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Akemi Aug 2014
this veil over your dreams
may as well be a guillotine
8:50am, August 11th 2014

'death of an individual' or 'invisible deaths'.

Be a person, not a puppet. Chase your dreams to the ends of the world. At least you'll have spent your life following your passions, rather than conforming to miserable social standards.

Material wealth means nothing. Find purpose inside yourself. Love people for who they are, not what they have.

Shallowness is a epidemic. Don't wear a mask to fit in with the ill.
Carlo C Gomez Jan 2022
Once at the guillotine

Now an out-of-focus angel

"Crime is shame, not the scaffold!"

She's got a '45 strapped

To each of her thighs

Speaks French with a Martian accent

Wishes she was a siren

When bathed in happy thoughts

Wishes she was the ladybird

When her wings

Confuse amuse transfuse

Into dreams of blood

Lukewarm prisoner

Detained for seven years

Now lies beside her

Asking for a helping hand

She loosens her corset

But tightens her grip
You held a promise
over my head like a guillotine,

I'd be safe as long as I did
what you asked,

I'd survive so long as I
gave you what you wanted,

I saw God in the face of Satan,
because there was no other
way for it to be,

and you want my thanks
and gratitude for being
my saviour that
night?

when you would put me
in a prison, for the rest of my life...
sasha m george Oct 2013
Punk Rock John introduced himself to me at my first show. He said, “kid.. protect your teeth, do NOT lick the walls, and don’t ******* the crusty’s. If you get cut, let it bleed– you’ll be fine.”
I was 15 years old, thinking about unzipping my veins. And while most 15 year olds would have done drugs or written a ******* poem, I went to ****** bars and basements and gave my best friends black eyes.

For the first time in my life, I knew that when I fell, someone was gonna pick me up. That first mosh pit was not a quiet conversation about suicide, it was Punk Rock John telling me, “Hey *******! Don’t **** yourself! Don’t waste your unscarred knuckles.” My rage bloomed. Why hate myself when I can hate parents, high school, the radio, record stores, magazines, corporations, yuppies, my parents, cops, rain, sunshine, beach days, phone books, and tiny ******* cupcakes? *******, if that first day of punk didn’t sound like Buddy Holly played back, double time, distorted, compressed into four chords.

The first time I saw Punk Rock John, he was halfway through a frontflip stage dive, and he landed directly on me. He picked me up, dusted me off, and threw me back in the pit. Punk Rock John was 6’4, had hands the size a kick drum, and he smelled like a 20-year rain. He was Noah. He was our shepherd. One time, I was getting ready to dropkick some metal kid when John got me in a headlock and said, “quit ******* around, Neil! You don’t know who this kid’s friends are, and I ain’t putting you out if they set you on fire.”

John told us, “the church of punk rock was always open. If you wanna pray, just crank up the stereo until your ears bleed. If you wanna pray, just grab your brothers and sing! Sing out of tune, sing the wrong words- just sing! Loud!”

But then some out-of-town skin dropped a guillotine knifeblade into John’s skull. The blood was pouring from his ears. He was dead before he hit the ground. John brought me into a world where I felt loved, and that world took him away. I buried my leather jacket, patched the holes in my jeans, and tried to pluck the chords like stitches from my chest.. but John still speaks to me. When the world is larger than I am, when my chest is a vice.. I put that needle on the record, I turn it up until I can’t hear ****, and I tell myself: as long as I have hands, I can break something. As long as we can breathe, we can sing. As long as I can remember, I will hear him– he says, “kid, you’ll be fine.”
shåi Jan 2018
click click*

i was bound to your
love
like chains on
a dead corpse

you held the gun
to my forehead
as i adoringly
fell in love with you

so hypnotised
drawn by your
kisses
my invitation

(shåi)
CZ Sep 2013
You aren't going to **** yourself tonight because, in one of the

spun sugar fragile sequences of the events in your life, it works

out. There is a place, somewhere amidst star stuff and cosmic

collisions, where you are not the problem daughter or the

biggest disappointment or the most regretted kiss. There is a

place where you sink into a desk in your eight a.m. class and

a boy with bags under his eyes and a hole-y sweater pulled

over his knuckles says, "hi." There is a place where your father

comes back from the war with sand grit in his eyes, blood

under his fingernails and lets you save him.  There is a place

where you live in India, where you aren't afraid to love, where

everything hurts less, where you stopped punishing yourself for

the faults of your parents. You are a girl. Not a dart board or a guilty

verdict or the final, desperate ****** of a sword through

someone's chest. You are made of the same stuff as Marie

Antoinette and Catherine the Great and Elizabeth, and you

can command the winds too. You aren't going to **** yourself

tonight because no one ever asked you about the scars on your

thighs but that doesn't make them nonexistent or unimportant.

