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Mary McCray Apr 2015
(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 9, 2015)

The tendency to forget information that can be found readily online by using Internet search engines.


This information is the result of my searches on Google this morning:

• “Never memorize something that you can look up.” Online this quote is widely attributed to Albert Einstein.

• “[I do not] carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books. ...The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.” This was Einstein in response to not knowing the speed of sound as included in the Edison Test. (Wikiquote)

• Many people wear the same clothes every day. In Einstein’s case this was a grey suit--the reason being that our thinking time is wasted making irrelevant wardrobe decisions. I also re-read the Henry David Thoreau quote about life being frittered away by detail. But when considering what is being frittered, you could add the mind, the spirit, time itself. This idea was part of Thoreau’s “simplicity, simplicity” quote which I once bought as a magnet from the museum at Walden Pond in the fall of 2001. I didn’t remember that date. I just googled a story about the trip, (www.apeculture.com/travel/boston.htm). In any case, I felt the magnet was being ironic. Like Einstein, President Barack Obama wears the same variation of two suits every day in order to “pare down decisions.” Apple genius Steve Jobs wore the same thing every day as does Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. (Elite Daily: elitedaily.com/money/science-simplicity-successful-people-wear-thing-every-day/849141/)

• Google is creating personalities for androids, personalities that will live in the cloud and can be swapped into robots. I plan to forget this information because it’s creepy and like Ripley in the movie Alien, I’m suspicious of androids unless they are like Lance Henriksen in the movie Aliens in which case I would probably buy that personality for my robot if I had one.

• I also found out today that Google's images section, (which I use religiously when blogging), was created due to Jennifer Lopez’s green floral Versace dress, the one that opened like a surgical split to her navel, the one that caused such a kerfuffle when she wore it to the 2000 Grammy Awards and everyone searched Google fruitlessly for it afterwards. I’ve forgotten about that dress because I hated it. It looked like a Miami house-robe for one thing and I don’t like any couture that structurally hangs off *****.

• Google also announced a new patent today for a warning system that protects you from pop culture spoilers on Internet pages. If you think about it, this warning system will protect you from Google itself. Sometimes a little information ruins everything.

• I found all of this Google news on Google News.

• You can find more Einstein quotes here:  brightdrops.com/albert-einstein-quotes, one particular quote informs me that creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

• D’oh!

• Which is a word I have always remembered because the great poet Homer said it.
Hello Poetry doesn't allow linkage in poems which created a problem for my Google-based poem today! To access the links you can cut and paste them into your browser.
Julian Apr 2019
The inaugural bang swiveled with the vacant expressions of a muted feral crowd indignant about ethnic identity and swift in the recourse of tyrannical thugs pandering withered abuse

I solemnly abided in a chirpy itinerant glower against the exclusive system for stranding the disintegration of lyrical integrity for the Potemkin cheers of the culmination of too many jeers

Withered words for the abeyance of silence I incurred with wistful pleas for resurgent clarity beyond   sheepish fears

So I loitered in the evanescence of words..

Watching with alacrity as the strident ignorance of grafted wretchedness writhed its last mustered exsibilation at the sound of windbags bloviating beyond prodigal extravagance without a visible tweeted word

I measured my pause…..as I considered the heft of poignant exposures to a dismal serenade of miscegenated politics and garbled breaths of wheezy mendicants seeking participation in the trophy of smothered compliance

But I marveled simultaneously at the extinction of the shriveled crowds as they sized up the minutiae of wastrels glamorously inviting a frozen recapitulation of sorrows borrowed and wasted on minced platitudes that swindle still the votive confidence of regimented sympathy pretending empathy for soured hearts professedly defiant at their bereaved will

My pulse I clocked at 120 as I wondered where on earth the 140s and 150s have frittered their patience on with such brazen alacrity for the garish snarl of a sojourn into the ineffable effrontery of aureate mutiny against the tyrant of deaf spoon-fed indignation without the luxury of shared ignominy of memorable cadence for frippery in sparse blurbs registered in braille rather than brawn

Then I remembered my vociferous persnickety temperament and the curdled hatred of procrustean swan songs to an etiolating standard of ethical entanglement in aloof issues delivered with a decisive swoon too swift in earnestness to outfox with a quipped rebuff or a calculus of classical spoof

Then I wondered with a problematic but inherent prolixity…..
I too could adorn the adoring moon with a lyrical lampoon geared for a clockwork punchline or a winsome rebarbative tune….OR…. enchant with an incisive acerbic rant about how pasquinades outstay their welcome because of the clambered insistence of happenstance years ago in a blinkered mirror but never rehashed too soon

But where would affection heap its laurels if I dared to swindle the spotlight away from frisky poetasters who proved a renegade inspiration for fluttered triumph in a seaside tragedy only the crestfallen waves of pestilent Idiocracy could steal from my outstretched tenacity in verse and verve

Boom went a fulmination of hatred at my labored words! And then I swerved to avoid potholes of tenuous gainsay…. and other miscreants littering the world with misappropriated labels for laments belabored with publicity for displaced enmity distilled from a cauldron of mismatched ignorance….tethered to the vagrancy of gripe plucked at the ripe time for a twenty-dollar prize give or take a dime

But that dime separating 1990 from 2010 meant more than anything to a life littered with hallowed word crimes…. against the sanctimony of syncopation with cheap bleats too arrogant to be sheepish at the lavish indulgence of the marginalized wines…. brewed in a castle flickering on fiat worth rather than the simplicities of minutes of warbled time

So I currently warp minds with the proctor of a gamble too garish to finesse the quicksand of attrition but jaunty enough to bypass the limitations of a linear self-referential memorial about the circular nature of irony espoused by divorced rhymes

Now I stand ascendant….waiting for the retinues of retinas to absorb the wavy rigmarole of the serpentine pathways carved beneath the buzzwords of race and division and towards soldered unity with a human race beyond racism…. and a class divorced from socioeconomic crass division

