"funneled" poems
Two ticks click
through my ears
fuego leapt from
steel grasp to burn
destroying as it
flares across the valley
Smoke billowed into
the clutches of
hard, purple plastic
pressing in from all sides
funneled into sacks
of tendrils. They cringe
grey swirls choking
off pipes and
blood lines
Veins bursting with
new chemicals
Spewed out over
the burnt plains
But the valley
is just a small
groove on a
burnt out, tired
brain
Nov 13, 2012
Nov 13, 2012 at 3:55 AM UTC
We're in hell
Can't you tell?
No you can't
You only listen to the teller
All other voices are drowned
Because he's a yeller
For the useless things we're bound
That fill up our cellar
And our living room turns into a dying room
When the seller is the jailer
And salvation comes from tailors
Who can cover up the pain inside
With all the comfy clothes we buy
Money is the blood of our society
It's circulation provides oxygen
But we spill money into spilling blood
And we're funneled into killing love
So we can concern ourselves
With people not getting things they don't deserve
Rather than people getting what they need
Our blood starts clotting
In the fortunate arteries
As the rest of our body goes numb
It seeks medicine for healing
And drugs become our autoimmune disease
Redistributing blood to the suffocated areas
An unfortunate recompensing for injustice
When the persecutors
Become the prosecuted
Lives are exploded
Like Afghan villages
Lives can grow back
Like poppy fields
That's the score
And it makes me want to score
Until ****** drips from every pore
And ******* fills me to the core
I could just live at the liquor store
Where benzos are my father
And **** my mother
So I can ignore the death of my brother
My family is in trouble
Our society is in rubble
Aug 23, 2017
Aug 23, 2017 at 8:14 AM UTC
They enter the café just as some sappy pop song is playing
They order then immediately hug
Embrace
Swaying to one side, together, like the wind
Encircling the leaning tower of Pisa
Then teetering to the other solstice
Foot to foot, smile to smile, hand round skirted waist
Forearm resting on his tall blazered shoulders
This is forgivable in the young
Those teeny-boppers with defiant hair-cuts and posters
However, he has peppered hair
She, though voluptuous and tanned,
Must be in her 30s.
“Affair.”
My cynical devil snickers, between sips
But I sit mesmerized, and for the first time ever
Envious.
The chairs and the tables somehow seem more distant
The song now sounds as if it’s funneled through some crackling phonograph
The very light disentangles itself from stones
It’s as if a sky has opened up in my chest
Flying high overhead, one lone raven,
Its slow shadow
Gliding across my heart
Oh, how I miss you
5 states away
I see your smile on magazine covers
I vaguely sniff your scent on passing women
Yet you remain elusive - immaterial, haunting,
While this visceral assault
Leaves me bewildered - empty
An echo in a chiaroscuro cavern
Fading for thee
Jul 28, 2016
Jul 28, 2016 at 5:31 PM UTC
If I could speak
I would spill these lamentations
cloistered sins and secrets
whispered vespers for wretched dreams
Retching sentiment
this malignant manifesto
a macabre mantra
eats my skin from within
transient refuge for temporal treasures
inexorable moments carry life away
tick tick tick
the seconds scurry
flurried ineffectual supplications
demigods of affluence
the cacophony of the machine
I spin within
cogniscient of my myopia
the funneled tunnel vision
drips from the end of a pen
furtive verses on paper
fading ochre moments
somber drops of ash and bone
poetic exorcisms
of wicked things unknown
phrenetic
sensibilities trickle
spilling life
black and withering
is the gain worth sacrifice
crackling fat of dreams
too costly
this shallow palette
self obsessed
eyes gouged out
hands shackled
to the reality
the immortality
trust the dust
the dust becomes me
soul focused on decay
spectre death
devouring this unsparked spirit
If I could speak
truth into your heart
would you
believe.....
in anything more than what you see
I trust the dust and dust will be
the remnant me
TL Boehm
042508
Oct 14, 2013
Oct 14, 2013 at 5:11 PM UTC
The hollow wind funneled the voice
of the distant night-train crossings,
awakening a familiar silence
hanging from the vast wilderness sky
A restless heart hearkening the echoes,
imagining a runaway Pullman
flew away off the rails, airborne
on the winged wind headed north
Winter pausing for a moment
in the shadows of familiarity,
as if parsing the unspoken breathings
in an echoless surrendered sigh;
uncertain if tacit words set free
could ever allow a heart broken
to feel whole again
There is no absolving voice
that whispers in a solemner tone :
Death has no mercy ―
love remains marooned in the wake ,..