You aren't going to **** yourself tonight because you've grown:

stronger in some ways and weaker in others, but you are still

a result of rhapsodies in violet and trees bowed to the sea

and soldiers with wind burn on their cheeks. Tonight, you are

going to wrap your own arms around your own chest and

breathe, swaying silently to no music. You are going to

memorize the sound of silence, and you are going to listen hard

for the even, jagged, pitter patter of your heart. You are going

to thank your body for waging war against itself, you are going

to apologize to your head for bruising your heart. You are going

to feel the roughness of the floor and the vastness of the entire

world and all of the eventualities spread before you. You are

going to remember that this is only one, that atoms and

molecules are flighty, whimsical, prone to selfishness and

longing for the promise of stability. You are going to press your

lips to your own wrists and know, as surely as Anne Boleyn

knew when she walked to the guillotine, that no one can save

you but yourself. You aren't going to **** yourself tonight

because you are not an accident of the multiverse. You are

purposeful and beautiful and young and reckless with your

feelings, but you are not a mistake. Listen to the trembling

of your heartbeat and breathe. You aren't going to **** yourself

tonight.
Jessica Pompei Aug 2015
stuck pig
injecting
in a tiny house
on a green island
raining
a jungle of
cable
internet a
septic
tank
I run a
maze
grow bananas
wait for delivery
departure
line up
for my plastic
sippy cup
eat
pancakes
stack
Bromantane
for breakfast
nootropics
family
replacement
new tropical
smoothie
maker
prime member
of the Amazon
got to stimulate
my work in the garden
see that
water feature
it’s a duck pond
no it’s
an empty kiddy pool
but on a tree
I’m over it
an antler bromeliad
hunting trophy
a certification
of my triumph
the plot
next to it
my head
in the mail
a miniature guillotine
to repatriate
my body
and tail
still moving
photovoltaic Dec 2020
Just as you are different to me,
I cannot understand you.
Every move you make
Every thought, expression
That passes across your eyes;

They say eyes are the window into the soul
But your eyes are expressionless
Blank as a stone slate
Cold as a stone slate

How could you **** someone?
Don't you feel guilty?
The dark malice hidden away in those beautiful eyes
Spur-of-the-moment thoughts, uncontrollable impulses.

How did I fall for you?
People still ask me, every day.
Do you still love her?
How do I answer that?

All those memories we shared,
Every photo taken,
I still look back at them, sometimes.
And feel the toxic rush of happiness
Of fondness, of love.
Love for a serial killer.

While you comforted me,
Gently held me,
Assuring me,
Everything was going to be alright,
You tortured, tore apart others
Who were different from me.

You're a murderer, a criminal.
You took a life, intentional
Every move and calculated plan
All executed like a falling guillotine.
Unstoppable. Deadly.

How did I fall for you?
People still ask me.
I still remember, the memories we shared.
Every gentle word and loving touch,
Filling me with toxic happiness.

How did I fall for you?
How do I answer that?
The best answer, I think,

Is that you were different.
again i have no idea what im writing **** pls send help
Michael R Burch Dec 2021
These are my modern English translations of sonnets by the French poet Stephane Mallarme.

The Tomb of Edgar Poe
by Stéphane Mallarmé
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Transformed into himself by Death, at last,
the Bard unsheathed his Art’s recondite blade
to duel with dullards, blind & undismayed,
who’d never heard his ardent Voice, aghast!

Like dark Medusan demons of the past
who’d failed to heed such high, angelic words,
men called him bendered, his ideas absurd,
discounting all the warlock’s spells he’d cast.

The wars of heaven and hell? Earth’s senseless grief?
Can sculptors carve from myths a bas-relief
to illuminate the sepulcher of Poe?

No, let us set in granite, here below,
a limit and a block on this disaster:
this Blasphemy, to not acknowledge a Master!

The original French poem appears after the translations

"Le Cygne" ("The Swan")
by Stéphane Mallarmé
this untitled poem is also called Mallarmé's "White Sonnet"
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The virginal, the vivid, the vivacious day:
can its brilliance be broken by a wild wing-blow
delivered to this glacial lake
whose frozen ice-falls impede flight? No.

In past reflections on its thoughts today
the Swan remembers freedom, but can’t make
a song from its surroundings, only take
on the winter's ghostly hue of snow.

