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a polar vortex
swirls eastward
on Siberian Tiger paws
bounding over
Appalachian Highlands
gobbling geography
gelling Great Lakes
spawning Erie blizzards
sculpting Wabash ice floes
clogging commerce all
along the Ohio River Valley

this voracious
juggernaut’s wide maw
bears icicle teeth
laughing as it swallows
Pittsburgh, Little Philly,
and a Big Apple, before
gorging itself on
generous portions
ladled into
simmering crocks
of steaming
Boston Baked Beans

growling
blue arctic
air blasts roar
bursts pipes
savages the heat
of blasting furnaces,
bubbling boilers, hot
belly stoves frantically
drinking oil, flaming gas
burning wood and
burping soot

the blistering
jet stream claws
screech a slashing
stratospheric hum
as Frigidaire blasts
swallows breath
brittles limbs
chafes cheeks
gnaws earlobes
crystallizes tears
nibbles nostrils
cubes snot
numbs toes
bites digits

diving sub zero
gradient subdues
batteries to
deaden states
delays buses
derails trains
cuts power
constricts veins
preys on
vagabonds
and animals

get the homeless
off the street!
bring the animals in
check on your
elderly neighbors
don’t get caught outside
and shut the **** door!
do you own stock
in the Public Service?

beware the polar vortex
and next months heating bill


Sonny Boy Williamson
& Otis Spann
Nine Below Zero

Oakland
1/6/14
jbm
Serena Charles Oct 2014
You ever have those days when you'd rather take the long way home?
With headphones on
Ignoring your heart beat
Trying not to crack like promises and iphone screens...
Well honestly,
You ripped the spine off of my notebook paper skeleton and crumpled it into the shape of your fists until it was nothing but a broken haiku:

What is love without
Lighting matches in the dark
Drenched in gasoline

You wear the whites of your eyes like flags when we touch
Like giving up is an option
And I'm trying to rewind the cassette tape memories to the beginning when smiles decorated our faces and I didn't know your full name or that you love orange juice and comic books
We're just kids in love with following fault lines to their breaking points and drawing assumptions on sidewalks while it rains. Raised on etch a sketch commitments that fade when shaken
We have no connection to the word 'stay'
**** the Christmas lights in your eyes, they don't stay up all year like I had hoped and I wore red lipstick to stop myself from kissing you and you stopped gelling your hair back like permission for me to massage your aching head, knead out any leftover thoughts of 'slow down'
But that was centuries ago and by centuries I mean lifetimes ago and maybe our souls have agreed to meet in some silent studio where you paint me abstract on subservient canvases and you'd feel like Salvador Dali as you melt clocks on my wrist to leave our moments up for interpretation...
We will not touch again, we had our last hug and the bass of our pulse has weakened so the memories don't keep us up at night
They have become elevator music in the back of our minds because we don't want to forget the sound of 'I love you'
Like astronomers falling in love with a blank sky, darling, it's in our nature to chase after the stars that chase after the moon that chases after the sun that chases after the world that chases after this idea of love.
Lets fold our empty spaces into intricate origami haikus like...

We ran out of glue
Stationary paper cranes
We burn down in flames
Lauren C Sep 2012
The scallops squat
in their queer little cesspool,
small moon-white
skulls, vulnerable
like bare flesh
and hissing and spitting
in their juices,
gelling on the edges
like late November lake ice.
Dumpy little membranes,
they're applauding! -
percolating and foaming
at the mouth, and quickly,
now roaring - ecstatic
in a watery grave
that looks and feels like home.
An exercise, of sorts
90 today...you would have reached
This milestone....if it had not been your time.  

Strength to push through had ran out on you
Your 'end of days'.....your personal ordeal
Had caught up and dealt a blow to your wellbeing.

Yet you clung to life for 15 days as I watched
You fade away trying my best to give you what
You needed and keep you safe with your dignity
Intact......in your final hours .

The clinical cocoon became your home, our home
In your 'end of days', where we gathered daily  
At your bedside preventing you from being alone.

Hospital corridors became familiar acquaintances
Gelling our hands to fight the germ war
Testing out the hours to see if they would be
Kind to you and grace you with favours.

We could not change what was meant to be
But we all tried, how we tried, to rally you round
Until you took the decision.....enough was enough.

Your departure broke all ties, you paused whisking
Away your final breath and you.........stopped
Cut free and sailing toward your new destination.