and it feels like the world’s gone mad
letting time be the arbiter of perpetuity
The fading dream of a motherless child;
a wish to be held maternally
fell to the ground with a thud,
breaking the silence,
dissipating formless as the shape of water
Muted cold lips so full of questions
morphing into fugitive sighs
come the unsettled night;
when shadows disappear like frail memories
that passed too soon to grasp,
thickly palpable as the warm breath
a winter bird alone on frosty branch
There’s no fear in braving the darkness
in the winter wilderness of life borne alone
There’s no way of knowing what you’ll find
down that long empty road back home
Life just flashes by silently before your eyes
through the windshield
of countless miles and miles
And there’s nothing you can do about it ―
It’s like hearing the moment of truth in a lie
when all I was looking for
was how I got here in this now,.. yesterday
only finding a hopeless poet
scribbling slightly stained pages,
spilling a bitter sweet dream ...
harlon rivers ... February 2018
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Feb 14, 2018
Feb 14, 2018 at 10:31 AM UTC
With no expectation all's novelty
The new patterns don't astound us
We can stay in the middle of the river with our heads above the water
And safely watch the coastline pass us by
The outside world an ocean of television static
The signals painting pictures of entropic holograms
That interlock and correlate
Until the ghosts of time are churning out
Like geese into a a tiny hole
In an orange plastic fence
Fleeing mischievous youngsters
Who love to watch them funneled in
Like grains of sand in an hourglass.
We too live in an hourglass
And the grains of sand empty out the bottom
Floating aimlessly through an unending void
And the ultimate improbability
Goes through the formality of actually occurring
When the grain of sand finds itself at the beginning
Passing once again through the hourglass
Undivided, indistinguishable
Nov 28, 2012
Nov 28, 2012 at 10:12 AM UTC
In a dream I shall feel
The wings of the world unfolding, and
Worlds spinning on the axis of mad journeys;
And the seas breaking turquoise, upon their rippled surface.
In the heart of the ears
I shall hear the shivering willows, dreaming their
Wood-smoke dreams, full of sap and funneled sunlight;
Pierced by light for a thousand years
And the flowers sleeping nestled in stars;
Gathered in the deep, among the wood-thrushes,
In coagulated violet forests, all shadowed and dark:
And a whispered peace barely rustles this world.
Apr 28, 2010
Apr 28, 2010 at 2:44 PM UTC
Walking, always walking,
Puzzled youth being funneled like cattle,
Seek shelter from the sun,
Jeer and poke at each other,
All from the safety of their cell phones.
Constantly seeking that one undesired retention
Of jukebox explosion catapults.
Thrusting us deeper into the mind/brain paradox
What is this?
What are these strange mutterings in the dark?
Babysitting wasp nests by electro shock railroads,
Disgust in the face of the many.
Where is this golden eclipse we’re all waiting for?
How can I not see the spiders on my windowsill?
Are these anguished, infantile youth truly desired?
Aggravated Neanderthal men
Try to impress pulsating goddesses of Light,
All to no prevail.
Sickening feeling in the gut,
Why aren’t you here?
Well I suppose,
Things have changed.
The Empress of the tunnel
Seeks out the empire halls
Of the tunnel-bound angst,
Musicians in the hall strumming
There thoughtless musings,
While the the debutantes watch and listen.
The intensity is unbearable to them,
They must seek shelter in their ipods.
Milk, must have it.
Watching them creep through the cafe,
May they one day find what they’re seeking.
Where are they?
Sitting here by myself,
Look at them jeering at each other
In their own jargons.
Have they seeked out the pleasure of life?
Dream-like meditations,
Well-rounded views of life,
Happiness within.
