"flatly" poems
Pluto was just like the rest,
Complete a full rotation, wake up and get dressed,
Open his eyes, feel the weak beams of sunlight on his chest,
Looks upon his brothers and can’t help but be subtly impressed.
There was Earth, a real people’s person,
Wore turf like makeup, but not in equal proportion
To his ever rising water level that always seemed to worsen,
And a high population that could sometimes be a burden.
Riots and drama and wars blemish like acne,
His inhabitants each day getting slowly more crafty,
Some think he’s round, others prefer to live flatly,
I guess being the most popular isn’t so classy.
Jupiter was closer, a real gas giant,
Lived all alone with no people to be her clients,
But stuck in constant alliance with a star filled tyrant,
The universes ring around her finger, a constant engagement.
And then there was Pluto, a boy with a strange condition,
A condition made worse by a long stellar distance,
In a world seemingly endless, it’s time that this came fourth,
What was wrong with Pluto you ask?
Well he was a dwarf.
Due to his small size, Pluto just didn’t quite fit,
The little guy in town, but with a slightly bigger orbit
The shortest, the furthest, not reachable by any rocket,
Until one day the universe did something even more horrid.
2006, the year the family would die,
God took his power, and cast Pluto aside,
No longer a brother, cast him out and took his pride,
Now forever a dwarf planet, it was planet genocide.
From that day on, Pluto became distant,
He was the same as them, same digestive solar system,
But he was victim to prejudice between organisms,
A broken existence, due to planetary feudalism.
By Thomas Charlton
Jan 21, 2019
Jan 21, 2019 at 3:18 PM UTC
At the edge of morning--broad sky fine
And soft as peach skin--
The sun, a round, sweet skinless half--
Rilling water washes through gullied gorge,
Cresting fig root and tongue of cobbled stone,
Lazing into lacquered lake or placid pond;
Squat and pooch-bellied on flatly floating leaf,
The idle toad croaks his great guttural,
Glutted belch.
Sep 2, 2018
Sep 2, 2018 at 8:35 PM UTC
Often, we masquerade behind words without weight
Words that coldly costume our minds, but rob our warmth
I know you’ve euphemized, for me, speech forged in hate
Just as my mouth belies each loving thought I form
When burdened, your mask slips to lay bare hidden eyes
Eyes flatly calm, though agleam with muted malice
While I’m a hypocrite to disclose webs and lies
Still, our beloved ones should not act at loving us
My rarest friend, please, know that to my heart you’re near
And the sword you have carried is a pointless one
For I fall on my own, year after wounded year
I chastise on behalf of all when day is done
So, if the veil grows too heavy, then let it fall
Your shrewdly made disguise does not relieve my pain
The truth can never cut like secrets, after all
There are furtive daggers in the smiles you have feigned
We are all alone, and I, in suit, am alone
And I’m still not sure where life’s path will lead, my friend
Maybe to a lover or child with to atone
Someone real whose hand I’ll hold in my story’s end
Feb 21, 2013
Feb 21, 2013 at 3:48 PM UTC
I saw Sting in the lobby this morning, we were going out and he was coming in. Lisa nudged me, “Sting” was all she whispered. He was with a woman and a man. The woman was talking to the doorman. Sting was dressed all in black except for a long stark-white cashmere scarf, he was chatting and working a dark-gray French-flat-cap around in his hands. His hair is very short and white.
We wanted to walk in the snow, if only for a minute.
A gust of wind caught us as we reached the sidewalk. The two American flags, on either side of the entrance, went rigid, at 9-o’clock as if saluting us. “Jeeez!” I said, like the Georgia girl I am - or was. “Don’t be a baby,” Lisa answered, like a true, pittyless New Yorker but her cheeks had turned a child-like pink. She flipped up her collar.
I patted my pocket, relieved to feel my phone and know that if we froze to death the authorities could use “find my friends” to locate our bodies.
Leeza joins us a moment later and I can’t help but notice that she’s dressed like it’s a cool fall day. Back in the day, when my brother would dress like summer even though temperatures in Georgia had dipped cruelly into the fifties. Seeing him, my mom would say, “Where there’s no sense, there’s no feeling,” but I don’t.