In the Swan's white agony its bared neck lies
within a guillotine its sense denies.
Slowly being frozen to its inner being,
the body ignores the phantom spirit fleeing...

Cold contempt for its captor
is of no use to the raptor.



Le tombeau d’Edgar Poe
by Stéphane Mallarmé

Tel qu’en Lui-même enfin l’éternité le change,
Le Poète suscite avec un glaive nu
Son siècle épouvanté de n’avoir pas connu
Que la mort triomphait dans cette voix étrange!
Eux, comme un vil sursaut d’hydre oyant jadis l’ange
Donner un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu,
Proclamèrent très haut le sortilège bu
Dans le flot sans honneur de quelque noir mélange.
Du sol et de la nue hostiles, ô grief!
Si notre idée avec ne sculpte un bas-relief
Dont la tombe de Poe éblouissante s’orne
Calme bloc ici-bas chu d’un désastre obscur
Que ce granit du moins montre à jamais sa borne
Aux noirs vols du Blasphème épars dans le futur.



Le Cygne
by Stéphane Mallarmé

Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui
Va-t-il nous déchirer avec un coup d'aile ivre
Ce lac dur oublié que hante sous le givre
Le transparent glacier des vols qui n'ont pas fui !
Un cygne d'autrefois se souvient que c'est lui
Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se délivre
Pour n'avoir pas chanté la région où vivre
Quand du stérile hiver a resplendi l'ennui.
Tout son col secouera cette blanche agonie
Par l'espace infligée à l'oiseau qui le nie,
Mais non l'horreur du sol où le plumage est pris.
Fantôme qu'à ce lieu son pur éclat assigne,
Il s'immobilise au songe froid de mépris
Que vêt parmi l'exil inutile le Cygne.

Stephane Mallarme was a major French poet and one of the leading French symbolist poets.

Keywords/Tags: Stephane Mallarme, France, French poet, symbolism, symbolist, symbolic, poetry, Edgar Allan Poe, grave, tomb, sepulcher, memorial, elegy, eulogy, epitaph, sonnet
Victor Thorn Jan 2013
Deny it; it makes no difference:
the American government pitches its deceitful realtor-reality to the world:
flaunting our flag as the banner of the free, but avoiding
our faults and failures as a country.
“Oh yes! We’re rollin’ in the (borrowed) bucks!
We’re a proud superpower capable of chaos; calamity!”
Well, kudos on your catastrophes: we all know it’s a hollow show.

See, we’re slaves to China, bound by China’s chains
to billions of dollars, the deficit deepening daily.
And who’s to blame?
“Not I!” says the Democrat.
“Not I!” says the Republican.
“Not I” say I, but we
weaved our financial woes together.
It’s not stupidity; if we could see into the future, we’d be shakin’ our money makers.
But have you seen the current fiscal guillotine
whose blade looms low and approaching our throats?
Oh, irony of ironies: the American government isn’t free.
Oh mah gee.
Freak out!
Calm down...
Forbes informs me that federal spending spurs private sector growth.
But when fifty-four thousand buckaroos from you
and you
and you
and me too is just enough
to cover Congress’ **** until the dimwits there do another... (insert something dumb),
it’s time to draw the line.

And time to erase lines previously drawn:
George Washington warned us once before:
“...the common and continual mischiefs of [political] parties are sufficient to make it the... duty of a wise people to discourage... it.”
Yet here we are: the media’s reporting majority wars
that serve only to sail us further offshore from Pristine America
and a time when things really seemed to matter, especially when they did.
Deny it; it doesn’t matter; it doesn’t change
our chances of escaping another Cuban
Missile
Crisis. If we waged World
                               War
                                            Three, what would we
                                                       do?
                                                               One
thing: debate, procrastinate, our fate
a fragile plaything fought over
by infantile, full-grown fanatics who never quite phased out of high school debate.
They never learned to lose, and so they play the inane blame game,
I say quite frankly: gurl. Dat cray-cray.

Dear Democracy, when will my words hold water?
When will the weight of a rainbow OREO or a
monogamous monotone monotheistic chicken sandwich
on my guilty conscience be lifted?
Must I muster a hungry lackluster life in the land of opportunity
to oppose tyranny
and uphold justice? I turned eighteen last December,
but for as long as I can remember
I’ve been voting with the dollar bill, my ballot
traveling through the bloodstream, fueling the body of big business, who fuel the daring charities, who fuel their bills in congress.

Democracy, do you know me?