One where we could not follow to hold your hand
Leading the way to ensure your safe arrival.

With the finality of your life's end
You had entered and begun the after life......

It leaves me wondering how you are
If you now know the great secret to......

Your 'end of days'.
Àŧùl Mar 2014
I wish that I could,
Encase your hands in my hands,
Whenever you need me to come,
And you need to feel me present,
Present near you in your vicinity.

Freely in my arms,
You are falling carefree relaxing,
Fall tension-free in my embrace,
Gelling well to my calmer body,
Play in the lakes of salty water.
My HP Poem #595
©Atul Kaushal
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2023
when was the last time i went ice skating?
at the old Romford ice rink,
it was one of my high school friend's birthday
party... i was perhaps... 13...
today was my second time on ice...
well... this time round i managed to walk
upright on the skates...
the skates didn't fold in on me
                        like i might be a *******
walking with the aftermath of polio...
i.e. my feet didn't buckle, and the skates didn't
push into my ankle bones...
giving my excruciating pain...

ice-skating is unlike the other gravity found
in either cycling or swimming...
one can look the complete fool when ice skating...
it's so simple: it's so simple the more adept
skaters say... i asked for clarification:
so which part of the legs does most of the work?

the top part... for a 2nd timer i advanced pretty fast
upon doing a second round, round the ice rink...
self-taught magic... fear of letting go
of the railing...
but that's not the point...
i was on a "date": or rather i "think" i was...
it wasn't a date...
          it was... gelling together of coworkers...
i've worked with some of these people for almost
a year...
it took a year for something remotely socially
related to be "established": i know:
calculative, frigid tongue of formality is my
go-to release, jargon: i know...

        outside of the realm of the brothel
where we are immediately imitate and touching
each other to this almost grotesque spectacle
of timid, lonely people, playing "chess" over pints
of beer, talking,
i'm more used to: nakedness and *** comes
a priori, all the other nuances of talk and mingling
come a posteriori... hell...
the world of interaction was standing on its head...
i had to remember:

as a man i'm not to talk about myself,
i have to ask the girl all the questions...
i can't revel in any details of me:
even though she might be a "cage-fighter" looking
woman... that she might be a lesbian
i still have to keep some contorts of manhood
in this interaction: i wasn't even overthinking
anything, there were no awkward pauses just
details of awaiting prompt...

first she asked me whether she put her right foot
into the equivalent right of the skate...
i told her: i see an aligning curvature...
she had them on the right way... took them off...
ridiculous: they were right of right the whole time!
so i told her: and you asked me to go ice skating
a second time in my life while you can't
even put on your skates on the right feet!
ugh...

walking on skates was fine... until i stepped
onto the ice... ugh oh... like i told her...
i'm going to make a fool of myself...
i'll be like that Harry Potter scene in the Prisoner
of Azkaban... were Wesley imagines
that cupboard demon Ridiculous emerging as a spider
made pointlessly scary by having
skates attached to its legs...

that was me...
    1h on ice... three or four more sessions and i'll
get a hang of it...
but there's an authenticity on ice...
unlike when swimming or cycling...
self-taught... well: i don't expect a grown man
to be endeared by getting skating sessions...
can't imagine that... it's not out of pride...
it's out of: i taught myself how to swim:
even for all the dearest of things in the world
my father wanted to teach me...
peer pressure got the better of me...
i'm guessing peer pressure is going to kick in once
more...

but she filmed me pretending to fly on ice...
sent the video to a few people... from 8 people...
400+ views... now she wants me facebook details...
i don't think it's such a good idea...
i internalise my experiences and i...
i don't mind talking to strangers... in a pub...
even today after the ice-skating she wanted
to go for a pint... we had three...
she noticed a Fred who works in the metal-scrap
industry near Rainham: has to wake up
at 6am get to Walthamstow for 8am... pick up
a tonne of copper... drive back... blah blah...
works an imaginary 80h week...
even train drivers... hell... surgeons can't work
the legal hourly limit of 60h per week:
fatigue... you can't work tired:
might as well allow work to be done by drunkards...