Just then I arrived at serenity…. as I realized that the BAR exams that encage so many aspirant hearts are counterfeit in the court of the highest judiciary art that believes that insidious artifice is an embezzled venture of frolicsome guttersnipes wallowing in division can never revive a lifeless heart…. even if quick-witted credentialism rattles the slaves to vapid artforms that any humanism would never deem smart

Ditch the agitprop as a human frailty indentured to endure the curated disease without a cure to make the snollygosters in Washington ever so cocksure with their cockalorum disregard of the palatable consensus to make news real again….Finally for the fraternity of an enlightened human race in a benighted world of trendy fatuousness that infests the planet with the debauchery of glorified urchins jerking the levers with severed brevity to promote infectious foofaraw with cultural indemnity

I leave you with this

What is ornate complexity without the luxury of concerted beatific bliss that the parsecs that flummox your minds throb vehemently with cohesiveness in my internal design are not remiss

And remember the benighted standards of kitsch for the kitchens of penury bewitched don’t stand a chance against the overriding itch to vanquish mountains one after another to cross them off the list
Austin Martin Feb 2016
The complexity of coupling is an exponential increase.
No matter how perturbed life may be, we strive to linearize it,
thank you Laplace. You transform us.

It is integral to simplify life.
Like Da Vinci, Like Thoreau:
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”
“Our life is frittered away by detail…simplify, simplify”

Let us not differentiate between the good or the bad
                         the high or the low.
Life is too brief to quantify, qualify, and compare it to others.
It is yours alone. Embrace the change over time.
Inspired by a flight dynamics class discussing the highly coupled equations of motion. And the transfer functions to simplify them.
Julian Aug 2015
The haystack is the needle and the iceberg is compact
Scions of attrition tremble before the contract
Jaundiced world-weary tears lament the frailty of days and the evanescence of years
Senescence a cruel destruction, distracting garish comfort escorting the fears
Displaced and forlorn love beckons a second chance
Itinerant hopes know no commitment to simple embezzled parlance
Of dice and kin, nepotism’s high-roller antics are the linchpin
Frittered patience staking its bets on internecine dynamics of skin
Affirmative traction of disenfranchised hopes rests on fallow seasons
Traduced mirage tantalizes until the activation of regaled treasons
Shock wed with dismay appoints the tutelage of prestidigitation
Juggled triage aborts an unborn reason and anoints intimidation
Aliens flummox the borders to enlist a new world disorder
Trailblazers succumb to lawlessness and for every dollar gained we lose a quarter
Chaos checkmates as power rests from decrepit hands foisting the meretricious brand
Cattle scorched and sheep scattered as the broken hourglass can no longer count sand
Time toppled serenaded by applause canned
Toppled pyramids blind the eye of providence in the hour of unheralded prominence
The terror of history unfurls the efflorescence of piracy as ghosts work to subvert the invisible hand
Next dictums emerge that say supply on command, and entropy desecrates the land
Phone home to arm the putsch, clone home for aliens we push
Revisionism subverts the instruction of years and empowers the apotheosis of fear and the fourth ***** of George W. Bush
Dynasties envy the anonymity of a bald-eagle cabal of skinhead guffaw
Irascible genocide cavorts under the premise of shock and awe
The lullaby of morons is flinching assent to the supremacy of the unelected and unassailable tyrants
Discarding covenants on the principle of principality and counting on every knight to become errant
Pyrrhic victory of the perverted cross corrals the flock
Openly announced secrets enable the aliens to dock
At the port they are greeted as the victors and granted not only amnesty but indemnity
They brandish the unprecedented concept of an enumerated infinity
To amuse the zero-sum victory they author a new history of utilitarianism dethroning deontology
To the future readers they make contrite apologies
But when the races of men are annihilated by the evil Zen boasting of its utilitarian ken
The rubble of time cannot ascertain exactly how or when
But on the dreaded hour the virus will conspire to elect the most reproachable power
When panic reaches crescendo all the sugar in the world cannot but help to taste anything but sour
Abort the tyrannical machine no matter how convincingly it preens
No matter how much bunkum elevates the enchanting prevarication while concealing the affairs behind the scenes
Voting for balkanized splinters designed to weather the winter sustains the monopoly of sophistry
Ballyhoo saturates the airwaves and suddenly catcalling becomes gallantry
Tune out the pulpit, divest the culprit and impugn systemic venality
Dismantle the verisimilitude of shadows and hoist a giant mirror to reflect stark realities
Cue the curtains fall, the specters grow tall, and the clout is daunted by establishment doubt
The skeletonized truth severs the root but the behemoth armed to the teeth wages a bout
Cartels conspire with arms and fire and resurrect stodgy tenets to prowl like an army of vampires
To feed a fatuous superstition and to empower a censorship of convenience to enthrone a dark empire
Cunning preponderance enlists divisive shills to let the ghastly thriller exact its thrills
Occult obscurantism funds the vulnerable and tramples over the outspoken to actuate its will
Hopes dashed, stocks crashed and strife abundant
Generational dissonance revokes the incumbents
Chapter one of this unsung war come and gone
Stay tuned for the next addendum to see what is lost and who has won.
onlylovepoetry Jul 2017
if only I knew how to love...

for my Victoria

winces-grimaces, that these words even leave my fingertips,
reminiscences, a chrome bookmark tab full of decades of near misses,
instances, subway sideway stolen daily glances of she who would be the only, the one, but one day failed to appear, left to dream peer,
and/or
decades long of romanced lasses, flying spectacular super crashes, when my heart-blanched, lanced, and the lawyers danced, poems shriveled as dried ink crack'd and words rusted shut,
cut by so many p'raps, and ugly motives, beautiful covered up, disguised as synapses of sin and insincerity, and I,
the sad man,
both the sinner and the sinned against,
totalities, of shoulda-woulda-asked/kissed-her-gallantly,
activities, when kisses were doorways to trap door rooms
and an over decorated monte cristo prison cell

ah well

the 'and yet,' the 'but for,' a single finger, sealing silenced lips,
passions mourned and irrevocable sensations, frittered, fractured,
all that I calmly called love was sprigs and broken branches,
cut flowers destined to shrivel,
not of what I believed in, something akin to a tree rooted, an oaken strong unbreakable love

of this certain, all approximations, all failed incantations,
for surely, if but only one escaped, could have been saved,

and if truthful love it was,
I would have known it,
for would I have dared to let slip away?
7/14/17
Rakib Nov 2022
As the ages of my life pass by
Like bits of burnt sages
I look back at what elapsed
Like withered pages of rusty verses
Frittered yet sapient in phases

And I fondly wonder
Of the moments of quandary
Whether I flourish or mold blunder
Heedless to the end that I shall attend
Marshal Gebbie May 2012
A very firm intention
To tell it as it is
Has the audience attention
On its toes and all afizz,
Though channelled to the circumspect,
With a patterned thought awry
It chaotically cascades
Across the prism of the eye.