For this faux-democratic nation where the population waits for the government to lay itself to waste, the Founding Fathers sob, disgraced.
                                                       Oh, God Bless America!
the nation where when faced with any
[man, woman, child, intersex, genderqueer, etc.] who dares defile the status quo,
accept the stigma like a crown of thorns, on top of all the scorn
                                                                    We The People
donate millions to “charities” who dare to speak for
Jesus,
the meek and mild. John chapter eight, verses one through eight:
he drew a
fine line in the
sand, man:
it’s where your rights end and mine begin. Irony, irony: they are as good as
mine.
For this faux-democratic nation where the population waits for the government to lay itself to waste, the Founding Fathers sob, disgraced.
I have days.
Yenson Dec 2018
Listen you nice genteel ladies out there
We know you'll adore a charming, intelligent
smart, humourous, caring, loving and sensitive
charismatic man

We know you'll absolutely love a decent, wholesome
capable, balanced, brave, courageous Alpha male
we know you'll really like a versatile, poetic,
gentleman, able to do nearly everything and do it well
Even animals and children love him too

We know you'll just melt for this man who is an amazing lover
Wonderfully equipped, experienced, unselfish, rhythmic
hard yet gentle, graceful motion in hot ocean
Slow hands and arousingly hot touches, a great lover
who just adores women

Well forget it Ladies
We do not like this Elitist, well rounded intelligent lovely man
He is banned, banned, banned banned
How can we rogues, coarse, uncouth, insensitive semi-illiterates
compete with Mr Wonderful, who leaves ladies buckling in
rampant throes of multiple *******
Who makes love to your fine senses as well as your bodies

How can we, under endowed minutemen
with no grace, style or starmina, much less a romantic nuance
compete with our Mr Amazing with the mostest

We are flat bottomed pale skinned, weedy looking lot
we have little manners, we can hardly hold intelligent conversation
we don't do charming and all that *******
We are not keen on personal hygiene, that's for poofs
Forget looking groomed and polished, that's for poofs too
when drunk and we can just about manage to get it up
It's slam, bang, no thank you ma'am, nothing
poor gals left unsatisfied, unappreciated, any wonder most are turning to each other these days
Us loutish men, just reach for another pint, see you later, get your *** out...

We are working-class dumbos and proud of it
we are pirates and Robin Hoods, we take from the Decent Upscales
we fight them and harass and hound them, torment their *****
we destroy their reputation, degrade them
we can't do better, why should they have an easy life
And all the fun of the ****** fair

Look at the toffee nosed Emmanuel Macron in France
Rich background, privileged, he gets into power and start
messing with the working people, we are now dealing with him
That's what they do if you give them room
They diss the ordinary people and tell us its living intelligently
while they wine and dine and make love in Champagne
Well, not anymore, they don't, we've got there numbers now

The same with our charismatic intelligent Mr Wonderful here
We are sorting him out good and proper, we are on his case
So any ladies go near him or seen befriending him
is a class traitor and would be dealt with accordingly
We have put a *** and relationship ban on Mr Amazing
Let him see what doing without means, lets see him suffer
deprivation and hunger and hopelessness, we have been for years

I dare any of you ladies go near him and see what will happen
we will shave all your hair and put you to public shame
like those collaborators ladies in France after the 2nd WW
We will ostracise you like we have Mr Wonderful
we will smear and degrade you and  your life will be made
impossible.

This is Class war and you Ladies have been WARNED
Can you imagine it, not only rich, privileged, brilliant, capable
confident, self-assured, smooth, suave, charming, articulate,
presentable, wise and balanced, He's also gifted with a big ****,
and from all accounts he really does know how to use it
Jezz...how ******* fortunate can an elitist get!

Well you ladies are sure missing a good thing going
but we don't mind cutting off our long noses to spite our faces
Granted some nice girl could found happiness and the most amazing man and both could do a lot of good in the society and bring happiness to others
but we don't think rationally, that's for the elitists

We are mindless yobbos, thugs, hooligans, no-good, immature,little dicked ruffians and malcontents
We are anarchist, tall and proud
We are crazies, sad and pathetic and we do not care

So you ladies stick with your class and make **** sure
it's a No dice to Mr Wonderful  

NO NO NO it's a RESOUNDING NO from all working people
  ESPECIALLY YOU LADIES, just better know that YES from you
and it's the guillotine and not only your hair will be for the chop!

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!
This is a PEOPLE'S ROYAL COMMAND
why can't I help always seeing the funny side of life. wake up laughing, go to bed laughing, life really can be so absurd, funny and interesting.
Cadmus May 15
~ 💋 ~

She speaks in silk,
moves like sin,
Draws grown men like moths within.