“Did you see Sting?” I asked Leeza (12). She gives me a blank look. “Sting”, I said, “the lead singer for The Police?” I add, as clarification. “I don’t know who that is,” she says flatly. “He was famous,” I say in surrender, “a long time ago, in the 90s.” Maybe the next generation won’t be as celebrity driven.
Thank God Lisa suggested I pin my artist-beret down or it would have blown away, like my resolve to walk in the snow. Still, I followed Lisa into the park like a cat on a leash - unwilling to be seen as any less Canadian. The show crunched like we were trampling over snow-cones.
Trees began turning away the wind as we entered Central Park, “I think we may survive.” I said cheerfully. Just because you're freezing to death doesn’t mean you can’t be affable.
Why don’t pigeons freeze to death - I thought birds flew south for the winter?
Jan 10, 2022
Jan 10, 2022 at 9:17 AM UTC
I keep aware of the dry crusted cup covering me, trapping me and my thirsty dreams, sealed, and the glass is the kind not clear not sure, what is on the other side. My palms fit flatly against the surface and my ear presses against the silence, searching for a tone deeper than my own shy scrawny voice. Because I talk in memories and in daydreams and my words are so muffled while passing by those purposely planned for now junkies. They toss their names into the air too urgently and I mistaken their desperate greetings for a sharp goodbye. Inside this cup I can see perfectly their whole lives ironically strict and guided. Their critical hard hearts that carefully ration its beats each day at a time, scared of losing their spontaneity; and I feel a certain kind of sarcastic love for those constant people that stumble and scatter their hopes and desires, spread thinly, threaded loosely. Their cups are cold and wet and they are jet black satisfied. My fingers curl into tight fists, white knuckles, knocking on the china glass, china cup. I only wish it would crack and collapse, puncture a hole to peer in through. Tiny cuts skim across my hands, the skin is breaking and the cup with its taunting fits of laughter, covets me completely. Bang bam deep boom, tap tap, crack, just crack, a small crack, to compensate for my suffocating reality.
Jan 16, 2014
Jan 16, 2014 at 11:59 PM UTC
I asked the old man
If he would miss existence
He flatly stated, “No.”
I asked him if he missed
His girlfriend who died
He said, “Yes, very much.”
Nothing beats love
Love beats on itself
Oblivion beats everything
Does anything stand a chance against oblivion?
Along the road to death
There are some amazing sights
Spectacles, sweet intimate moments
Along the road to breath
A kind of destiny begins
Am I talking over my head?
I chose not to father children
Because I knew I would make a terrible parent
Apparently by mistake
I’ve stepped on a few toes
The persistent inevitability of death
Sound of children playing, laughing
Dank smell of street sewer
I asked the old man
If he would miss existence
Apr 27, 2013
Apr 27, 2013 at 9:33 PM UTC
The ancestral diet of Stars, being Other Stars
has left no scars, save open black and yawning vast.
No retrograde Oblivion... only galactic swirls
and elastic Space between worlds. that never last.
and Eternity.
my modernity nips and pleats my yellow teeth
after long whitening by paste and bristle. i chew the gristle
of the dead sow
and club the weaning pups of Cerberus
with an eyelash and a long blink.
i tread the narrows, flatly -
and conquer the quizzical conundrums
by simply asking.
My Rocket Science... laughing
at your grecian urn
to paint the herrings red.
i'm out of my depth.
but yes means 'yes' and we ' no' it.
if Nothing else.
Oct 9, 2014
Oct 9, 2014 at 10:32 PM UTC
Flatly lying
They closed your box,
And it was just another goodbye.
A paycheck, and enough sweat to fill your bloodless veins.
Flat photos tracing back to you
You were always trying capture the laughs
Of seven grandchildren
Once so bright
Now the flattest state of mind
Emptiness with no traces of life
But at least there is the raspberry garden
That keeps your memory alive.
A flat grave
Stolen for cancer
The flat scent of cigarettes in your diner,
Your eldest son is to blame
But even his money couldn't fix you,
Still it meant everything
To an Irish woman
With peppermint hands.
Flat and out of luck,
No four leaf clovers
Just ditch flowers and dirt
Resting on you.
