"franchises" poems
its all franchises
as far as you might see
burger joints, taco houses, and pizza parlors
dot the horizon
the whole lot
greasier than the pan
than the canola oil, a whole can of pam
its warehouse-sized stores
full of disgruntled
shuffling cheap trash
package to shelf
packaged for the shelf
in anticipation to sit
listen a while
under the low murmur
of the machine humming
you can hear ma n pop wailin'
Jan 30, 2021
Jan 30, 2021 at 8:43 PM UTC
Dressed in black, dark eyes amused
She strolls into a room
With the specialised tread
Of a femme fatale,
Tossing her streaming hair in arrogant joy.
Her perfect body
Contains the calm and unexpected force
Of the sea, shifting in a moment between
Reason and fury.
She graces the men with sure-footed Arabic,
Stark, sibilant, passionate words
Laughing like a poem.
A Moroccan beauty,
Guedra dancing in the sun,
From the desert coloured mosque of Casablanca
Punctured by the worship Of 70,000 songs,
To the unremitting souks of Marrakesh,
Her complexity
Emboldened by the courage
Of poets.
She has a silence in her intellect
Such as few have,
Unusual evidence of a soul
In a world of franchises,
Her past imaginings deeper and wider
Than that of her peers,
Dancing to fast Gharnati rhythms,
Beneath imagined Andulusian sunsets
And glowing skies.
An effervescent scintillating gasp of fervent
Desert air, beating across her limbs
Moving gently towards silence.
Nov 12, 2015
Nov 12, 2015 at 10:55 PM UTC
Are you happy?
Are you really happy?
No.
Happiness is an illusion a distant conception dreamt up and designed by advertising and marketing agents to get you to buy trivial, meaningless, material junk.
We once tried to break away from this with counter culture, rock ‘n roll and punk.
Not long until the battle was over and we thought we’d won
But little did we know their rain had just begun.
Believing we were safe we let our guard down
Now they are back and build a Starbucks in every town.
We’re told how to look how to dress how to behave
Will watch smiling people on TV corrupt and deprave us
Now we snap back and they will not force us
Forget about what you know what you think you know especially about the value of material possessions
They are only strategically programed desires and obsessions
A guilty conscience isn't cleansed by buying a new watch
Stress is not drowned by a five dollar cup of coffee
Your life is not completed when you buy that leather couch
We can write a new page in history carve another notch
We can peel the label of consumer off and finally be free
We as a generation will curse suppression and no longer slouch
Break away from advertising
Say no to the franchises
Become what you want to be
Not what the posters say you want to be
See yourself through your eyes not the TV screen
Jul 16, 2014
Jul 16, 2014 at 10:22 AM UTC
I'm sitting here,
at my regular table
and in through the door,
waddles a stream of gluttony
bodies like melting planets
and a look which falls somewhere
between pride and entitlement
is plastered on their sweaty bovine faces
they come into an area
graze while the grass is good
and slowly meander elsewhere
chewing the cud the whole while
like an old trail hand
chews a thick *** of tobacco
these people
who don't know the meaning
of living a lean life
what do they do?
besides propagating fast food franchises
and big and tall clothing stores
what do they do?
they sit in their cubicles doing the same
mindless
mundane
pointless
task for eight hours
with lunch and breaks
and then they drag themselves back home
to the herd
and sit down in their puffy couches
in front of the T.V.
with a microwaved meal
staining their beat up wife beaters
before they fall asleep
on the couch
their mouths propped open
drooling
with a still half full
can of coors light
balanced precariously
between their cottage cheese thighs
Mar 28, 2013
Mar 28, 2013 at 11:04 AM UTC
Admittedly,
the company
proved over-ambitious
as it
deteriorated
Mar 19, 2019
Mar 19, 2019 at 3:31 PM UTC
i wonder where it is your ****** metaphors come from
when you say things like "she tastes like strawberries."
i am disenchanted miscarried
by what you are trying
to say, if anything.
this
social significance of a tangy fruit ripe for harvest- tiny for your convenience. connotations of innocence to sensuality, *** lips
if it is literal. evoking a certain tube of tacky lipbalm that finds itself applied tastelessly and often-
a certain perplexing exclusivity of diet.
or at least a strong penchant for the thing, that.
or if virginal.
recalling imagery of children's clothing- characters and franchises similarly swimming in the same shared canon of bad symbolism.
if you try to push us
into displeasure. violence. or grunge.
to challenge the peacefulness or comfort of normalcy.
shock us.
bring me somewhere
that would be better poetry.
i've read you like: all of you-
a thousand times from anywhere. any time
some might say the universality is its highest honor-
sign of its perfection and
truth.
it is not.
lazy.never real
long bereft of impulse
it makes you feel good because you are told it makes you feel good,
brought up with it.
watered down by it
like many other things.
devoid of specificity or idiosyncrasy
and the imagery of the DD/lg goes wayside.
though fetishist art, at its norm, becomes insular and self pleasuring
(just as fresh strawberries)
it can still be used as a tool when used to break away from expectation
as long as you don't let it become itself.
for it is just as average as anything else:
falling into a bad creepy pasta.
reading the news on a phone app.
unjustly scolding a cashier.
telling a girl that her skirt is too short at her bestfriend's father's funeral.
parents driving offspring to suicide through religion and therapy.
they belong to you.
Mar 8, 2016
Mar 8, 2016 at 11:47 PM UTC
VI.
Hélas ! tout est fini. Fange ! néant ! nuit noire !
Au-dessus de ce gouffre où croula notre gloire,
Flamboyez, noms maudits !
Maupas, Morny, Magnan, Saint-Arnaud, Bonaparte !
Courbons nos fronts ! Gomorrhe a triomphé de Sparte !
Cinq hommes ! cinq bandits !
Toutes les nations tour à tour sont conquises :
L'Angleterre, pays des antiques franchises,
Par les vieux neustriens,
Rome par Alaric, par Mahomet Byzance,
La Sicile par trois chevaliers, et la France
Par cinq galériens.
Soit. Régnez ! emplissez de dégoût la pensée,
Notre-Dame d'encens, de danses l'Elysée,
Montmartre d'ossements.
Régnez ! liez ce peuple, à vos yeux populace,
Liez Paris, liez la France à la culasse
De vos canons fumants !
Jersey, du 7 au 13 janvier 1853.
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