A kiss,
a sigh,
a flash of thigh
And just like that, they’re begging why.

She toys with hearts,
delights in screams,
Turns pride to dust,
and love to dreams.

No blood,
no blade,
just one slow lean…

And down it falls,
- the Velvet Guillotine -

~ 💋 ~
A tribute to the femme fatale archetype, sensual, untamed, and devastating by design. Not every execution needs a sword; some wear satin.
Manda Kolav May 2018
I suppose we wear our traumas
the way the guillotine wears gravity;
our lovers necks are so soft.
So sweet
Too innocent;
Kisses like cold, corrupt metal.

Those seven seconds of silence
When you wait for anything;
Any sign that they understand
What you’ve been through
waiting in those seconds
To be reassured by
‘I love you’

Sitting in dust of a dark room
Confiding in them your secrets
Those seven seconds of silence
They **** you.

On edge, free falling
The guillotine dropping in your stomach
Eyes desperate for reassurance
at complete mercy
To this person
Right in front of you

And when they hug you
Brought your head out of danger
Shattered the blade

Saved you from death

Loved you to life

That guillotine,
Nothing more
Than fear of being unloved
Darkness peaks beneath your mask,

Eternal lying smothers your task,

To be accepted by commercial greed,

It stimulates your mindful need,

Of personal gain and broken dreams,

Place your brain inside a guillotine,

To feed your craving for nicotine,

Among the thoughts in your caved-in mind,

The wind tickles your troubles in and out of time,

Your plastic-eyed dolls and cruel songs,

Is a portrait of your desire to walk along,

All the beauties in the magazines,

Drench your face in gasoline,

Ignite a match to force humility,

Upon your flesh and your stupidity,

You used to poke fun at the lifeless on the streets,

Now, take a bite of that forbidden bittersweet,

Juices of past one nightstands and lost lovers,

Enjoy what is less taken to be discovered.

There is an insatiable claim to your brain,

Alongside your coffee, pills, and bags of *******,

Wicked ****, sour *****, and dedicated fake,

It is your bones against stones karma will break.

Liar, cheater, deceptive soul eater,

Tis’ the future in the light of tomorrow’s eyes,

Where in Hell your soul shall eternal lie.
Ignatius Hosiana Feb 2016
Despite everything that's happened
Despite the mistreatment of our own
Despite the suppression & oppression
Despite the mambas in big numbers
Despite the silencing of the nation
Despite the heavy deployment on the streets
Despite the gas that our eyes mistreats
Despite the despair prevailing in the air
Despite the scare,the arrests that are unfair
Despite the government condemnation
of those battling our incarceration
Despite the fact that some are starving
because electronic mobile money transfer is off
Despite the looming loss and fraudulent tally
Despite the gloomy faces we all wear, the sully
Despite the rage burning through us for many a reason
The main one being the compromise of our peaceful
struggle out of the manacles of this corrupt regime
despite many being voiceless in prison
Despite the treacherous Telecom companies
assisting the tyrant keep us on our bruised knees
Despite the malnourished kids along the streets
despite the expectant mothers fearing for their life
because the best Hospital in the country has no doctors
& the disgruntled interns trying to help and teachers
despite the lives lost in the election scuffle fueled by police
despite the opposition constant arrest and release
the rise in the prices of everything but value of nothing
despite the arrogance of those profiting from the tyranny
despite the dishing out of cash to bribe voters
& the lining up of cattle to have more votes than voters
Despite the furthering hope for eminent change
despite the lead of the incumbent by a ridiculous range
I still love my country and I still believe change will come
even if the despot rules for a thousand a term
I still believe a day is coming when we shall say
"At last, the man is history,this country is now for the people"
I dream of that day, it should have been yesterday
But despite the fact that any dictatorship
tends to want power for permanent keep
Someday from the fountains of change we shall sip
I still believe,albeit such freedom isn't a one day trip
On behalf of all who turned up to cast their votes
thank you for not just talking but also walking
thank you for the courtesy you're giving to the next generation
at least we know we shall have answers in clear narration
to our children and their children, each and every question
Don't give up...to me the fight is just started
And still, even a president has got but one neck
Change is guillotine, someday it catches up
Don't give up for you have come so far and see so much
If you were about to surrender, I hope this your heart can touch
Despite all the challenges our struggle is facing
Let's stay focus toward justice and fairness chasing
Yes, we have fallen more than we deserve
it may feel but someday someone will appreciate your love
One Uganda, one people... in change we believe
For God and my country, I love Uganda
I love you all...Don't give up
For everyone in struggle against dictatorship. I'm proud of you
Queso Jun 2012
‘Twas but a rare, snowy day in Paris,
a January day, as all the lights of the city
rested, as dancers of the Moulin Rouge
fixed their make up during the intermission