Oct 7, 2014
Oct 7, 2014 at 12:25 AM UTC
A White girl figure with a blank face and
a dress cropped over her knees lays
smeared flatly onto a restroom door;
a black star encrusted shoe kicks open the
Door.
In comes a knocking the delusions
of grandeur that stay suspended in the
Fragrance of workaholic soccermoms.
In one of the bathroom stalls
swims a ****** rosemary, teenage midlife-crisis
Averted. Theses tests were ironically
positive for the genesis of an unborn
Icon. I might have just used the wrong definition of irony.
Moving on. A hand flushes
the remanents of immortality down a sparkling, smiling toilet.
Rolled poems become unscrolled
when writeen on the pampered virgins paper.
In the next stall,
there lives substance for the homeless man
in the deep, brown soil
Of the marsh. A trash can is hunched over the sink,
attempting to dispense it’s
Apathy for a commercial world.
He turns the corner and sees writeen on the wall in
legible, abstract graffetti; “Ugliness is shrouded
under layers of positive
contradictions.” The words are engraved
deep into the cracked out, white tile wall.
Socialist Olympic torches blaze before ash
crumbles into communists tendencies.
The water is clear but the benches
are polluted with foreigner sea ****
and
beneath the jangled sands
lie the zombies stuffed deep in the black body bags.
Dec 4, 2016
Dec 4, 2016 at 5:16 PM UTC
Holy Crap,
They Sold My Name!
No big deal, your name, your email, bought n' sold daily,
Like a baseball card, your picture and vital stats are on the internet,
Your credit card in the fine print tells you they love you much,
But the data they collect, might get credited to such and such.
You're fair game if your sign up for anything.
Now I know I am getting on in years,
Tho spry rhymes with die, I flatly deny
Any notion that
My great beyond is just around the corner!
But Holy Crap,
They Sold My Name!
Got a color brochure
Suggesting that when my travels are over,
A nice place to rest my head might be
St. Michael's Cemetery.
St. Michael's Cemetery
7202 Astoria Blvd, East Elmhurst
(718) 278-3240
Friday hours 7:00 am–5:00 pm
In case you want to check it out too...
Tho I live not in the Borough of Queens County,
My zip code but a hop, skip and jump away,
The cemetery adjacent to the Grand Central Parkway
Which is actually quite thoughtful of
The mass marketer who dreamed up this scheme
(And got paid a plentiful amount of bounty).
My kids could wave as they drive by,
On the way to LaGuardia or JFK, (airports)
And say, guilt free, they visit me regularly!
Sadly, their plot foiled,
I will be buried in
New Jersey soil,
Near to my pop, who liked the
Wide open spaces of suburbia
And shopping on Route 4,
Where the selection is great
And there is no sales tax.
But Holy Crap,
They Sold My Name,
And I am now target marketed,
Niched, pretty soon the boys from AARP
Will come calling, reminding me of the gap
Tween Medicare and the poor house!
Ok ok, grow up you say, tho your hair is full,
And not even a hint of baldness shines forth,
Nonetheless, its color is zebra striped gray,
And when someone says they got my back,
I think, please, please take it and keep it....
Oh yeah,
Dear St. Mikes
You might ask for some of your money back,
Cause this sily scribe is a member of the tribe,
Some call "those ***** (hint: it rhymes with Mikes),"
It starts with K and ends in yikes!
But thanks for thinking of me anyway.
May 24, 2013
May 24, 2013 at 5:32 PM UTC
I am trying to pick up a thin unforgiving object
with my over-sized,
disjointed creaking hands- again.
Plastered smooth,
flatly white and plain,
sharply contrasting the oaken ornate table beneath.
A pointed creation - filled from within by an impossibly pulled pin
n' covered simply
in slim thinly soft skin.
I want to tear it off
but my hands ache and cry out- soundless.
Time hasn't meaning anymore,
when you are gone and I am old.
Twice folded around inside,
the cocoon is layers of pressed arrested rough hewn life,
wanton against my finger tips,
that are bloated and gnarled with corroded bone
all angles
and absurdity.
Aged pages will be riffled raw by my papery epidermis,
squirming in earnest and fear of your leering senile words.