It chaotically discharges
In a scattergun array
Of verbal innuendoes
Through a thin, saliva spray,
And all the passion spent in telling,
All the effort of the tale,
Sends a barrage of confusion
To occipital portrayal.

Where the tiny bones of balance
All atremble with the sound
Have discharged interpretation
Through a penny to a pound.
There’s a lost extrapolation,
There’s a blank look on the face
Where the balance of exchange
Has frittered nimbly from this place.

A calmness in both parties
As a sad pretence prevails,
Where communication nexus
Is ignored to save the whales.

Marshalg
Incommunicado
30 May 2012

© 2012 Marshal Gebbie
When I find a seat in the bus
thoughts throng me words rush
when I stand in the jostle I regret
how rhymes are frittered go a-waste!

But in standing there's a silver lining
I care to see the visages around me
darkly grim or happily shining
the many faces of moving poetry!
Ben Jones Feb 2013
Lord Henry Dickenbottem
Lived among his peers
A mind of deepest arrogance
Concealed between his ears
He spent his nights in gross misconduct
Lounging in his secret quarters
Mistress, maid and washerwoman
Ousted mothers, secret daughters
Hiding sordid love affairs
His endless line of ******* heirs
***** Henry Dickenbottem
Stalked above the stairs

Lady Mary Dickenbottem
Did her wifely duty
The slenderest of all her kin
Considered quite the beauty
Though in the dusk the candle burned
Alone, she stitched a pallid face
And in the dark she sought its words
To gain her shallow masters grace
Guiding will and fooling eyes
Beseeching of the dead to rise
Demon Mary Dickenbottem
She the pure despise

Master Neville Dickenbottem
Best of all his class
Beaten all the school boys
And bedded every lass
Allies of the strongest kind
And making merry of the weak
The liberties were his to take
And never one he wouldn’t seek
His gaze surveyed that which he ruled
All logical and water cooled
Nasty Neville Dickenbottem
Devil-fire fuelled

Young Jemmima Dickenbottem
Innocent and slight
Playing on the borderline
And darting out of sight
Only ever at her ease
When no one else was close about
And etched upon her baby face
The guilty shadow of a doubt
Always blamed if something broke
And speaking just above a croak
Shy Jemmima Dickenbottem
Tangible as smoke

Old Mother Dickenbottem
Lounging in her chair
Lavender and nicotine
Are fighting for her hair
Beware, at night she ventures forth
So best keep safe your tiny tots
She’ll creep up to the windowpane
And ****** them, sleeping, from their cots
Humming in discordant tones
Nimble fingers, cold as stones
Hungry Mother Dickenbottem
Gnawing on the bones

Dear Major Dickenbottem
Five years in the ground
Hoarded every ha’penny
But frittered every pound
Long he served his king and queen
A gentlemanly thing to do
He left the port with many men
And brought back homeward very few
He died away in foreign lands
Of syphilis and swollen glands
Dead Major Dickenbottem
Killed by wandering hands
usandthem42 Nov 2014
Two shades of blue, Two shades of blue
The endless Sky, a canvas painted with molten sapphire
He frittered those diamonds with no trace of frugality
The never-ending cerulean Ocean, big as your heart's desire
She undulated life, corals and sea shells, with a trace of salinity
Two shades of blue, Two shades of blue.

Two shades of blue, Two shades of blue
She is his diurnal curtain, as he opens his eye from his sleep
He is her coiffeur, as he colors her entwined hair in a shade of serenity
She is his narcissistic cheval glass, reassuring him every moment
That his swaying eyes and his murky silver mane are intact.
He is her tepid blanket, gifting her his warmth and millions of lives.
She is his lullaby, swinging him to sleep, wobbling him into a trance.
Two shades of blue, two shades of blue.

Two shades of blue, Two shades of blue
He is her, and she is him
He collects her brimming elation and gifts it to the world
She takes his sorrow, swallows his tears, until he returns to normalcy
Two shades of blue, two shades of blue
A pair of hues that will always remain estranged,
Arising to vehement debates on his excessive height versus her unfathomable depth.
They aren't parallel lines which never touch each other,
They are converging lines that will always strive to meet,
Stretching each other with all its might,
Illimitable and endless they may be, but without each other
They will remain infinite fractions forever
Two shades of blue, two shades of blue.
Ben Jones Feb 2013
There's a hole in my wall which the wind whistles through
And the wallpaper's mouldy and calamine blue
The carpet besmirched with a decade of grime
And the pattern is lost to a happier time
The journals and books where my memories stay
Have mixed and submerged in a fearful array
The curtains hang tattered in woeful neglect
Where the mildew and fungus and beetles collect

There's a hole in the floor where the mice have a nest
Where the walls creak and groan like a cancerous chest
And a puddle emerges from under the door
Like a serpent, it winds on the laminate floor
Underfoot, fragments of crockery crunch
Still stained with the leavings of long ago lunch
There's a rattle and scratching of verminous claws
The spoon never stirs so the *** never pours

There's a crack in the window that lets in the rain
Where it runs in a rivulet right down the pane
The mattress is rotten and rusted inside
Bacteria thrive and amoeba divide
The ceiling is sagging from waterlogged beams
And catches the sunlight with putrefied gleams
Like powder, the plaster is fast in retreat
With it's choking secretions, the air is replete

There's a trace of a life that was never fulfilled
Like a drink only sipped and then carelessly spilled
There's hope of a future and trinkets amassed
But frittered away and consigned to the past
The wires are old but the bulbs are still new
And pictures of vigor are hanging askew
As if from existence, vitality blinked
A carcass remaining though life is extinct
‘You’ve come to the end, it’s sad, my friend
But there’s nothing more we can do,
Your kidneys have malfunctioned, and
You’re at the end of the queue.
You’d best be making your Will out now
Or you may run out of time,
There’s just a question of fifteen thou’
You owe for our work, just sign!’