And in the graveyard of Père Lachaise
there stood a solitary figure of an old man,
his hands gathered together politely,
in front, clenching on to a tattered flat cap

The man stood in front of a grey wall,
“a tomb without a cross or chapel,
or golden lilies, or sky-blue church windows,”
but with an equally lonesome little plaque
that read, ‘Aux mort de la commune,
21 28 Mai 1871’

He lit a cigarette, from which he took just one puff,
stuck it upside-down on a patch of dirt,
then notwithstanding the thunderstorm
of camera flashes from Japanese tourists,
he started to sing, with a hoarse yet firm voice,
“Debout, les damnés de la terre,
Debout, les forçats de la faim…”

As the wrinkle on his forehead began to stretch,
the dusty particles of ice piled higher and higher
on neighboring graves commemorating
French members of the International Brigades
and Spanish maquis of the French Resistance
-apparently the 3,400 meters height of Pyrenees
was merely a backyard *****
for ideas and fates to tread over barefooted-

His song was a ballad of unrequited passion;
when he got to the chorus about some final struggle
and the unity of human race in a silly hymn,
a song that was never played on a radio,
for which no cool kid would ever
spend $0.99 on iTunes store,
his voice started cracking in amorous choke

The old man was a lifetime lover
in the truest spirit of a Frenchman,
spent all his life trying to charm a girl named Emma Ries,
and whenever he dreamed of holding
the eloquently bruised hands of that sixteen years old seamstress,
his eyes swelled of nostalgic heart,

And he used to cry joyfully,
dropping tears of bullets back in the days,
whether by the guillotine in Place de la Concorde,
behind the barricades of Belleville amidst the cannonballs,
******* in front of the Gestapo firing squads,
or under the truncheons of gendarme in Quartier Latin

As the expired old ******* moaned wet dreams,
hallucinogic delusions of his bygone youth, however,
the chilly, soggy winter of 20th arrodissement piled on,
the ashen slums of Ménilmontant depressingly ugly as always
with brownish-grey molten snow spattered all over
the streets trotted by drug dealers and wife beaters,
and neither the fiery oratory of Maurice Thorez
nor the sanguine grenade of Colonel Fabien
was around to arson the frost into the proletarian spring

In the same winter that the old man sang
the first, only, and last lovesong of his life,
it had been more than two decades already
since the Berlin Wall had tumbled down
and the ruling parties in Greece and Spain,
both socialists,
had just driven 500,000 workers out of their jobs

-J.P. Proudhon, Marx and Engels, Jean Jaures, V.I. Lenin,
Leon Trotsky, Antonio Gramsci, Leon Blum, Abbie Hoffman-
by the time the old man muttered an old pop-song nobody cared for,
all of those names were as relevant as some Medieval knights,
characters from an obscure chronicle centuries ago,
who died by charging horseback into windmills,
mistaking them for giants that held whom they thought as
a princess of an ugly peasant woman,

Eventually, right before his voice cracked
into an embarrassing fuddle of choked-up tears,
impressive for a seventy something years old,
the man finished the song from his memory,
all the way up to the sixth stanza;
yet the curvaceously splintered palm of a seamstress,
it was still so far away from his hands that’s been pleading
since 1871 for that glorious *******
which once stood so proudly in the face of a Czernowitz magistrate

When the cigarette he stuck upside down on the dirt
burned all the way down, he reached into his coat,
took out a rose, laid it softly, like his own infant child,
in front of the plaque which golden inscriptions
turned grey from unwashed grimes of ages
and as the old fool walked away,
his back turned away from the solemn wall,
there was but one little patch of dirt in the whole of Paris
uncovered by snow, still hoping for the spring to come.
Colt Jul 2013
Bury me in Paris, when my heart stops and my eyes open wide,
next to Beckett or Sarte & de Beauvoir, ménage à trois.
Bury me in Paris, where the tourists go,
on the Champs-Élysées, or near the home of Picasso.
Bury me in Paris where the Seraphs scoff and roll their brown eyes
and the saints sell paints on the edge of the Seine’s grime.
Bury me in Paris between the pavement and le Métro,
take my body to whatever stop, just go.