Dumbly smile at each other,
Seeking closeness,
Mind/body consciousness
Feb 28, 2011
Feb 28, 2011 at 1:05 PM UTC
I walk along Pacific Avenue
Santa Cruz, CA
I walk down past the nice parts
to the bus station
near seedy bars
and a sandwich board reads
Cafe Pergolesi one block
with an arrow pointing
It's not too early to scout locations
It's the location of my opening scene
I approach, and I see, it is still alive
in this summer evening
people outside and in
a trod upon, worn and comfortable air
various levels to the porch
even ash trays on the tables
like Vegas, everyone is welcome
Inside, this is no Starbucks
You don't see a line clearly where you must order
and pay
like a theme park
or a hospital
or a slaughter house
where you are funneled
It's not too clean
But it's filled with comfort
Huge couches beckon
A Victorian house
One people lived in
with spaciousness and windows
Real air permeates the place
An ATM is casually smashed between a couple of tables
but no one cares
you can't mass produce this wonderful mess
A friend's band CD blares through the speakers
badly recorded
a barrista in carefully torn fishnets sneaks a break
on the back porch with her cell phone
I buy water and a cookie and settle into a huge worn chair
Every room has a different theme
But I want comfort
I pull out my notebook and write
I have a shopping list of scenes
And I add another one for this place
Would they let me shoot here?
I don't know
But I think I could live here
It's so non judgemental
People buy things
But there isn't that corporate pressure
There are no special names for dumb things
just small, large, cookie, beer
This is cafe bliss
Jul 21, 2012
Jul 21, 2012 at 4:09 PM UTC
The sky is ripe with stinking wet scorch marks,
And bleeds in petrified phosphorescent snapshots,
Trapped by droplets that
Pour from scratched gorges,
Clawed into the ether by electricity's unkempt fingernails:
An unholy flow, funneled to quench
A celestial ****** of tap-dancing crows;
Their flickering ***** miming pastiche skeleton shapes,
Beckoning black hole embers
Through trap-doors to some ghastly Cathedral of Mirrors:
A padlocked whinstone veil of white lightning,
Encasing maze reflected upon monolithic maze -
Paths billowing torrents of burning shadow -
Thrusting day, night and apocalypse between
Those rusting bars of strobe.
Oct 11, 2014
Oct 11, 2014 at 2:16 PM UTC
I set a paper rocket flyin', and it hurtled into space
breaking off gravity - all the way to Mars orbity!
Now everyone's surprised, coz a mere paper rag
flew up high and reached that rarefied lile where
only the costliest of junkets lounge leisurely by.
They said you're stupid, you got a paper twit to beg
and you've wampered even that away: how dares
a hungry haggard send missives down the skies?
I stand staring, starry eyed. This is an old squint,
that I got learning to look the other way as
my brothers starved and pottered on the streets
when cotton and coal funneled to Manchester leets.
But last heard, papa John's makin' paper boats
to swim by them snooty stars and there's a scramble
at my yards to get some ******* to the Moon.
Nov 11, 2014
Nov 11, 2014 at 12:41 PM UTC
363
I went to thank Her—
But She Slept—
Her Bed—a funneled Stone—
With Nosegays at the Head and Foot—
That Travellers—had thrown—
Who went to thank Her—
But She Slept—
’Twas Short—to cross the Sea—
To look upon Her like—alive—
But turning back—’twas slow—
1.8k
Your pupils are black holes
and they tug and they tug at me
like how a tornado tugs at the gutter on the side of a tin roof house
in the middle of Oklahoma.
But instead of a gutter and rain
it's blood funneled through my veins
and instead of blood,
it's liquid love.
You're broken
and I like that and how I can just
wedge myself into the valleys of your cracked up porcelain skin
because I am, I am liquid love
and its a simple fact that liquids spread to fill the space in which they are.
Even a river.
But here's a little disclaimer: I never cared much about science.
I was only really interested in our chemistry.
And here is a little exclamation: I don't know anything!
Except that your bruises are actually interstellar clouds
and that spot right under your fingernail is the most comfortable bed of all.
I like how you're covered in speckles like a knock-off Jackson *******
But instead of freckles they are constellations
and I am a quasi-astronomer artist who believes more in zodiac compatibility
than Attiyah's Sun theory.
I think this poem is unravelling
like that sweater I left in your house once
and I think and I think and I think
these last few stanzas are the loose string.
But that's okay because we're falling apart anyway
like the pages out of my old sketchbook from ninth grade.