‘I’ll not be signing my life away
Just now, though it’s almost done,
I may be taking a walk someday
But not ‘til I’ve had some fun.
You say I’ve only a week or two
To spend, and that’s at the best,
I’ll cram the rest of my living in
With the help of a Prescient Vest.’

The Prescient Vest, the brainchild of
A Silicone Valley clone,
It calculated the path of life
From the life already known,
It fed its images through a brain
That would never live to see
The normal span of the life of man
Through some abnormality.

So Kevin fronted the Institute
And was strapped into a chair,
Fitted with Vest and Headpiece
And was virtually aware,
It drained the memories of his life
That flashed on past his sight,
And stored them into a tiny file
Just less than a Gigabyte.

And then it started to calculate
Beginning with his wife,
It showed her having a sweet affair
With the boarder, Stanley Smythe,
They both attended his funeral
And she leant upon his arm,
And held the wake with a Currant cake
At Stanley’s father’s farm.

Then Kevin struggled within his bonds
And tried to say, ‘Not true!’
But then his favourite daughter came
Quite suddenly into view,
She stole the funeral money he’d
Been keeping in a jar,
Then jumped on into his Thunderbird
And drove off with his car.

She let her idiot boyfriend in
To sit behind the wheel,
But all he could see were dollar signs
And a car he’d like to steal,
He dropped her off at a candy shop
Drove off and left his Pam,
While only a half a mile away
He ended under a tram.

Kevin suffered a minor fit
At the wreck of his pride and joy,
But didn’t suffer a single qualm
At the death of the stupid boy,
His job had gone to a minor clerk,
Dumped records in the bin,
The careful working of twenty years
That he’d spent compiling them.

Then Stanley got at his savings and
He frittered them away,
His wife was clueless, she let him sell
The house he’d slaved to pay,
The future, once he had gone was not
The thing he’d visualised,
He strained and screamed at the Techs,
‘Just get this thing from off my eyes!’

He staggered home in a mood and took
Some gas from out the car,
Splashed it around the house, and took
The cash from the funeral jar,
He threw a match and it all went up
Though he didn’t know or care,
That his wife and Stan were up above
When the flames went up the stair.

He jumped on into the Thunderbird
And went for a long, last ride,
Along the Beachside Boulevard,
And once he had stopped, he died!
They’ve banned the use of the Prescient Vest
With a raft of bills and laws,
‘The future needs to be locked,’ they said,
‘For the damage it might cause!’

David Lewis Paget
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
It takes some courage to eat a legume's fruit
knowing what is known of each poisonous part
of the locust (although the flowers may be frittered).

What's pushing up through the leaf litter
before the canopy is out, past the stone fence?
Wild lily-of-the-valley is my guess.

Of 140,000 soldiers, less than 1% have considered
the fruit of the desert surprisingly good and varied.
They have stayed and married women who are crows.

My own land is a land of wetlands but we too
have crows. We have waited and waited for this election
and now we're divided into just two factions.

If everyone votes and every vote's counted there will be
nothing for either faction to crow about. All will be
well with the republic and in the world what will be will be.

What responsibility does a citizen bear
for participating in a war, blowing the roofs
off houses, exposing the beds and clean-swept floors?

Warriors at the gate, you will not run,
you will not bargain. Dig in deep, feet
overhanging the abyss, protect your children.

I poured water into the dry vase of garden cultivars -
snapdragon, phlox, bigonia, bluebell, mint -
and have they not rewarded me with their collective scent?
Reece Jan 2014
anamelesspoet* · 16 hours ago
The Weary World Traveler
Byron did blush at the faceless one's amour
Strange feeling he'd never experienced before
On the cloud blackened night by the shore
Continue reading...

Lonely and Naked ·  20 hours ago
The Light Sings A Name Majestic
                                                          You're The Light,A Name Sang Majestic
                                                             I Was The Life That You Had Ingested
                                                              This Was A Love Never To Be Tested
                                                                            Continue reading...

sweet princess · 9 hours ago
love and other hugs
i am so alone my bed misses you tonight
oh sweetie i love you - do you love me tonight
i want to look into your blue ocean eyes again tonight
Continue reading...

Daniel.M.Molasses · 19 hours ago
A story as old as thyme
A Kid signing language to his mother's despair
the way moonlight frittered throughout the air
A lost cat prowling to and fro by the gas lamp
Continue reading...
TERRY REEVES May 2016
They came for a half-term party
swarmed around me like instant charisma
wearing face-masks of Mourinho
I couldn't move - there was no place to go

I was taken back to when I was eighteen
misspent youth frittered away so they say
wished I was back there with them all
but it was gone - I couldn't any more

I couldn't be in love every other day
make outrageous comments, buy things on e-bay
not so many spots to pick at present
however, no jealousy, nothing to resent

I soaked up their bonhomie once more
gave a faint smile when I walked out the door
M Harris Feb 2017
Heavy Rain,
Under the umbrella in vain,
Exigent and ostentatious,
An egotistic hostility,
Filling the purge atmosphere,
Rain drops ebbing,
Conceiving an enchanted assault.

Fenced with free fall,
Falling into zero,
A faith so sick,
Ready to twitch.

Sanctified reminiscence of a remorseful purge,
Hateful conscience of a disgusted now.

Don’t know how,
A will to amend,
A limitless descent,
Wandering in extent,
Chaos down the ascent.

Extremity too proximal,
Grey beyond despair,
A reverence so brisk,
I’m frittered and devoid of retention.
Mikaila Apr 2013
Inching back, wind at my back,
I gave and you advanced.
You asked for a smidgen, a little more lack,
And I stumbled as we danced.