Bury me in Paris on a winter’s night,
beneath the Louvre pyramid light.
Bury me in Paris with Lady Liberty in tow,
make my bed next to de Balzac, next to Marceau.
Bury me in Paris at the foot of l’Obélisque
accompanied by pharaohs, exhumed.
Bury me in Paris, leave me there, I guess,
in the hotel room overlooking the Arc. I, fully dressed.

Bury me in Paris while listening to Robespierre’s final scream,
the silence drowned out only by the guillotine.
Bury me in Paris, Montrouge, your angel calls to me,
that one who serves macarons at the head of the Tuileries.
Bury me in Paris, with the Angel, unimpressed,
next to her, I, in eternal rest.
Bury me in Paris, toss me off Bir-Hakiem, splashing,
or under tour Eiffel in the springtime night, waking.
Bury me in Paris, my body yearns to be free and true,
but if I am to die in New Orleans, bon Ange de Montrouge,
Bury me there with the jazz worms, singing:
“Angel, come to me, come to me, Angel, come.”
Pedro Tejada Feb 2012
My voice is nestled within a river
of transitions, positioned
in endless sets of pre- and post-
parentheses. Pre-revolutionary,
post-Missing Link. Post-postmodern,
pre-postmodern revival.

I sit in a somersaulting purgatory
sandwiched between evocation
and paralysis.

My hatred is exhausted, shoulders
hunched over a guillotine,
cursing with its tongue sprawled
dead and dry at an imaginary hunter,
a mass of bones clumped
under the rug I keep pulling
from my own two feet.

Will you hack through this cocoon?

Have you got the muscle
and the patience?

Nevermind that bedtime story.

There must be some wounds
of yours, those placed beyond
the verbal tanline, that need
immediate bandaging.

*Can I get you anything?
My flows Isaac Hayes hot butter emcees stutter
Once I rise from the gutter no other
Layin' raps guillotine know what I mean
Make a chick lean once shes see me on the tv screens
After my greens but I play mean switch up the scene
Ya styles anorexic so ya necks better get protected
Another sucka selected mics I wreck it
Head on I'm dead wrong cheat more than Armstrong
Cycling rhymes easily I be the coldest
Past the tundra sound the thunder with no lightening
Only striking I make the earth move
But it ain't no quakes take over I dominate in all states
But you ain't in good hands running" with the clan
Once I stand ya turn up a paraplegic
lieutenant Dan desert sand storm soon to swarm
Invoke harm sound the alarms bombing farms
Let ya blood meditate in my
palms
Silence **** end your wills made many sigils
Begins a new sequel since snitches squeal
They gotta get dealed with blows deadly
Than a uppercut from Dempsey swing rapidly
attack the mic like a ragin' chimpanzee
emcee of the century
Don't many wanna see the styles of real street gory laying killer
ephipany


Lyrical iceberg **** the seas flows honey
Attracting bees melodies so smoothly call me
Johnny G sayin my my my as the bullets fly by
Another dead guy soul searching the sky
I got ties from the Buddha that rises the highest
A wise guy
Know a lie when I see a lie so why try
Shootin' fairy tales only to mind
jail
Ya thoughts I'm dead caught
Without a chase slash ya face
With my Lyrical sickle got ya brickled
Penny to nickle count ya steps watch the reps
I got prepped so many slept as I crept
On the mic turn the industry swayze amazingly
My styles wicked complex as myxlplix
Mentals twisted lyrically gifted none could lift
My rhymes couldn't weigh on whales scales
Sail like Gail Devers please believe tha
Brother in black is back to set the track
Bumpin' out new jacks with they wack acts
No ******* I move minds like clergies in pulpit
Vatican Assassin clench my fist catch a whiff
Of a Bruce Lee's lift way of the dragon I'm stabbin'
Deep into intellects once the  rhymes injects
Spreads like infects contaminated none could reject
JR Weiss Jul 2010
rats
run through the walls
scratching and chewing
and fighting over my crumbs.

i know your there...
i see your tails and hear your nails
skittering across the broken tiles

a inch or two of plaster
between you and me.
you chewing through
right by my tossing and turning head.

the sticky traps catch dust
the poison would **** the dog
so we are left to the
old rusty snaps
the blood stained
guillotine
sticky with caked blood and hair
of your fallen brothers
and sisters
and god knows
how many other relations.

i hate the snap
i hate the painful squeals in the night
i hate the ones that catch
but dont die.

i hate all that
but not as much
as
i
hate
rats.
WhyamIaSpoon Aug 2013
How am I supposed to live in this guillotine
I can't move my head
I can't do what I want
How am I supposed to live

Do I live carelessly
Screaming and shouting til my lungs bleed
Shaking and fussing in hysteria til the skin of my neck peels
Just so it can all be severed with a seamless blade