I want to tear it off but it holds like glue
And-
as I remember, you are beautiful
sold into sleep, bought in too deep
with twitching, itching delicious skin,
between golden strands that at times stand stiff with tension
caught hot underneath our bodies.
I choose not to remember as you are now
alone
in a crone crowded home.
Dec 13, 2010
Dec 13, 2010 at 1:35 AM UTC
i don't think i love you right,
and maybe i don't even love you at all.
because there's something in you so sick
and all-consuming that there's no room for anything else.
you are an all-seasons grinch,
ready with a bitter wit and a heart three sizes too small.
and that's supposed to be funny and timely
because in three hours it will be christmas
(and all i want for christmas is never having had you)
but it falls so flatly from my fingertips onto these keys.
and i don't even know what season it was when
you kissed me but i remember it didn't matter
and if i could do it again, i'd kiss you back.
but i don't love you and you sure as hell
don't love me and i can live with that
and i will always wonder why?
i've made a terrible mistake with you,
and i will always wonder what it was.
Dec 12, 2012
Dec 12, 2012 at 1:36 AM UTC
The telephone is constantly ringing;
I’m on the verge of insanity.
It’s all I can do when answering calls
Not to break out in profanity.
It doesn’t help to block a number,
For callers will use another.
How many do they have access to?
Twenty? Forty? Brother!
The scammers are the worst, of course--
Each a conniving crook!
But telephone solicitors?
Also bad in my book!
If they would only take NO for an answer,
It wouldn’t be so bad.
But when they importune me for money,
That’s when I get mad.
Sometimes solicitors overstep
The bounds of familiarity;
If they do, I’ll flatly refuse
To donate to their charity.
I hate to be rude, but it’s hard not to
Say something mean.
As I said, I'm at the point
Of saying something obscene!
It MUST be self-defeating for them,
For I know I'm not alone
When I say they’re forcing me
To never answer my phone.
The “Do Not Call List”? What a joke!
Robocalls? A pain.
All of us in phone-call hell
Have the right to complain.
This phone-call madness will have its place
In the annals of demonology,
For we know one thing: it is one
Of the curses of modern technology.
-by Bob B (9-13-18)
Sep 13, 2018
Sep 13, 2018 at 8:29 AM UTC
It was a short and bright love-story.
I’d fit it easily in simple couple lines.
It was complete: the waterfall and whirlblast,
The soulful look, and sighs just days and nights.
But it’s all gone, or it was never happened,
Those love confessions, tremblingly for good.
The flowers wilted and rhetoric fully vanished
The very moment, when the dawn became selfhood.
I bear all in mind: that dawn and bench.
You stroked my hand and you were flatly silent.
I understood it whole. And bade you farewell.
And you went out without a word. You didn’t keep in mind.
The story ended on that sandy beach,
In that soft breeze and in those silken waves.
And now there’re only melancholic memories,
The hollow promises and sea taste on my lips.
Aug 5, 2025
Aug 5, 2025 at 5:46 PM UTC
A little empty that morning
she sat on the top step
of the verandah
sipping tea, sipping thought.
Three steps down to the pavement
squares of sandstone
lay in even handed rhythms;
flatly refusing to contour.
He’d moved away last week; big bloke, big smile
could clasp four pavers in one hand,
laid the lot inside ten days,
maybe a record, who could say.
Completed, the pavement was now empty of him,
no more scraping back, no more chipping out,
no more broad smiling hands
reaching for her cups of tea.
She missed this; as she missed the slightly flat renditions of
‘midnight oil’ and ‘fleetwood mac’, the **** of his straw hat
and the farewell call of... "see you sometime in the morning suze..."
(always at exactly 6.30 a.m.)
He was big on tea,
said he was glad
to meet someone who knew it
wasn’t merely the dis-colouration of milk.
She’d smile at that, he was right,
things like tea were best, given time to infuse.
She sipped her tea, sipped her thoughts
and the deeper taste that came with a little time.