I thought, Just an inch and she'll be satisfied,
And back again I crept,
Ignoring the hollowly howling tide
From over the ledge where the angry sea slept.

I dared not look back, for it frightened me so,
And anyway I could already feel
That a few feet behind lay the edge and below
A searing cold sea of hot steel.

The wind bit at my back and you snarled for a smile
And so my lips complied.
I asked could I maybe just rest for a while?
With cold sweetness you kindly replied:

"But it's only an inch, all I want is an inch!
I need my room to grow.
I can't breathe with you near, all I need is an inch,
It's so selfish of you, you know."


And you dangled the bait- knew I couldn't stand hate-
I folded and fell in my head,
Collapsed like a house of cards, crying, "Wait! Wait!"
Your threats weighing my veins down like lead.

I gave you a foot to repent at your feet,
For my terror of falling was matched
By my heart's crying need for a reason to beat
And my cold soul your sunlight to catch.

And by and by when I rose, weak, on trembling knees
And snatched a glance behind,
I saw not packed earth but a roiling sea-
I was fast running out of time.

I could feel the vast drop with a sense more than sight,
Like cat whiskers ***** in the dark.
I felt every moment the hunger of night,
And the break neck fall thundered my heart.

I said, "Darling, I'm scared and I've come unprepared
For a fall like the one right behind me.
I'm begging you, please, let's go back over there,
Where the sting of the cold cannot find me."


"You're kidding," you said, "Are you out of your head?
Look at all of the damage you've done!
You're selfish and sad, and whatever we had is dead-
I've a mind to just run!"


And then you stepped forth with another demand,
The inch that would make my decision.
But I cowered and crumbled at your biting command
As bitter rain and cold light blurred my vision.

"I'm sorry," I said, as I clutched the edge,
"You'd better be." you then replied.
And a hair's length from plummeting right off the ledge,
You demanded an inch and I cried.

Fingernails clutched the cold stone as I wept,
And I couldn't hold out any longer.
As you blindly demanded another last step,
Drops stung down from the slate grey sky, somber.

Tears mingled with rain, and then, only then,
Did I realize it's never enough.
Never would be or could be or will or has been,
For this is your real goal, my love.

As I peer up into your lovely cold eyes,
I finally know it's not me.
The moment I loved you I was marked to die,
And even when I have gone you won't see

That you backed me, my love, drove me right off a cliff,
Demanding an inch at a time.
And I fought for each one, not a second to miss-
Before I'd lose you and leave life behind.

And now in my moments of choice and of death,
I'm asking you, please, to believe me:
I've given my sanity, life, and last breath
To beseech you, my love, not to leave me.

Forgive me if tiny things mean far too much,
But I'm living in inches, you see.
And they've been eroded and taken and touched
Until this is the only one left me.

Slowly frittered away, inch by inch, day by day,
I have given up all that you gave me.
You have taken it back, please just give me today:
It's all I want, knowing nothing can save me.
Julian Feb 2019
12/30/2018

The eloquence of listless years is lost on heady overweening heels that submerge reality in a cavernous of oblique light shrouding the dark mysteries to come. Axiomatic but refractory we swim and tread danger and peril because the unsaid screams for awakening as the roosters outfox the owls and completely change history based on evil skullduggery that awaits the gainsay of titans compromised in security but elevated over the doldrums of quotidian thought. It is my solemn forbearance and consistent steadfast prayer for alacrity and industry to conquer the dudgeons of incurred opprobrium to clinch a beatific convivial festivity for a time-informed claque of leaders that delight in simplicity but dissemble their true disguise in open shark-infested waters. Salvage the impositions of the many and cull the best to anoint their favor on uncertainties improbable but likely as the discerning will master reality rather than be the dross of yesteryear. We swarm with importunate guilds of serfdom to surrender their edifice to the chiselers that operate and extravagate beyond bounds established by parochial priggishness that is a flagging patriotic insistence on drenched graft dank with the mildew of balkanization but not entirely as reproachable as some relics of the ancient law detest with misguided guile and paranoiac sophistry that is a precarious canker of otiose tastes drawling on with misinformed skepticism. The hounding gray in the pallor of alpenglow light ennobles the concatenations of wistful dread but at the same time esoteric flavor that enriches the emblazoned gallantry of the few to become the mainstay of all relevant considerations. Wish upon a coruscating menagerie of miscegenated aboriginal languages that have always abided in the shadows but exist in brevity among the elite coteries that coddle the world in its infancy away from the artifice of exegesis and the importunate placations of swarthy umbrageous shadows that exist apart from the factitious apartheid of race and gender. We must stand united as brethren enduring the tribulations of human vicissitude to abhor the diseased rhetoric of pandered puritanism amalgamated with aleatory financial alarmism calculated to swindle the dilapidation of penury that burns as a smoldering conflagration of concerted ignorance leading to ochlocratic determinism rather than a whispered percolated pedigree that drowns sorrows but simultaneously strands the pariahs of time in insular self-reflection unbecoming of an age that demands an importunate, ubiquitous and outspoken corporate altruism not superintended by a bloviated and tumescent dysnomy of congregated botched bureaucracies that encroach with a daunting donkey commandeered by headless horsemen who are only known by pennames and cognomens that flinch at the demise of their undeserved anonymity. We use valor as an instrument to prevent a scuttled vessel of a seaworthy humanity slinking along a very balmy coast as we await future instructions at the apropos time for a simpatico relegation of commercial collectivism. We expect instead a demassified world to enliven the dialectic of epistemology itself and renew covenants long ago moribund in their ragged and wretched desuetude that they may be vanquished as vestigial habiliments to the tatters of sloppy abnegation leading to a swollen piety that dares not to pretend but simultaneously believes so much in its pilloried hubris that it provides erasure for the secular enlightenment of a messianic time. Squalor and riddled eccentricity drive a brackish but saccharine attempt to homogenize the pastures that we graze upon but look no further than a bequeathed divine providence of smirks rather than the jibes of sneering ostentation. Whisper you fame rather than declaim against the arraignments of a scuttled pettifoggery of miscegenated justice that embroils foreign wineskins for domestic turmoil rather than the demotic enlightenment of the abrogation of inequitable laws that preserve the totemic dissolution of society rather than the prized ameliorative enlightenment of science informed by faith and faith beckoning the clerisy to seek supernal wisdom and furtive swank to reconnoiter the righteous and jettison renegades imploring for a piebald blinkered apostasy on a rudimentary subconscious level but never realizing their effrontery is gravid in a heedless ignorance interpolated by menacing secular hobgoblins that ransack barren treasure and cherish it as a trinket for a chrysocracy that is specious rather than veridical. Barnstorm for justice but appoint the abeyance of foolhardy prescience so that the enigmas of time can beckon their own deliverance through a culmination of waggish flickers rather than the kowtowed toadies of a quidnunc reality divorced from proper temperance outmoded but thriving among those that disavow newfangled foudroyant spectacles. Always and with alacrity indulge the gladiatorial sportsmanship of a zeitgeist beyond contention as the paragon for livid dreams and lurid imaginations to drive the mutiny against plebeian ears and purblind eyes. Live for the eternal present with providence and forswear the vestigial fossils of flippant eras domineered by dragooning fictitious sentiments buttressed by castles built against the encroachment of the imaginary foes of vassal states that submerged the world in a fideism that rejects too many axioms of modernity to vie for preponderance. The government is not irreproachable, but it is a primeval reflection of the propensities of an aggregated society flippant against choice wisdom of the ageless Constitution that is peremptory proof of the divine providence of sempiternal liberty. People that chide against liberty because they fear precarious cankers that endanger from a distance because of their swollen specters need to uphold a commitment to a wistful remembrance of tragedy but a sturdy ruddy optimism to perdure and prosper on this greenest of worlds for both the greenhorn and the expert alike. Never kowtow before the altar of avarice and always pilfer resourceful contemplation in the respite of quiet times that engage our best faculties to awaken rather than slumber. Recruit the collective imagination to superintend chaos and the leviathan becomes tamed because it requires human synergy in both prosperous times and desperate measures to foment the earth with the brontides of due warning simultaneously murky and misleading but always reflective of an irenic pasture of withering sheep and abundant shepherds. Regal promises have always loitered in the penumbras of the elite but now is the time for absolution rather than scattershot contumely. We believe in the federal way and the state farm system and we don’t believe in foreign monoliths becoming the pasquinade of slippery hebetude that ensnares the immobilized futilitarianism of ignorant creeds and divisive claptrap. Barnstorm together for God and liberty as those two principles-however squandered they might be by listless speculation that doesn’t hinge upon the concerted subaudition of the deeply fathomed sources glistening with profundity- will clinch a victory for the beatific future of a guided humanity rather than the guileless intemperance of choleric fools who wage conflagration against only their own plodding ignorance rather than reaching with outstretched hands and tenacious grasps to invent the future according to the helical perfection of the past. May God rule forever on earth! A prosperous earth! An Earth filled with pleasure and an Earth that approximates heaven more closely every day. Amen  



