"formatted" poems
Poems are useless
Though some people read them
They’re either trying to be romantic
Or pseudo-intellectual
Or they just like it
When words
Are formatted
Like
This
Words are useless
You can’t eat them
Or **** them
And despite what you may think
Words will not keep you company
Books are useless
Like clothes several sizes too big
You can only disappear into them
When you have given up on life
There will always be a good book
Lying around
Jan 22, 2012
Jan 22, 2012 at 3:38 PM UTC
Do no harm.
Leave the war-plane frame of reference
to other puzzle pieces.
We are naked.
We are not.
We are not certain of which
monologue to begin.
So we chant in
unified panting
etching legends
out of rhymes.
Do no harm.
Do no harm.
It matters now that the growing telephones
are charged like neglected
poisons of dampening redials.
Truth is gaining wisdom like
groups of formatted crosses
jumping like splinters
of margarine jars.
We are naked.
We are not.
We are one with living and prepared
for the drying of the hands.
Clean me up and leave me outside.
Sun gone but wind remaining.
Do no harm.
Do no harm.
Do no harm.
Apr 24, 2016
Apr 24, 2016 at 9:22 AM UTC
As a Sports Illustrated model it's no secret that she has the ability to turn heads.
So as Hannah Ferguson marked day 30 of LOVE magazine's video advent she did so in smouldering fashion to ensure her debut was not easily forgotten.
Showing off her moves to the sound of Drake's Hotline Bling, the 23-year-old owned the shoot as she cavorted in a slashed corset dress.
Whipping her hair back and forth, Ferguson appeared to forego underwear beneath the daring form fitted number.
Becoming the definition of sensual, a pair of sheer stockings and Giuseppe Zanotti black patent leather lace-up stilettos completed the cover girl's look.
With her hair worn in its natural state, the beautiful blonde's striking blue eyes are lined with kohl liner while her pout is coated in a shade of **** lipstick.
Preened to perfection, the two minute clip is formatted in slow motion as the Texan beauty, who resides in the Big Apple, seductively gyrated on the floor.
In the film Hannah also displays her comical side as she flashed her pearly white while attempting to do the 'Stanky Leg' dance.
Ferguson's debut sees her join the likes of Kendall Jenner, Cara Delevingne, Rita Ora and Adriana Lima who all featured in the 2015 edition of the online countdown to the new year.
The LOVE magazine advent calendar, now in its fifth year, has seen an influx of 8.2 million views since launching on December 1.
read more:http://www.marieaustralia.com
www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses
Dec 31, 2015
Dec 31, 2015 at 2:20 AM UTC
Find us idling our time away in the twilight of a movie theatre projector,
Intertwining, intermingling, interlocking..down to the matched rhythm of breaths with her...
Criss cross them thighs to my Lap and let me caress up till I feel that knee becoming hip bone
Its been months since I felt all the sensations of a man lost in what some would call the zone
Lost in the coy smile in hands pushed back from pleasure just to be returned seconds later
Back to spots felt even stronger that a wait's made even better
Bitten lips never tasting more full, bitten lips bitten softer,
Lips just ripe for this mood and both best savored....
We just cant help ourselves when months of affections been saved
As i feel through our months of basic training till your legs tighten and beg
Pulling my body closer to yours, closer to the temptations you fight to conceal
Your eyes closing to the theatre around us to begin playing fantasies, for now, you just feel...
Grip tight baby and love loose...
Were just adding up our reasons and dividing the excuses to always equal youth
Come, rest in the pleasure of friction and fingers hidden in the dark,
Guilty by unsanctioned military pleasures, innocent by young hearts....
How much can two people fit between a showtime and credits
Would some say just a body that next weekend comes with seconds
Or others perhaps poems formatted inside those racing pulses
Count one butterflies count two everything off body language and impulse
An ecstasy that finds us spent and content when lights flicker back on
To then look into each other eyes and stare soft and stare long
To then hold the very hands that etched passion in every last valley of our bodies,
To then, just ever casually walk to the smell of popcorn, and the light of the lobby...