Aug 16, 2011
Aug 16, 2011 at 1:13 AM UTC
outside, a kingfisher falls from a snowy tree
and plants the blood from his frozen wings.
inside, i see the plunge and, as i stand,
feel my stomach drop
down to my feet.
that bird’s been dying for so long,
its song whistling flatly through its beak,
the tiny flash of color for my days
expiring, suffering, visibly diseased.
my sigh of relief for ended anguish
flows like a frozen river from my chest.
should i revel in my freedom?
should i be grateful for my breath?
outside, a vulture comes,
and inside, i fall back into my
now-cold seat.
Mar 1, 2016
Mar 1, 2016 at 3:56 PM UTC
There was, every spring, a new batch of pups,
Yipping, nipping, clumsy ***** of ***** fur,
Looking for all the world like speckled tennis *****
Before they’d learned any hard lessons
At the hands of a racquet.
They chased their tails and each other,
Not to mention various other denizens of the barnyard:
Frantic chicks, cranky piglets,
The occasional bemused draft horse,
And sometimes they chased us as well,
Yelping childishly, rolling with us on the ground,
Nipping bare fingers and toes,
Afterwards lying on the ground asleep,
Looking , save for the rhythmic twitching of their paws,
Positively angelic.
Come late August,
The time would come to set them on the *****
We’d long since stopped thinking about it,
Much less questioning it
(I had, one year, asked my father if the puppies had to go
One time too many until,
With a look that brooked no further conversation,
He said flatly It’s what they’re born to.)
So we went on with the business
Of the soft, slow late summer
Until one evening just after sunset
We would hear the baying of the hounds
Out toward the back fields,
Mechanical and workmanlike at first,
But soon strained and syncopated with excitement,
And at some point there would be
A cacophony of cries and snarls
Until such time there was only silence.
The next morning we would visit the dogs,
And we’d pet them and rough-house a bit,
And there might be an oddly rouged spot
On their coats here and there,
Or one of them might sneeze out a tuft of fur
That didn’t rightly belong to them,
And every year our Uncle Bryce would slyly opine
*You boys may want to be a bit more careful
Around their mouths now, hear*?
Apr 13, 2017
Apr 13, 2017 at 10:18 AM UTC
She could scallop her fruit inside
her delicate ring tonight
though her pantry gleamingly sound
that a surge sped with her gait
but thwarted round her waist
that a basket full of poetry read
as crystalline in her heart
even rose her bed
with flowers festooned till midnight
as elegamce flatly trimmed parlance.
Mar 4, 2017
Mar 4, 2017 at 11:15 AM UTC
Red ants climb up my leg,
Heading for that sweet, infinite
Amount of sugar
Residing on my lips and fingers.
The apple I am holding drops
And falls to the ground, landing flatly.
I am on my knees, collapsing downward,
Dirt landing at my sides.
The apple rolls away,
And the ants swarm on me.
They bore into my eyes,
Crawl into my ears,
And bite at my tongue.
When they are finished,
My skin is gone,
And my white skull is exposed
And empty.
I sleep,
Relieved to be no longer burdened by the ants.
*They are full, but ready to find another victim,
While I have exhausted my usefulness.*
Oct 27, 2010
Oct 27, 2010 at 8:49 PM UTC
I was trying to write about sex.
it’s not like I was planning to be there.
I had a cotton ball in my hand; I walked out.
a bird circled high.
I could hear my garage door surrender itself, flatly,
to a low heaven.
I was sad not to have the work of my arms behind me.
sad god would not once be startled by an animal.
the leg of my pants drooped from the mouth of my mailbox.
gentle cloud, and I quote
I thought of you in uniform and was copiously delivered.
Aug 7, 2012
Aug 7, 2012 at 1:08 PM UTC
dare I?
be your *****
whatever you like
director drives me to town
asked if things slowed down
when the other car hit
(nope)
most likely probing crises response capacity
intellectual curiosity or genuine concern
wager the former at 10:1
if they'd take bet
I'm just like him
I'm going to be him
groomed
flatly delivered jokes about a ***** test
better received by coworkers
"funny guy"
who is this man at the keystroke?
beached and bleached
disco ****
same old heady glazed blue-grey stormy
reminiscent of bucolic childhood splendor
when was good and town was endless
that never really existed on a barren rock
"many of you look changed, somehow older..."
pause for suspense
"and some look exactly the same"
cue laughter and my irritation,
salt rimmed with rage
am I now jailer?