But that doesn't stop me from pretending that
you're a Gothic cathedral and I'm a hopeless romantic
in the middle of an architectural revival.
And that doesn't stop you from getting drunk
getting drunk off that fermenting liquid love.
And that doesn't stop our hair from growing or
the universe from expanding or
people from living in the core of tornado alley or
you from lining my heart, my heart with the pages
you ripped right out of my diary.
Jun 8, 2011
Jun 8, 2011 at 6:16 PM UTC
Another day of anguished waiting
My earthly life, now put on hold
Another day, that I am hating
Of my death, I have been told
My life is now an hour glass
My days, those grains of sand
Veiled by tears, I watch them pass
As I am funneled, to my end
I cannot slow or stop the flow
Each grain, thus bleeds my heart
All earthly things, I should let go
But I'm yet, not ready to depart
My sorrow strikes like lightning
Piercing bolts of what’s to come
My doubts and fears keep heightening
Until deaths hand does me succumb
In this world, I’m just a speck
My life, sifting into death
As that last grain, slips past the neck
I’ll take my final breathe
I wonder if, I’ll fly on wings
Or be prodded by a scythe
Will my remorse, then save my soul
When I am forced, to leave this life
BOEMS BY JA 498
Apr 12, 2016
Apr 12, 2016 at 9:50 AM UTC
Trapped, pent up frustration.
Block, and then release.
Pull on the reins, ease on the tension.
Back and forth, over and over.
Restlessness, to contentment, and back.
Funneled to but one, cramped outlet.
What shall I do?
Stick it out, wait around?
Turn tail, flee, never return?
Dec 11, 2010
Dec 11, 2010 at 8:02 PM UTC
Slowly,
we are all going insane,
slowly, but surely, we are all slipping down the same path,
some pushed to the brink sooner than others,
some farther behind.
We all trudge towards our doom,
funneled and guided to the right area
by the hands of our society.
The end has been predicted many times,
in different ways, by different people:
many a stray asteroid has been foretold,
one that will sink it's rocky teeth into the earth,
and make it explode.
It seems like the end may finally be coming,
people have been pushed so far, that they have cracked.
Their minds have broken,
their thoughts have jumbled,
they don't know who they are.
They are zombies,
literally and figuratively.
Zombies.
The ones who have been consumed by society
and spit back out again,
forced to live in a world that they want no part of,
so they attack,
and,
much like the zombies from storybooks,
they have this strange appetite,
that is full of a thirst for others.
These people care not for the world,
or their own bodies even,
no, they don't care.
They rip themselves apart,
tear into their own flesh,
and escape reality,
finally,
after succumbing to their fate.
The world,
pushed against unseen boundaries,
forced to the brink of insanity,
has finally spilled over,
and now,
we must fight the zombies
inside ourselves.
Sep 22, 2012
Sep 22, 2012 at 5:38 PM UTC
I know you still can't breathe
And your ribs burn
But I love it
When I finish laughing first
Because for a moment
I am the insomniac
Enthralled by the lucid dreamer
(your eyelids flutter)
I am the Catholic
Entranced by the shameless drunk
(your hiccups slur)
And your giggles pop like
Bubble bath and boiled syrup
And everything is funny
Everything is spine-chillingly funneled
Your sprite and shrieks nosedive
Into my bloodstream
Spike my heartstrings
And your cheeks
Swell and splotch and squish
Into those sparkling eyes
Until they gush
And you try to stop it, but
Like gagging on lake water
You can't
Not until every sprinkle gets spewed
And baby, there is so much
So much beauty
Spawning inside of you
So much to share, and I starve for it
I soar with it
And for a moment
A dreamer stirs the city
A drunkard saves the world
The children stump the wisemen
As you shake the cobwebs
From your ribs
For one more second
Reality is fragile
Love is tangible
And nothing else is
Sep 19, 2018
Sep 19, 2018 at 1:12 AM UTC
Love is so complex;
too grandiose to comprehend,
too intricate to explain,
lost in some ulterior realm,
in a universe that is foreign
where the only thing of which I am certain
is that I am in fact
lost in you.
My body goes on autopilot
as my hands grip the sterilely frigid steering wheel,
speeding 20 miles over the limit,
body going through the motions
as my mind slips back into love,
into the all-consuming mesmerization,
grasping at song lyrics like straws,
searching the vowels and consonants for the
y - o - u
that I hear in them.