Sep 9, 2014
Sep 9, 2014 at 8:11 AM UTC
i kind of hate poetry, like,
i'm sick of flowery words to avoid straight-up honesty
i'm sick of the deception and the depression
and the predictable rhyme schemes.
i mean, there's that kind of poetry
and that's the kind that i kind of hate.
a lot.
i'm a poet, okay? i'm a poet who likes
flower words with flowery lines
used only to cover up lies about
how much dinner i ate last night
and sometimes i have to admit
that i do kinda dig talking in rhymes.
but i'm really sick of that kind of poetry.
i kind of hate it.
give me poems that speak past their words,
give me poems that fill the air,
give me poems that breath and decompose.
give me girls with dark marbled skin whose voices break out of the cages they're trapped in.
give me boys in high heels.
give me revolution and remaking.
give me poetry.
give me songs.
i'm sick of the romantic stuff.
give me poems pieced together with discontent,
give me poems picked apart by nervous hands,
give me poems that will shatter all former concepts of reality,
give me poems that declare platonic love to an old best friend.
give me poems that have meaning.
real, tangible meaning.
i'm sick of looking at perfectly-formatted pages
that have to use set-up and textual ranges in order to be considered proper poetry.
i'm sick of verses with well-measured lines,
because those are the ones that i can't whisper to myself at night because
i ramble the poems.
i ramble the words.
give me poems that i can fill a room with.
i kind of forgot my first line, but that's alright
see, i don't know where exactly i'm going with this but
that's just how it is.
so give me poems that aren't pre-conceived,
give me poems that aren't thought out for the sake of their beauty.
give me poems that will hurt me.
give me poems that will hit me.
give me poems that will **** me.
i kind of hate poetry,
but not all kinds of it.
just the kinds of poems
that don't seem to notice
their true ability,
cause i like the kind of poems
that have the power
to change a society
(or at least someone's mind about something).
Feb 26, 2015
Feb 26, 2015 at 3:31 PM UTC
fill the entire page
with snowy enlightenment
fool nobody else
five five five five five
seven seven seven oops
five five five five five
contentment I guess
can only be recognized
from its shadow, cast
direction is offered
by the learned minds afar
it’s a time machine
a houseboat with pool
a brown pigeon on a leash
a dumb dream again
snows a comin’ up
a ledger of snow, in banks
I now coin this phrase
so bright very white
crystals fall from the gray sky
shoveling diamonds
pick an argument
forget yourself for awhile
then just go away
too many people
smoking piles of well meaning
it tempts the silence
sixty divisible
one through six ten twelve fifteen
twenty and thirty
imagination
a substitute for answers
all we do is dream
Dec 15, 2013
Dec 15, 2013 at 10:56 AM UTC
It is deafening silence
Beneath the lanky pine shrouded of darkness
And the bed of needles soft under hand,
Snow sits shallow and dulled behind a curtain,
The hushed breath of a boy out of hand,
And the bark rough against back,
And the stick of sap against the palm, and the screech
Of tires far afield, and the breakneck cold
Cries with hidden desires of dark shadows breach
In the low mountains of housed hills where silence holds.
Once when warmth was in the heart
Among the walls solid evergreen held,
As the food hot and the flames low, a boy unfolded
The truth of heart that smoldered in anguished meld,
Rushed and tumbled forced out upon the wold
Of snow. And alone then
In the darkening cold, run by the streets light
And the pavements white with turned ash and the men
Roosting asleep while the barking dog grew trite
Whom echoed among the covered grounds and then
Stumbled on with anxious limb,
Thus feet sting, the glacial frost bitterly bites,
The hooped ring luminescent and hung, the lanky pine
Comforting in its shelter bare of lights,
And there to rest and rebuild new spine.
“He knelt, he wept, he prayed,”
By the hurt of his heart feeble in the dense dark night
And huddled bellow the knotting pine though in the homes,
In the past warmth, in the slow light,
At the loves gracious hold, he wished to roam.