no... it wasn't a date... i was 14 and she was 13...
we went ice skating...
**** me: might as well have been a cinema "date":
but it wasn't reading each other's CVs
over food i'd end up paying for...
in the pub i realised i was going to be 37 in May...
i noticed all the young girls...
they spotted me with my "date": it wasn't a date...
she's a lesbian and i'm a brothel frequenter...
from one end of the pub.... we sat beside
Fred the scrap-metal-mogul and disappeared from
view... what happened?
three of them with one beta-buckle-buck sat near us...
suddenly an older lady... with artistic inclinations
of dress started hovering near the bar...
walking past her to the toilet she sort of excused
herself for being in my line of sight...
i'm just here to go to the bathroom...

        being human, like so, is weird to me...
i'm not used to it...
  i'm used to being alone,
not in a solipsistic / autistic sort of way...
  it's just weird that i can pretend to be a clown
without putting on any clown make-up...
i'd rather put on some clown-make-up
and disappear into: a film best not made...

has it really been that long? it had to be a lesbian
to (do i need to stress the fact that she is?
most people these days stress their little somethings
of identity politics, for example...
clinically "schizophrenic": in a Lingua Inglese world
of commerce... bilingualism is a quadratic /
a "clear" disability... two tongues too many!)
ask me to go ice skating and then have a pint of beer
with her? no... able bodied, no able minded female
had the stomach or the courage to ask for
something pretty and simple as, this?!

let's go ice skating! let's go cycling!
let's have a picnic in Hyde Park!

i came home, said sorry for being late... i was only expecting
to go ice skating...
gave revelations of my lateness...
spoke to mother (dear)... waited for my father
to finish watching Match of the Day 2...
saddled myself in the chair before a computer
and started writing out my father's invoice...
tomorrow i'll be working on his VAT and sending it off
to a new accountant...
my mother started sobbing...
why? i'm already the freak i was supposed to have
become...
    base: closeness with others?!
is that, even, remotely, possible?
if all the world is a stage... i'm playing the role of actor
pretty **** well...
i'm not going to allow myself the frivolity
and the escapade of not entering the arena of intra-personal
relationships with... former, youthful... hopes...
naive feelings off of: FUZZY-THRILLS...
what once was mammalian has become
lizard... cool, cold, calculative...
that's how you adapt to the environment presented
for you to digest...
everyone is playing some sort of game...
the Thespian intrusion into all expressions
of art... hell! beyond mere art...
this... Thespian Dictatorial Reign makes all other
expressions of art obsolete...
no wonder painting suffers the most...
why has painting suffered the most under the Thespian
Dictatorship of appealing to the masses
while poetry is... a hiding demon in a dank, drab...
petty 3 x 3 x 3 cubic expression of cut-out yet still waggling
like a decapitated head of a chicken sort of:
magic act?!

no amount of Paul Celan
in the mouth of a Norwegian super-star of literature
could ever fathom-dim
this fabrication of close-relation-ship? ahoy!
ah... **** it...
                      tiles and count the loaded bullets...

this ordeal of the everyday lived:
from the tumultuous ordeal of the body:
thus, summoned to give presence-count
of the "grieving" grave...
my own told woe being unaware...
of the woes of others...
such the price: of a life short-lived...

prior to the said engagement...
rereading some snippets of Spinoza's
Theological-Political Treaties...
because... i own a copy of the Ethics...
but not in English...
i like to imagine myself gloating
on what's readily read contra what' readily
available: and not...
      
i'm not dating material.. trying to imagine, thinking
might have curated me better...
she gives me ice skating...
i want to give her... a Walter Sickert exhibition...
we're not going to match...
over a pint i tell her: i was never
into these DATNG APP matching...
these window-dressing exhibitions:
and how many have you met, face to face?
2?!

i didn't tell her but i was sort of going to:
there's me and this gall from Hawaii...
she sent me honey and dried pineapple...
i didn't... we're mismatched...
she's lesbian and i'm a brothel frequenter...
life since my idea of teenager dating has
become, serious, ugly...
i don't want to have anything to do with it...
for almost half an hour i felt like...
a lion bound to a cage...
impossible to conjure up a lion
without a cage... classifying it as: pet-worthy...
something to make people pretend....
a wound for a heartbeat...
this beast better perform...
  prior to the details of boys
sending girl their ****-pictures:
oh no, no prior to the hard-on...
some variation of a p.s.:
when the blood runs dry...