12/31/2018

Riddled by bewildering supernal designs of an ineffable splendor that drapes reality in iridescent cloaks of rigorous and strenuous limber we trounce through the effigies of a profaned pasquinade to gallop through the doldrums of time for the allocated investment in the refined human condition to exacerbate the declension of foes but link the Abrahamic faiths with taciturn reflections and wizened countenances beckoning a newfangled harmonious destiny. Livid are the naysayers who proffer gainsay with insouciance and flippant sorcery to denigrate sacrosanct axioms with persnickety maxims that are only auriferous when viewed through a refracted entropy of disdainful speculative mutiny against propriety in values and stances. I sidle through a refractory zeitgeist despised for my aureate temerities against the chided condemnation of those who flout so-called gobbledygook because they lack stringent acuity and pale to the polish of ennobled grace that anoints favor and felicity on the laurels of an age very intransigent against latitudinarian capriciousness that will one day ransack the world of its flickered graft and its paltry obsessions with quondam gaucheries. A house divided against itself will flounder because of titanic pressures of oblique balkanization that is opaque only to the hounded ignorance of wishful but labile people who wage acerbic gambles against the delegated authors of an aborning covenant for irenic reconciliation in a blinkered piebald world. I like to saunter in private with my insistent lucubrations because I know the majestic gestures of jest are more bountiful in their fecund harvest than any circumlocution of blunt poetasters who calumniate the verve of self-made upstart grandeur that I brandish at every opportune occasion to pilfer my due inheritance from the coffers of a self-fulfilling fatalism divorced from solipsistic monisms and the denigrations of the futilitarian quest to deprive sustenance in the exercise of deft skepticism disempowering the perspicacity of miserly mendicants who treasure their science but pale in their trepidatious momentary twinges of faith that are insincere and unctuous abominations against a steadfast God that wallops our misery with the lurched progress of human amelioration wrought by the succor of alien wizardry beyond even the most quixotic imaginations of people who in their prolixity miss the pithy glib sacraments of a terse and burlesque pragmatism. I simper because I know about carbon emissions statistics with hearty gusto and a convivial banquet of amalgamated personalities and wraiths that emanate from the ether of the 12th dimension of reality: transdimensional interspecies sentience. I wrangle on the outskirts of a bustled city embroiled in a relegated civil war entangling plebeians and plutocrats but not engorging any coffers in a zugzwang destined for pejorative scuffles rather than synergistic revivals of the human fraternity, a consensus about intellectual meliorism that will fossick with due efficiency cognitive resources frittered away in the respite of laziness and the abeyance of prospective diligence to conquer rather than waylay with furtive gambits of appeasement. Everyone need to leapfrog beyond the quotidian plane by indulging the oneiromancies of self-efficacy aggrandized by presidential favors and collective efforts to unite the 16th version of reality with the penultimate version of reality. For the ultimate version of reality is corporeal death upon which we are transplanted unto an ethereal dimension beyond contemplation without the horological diminishment of wizened age.  We trudge in the miserly conditions imposed by pharaohs of pettifoggery that swindles with blustery graft and strident intimidation of the audacity of hopes and dreams to foment the requisite fin de seicle zeitgeist that deserves more of a heyday with the revivalism of nostalgic entertainment against the opprobrium of inferior tastes facile in formulaic conformity but deficient in its nutritive enrichment of beatific festivities that traverse the earth at lightspeed because of the vehement energy of foudroyant amazement is beyond contagious when conveyed through the dexterous vehicles of more centralized rather than skeletonized organization. The bonhomie of a copacetic future demands the interpolation of scrupulous adherence to authoritative dictums but the laissez-faire demagoguery of titans trouncing the ragamuffins of cacestogenous upbringing in a miserly husbandry that stunts the stilted imaginations of formalism rather than bequeathing a seminal insemination of a future hybridized race mechanized but humanized simultaneously to accomplish what would once seem impossible that now looms considerable with the democratization of the furtive at a faucet’s trickling pace to empower the future to heed the past and the pastors to revere the eschatology of final conditions rather than a favoritism for aboriginal barbarisms created by the snare of hobgoblin phantasms that exist only to make us tremulous rather than swanky. May God bless this great green earth with many decades of prosperity to come and heap plaudits on the intellectuals fighting the fight against simpleton groupthink. Have a very festive New Year!
Flexing a 155-160 Verbal Expressive IQ
Fee Berry May 2012
Will they say I lived all my life
On suburban roads
Not of the city or of the country
But a place in between
Will they say I never took any risks,
Never had to hack my arm off in extremis
Never eating anybody's cousin in desperate straits?