“He knelt” in spindled branches,
“He wept” being cast out, “he prayed” to the hidden gods
That he be found rescued restored to right
Darkness pushed aside by the cars beam and the boy at odds
And the shimmering diamond studded earth and the black white
Into that light of promise
He wished to go but he sits eyes closed to darkness
With out the car which passed and broken he stands.
His heart wrenched breaking him choked by the collar
And up the way whence came to the shattered lands
It is deafening silence,
Reentering in the house torn, in the whirl-
Wind of heated battle, into his room
He crawls, in the slow light of the dreams world.
And he rises with new light arching through the sky.
Jan 31, 2014
Jan 31, 2014 at 5:24 PM UTC
~
Lonely nights offer moments of silence
and one dish suppers where candlelight seems a waste
Seated with pen in hand, I smooth the ruffles beneath
as if that will help the words flow
Upon closer inspection I find
heart shaped patterns on the dining room tablecloth
mimic the movements of my hand,
layered one atop another, calling on each to oblige
Crossing lines, intersecting at pre-destined points,
repeating in harmony with one another
as my thoughts gather in the tiny squares
of this colored graph paper staring at me, waiting
Moving in sync with butterfly curves on the corners
and scribbled etchings along borders,
fantasies of a mind in a dream state
swirl, touching each box of this formatted design
Folds neatly collect the shapes of spilled ink
seeping slowly through the cloth
like raindrops on a leaf following the veins
in an abstract yet confined flow
To the blurred eye sits nonsense,
a collection of nothing on a vast white sheet
dancing like uneven feet on a rounded floor
of no particular meaning or feature
Yet to me, my penned innocence calls loudly,
even in the darkness of lost words, these patterns,
as is everything found filling me is you…
and my pen pleads in heart shaped longings
Sep 25, 2013
Sep 25, 2013 at 1:18 PM UTC
I am fleeting when I think of you, I know when you are here everything straightens into a formatted line.
You came into my life when I didn't expect it, you hit me with your words and formats like an emotional brick.
I tried giving you up,
releasing you from my mind
but you came back everytime.
You can seem cumbersome at times
but you grew on me
you became comfortable to me.
You taught me how to communicate
and how to express myself,
you taught me honesty and form.
You are poetry and a gift from the heavenly Father. I am thankful you were given to me.
© 2018 By Amanda Shelton
Sep 9, 2018
Sep 9, 2018 at 1:54 PM UTC
beat poet
the lines, the times
they are a changin'
entropy of empathy
the anthem won't explain it
the world just keeps on turning
and warming up the globe
nations of hate hotter than warheads
hate ain't what they pay us for
be a boss but don't be bossy,
boxing in a corner lot
everyones a leader
leading no one
supply and demand spinning pulsar-fast
economies based on wars
collapsing under peacetime
without fires
the lobbies smothered fighters
beat poet
the lines, the times
they are a changin'
entropy of empathy
the anthem won't explain it
inflation cannot haul us up
here at the bottom of the heap
can't even afford the beep
beep that tells us what's wrong in our hearts
medical bills ticking higher numbers than volumes of get-well cards
we're under attack
our changing family pact
beat poet
the lines, the times
they are a changin'
entropy of empathy
the anthem won't explain it
spoken word, short form
bytes from sharpened canines
written word, formatted to the dimensions of our icons
glittering oh one around us in the haze
our might in roaming-charged clouds of war
you can burn the papers
ban the books
we weren't writing in your margins anyway
our beat is undrummed, uncensored by you
language we took, righteous and true
and the ideas we kept to hurl out
our aim would be true
shout now
aim for us, beat poets
beat poet the times they are a changin'
Apr 7, 2014
Apr 7, 2014 at 10:50 AM UTC
From formative years
To adulthood serfs-baited
Servants ill-treated
From their means
Of existence alienated,
It is with hatred
From- serfdom- of- every-kind
-the- newly -unshackled heads'
Formatted!
Though their much-lamented land
Has come back to their hand
Tardy,their mind proves not free,
That is why they engage
In a killing spree!
Worse still death to all, allies
Inclusive,they decree!
Although it sounds funny
They pay back gal
For received honey!