Reality comes and goes,
but you remain,
even in the moments most mundane;
sipping the koolaid slowly,
injecting your poison deeper into my veins
as I struggle to prevent the come-down.
What I feel buried deep inside...
it dries out my mouth,
creates craters in my stomach,
esophageal spasming,
I fight to catch my breath at the sight of your name on my phone,
the sound of your voice as you speak my name.
A thundering tsunami bursting at the seams of my
pale skin, my rosy cheeks,
the ferocity of my burning love
scraping against the bone and cartilage
to rip through me and
devour you...
And the only way that you
allow me to love you,
it's so small, it's so
momentary,
you only able to drink one
drop
at
a
time,
an entire hydraulic system,
streams and tributaries,
rivers and oceans,
forcefully squeezed,
funneled into daily droplets.
Dreaming of the last time I tasted you,
the times you used
to intertwine your body
with mine,
lost in incomprehensible ecstasy,
I can now only love you
through the simplicity of
conversation
and
of sitting by your side;
however,
even in its relative infinitesimalness,
I anticipate, yearn evermore for the stillness,
for I know that if today were to be my last,
if my hands were to slip off the steering wheel,
my body becoming sterilely cold,
your name would be the first word I would
speak
in my survival,
the last thought I would think
in my demise.
And though those moments
do exist
where I grow impatient,
frustrated with the walls you've built,
the dams you've constructed
to guard against my love's roaring riptide,
I would rather lose myself,
drop
by
drop
to you,
love you in the most minute way,
if it means I can
love you
at all.
Nov 21, 2014
Nov 21, 2014 at 1:33 AM UTC
Walking around Widener bookstore
Brown bag 40oz in grip on the first floor
Hurricane
my life and future funneled life a twister whimsical whirlwind
down the hatch guzzle guzzle. Oh, Christie! How are you!? can you see I am a mess? I know Youtell my Chinese girlfriend from our study abroad you saw me a mess in the bookstore. SHe is now heartbroken in chongquing. see ah ha
later im just returning books to get dope money.
LAter
Oh, I see you are stocking that Stranger Camus
Langston Hughes
English 102
I drift in my own “end of summers night”
still dreamin’
still falllin’
Dropping, stumbling, the house of German exchange professors
Sequestered on speed *****
Welcome to Chester
Corpse exquisite
the Bride resides in physics-compartmentalized-drawers
hiding refuge from the storm
He was Alone
( Most of the time he got weirded out easily)
Feb 11, 2015
Feb 11, 2015 at 7:53 PM UTC
Ever decreasing circles
Tessaracts
And mine fields
Hindsight blind sided
Ostensibly this funneled
Tunnel vision
OCD in oscillations
The vortices surround me
Gravity
On my event horizon
The memory of sunlight thins
This meridian
Soul and spirit intersect
At the latitude of foolish intentions
Emotional circumspect
The absolution of revolutions
Pull my fatal focus center
Enter in
To end
Where I begin
*aufero vestri cranium ex vestri ****
whispered litany
reverse reverberation
In that space between statis
And 360 degrees
Stretch out my arms
And I am free…..
Ever increasing circles
From the epicenter
To destiny
TL Boehm
092809
*remove your cranium from your ****
Sep 24, 2014
Sep 24, 2014 at 11:30 AM UTC
The Truth of it all is that aggression leads to strife
In my own confession I'd rather not die by the knife
We as humans have this need to supersede
despite our insight and things
We only grow when we bleed
Our staff and hands
be tools to keep the lions at bay
All our brains used in vein
when we set a blaze to the grains
now with our swords we make wars
before there was peace to balance
now we make wars in malice
Forgetting Mother Earth feeds us
from the same challis
I cut my hand on the handle as I manicure with the lathe
Spit and Curse at the ground and then walk away
in dismay
our belongings are found in disarray
another jealous of another's work diary
hands and feet destroyed
blood and sweat ignored
We throw Rocks to knock them off
but meet death by the blade
So we hammer out a sheet
just to protect what we've made
As if the mothers hand we're not enough
Surviving her change
Change
I'm from the land of the Star
my culture reigns down from Dallas
my travels are far and wide
with our tools I fly over this freedom palace
but at every checkpoint
they scan with all seeing eyes
They Shadow a Doubt with gun point
Frisky hands finger out for lies
As I challenge that my Utensil is to help not to hurt
they won't believe me cause the pen points cause mental alpha ****
So what’s my lesson to be learned?