Like millions I struggled from one pay day to another,
Trying to stop the haemorrhage of money through the bars and pubs of the town...
Trying to keep up, to keep the income over the outgoings.
I don't care what the Joneses do.

I long for the wild places without fences or walls,
Where the birds wheel and the wind blows lustily,
Where the sound of the sea is never far away
Where the shores rustle their greeting to the waves
And the driftwood tumbles up and down the beach.

I long to run without worrying I am going to break a knee or hip,
Long for those days when I didn't know what I had, who I was, what I was going to be.
"Youth is wasted on the young," said my grandmother, and I protested, but I didn't understand
Until now
How little I appreciated my youth while I had it.

Will they say I had talent but I
Frittered it away on unfinished projects
Neither brilliant nor awful, but somewhere
in between?
Will they say I never took any risks,
Never embroidered all my lovers or
Revealed my innermost self?

Like millions, I was always writing my book, a novel or
a handbook or an autobiography.
The truth is, I started too many times, and finished
Never.

I long for a place of my own, a library
A place to keep everything that means anything
A place to watch my family on the wall, laughing and smiling
While I write or sew or research or simply read
A place for being and a place for remembering and everything in its place.

I long to write without worrying about the consequences,
Long to say what I think
A place to scour the corners of my memory, to see the pattern of my life.


Will they say, they hadn't realized I was still alive?
Will they say, I never kept in contact, which is true
I have tested my ability to live without them all
And I can.
What will they say about the person I have become?
What can I say?  I tolerated difference and saw none.
I loved the people I loved
Did the things that I did
And I am not sure what sort of future I made for myself, or what past.
JC Lucas Aug 2015
If I had back every dime I've ever frittered away foolishly,
I'd be rich
for a day.
A web of terror would know quaintness  
in their crêpe variety where a spider grew angrier
only silk woven blouse blest bats
why darts inside heads if their tough regimen were slime
and never really frittered away an hour at bay.
farahD Nov 2014
Dug deep into desire,
Of passion and lust,
With me.

Spark the joy,
Of mementos and dramas,
With me.

Resonate in tad dramatic,
Of fashion and style,
With me.

Be yourself and with me,
But not frittered away,
By details of my life,
Or yours.

So hold tight,
Walk with me,
through this life,
And the next,
Because I love you.
i.
The rich man.

Somewhere where the shingle slopes up to the shore and the sun scattered
patternlike diamonds on our skins and the costumes we wore were too tight to fit in
we frittered away the beach and the day in soft talk.

Sweet words once were spoken but now they lay broken between the sea and the tide line,
somewhere in time.
ii.
The beggarman.

Unshaven,
who will spare me
the price of a tea and would
that save me from drowning
in the depths that we
used to be?

Now behind me, the diamond patterns still blind me and bring tears to the jewels in my eyes,
if I could unsign the times which time lent me, which ultimately aged and then bent me, would it set me as free as the shore and the sea?

iii.
The thief.

But each ocean goes on until it is gone
and when the sun drinks it dry at the
edge of the sky,
we are gone too.
Kurt Philip Behm Nov 2016
The Camp Cooky’s singin again outa tune,
  about turnin 60 today around noon

"What good is there in it?" I hear him say,
  and it got me to thinkin . . . seein it was his birthday

It seems bein 60’s got two spins to that tale,
  one frittered and wrinkled, the other covered in shale

The one who’s 60 if truth be told,
  is still younger than all those 61—to real old

In the campfire’s crackle of light I can see,
  how everyone younger, is likely dumber than me

So if my hands struggle with the knots and riggin fer sure,
  the knowin and the tellin to those younger’s worth more

Havin outlived many a cow horse, while lovin them all,
  the awnry and skitterish, the short and the tall

The summers ridin drag, and the worst winters mendin fence,
  with a slicker full a holes, and that ol dog with no sense

And while the cuttin and the brandin seems boring to some,
  it’s the importance of their nature and gettin things done

When the hats and the spurs and even the saddles are all gone,
  and the sun sinks over that last mountain, like in Dusty’s ol song

I’ll remember the good times, lettin go of the bad,
  and think back on the pards and the ladies I’ve had

Because just like for Cooky, it happened last year to me,
  and turnin 60 seemed ranker than any bronc could ever be

But like that new Visalia saddle the boss man said was now mine,
  I've found somethin that’s different, somethin gentler and kind

The speed and the strength ain’t been traded for free,
  and somethin woke up that I guess was sleepin in me

And as I yell to the wrangler “Cut me one gentle and nice”
  without loosin too much pride I ask, “Can you help Ol Jim
  cinch his riggin real tight”

Then once more in the dark I ride off in search of the herd,
  singin that one favorite cow song every real hand has heard

And as I inch up on the lead steer whisperin mellow and low,
  “Yippee ki yay, Ol Fella; you ready to go”

For maybe one last time we push North thru the dark,
  the sun still two hours off to the right of our mark

While in the distance a wolf howls, as that lead steer catches my
  eye, and in that instant I know I’m still needed—a long ways
  from g’bye

(Dewey Montana: Circa 1990) Read In Elko Nevada, 1993
rebecca hunter Jan 2018
Our time here is so very short -
We only realise this when we're getting old.
If only our young self were more mindful of this
And treated time more like gold:

Valuable and beautiful and something to be savoured,
Like someone you love, whom you always favour.
Never waver the flavour
Of that favour we've been given
Of Time, more elusive than rhyme!