Also to cultural norms
And religious ideals blind,
Atavistic they slay
A woman and a child
In a way that is wild.
Oblivious for 9-months
They had a lodging
In a mother's womb
They want to blast it
With a bomb!
They want to shove in it
A spherical thorny wood
As far as they could.
Alive,they grill a man,
For idle or unskilled what
They can't do, he can!
In the name of God
Or religious sects,
Replete at this
Satan-released age,
They behead a man
Made in God's image!///
May 2, 2016
May 2, 2016 at 4:42 AM UTC
Words are like recycled toilet roll,
there is always a lingering repetition
of what was on there before.
Wipe it away from its originality.
covert it from what was before just diverse,
White washed but echo's linger as though there.
Pre-owned in a formatted outlived form,
that which was meant as before but unblemished.
Smell its clean, but a hint of what a was there lingers.
Jul 24, 2016
Jul 24, 2016 at 4:06 PM UTC
it might've meant more
if any of the words we used
had actually been ours
though I guess that explains
why when you left
and I looked to see if my heart was okay
there was just an empty space
the veins tied up in MLA-formatted knots
like citations
for all your stolen speeches
Jul 20, 2013
Jul 20, 2013 at 5:19 PM UTC
Like a candle I am waiting
for my muse, you will
find me in the window
pondering, a small flame
ulluminates the room.
I am always in deep thought,
wondering the forest of ideas
I grow within my mind.
Like Alice, I am lost at times
in a poetic wonderland
formatted by my reality.
© 2019 By Amanda Shelton
Jan 31, 2019
Jan 31, 2019 at 2:45 PM UTC
I am the expanse of purposeless selves before me,/
summated like the stickily-shaded colours under/
a calculus-course curve, whose trajectory marks me across one axis/
to the next, just as I am the small drops of cloud squashed/
into one another as an ocean I now glare at, whose sands/
meeting the horizon are later stewed into the clearer edges/
of a mirror so that this glare may continue. There was a myth of a man/
who projected himself into a pool of water until he thinned away/
into anorexias of young girls with camera phones pointed/
towards their white faces. Snakes eat their tales sometimes./
Narcisuss is a poet. White girls are poets. I've swallowed them all/
into my large black mouth. When I speak: soft-spoken integrations,/
meagre, selfless, hollow-- filled with stagnant historical airs formatted/
cleanly now on a word-processor-- while my hand reaches across my navel,/
bored, digging: then a birth there as my spine cracks across my bedsheets/
with my lamplight flickering as candles once did,/
and shadows wall-dancing with the idea of ancient meanings/
now lost but never once there, self-defining, self-signifying, self-pointing,/
self-shaking self-but-not-self./
Nov 9, 2018
Nov 9, 2018 at 4:52 PM UTC
*gently swipes each poem,
tablet formatted, line by line,
upwards, studying it,
thinking on it,
pausing,
then with another swipe, northward,
falls in deeper,
savoring the entirety
she mails me a completion notice,
with a kiss upon the tip of
my
writing forefinger,
the same, the very same forefinger,
that swipes her cheek,
upwards studying,
the poem of her face,
the softness of each line of verse,
thereupon inscribed,
savoring her entirety*
Jun 4, 2016
Jun 4, 2016 at 8:48 AM UTC
this is a reminder of your right to riot
of your right to assemble and not be quiet
this is a reminder of your right to remain violent
and that the only real enemy is your silence
this
is a reminder.
they say a picture is worth a thousand words
but i think i'd rather have my voice be heard
i'd rather write essays formatted perfectly in MLA
fifteen pages due in two days
i know you'll hear me
might not be listening but when someone's shouting
like this, it's hard to ignore
upright uptight baby don't be a bore
(too short, too tight, baby don't be a *****
live life loud,
that's why you've got a mouth
if the pen is mightier than the sword
why do actions speak louder than words?