(whispered)
*****
indeed here now the gatekeeper
open locked doors knowing
will purge again
no matter how movement restricted
treadmill only, calorie burn
gym restricted
not equipped
(won't talk)
transfer to children's hospital
before heart fails
do it make a difference?
displaced despair
wash not over me
instead cut through me
starve binge
sniff and smoke
Dec 29, 2016
Dec 29, 2016 at 8:33 PM UTC
Tired, ironic and
Flatly stating
Jests about
Cyanide, suicide,
Joining laughter
To subside and
Normalize pain
Or rather,
Try to --
The joke’s on them
I still want to die
Jul 15, 2016
Jul 15, 2016 at 11:28 PM UTC
She aggressively pulls my hair for a one last sensual kiss and sheepishly grins as she lies flat on my bed. Panting and fully naked, we both savored the clammy atmosphere in my room caused by our body fluids mixed. “Well…” She takes a cigarette from the bedside table and lights it. “What?” I replied covering my body with bed sheets as if she hasn’t seen anything. The whole room is only lit by a tiny lampshade anyway. She takes a one big huff and relishes the great amount of nicotine in her lips. She exhales. “Nothing.” She chuckles and slowly removes the bed sheets covering my body. She leaves her cigar lit on the ashtray then moves and turns her body towards me. I sat up.
“Hey?”
“What?” My senses slowly coming back.
“Cuddle?” She gives me that irresistible sad puppy dog eyes again.
“What are we doing?”
“Well, as far as I could see, I’m lying while you’re there… Let me think.” She puts her index finger on her lips and acts like she’s deeply thinking. A quirk I have always loved. “…Sitting and wanting to leave?”
“Funny,” I said flatly.
“Come on.” She holds my hand and gently intertwines her fingers with mine.
I sluggishly lied down and tried not to look at her. I fixed my eyes to the ceiling. She moves a lot closer to me and envelopes me with a hug.
“I love you.”
“You know you don’t,” I opposed.
She teases my ******* and draws circles on my ******* with her fingers, trying to arouse me but my exhausted body refuses to be.
“Stop.” I said.
“Plead.”
“I’m not kidding.”
She kisses my chin. She slowly puts kisses on my face like plotting a pattern towards my lips. She stops. I glared at her then I took a bite of her lower lip. She gives in. Our tongues did motions I could never fathom, mine explored hers as if it has a life of its own. I hastily recoiled.
“Hey!!” She exclaims and obviously wanting more.
“You want me so bad, don’t you?” I chuckled.
*“Well, yeah. You sound ****
She heaved, bent over, and quickly sat on my stomach locking my movements. She starts nipping my cheeks.
*“How can you be so cute and so **** at the same time?”*
“I don’t know?” I placed my hands on her hips.
“Ready for another round?” She teased.
“No. Not really. Let’s stay like this. I like the view, anyway.”
She holds up her ***** “Ah, you like these.”
Mar 25, 2016
Mar 25, 2016 at 11:30 AM UTC
"Ticket please" flatly states the conductor,
looking past - not at me - toward the distant west.
"Tell me," I nearly ask "does her image fuel
that furnace in your chest?"
Oh well, instead of bothering to try
I simply nod and let him pass me by
and slowly I turn my thoughts west -
to you.
Dec 30, 2012
Dec 30, 2012 at 5:55 PM UTC
They say a mask worn long enough
may soon become your face
And that a heart devoid of love
will seek any embrace
For some hide behind pages
While others choose the flask
But either way we walk a stage
In a panoply of masks
And yet each day I choose
In increments of years
To carry on a ruse derived
From the basest of fears
Fear of peer's opinion
Of other peoples thoughts
In my mind takes dominion
And once settled starts to rot
Fear of phrases hobbled
Keep words off of my tongue
Forgotten and half cobbled
They die forever young
Lord, if you have called me
To go about your task
I ask to move unhindered
My face clean of this mask
Let my words move freely
And stand with their own grace
Or lacking of symmetry
Just fall flatly on their face
Let my eyes gaze honest
although they may gaze crass
Until the time you manifest
a simple veil of glass
Mar 1, 2013
Mar 1, 2013 at 6:25 AM UTC