"grifted" poems
He's part artist, part alchemist,
but a full-on con, self-professed with post-
graduate degrees in mixology
and the god-given sense to know which
smoldering home remedies will catch fire
(give or take an occasional legal glitch).
His healing pitch is grifted on the easy
comparison of queasily lowered brows to
their indistinctly raised betters. You'll doff
the scoffing face as he pulls back a masking
caparison, and your fever gallops hotly
hoof-in-mouth with an uncontrollable itch.
Tinctures, colloids, salves and potions,
they all have twisty caps, blithe boxes
bubbling over with hypnotic patterns
fashioned to cure your urge to avoid
his futility. First'll come the ****** then
the crumple followed by purse strings loosening.
Don't consider it capitulation.
His assortment of fluid manipulations
bear a singular branding at 100 proof,
and after the recommended daily dosing
(two jiggers with each meal), you'll feel
you're **** erectus made sapient.
May 23, 2010
May 23, 2010 at 8:15 PM UTC
~
Saturn Jupiter Mars,
three blind mice running
up the clock to find freedom.
starlight stairs in abyss,
cities of the interior ring
carry a dangerous cargo: citizens.
t-minus one/this is fear
I am no astronaut,
I'm a refugee, bleeding hands pressed
tight to the barbed-wired fence.
we play charades from the window,
lunar phases keening
in the tender light of these infant wars.
t-minus one/this is fear
farewell threshold on laudanum,
the grifted gift of the Joe Blakes
painted from memory.
the far off observation
telescoping my fear, leading me
to believe I'm hiding in plain view.
~
Aug 12, 2023
Aug 12, 2023 at 11:15 AM UTC
Sun comes up,
she goes down
on some upended main drag,
if i were an archaeologist
i still wouldn't dig this place,
every other day she dwells
in tedious, empty cafés,
but on the weekends she flashes
her "license and registration"
to oncoming traffic,
hoping for grifted furlough
to wear as silken, shiny beads,
and so we ride
this merry-go-round,
because moving in circles
is far better than being trapped in a square,
we've stopped climbing the calendar
in search of higher elevation,
she used to pour it on thick,
stirring drinks inside my head,
i used to shake
worries from her hair,
now with bitter orange marmalade
low in the sky, and stacked against us,
it's home before dark,
lest our eyes open wide to see
we are nothing more
but strangers at sundown.
Feb 17, 2021
Feb 17, 2021 at 10:57 AM UTC
Hound-dog swallowing poly-coated pills, filling up, bloated, falling off stage, and into a more permanent and lasting Graceland, to be surrounded by another’s verse.
I only enjoy what comes from my own head, a modern Samuel Johnson, no matter what happenstance brought about to be said, a cage free Bronson. Hearing false verse through a syllable count, hoisted onto adverbs easy to mount. Congratulate a lesser mind, reaching commonalities most could find. Ease in creation, opens floodgate doors, distributing specs of grace through misworded spores. Life, love, and the pursuit of vanity, leaves simplified lumps of prosperous thought riddled with anonymity. The invention of despair overwhelms those ungifted, and leaves them erecting stale forgeries they grifted.
In the wee small hours of escaping light, a crooner steadies his hands as he falsifies his originality, reading off the music from another’s sheet.
A change in topic is something to hold as worthy, though in a modern context of prosaic prose, such good fortune can be exceptionally elusive. Broken hearted symptoms shared through a hash-tag, rerouted and worded, to fit an illiterate youth’s lesser diction, reposted to approach validity, only to be called forth as an original soul, one to revere, and hold as an entitled fraction of logic.
The piano man knocks out a tune, hit in stride with vocal conduct, inspired and laid in pen by a lesser man propelled by better wording, given up for another’s career.
Market’s over-saturated with teenage sonnets, weeping over cut wrists, ended (Victorian inspired) trysts, refreshed and brought back around until sentimentality vomits. Themes used to run rampant with fresh ingenuity, made extinct, occurred in a blink; now every poem has some congruency.
The grapevine got entangled, getting involved with a troublemaker, providing the soundtrack, using another’s words.
Nov 23, 2014
Nov 23, 2014 at 5:43 PM UTC
The dinner was made, but something was wrong,
She tried to eat something, appetite, gone,
The view from the kitchen was a sky black and grey,
She got under the table to get out of the way.
Even moms home made cooking couldn't beckon her out,
For she knew fine and well, that a storm was about,
Such a crash, then a light filled the kitchen completely,
Then a hug from two arms,"Daddy please dont you leave me".
As her body was lifted to a warm loving place,
Daddy wiped away tears from her four year old face,
Then it seemed as though nothing could hurt her somehow,
Not the storm, not the flash, not the terrible howl.
As the storm grifted by, daddy hushed her to sleep,
Snuggles up with his baby,safe and warm for to keep.
Nov 1, 2009
Nov 1, 2009 at 3:18 AM UTC
What happens when you take a child’s ear
and shape it with Poe and Shakespeare's talent?
What happens when one grows exposed to
delicate musical and grand memories?
What happens when child’s mind is filled
with great aspirations from knowledge of many topics?
What happens is...
a divine, sacred, smart and grifted poet,
meant to grace the world.
Meant to be an avatar in life.
carving other ears splendidly.
Jan 12, 2018
Jan 12, 2018 at 12:49 PM UTC
I tried once
To be what I am not
Gave myself a shove
Tried to be forgot
My shape shifted
And for a moment
I was grifted
I cannot
Be what I am
Not
Dec 8, 2020
Dec 8, 2020 at 9:23 AM UTC