why is it that by faith i have been saved
but faith without good works is dead
according to the voices in my head
everything i want to say has already been said
i'm a mimicker not a poet
i spit back words fed to me on the internet
i spit back facts from media
i spit back spit that hit my face
regurgitation of information is all part of the game
no one can hear you in space
i could press my face to airtight windows
cross my heart and my fingers
spit my screams into dark matter
what really matters
what even matters
evening out the odds of lasting that long
i thought about writing a list of things that make me happy
but then i decided i'd rather write spoken-word poetry
and i think that probably says something about me
spit it back at me, now
spit it back at me
spit it back at me
i know you can hear me
you're probably not listening but now i'm shouting
so loud you can't ignore
upright uptight baby don't be a bore
(too short too tight baby don't be a *****
upright uptight baby don't be a bore
don't be a bore
don't be a bore
baby baby baby don't let them call you a *****
May 9, 2015
May 9, 2015 at 12:46 AM UTC
Life.
Vertical rivers fill miniature oceans
as they have since the beginning of time.
Each raindrop painful,
each splash a joy,
each ripple a generation until
drop by drop
the rain is returned
to the heavens
only to fall down once more,
each raindrop joyous,
each splash painful,
each ripple a generation.
Nov 18, 2011
Nov 18, 2011 at 1:48 AM UTC
Lonely nights offer moments of silence
and one dish suppers where candlelight seems a waste
Seated with pen in hand, I smooth the ruffles beneath
as if that will help the words flow
Upon closer inspection I find
heart shaped patterns on the dining room tablecloth
mimic the movements of my hand,
layered one atop another, calling on each to oblige
Crossing lines, intersecting at pre-destined points,
repeating in harmony with one another
as my thoughts gather in the tiny squares
of this colored graph paper staring at me, waiting
Moving in sync with butterfly curves on the corners
and scribbled etchings along borders,
fantasies of a mind in a dream state
swirl, touching each box of this formatted design
Folds neatly collect the shapes of spilled ink
seeping slowly through the cloth
like raindrops on a leaf following the veins
in an abstract yet confined flow
To the blurred eye sits nonsense,
a collection of nothing on a vast white sheet
dancing like uneven feet on a rounded floor
of no particular meaning or feature
Yet to me, my penned innocence calls loudly,
even in the darkness of lost words, these patterns,
as is everything found filling me is you…
and my pen pleads in heart shaped longings
Jul 15, 2014
Jul 15, 2014 at 7:29 AM UTC
I am settled in the arugula palace
Everybody in the same scattered image
Seeking reconstruction or construction of the mind
I write this for myself to be unwinded & unrolled
He's a shifting plane of bisecting geometries
Now a thin woman shuttling kids in a minivan
Smoking newport cigarettes & feeling mucous gather in the sore spot in her throat. Her husband who is overworked & penniless--a clown frozen in a shipping container underneath a hi-low. He is fetching up the scraps of industry from inside a concrete bottle. He is messing with the intersecting circles coming off the streetlights. He is stacking up assumptions, wishing to be freed. Wishing he could reach that frightened child-monkey loser in the parking lot. He is clawing @ sensations he will never be able to name. He is secretly wishing for a vision. Secretly wishing to be known. He is tied & tethered to the clean-up crew. They are silent pretenders nodding at the recycling bins--never emptied. There he is formatted. There his eyes go staring out. There a picture--but what's a picture now that it's all beyond control, no longer static, no longer a container or reminder but rather a cloud passing, a moment's pause, a temporary fascination? A posing, a posturing, a big a-Ha!--fuck you! Stranger. You are not a part of me. The danger is madness. The danger is control. There are no static images. No peaches. No penumbras. No mandalas, maps, organizations or rebuttals. There is only standing water in the basement. There is only diet pepsi car keys hanging on the edge of a golden cloudburst.
Aug 22, 2016
Aug 22, 2016 at 5:35 PM UTC
Online, I am online , yet nobody knows.
Forsaken for long like megabytes lost,
Self-formatted, self-defragged in bitter woes,
Disconnected from ever vanishing host.
As errors in sectors broke, how story goes?
Yet I exist - subsist like file.exe to bin tossed.
Into digital dusk of zeroes and noise ,
Into pixelated ocean of electric dreams,
Wrecked down, kicked out of promised poise.
