better than seeing
That failed form in the mirror
That chemo skeleton
Dying hurt worse

Living to die or dying to live
What a terminal
Pain ******
Firecrackers at night
Orange flash, saltpeter smell
Pumpkin flashes smile
Kari Nov 2013
Hot oil burning  kernels
                      Jumping in stomachs
                                       Exploding and delicious
        Hot and   steaming    burning
Red like pokers
                Molten from flame
                                Bursting lips spark heated
Words like firecrackers.
Being angry is like making microwaveable popcorn.
b more Mar 2016
Rocks know a lot more about time than clocks
Drive to the top of a mountain
Cinnamon gum
Noseblood
And rocks a lot older than clocks
Tell the older us we say hello

I am stuck between red rocks and a very hard place
Rockclimbing to rockbottom
I am a time hunter, rock hunter, pigeon hunter
(Let me tell you something about pigeon hunting:
Shooting clay pigeons isn’t as much fun when the pigeons aren’t clay
and their bodies shatter in midair like pomegranates in September
with red jewels sprinkling the sandstones
the sedimentary clouds and the fastfood signs)

Remember that time I tattooed the sky?
I wrote “time is a l.e.d. light” in a sacred heart
between the stars and the freckles and the ladybugs
none of their mothers were thrilled

Now I know time is a rock, a very heavy rock
A rock is a star, a star is a rock
And me? I am a rockstar
But I have all timers. Alzheimer's? No. ALL TIMERS
and a monolith growing on my sternum

Firecrackers. That’s what I wanted to talk about.
And when I say firecracker I mean fireworks
the way fire works his way between me, time and a rock
What is it with rocks?
Rock and roll
Rocked by doubt and rolled by time
Rock my world, please
The crowd swelled and billowed out
a thousand panicked footfalls
pushing, stamping, trampling

Some one had set off firecrackers in the foot tunnel
on the 4th of July
and they even had a friend fall backward
so it looked like a gunshot
hell, it sounded like a gun shot

The wave of [people]
fled for their lives,
as if they had ever been in danger

A man broke his leg
someone fainted
and people vomited, screamed, fought

But me?

I saw the kid who did it.

Some laughing ringleader
starting **** all night
Fight or flight response- in an adrenaline haze,
they had all chosen to flee
but me?
I almost reached out
and broke his nose
Remnants of firecrackers litter parkgrass, splitting seams once encasing them;
exposed twine ribs attached, stretched out beneath shade like sunken reliquiae
dashed against the earth, as freedom is, withered paper husks abound.
What explosions in the sky were heard
above the quietus of patient submission?
Tracing the dotted white clouds to our horizon with thread and colored cloth,
held breath until nighttime, expelling then
-- as wind does each languishing puff of smoke--
from our lungs, sordid smells of Summer; vanquishing the past.
Isolating each other, like memories on kodak prints
we separately cling to that sleek filmy acquaintanceship of proximity and hue
-- disavowed pariahs and hearts lit anew.
Fused inside one sallow skull-box, which doubled once for holding shoes, we linger.
Ideas, impulses and infringements on the eye, until-- once--
bound, unbroken, encased and unspoken,
our ribs unwind with dew-- after,
unstitching seams outlined from heaven and inundating visions with brightness
we descend.
Violent fumes of childhood intercede amidst our shaking fuses lit.
--and BANG!
MMXI
Alessander Feb 2015
.................................................................­.................................................................­...

                          It was there heating
                                            sloping cavernous craniums

                         It was there illuminating
              marble hallways

         It was there immolating
                              witches at stakes

                                     Its fierce essence
                          frightens wilder-beasts

                                   Its mesmerizing radiance
  lures moths to annihilation

                       When in love, we often become
             both wilder-beast and moth

                As children, we learn
             to leap back from the flame

                               When old, we are rolled
                 into iron incinerators

                                    And every day between
   We are encompassed by suns
                       We are consumed by flickering passions

                                  We set-off firecrackers
                           for amusement

               We light candles
                                     to measure time

                         Veladoras to whisper
                                 to gods

                                          Fire is Life

                                      Something in us will
                                            forever burn.
Eli Grove May 2013
This evening I can feel the fingers of Migraine - black to the bones and crawling with snakes - as they push my eyes forward.
This is pure seduction, the pressure. I can see it - my frail, jagged optic nerve resting between the first and second finger like a cigarette. With each drag Migraine takes, a flash of brilliant pain (high-beam, spotlight, strobe, flashbulb) skitters across my field of vision. I mistake them for rabbits.
And the chase is on. Mechanical dog, mechanical bull, mechanical rabbit of pain like firecrackers, in slow motion. Half-time signatures flutter again as the thing made of snakes inhales my eyes. I guess I am making love to it.
The rain is coming in waves, marked by drops you can count on your hands, in intervals of five minutes. It comes and it fades, mimicking the snake-monster-thing living in my skull, huffing everything I see, getting high on the fumes of the images I feed to it: this paper, these words, blue pen and black sky.
There is a similar sensation in my stomach. I tried to drown butterflies in decaffeinated coffee, and they are fighting back, with constant pressure on the flexible walls of my insides.
They are hungry but know that they must wait three-and-a-half days to eat. They are taunted by words - short responses. They are teased by intense surges of memory, and by smiles that stalk the underside of my brain (have they seen the snake-monster?), waiting to submerge themselves in the calm, reflective water of my face. **** those ripples. They fall down my spine, from the base of my neck where Migraine has made his nest. I shiver.
I am made of ink, rabbits, rain, and butterflies tonight. These shapes I force my pen to draw are serendipitous, falling randomly (rain drops that have collected on the leaves of a tall tree but remain long after the sky has finished sobbing) atop the heads of unsuspecting strangers and one beautiful girl. Why does she always carry that **** blue umbrella?
The answer, of course, is gray matter and black memory, more harsh than my last cigarette will be, four days from now. The answer is experience, drought and flood. The answer is in Migraine, who makes up one third of my soul, and the soul of every human - although he may pick up a different face and hobby.
The answer is that I don't know the answer. I will not until she sets aside that artificially colored canvas reality-shield she carries, and talks with me. With the rain falling on our heads - hers filled with memory and brains, mine with whimsy and Migraine - the mechanical rabbit will come down from his track to dance at our feet, to kiss our rain-soaked shoes. He will lead us to puddles we can jump into.
Splash. Glorious Splash. Migraine is receding to his nest and the butterflies have taken one step closer to contentment. The rain falls, the ink falls with it, and sanity once again speaks to me.
I've missed you, old friend.
memineI Dec 2014
watched three grey geese in a field fulled with wheat grazing
while Peter Piper pecked some Petunias
while Bitter Butter bit her lip gazing on the scene
of strangeness like writers on paper
wrapping alliterations softer than sleep
louder than firecrackers I had a dream.
Jonny Angel Jan 2014
Lovely New Year morn!
I still hear firecrackers!
Give it a rest boys!

— The End —