                  they send their ****-pics after having
*******, when the blood is "drying up"...
not prior, shrivel, limp, lacklustre, prawn-curl whittle 'ichard...
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2016
ever walk in a thunderstorm? the brilliance you never see?
near naked with a foetal fudge feeling of a
soaked t-shirt clinging to you? imagine it like
it's better than *** (and it is), there i, actor of
ᚦᚢᚱᛁᛋᚨᛉ - thump thump, a foot once stood here
with imprint - a message to the Germans,
i didn't like your Europe... was it Greek crisis
or the migrant crisis that precipitated it all?
ever walk in a thunderstorm aiming for a bottle
of beer and a bottle of whiskey? i was dressed, but i was naked,
that's the thing with the mandible nature of
the Cartesian arithmetic - therefore suggests it's
all: +, -, x and ÷: indeed there are two compound
interacting, i kind of rejected the 'i am' compound
outright, i concentrated on the compound 'i think',
it's a bit like getting dressed (i think), or already
being dressed (i am), but whereas with the former
the i is a naked body and thought the wardrobe,
the latter ensures others are stripped of a dress-code,
therefore mediating the two compounds is still
mathematically very much the tetramoenus -
but you know... tut tut... writing this is like adhering
to a dietary plan... empty, a yogurt fat-free
and packed with excess sugar, ******* empty...
i left me soul walking to the supermarket in
the thunderstorm - the feel of it, my t-shirt sticking to me,
the rain gelling up my hair, the lightning,
the thunder - i'd never write anything worth successful
artists' memorisation of their work, i'm quick to
recycle, forget... maybe that's why they make it,
the success stories Nero wished to be in some urban
slum when in fact being an emperor -
that's art, poets turn out to be bureaucrats by comparison,
what self-love is there when the page of
recitation is whipped out? i'm still confused though,
gång-åskväder - no speaks of deciphering a distinction
on the dicta, between the dieresis and the ångström,
write it English as is due without diacritical marks
and therefore sub-atomic "particle" punctuation:
aangstroom - well, you don't add -stróm -
Å is a village in the municipality of Moskenes -
a stream... right, but not a wheel then?
or a rolling-pin? but both symbols represent a synonymous
invitation to say something - i've been given t.n.t.
and told ****'s as stable as water without a kettle -
but i'm asking it as: so you see how they tricked
the populace into being "unlearned"? they added
stresses to letters for the donkey carrot and stick,
poking fun, laughing it off - there are plenty of variations,
but please, remind me why looking at . . or :
makes you think of 2? or prolonging like doing
arithmetic? so what's the millimetre difference
when noting å-skv-ä if the dieresis over the second
a does not somehow tongue twist itself with e
as suggested? it's as bad as me, yes, i've been to
a *******, but i paid, my work is worth less than a slave's,
meaning i work but don't have a chance to rest assured
as having a roof over my head and food, i'm below
a slave... what? you kind reader will pay me?
i don't think so, you're one of those people who
decided all art is to flow freely and unsupervised by
a payment... mp3... but there's the radio...
paintings... but there's the brick wall... how's that?
zhong - shu - yi - three elements of Confucius -
ever walk near-naked in a thunderstorm with lightning?
i have.
She’d gone on her own to the party,
But sadly, for she was alone,
Her partner had left her in limbo,
Had not even said he was going.
A month had gone by, with never a word
And nothing to say why he’d gone,
She looked in the mirror for why she was spurned
But life, as it does, carries on.

Nothing had changed in her that she could see,
She still had her beautiful hair,
Her lips were as full as they ever could be,
Her eyes had that hypnotic stare.
Her figure was slim, and as firm as it was
When her partner decided to leave,
If there was a problem, it had to be him,
Which left her no reason to grieve.

The party she went to was stranger than strange,
With Bogans, Goth make-up and Greens,
She guessed that their ages for most of them ranged
From middle-aged matrons to teens.
A pair of Goth sisters were eyeing her off
And flattering her, to deceive,
‘My, there is a beauty, the best of the lot,
I’d fit her, I think, with a squeeze.’

They twittered and tittered between them, the two,
Whose beauty had long gone to seed,
Whatever they’d had, it was plain that it flew
When excess took over from need.
They fed her with drinks and exotic confects
That she hardly liked to refuse,
Her hold on the present was slight, I reflect,
Her sadness was yesterday’s news.

The ugliest sister, whose name was July,
Rolled in like a mist to her brain,
The cunning of eyes and a whispered surprise
Made her think she was going insane.
She felt herself ebbing, and losing control
As July held her hands in her own,
And then somehow gelling with tissues and cells in
Some fatness that she’d never known.