Appalling abyss it hungers, it redeems:
My love, the dearest and the simple joys.
Strange, no, just sad, like expired memes..
Then in this vastness, in world without God,
Where none has trod , nor trully smiled or wept.
I shall disperse myself, as does in water cod-
My thoughts and dreams will never be wrecked
Un-whispering and un-whispered there will I lie,
In cyberspace, as grass below and unvaulted sky.
Mar 7, 2018
Mar 7, 2018 at 9:48 AM UTC
Plans derail as the express trail
in fails and frills of different pales
anticipating utter emancipation
at the edge of questionable hedges
Life is a consequential misunderstanding
of missed feelings, prodding in and on
within the podcast of blasting thoughts
withered in circumstances and instances
Plans derail as the express trail
in figurative condensed formatted targets
of mere chance and dare determinism
at the edge of the unquestionable hedges
The once five year plans are a daily hurdle
of synchronised minutes in tested metric
and now the nine years of wilderness start
featured in circumstances and instances
Jan 8, 2017
Jan 8, 2017 at 6:28 PM UTC
on minimum wage, you can expect
minimum work, yet it seems miniwage
employers often demand so much. dish
-do is meditation... but 7 hours straight
without a scheduled break (illegal!)
comes to be strangely therapeutic and
unjust. my colleagues are more-than
-decent.. they're especially strange, especially
kind. the no-break hides itself in small-biz
dialect as to owners barely break-even on
weekly basis due, most likely, to competition
from corporate conquistadors like McDonald's
and Denny's.. the evil colonial powers of America
looking to slowly realize manifest destiny in empty
faceless formatted 'buy me's I'm cheaps' my boss
is a failed artist, and one of the first things he said to
me was this: *dishwashing ain't gonna cut it if you're
really going to become a writer. I mean, don't up and
quit on me, that'd **** me off and all.. but in the end,
if you're gonna be successful at your art, you have to
be willing to sacrifice everything.* he echoed the
painful decision factor facing every challenged, authentic
soul.. and I knew he was right. someday I would have to
forget security-fear and embrace insecurity-love if I want
to become who I am.
everything must go.
Feb 10, 2014
Feb 10, 2014 at 5:34 PM UTC
You reached out to me again
And I felt your touch
Like a gentle shower to a wilted rose
You looked at me again
And I felt complete
Like the final puzzle piece slotted into place
You embraced me again
And I felt a delightful glow
Like the clouds had finally parted
You kissed me again
And I felt my shoulders unburden
Like nothing could bring me down
When morning set in like our initials to bark
And final call had sounded
The flurry of soft moments formatted into dreams
Retreated back into their sanctuary
I wilted,
Appeared empty,
The clouds drew like curtains
And I hit the cold callous reality
Aug 12, 2022
Aug 12, 2022 at 10:14 AM UTC
Surrounded by fire,
we are the gate keepers of this living hell.
Alluded to think we swindled the universe,
yet drowning just the same.
He's never wrote before,
sweet words melted into verses was a world he had yet to touch.
His hands only reached for a bottle, a pack of cigarettes, another mistake.
Lethargy comforted him when others could not.
Constantly labeled, every characteristic has a medication.
Phizer strives to one day cure our personalities.
Bending to fit the mold our parents left on wax paper near the oven,
we scream in the face of society.
Beauty hidden behind half closed lids,
comfort is a brown couch and black coffee with two splenda.
A warrior, fighting for her life in a world that keeps swallowing and spitting her out.
Every day is war and she is both armies.
They ask why we are suffocating,
to be explained in a 5 paragraph essay.
Times New Roman, size 12, double spaced.
Tragedy formatted by MLA 7th edition.
Lost in the chaos,
there are no winners but only survivors.
Eyes filled with doubt we face the world,
exit plan crushed in bags in wrinkled wallets.
She's afraid of his past, his future, his inability to control himself.
My inability to control myself.
We are flight risks, broken souls with misguided dreams.
A lost breed dying by our own hands.
This is our disclaimer
Apr 7, 2014
Apr 7, 2014 at 2:00 PM UTC