How does my Rhema become Word!?
I flock my words like a Sheppard guard it from the absurd
leave my lessons and my sessions underground to mature
Poetry is what I breed and when I die all may see
some take shelter beneath branches of my Po Wet Tree
that drop insight and wisdom seed seasoned with change of Colored leaves
When they cut me down
with Axe and Dagger
my pen points the bullet
A running Kid like Merle Hagard
I spread ink seeds like soul feed
emotion water and potion notions
like fodder funneled, I dyed, You reed
Sow, only take that you need
if you have a life then keep it free of weeds
cherish the fruits of labor and leave minds be.
Nov 12, 2016
Nov 12, 2016 at 8:29 AM UTC
i want
this stream of consciousness
to pool around me
but its rushed feed of tumult is
only mine to thumb through
i dip one finger in
eddies pixelate skitter strip
look and
catch a glimpse
of brilliance yet
ultimately
bleed
into a
scream of conscience
i
am
funneled toward a
delta
leading my unheld hand off
to a sleepy deep dive into nothing i know im
drown
ing
Dec 7, 2014
Dec 7, 2014 at 3:01 AM UTC
Fresh night air breezes past me,
Funneled down though parking garages,
Running over brick roadways past the backside of restaurants
And through the smoke of every kitchen employee
Burning on the back street.
The smell of fresh brewed trash hangs faintly in every moment,
But goes mostly unacknowledged by all.
Thus the wheel turns
Cook, clean, run, serve, smile
Toff tiny tippers are tools, trickling
Down scented cash while mine smells like sweat.
Tip for tiny tippers. Tip better.
Jun 20, 2012
Jun 20, 2012 at 8:41 PM UTC
Sometimes I write nights, in the séance of the city
to the thrum of the sidewalk, the fume of the smokestack;
I scribble the madcap of it all, I furrow my nails in vinyl and dance
in memoriam,
my face blackened by storms in the crematorium;
there are those that watch the world through a window,
and those that are watched;
and if they have no voice in their manic stumblings; and if instead they
mutter
to the shadows for traction, to the swirl in the gutter, the outer rim of
silence
they will find a friction
to descend upon cement with an electric lunacy;
and though they will be outliers, they put out the candles
and write nights too;
within the funneled starlight, and the wheel of the sky,
we string our bodies astral,
in procession and out, similar in divergence, until similarity diverges
into steam and carbon
and time surges backwards to rejuvenate nights
and our visions are left clotted in their seams by
the dark.
Aug 19, 2010
Aug 19, 2010 at 9:01 AM UTC
There is Presence. Presence....and there is Light.
“Where am I? What and Who am I? Am I alive or dead?"
A suppressed thought makes itself known, “You were once Enkidu....” The simultaneous recognition and brilliance of the place kept Enkidu awestruck and unable to act. Suddenly, sounds. As if they were coming from somewhere inside Enkidu rather than off in the distance. They funneled into each other, a chorus of voices both alien and familiar crescendoing finally into an empty silence from which the most clear whisper he had ever heard trickled forth. Its reverberations vibrating his form as it spoke:
*“This is the Kingdom of light, as it is, which no city on earth can equal. See how its network of light points provide the foundation for the most masterful of physical world’s architecture. Climb the undulating, gyre staircase, built of alternating circuits of thought and emptiness. Go! And approach the dwelling of your true Self, sacred to the all that is, and equalled by no earthly aspect that could ever be. Make your way through the kingdom of light and follow it through to the end.
Realize the equanimity of its presence, examine the truth that creates this platform of existence and see how it pours itself constantly into the construction of the physical world; its palm trees, gardens, orchards, the glorious palaces and temples, the shops and marketplaces, the houses, and the public squares. This is the dwelling of the infinite presence pervading the universe as an imperishable and unchanging force. Welcome to that which is beyond both is and is not...."*
Feb 22, 2016
Feb 22, 2016 at 1:43 PM UTC