From the ridiculous to the sublime -
One piece of time can feel like yesterday or yesteryear.
But it's always going away - never fear
Actually, do fear - that something so dear is frittered aloft,
Disregarding the cost of every day bought for us

For us to use, and choose to be useful
Each day that is new, to be used to be fruitful -
Beautiful fruit like beautiful gold
Valuable, glittering
Let's be bold - and let our Story be told!
Heeramon, stop for me a while
For one lost word one smile
Long brewing in deep
For long caged in lip.
It’s time we made a start
Rein rush and speak our heart
In moments precious holding hands
Pick pieces of that lost word’s strands.
For long we have lived in thrift
Two islands remote adrift
In coldness distant aloof
In silence under mortuary’s roof!
Heeramon, it’s time for rewind
Walk back the times left behind
On the stretch of frittered away mile
Where we left one word one smile!
Heeramon, my love.
Thomas Sloan Nov 2014
Turn it on
Switch it over
Where is all the effort?
Expended
Frittered into dark corners of the glowing light
The imperative is stolen
Thought yielding to entertainment
Our abilities squandered
Reason hammered and hampered
by our addiction to mindlessness
The warm blanket of comfort
Safety
Turn it on
Switch it over
I can’t be bothered
I don’t want to think
I just like the noise.
Is it different
From finding others who make noises like you
and mooing together?
Lifting your tongue, raising your voice
As you join the cacophony of the voiceless
Chattering their way
Through the daylit midnight hours.
In the crowded room no one is listening
Except those who want to hear.
Turn it on
Switch it over
Nevermore Jul 2015
One day
You'll meet the person you were meant to become
But didn't
Maybe because of bad decisions
Wrong life choices
Poor impulse control
Sheer laziness
Selfishness
Crippling addiction

You'll meet that person
And flounder in the tearful aftermath
That quiet devastation
Of the could-have-beens and what-ifs
Wither in the fallout of regret and remorse

They don't tell you these things in school

That if you'd just reined in your temper a bit
Had been more generous
Overlooked life's little injuries
And spread goodwill instead of vitriol

What a difference it would have made

You realize these things just a little too late
When your life is half-spent
Frittered away
On petty squabbles and noxious grudges
Like cresting a hill
Only to see your path end at a sheer drop

If you're lucky
You'll be too far gone
Drowning in your pit
To even realize
The incarnation of foregone potential
Staring at you in the face
And so
Pass the rest of your days
In blissful ignorance

They don't tell you these things
Or how to at least maintain composure
When you get waylaid
By these belated revelations
Piper Diggory Apr 2018
‘Why’ yawps and whines in the corridor, dim
lights paving ceilings to greater unkindnesses;
Greater unknowns fester in cigarette smoke,
And always in dwindling moonlight . What do you
Suppose of yourself? Is it to be, or not
Until men in hats set your sad sky aflame?
The sunset stains you, you’re frittered and worn,
Deluged in the spirits of seventeen.
The night unties the laces of school kids
And you lie in your idle sheets of euphoria
To ignore, or simply not to know.
Where did you go
When you said you don’t know, in sheets shrouding school kids
and their shoelaces all soaked with the sap
Of seventeen, sunset coloured in daylight
Beckoned by men in hats asking rudely of
Scathed suppositions and how they might sound
When the moon is seen blushing in thieving late hours  
Catching cigarettes with fading lungs in its glow,
And the greater unknowns which prey on us all;
At the end of poorly lit corridors, asking why.
one I wrote when I turned 18
A W Bullen Oct 2021
At the zenith
of sartorial sloppiness,
frittered loosely in my scruff,

I clobber,
combats, sneakers,
faux-fur coats and baggy t shirts
stuff that wraps me up,
and I'm OK..

You can keep
your first- world
judgement

see
I've always
been this way

part scarecrow, hermit,
vermin, pirate,

all at sea with
modern stylists.

                    

And by the circle of our
strange unwritten rules

for a season, once in twenty years,
I, somehow, become cool.
I recall a mate saying, that, come the weekend,
me must go shopping for some cloves,
This seemed a bit niche, almost a bit too leftfield, but then , hey! , maybe he was going through some grit with an iffy molar, or fancied early ( as in August-early) pipes on some mulled wine

"Nah, Bruv.."Cloves wiv a "T-H"..

Schooled, I was.
It’s time you turn the machine off, it’s time,
Before the bard in you flies away
With the last melodious rhyme.
For too long your eyes are fixed on the screen
Living in a virtual world forgetting your kin
While you looked away, the rainbow came and went
The flower bloomed and withered
You never got her scent.
The clouds gathered on you for your glance
Then wilted, you frittered away the chance,
Every bit of nature on your door knocks
To find you lost in the rectangular box,
Switch it off, turn your eyes
Before the bard in you forever dies!
Hitting the day running,
the sun in my eyes and
the cyan blue sky looks unreal.

The church clock chimed eight,
eight
hours too late for the man in
the morning coat
and shiny new shoes.

And in a word you can lose
one third of a day,
eight hours frittered away and the
sun still in my eyes.

The internal clock never ceases
to mock me
whatever I do it is there but
the shock wears away,
and in that third of a day
my life's led astray

— The End —