"gregor" poems
Kafka and his Giant Insect
Which Might Be a Cockroach
But Maybe Not
We Could go to Das Schloss and ask Mr. K
An insect woke up one morning and realized
He had been transformed into Gregor Samsa
From a life focused on eating hair and grease
Glue, soup, bread, paper, leather
Sewerage, butter, meat (fresh and decayed)
Makeup, cookies, sugar, toothbrush bristles
Cookies, pizza, flour, tacos, apple pie
Dead bodies, feces, and his own species
He now had to deal with the confusion
The sorrow of being Gregor Samsa
Aug 14, 2018
Aug 14, 2018 at 4:28 PM UTC
My love knows no Louis Vuitton or Cartier
she doesn't belong to the city
she lives in a farm with her parents and siblings
in the faraway country.
My love thinks not of manicures
her hands are busy in the soil
the flowers and plants relish their tender touch
from dawn to dusk she does toil
My love didn't go to uni
but she knows Keats, Byron and Shelley
even French, German and Russian poetry
lots of Sartre and Camus--she takes delight in philosophy.
My love is no Maria Callas nor Joan Sutherland
but beautifully she sings Schubert's lieder
opera and folk songs she takes delight in
like none other
My love never had music lessons
how she excels on the piano
she plays Mozart, Beethoven and Bach by ear
at the music-hall the villagers love her as she plays solo
I am the son of old John Mac Gregor
her next-door neighbour
I went to school never
too shy to date her
Dad and mum said
learn to write poetry
send her a sweet love poem
if she likes it, she will marry you---happily!
Oct 7, 2015
Oct 7, 2015 at 9:24 PM UTC
With every beat and pump of my ****** heart, I grow to love you more and more.
The tears I cry evaporate.
Despair isn't the song playing in my head.
But rather a symphony of fascination
I simply adore you my dear.
Do you venerate me?
Admire, exalt, and treasure me?
In only the way I can do for you?
Jan 29, 2015
Jan 29, 2015 at 11:54 AM UTC
Cascading spider eyes
Colliding galaxies in midnight skies
Forty-thousand light years away
Sixty-billion quarks on the head of a pin.
Seventy-five dollars a month,
Just to keep the signal coming in.
Milarepa, caterpillar of the Himalayas,
Sat in a cave
Ate nettles
And swallowed the cosmos
In a single gulp.
Gregor, my friend,
I hear you are thinking
Of ending it all again.
Please consider,
It’s entirely possible
There may be no where else to go.
Dec 23, 2016
Dec 23, 2016 at 1:40 PM UTC
Are you needed at all?
Dung beetle needn’t stall
Make haste to your quarters
Not needed at all.
Are you producing at all?
Your sister needn’t call
Your choice of words is merely
Cause for her to fall.
Are you human after all?
The family’s income needn’t stall
Make haste to your death dear
Not needed at all.
Nov 28, 2012
Nov 28, 2012 at 9:28 PM UTC
Errands to run
decisions to make;
clothes to wash:
the endless
trivial particulars
that weigh life down.
Where is my
personal assistant,
my life coach,
my hot French maid?
**** once again
I've woken up
in the wrong life.
- mce
Aug 30, 2015
Aug 30, 2015 at 1:10 PM UTC
Gregor
Hallowed nights have risen over you
Guilt not yet abated you marched
They shall surely find you
In your head you’ll always be awake during the slumber
Gregor
Heed me know me
Final friend
Mar 21, 2025
Mar 21, 2025 at 9:11 PM UTC
When it comes, your smile is more of a statement
than a question mark. I crack myself dry and
lose the chapstick. I later find it on the floor.
I threw it there in the quick strobe of psychosis.
But where are your words now? You see, since Gregor Samsa
threw himself off a balcony thinking he could fly
after dropping too much LSD, I lost part of my larynx.
I’ve been chain smoking since the cops called.
Don’t blame a bug. No one else knows how to love a roach.
Where is your mirror? Since we all hate confessions
I try not to read Plath, or open my mouth.
I can’t touch myself without breaking a bone because
I’m all glass and deception and Tennessee Williams
was once my sugar daddy, but he drove off and I am cold.
My oven is open. I only speak as it heats up.
What happened to your eyes? My eyes are lost
roaming the streets. They’re cloaked in red wool and
I feel them scratching. I’d get them back but
I have no money left for a taxi let alone
a search party. Something feels too Little Red here.
I am also the wolf. I am also my own shoveled snow.
Are you doing better? I hate wolves as much as mania
and sharp teeth. Send a prayer only if you believe
thoughts count. But sometimes I can’t reach up to ten.
Mail me a letter soaked in your lover’s perfume
so I can smell like purpose while I pretend
I’m not wretched. I’d write back
if I could avoid a paper cut,
but last time I had an
out of body experience
and I can’t moderate
for the life of me.
Feb 24, 2017
Feb 24, 2017 at 5:26 PM UTC