She watched through a mist as the girl she had been
Laughed loudly, and then turned away,
Embracing the sister, that other unclean,
‘We’ll get you one, some other day!’
Her body felt loose, like an oversize suit
And her lips could but slobber and cry,
‘What have they done to my beautiful youth,’
As she turned to a mirror, to cry.

David Lewis Paget
Star BG Apr 2019
On a Saturday morning
I write,
as rain outside cleanses earth.
While rain feeds plants hungry
As rain calls all to umbrellas
And while eyes swell
to let me know a poem is gelling
to be released.

On a Saturday morning
I write,
as a bathroom run is ignored.
While my hunger has to wait.
As the moments melt away.
And while my fingers dance
on keyboard making way
to birth a poem.
A silly poem on a Saturday morning.
Graff1980 Mar 2019
She does not impress
but is built to vex me.

Liquid movement
gelling,

Dancing angelically
as if she has wings
to soar,
dropping
several soft feathers
but still wearing
a thousand more.

Yet I bet
though slender she be,
she could easily
devour the entirety
of my being,
and I would submit
gratefully.
Strong and brave men and women
gave their level best
crème de la crème
strongest and bravest
leaving grieving significant others
with emotional agony
within treasured chest
o'er the redoubt  
the enemy did crest,
where lovely bones
of forebears for everest

battling hostility over
well fought over *** strew turf
among warring factions finessed
in manicured cemeteries
(sacred burial grounds) ye guessed
dead bodies strewn across killing fields
forsook their lives eternal peace they rest
honored and revered succumbed mortal
electric kool-aid acid test
though I question if sacrificed life
worth a spit of land to wrest.

Now pardon ma faux pas
indicative of generic geek
a reasonable rhyme rhyme,
from dis po' pa try'n to be sleek
original poem crafted years gone by
necessitated minor tweak
where sense and sensibility weak.

Officially called Decoration Day
proclaimed on 5 May 1868
by General John Logan
first observed on 30 May 1868
Waterloo N.Y. officially
declared the birthplace
by President Lyndon Johnson in May 1966.

Though eight score minus one year  
(minor emendation regarding time frame
since original date I crafted poem)
Appomattox, a psychological balm
helped stitch frayed nation to calm
until hell on earth
killed, obliterated, and rained ******,
(a portmanteau of two
of the constituents
of the original thickening
and gelling agents:
coprecipitated aluminium salts
of naphthenic acid
and palmitic acid)
served as silent psalm
since bombardment at Fort Sumter qualm
including intervening wars
such as raging battles on the Somme
and the war between
Northern and Southern Vietnam.

National holiday most adept
at uniting Civil War fallen soldiers
when fiercely armed as brother in arms crept
against opposing forces, which took
by surprise “enemies” or found inept
ill prepared troops with surprise mortal
blow which ambushed attackers leapt
mowing down valiant soldiers, thus
becoming slain grooms who eternally slept
sorrowful lamentable hymns from
widowed brides tears wept.

Cease fire that day
terminating internecine flay
o’er mounds of earth whence
bones o boys donned blue or gray
a day of remembrance for those
who died in our nation's service lay

celebrated this last Monday every May
one must know tis not about division
boot about reconciliation
and sacrifice brave heroes did pay,
the price of their lives for granted
freedoms enjoyed as american lee-way.

Forsooth, now we cherish too, the Poppy red
that grows on fields where valor led,
it seems to signal to the skies
that blood of heroes never dies
acknowledged courtesy bunting
(strings of colorful, monochrome,
beige triangular flags and lengths
of fabric in the colors of national flags
gathered and draped into swags
or pleated into fan shapes)
visibly draped and/or hung
honoring the dead.
Jill Tait Aug 2020
One hundred buckets of soaked sand he dug up from the beach.. and by the time he’d finished the top it was much too tall to reach..Toby’s sandcastle stood majestic and Oh was so very grand..as people stood around watching him building it by hand

Toby modelled his citadel from the castle on the shore and on it’s final completion his little fingers were getting sore.. with his pitting and patting gelling all the sides together.. his taller brother stuck a flag on the very top of it..he used a feather.. “Wow what a creation”!! passerby’s  stood in awe.. it was worth all his hassle.. Toby’s sandcastle on the shore

— The End —