Right through my neck
The fine edges sliding through skin and bone
Leaving only my limp body

Or do I live in fear
Constantly looking up at the blade
Begging for mercy like a coward
Like a *******

It looks so real
so precise and trained
Deadly and opening

It hovers above me
Waiting to fall
To claim another life
Another love

How am I supposed to live
Third Eye Candy Sep 2011
the art of nothing more has not been lost, i know it well
it has been mine to serve Othello to the guillotine and poppies

the myriad are gathered to the helium and Harpies
and a gallon of miraculous is accidentally wasted

the meaning of the soul is how you love someone, distracted
by the loving for the loving was the loving that you loved

bind me more than set me free
and that be    love exactly

and

the comet in your hand is my heart
rivy Jan 2023
the museum of my heart
has a blurry picture of his green eyes
the boy whose I name I never knew

there's a special exhibit
of all the bathrooms I had a breakdown in

there's polaroid pictures hanging
of all the friends I lost through the years
and all the friends who lost me

there's the poetry I wrote about them
words written in red ink and messy handwriting

there's statues of copper and tin
of all the lovers who couldn't love me

there's a constant humming of white noise and lo-fi
echoes of unspoken words I kept and ones I never heard

there's a selection of wingless butterflies
and a collection of blunt pencil sharpener blades

there's a basket of fortune cookies
and every single piece of paper carries the same aphorism:
"amidst the loneliness, the things you loved will forever haunt you."

there's old tv sets and a stack of DVD's
of all the films I wish I'd seen

there's all the skeletons I've hidden
secrets written on napkins and snuck between the wall cracks

there's a brand new guillotine and a golden noose
carefully kept for anyone who tries to hurt me

there's blackberry trees, an open ceiling
and dark splatters covering the ground beneath it

there's a chapel with empty seats and burned bible verses
rose petals and pink, lilac and blue candles
where an altar waits for a future love's mementos

there's a fountain of sweat, blood & tears

there's me standing in the corner
waiting to hand you your ticket and lure you in

there's angels and devils praying that you make it to the end of the tour
Tyler Zempel Dec 2018
Condemned to The Guillotine

Condemned to the guillotine has been announced as my fate
for speaking the truth in hopes of setting everyone in the world straight.
But now it’s too late, pitch forks are rising up against me as everyone has voted to live life to its minimalist in a slave state.
I’ve been branded a traitor by my fellow primates.

Expose the world is controlled by Satan who’s manipulating your lives
and get attacked since you don’t want to give up ******* your ***** without making her your wife.
Expose that Nasa is a fraud and fakes every picture you see,
and get threatened with promises of being hung from a tree.
Exposes the world for not being round and shine a light on the fact that it’s flat,
and get assaulted with words laced with venom instead of having a friendly chitchat.
Bring the truths of the bible about Giants, Titans, Dragons and massive animals and plants to light,
get ridiculed and silenced since this information is far too much for your closed off minds to take in in one night.
Talk about the afterlife and the presence of spirits all around us,
get called crazy, insane, delusional, in need of medication because that is a topic no one wants to discuss.
The truth of the world and of our creation and history is far stranger than the false narrative that is shoved down our throats,
but everyone tunes out the lords amazing notes.

Condemned to the guillotine might be a blessing
since my life has become awfully ******* depressing.
Losing my father and seeing his dead body, there is no repressing.
Life for me has hit the brakes and I have stopped progressing.
A relationship, apartment, and job all lost.
Trying to take even one step forward comes with a tremendous cost.
A cousin now gone as well,
life has turned into a living hell.

Waking up in the morning, getting out of bed and functioning throughout the day,
is almost as difficult as burying my father on my 30th birthday.
The massive weight crushing down on me is suffocating.
When will happiness invade my heart, I’m tired of waiting.
When will positivity flood into my soul, it’s growing frustrating.
When will I find a career, I love and enjoy?  Constantly changing jobs is aggravating.
When will God use me to my full potential, I’m growing tired of waiting!
I’m tired of his plan for my life being so drawn out and calculating.

I’m always asked when will I finally write something happy,
or something full of love and sappy?
I wish I had an answer to that question.
I wish I could have a happy and positive writing session.
I’ve been given a gift that is more like a curse.
It allows me to feel the pain of the entire world, for better or worse.
Being so in tune with my spiritual self is torture.
No wonder people mistake it for a mental disorder.
I fight off demons every day,
that want to **** me, cremate me and caste my ashes out into a bay.
I know the truths of the world.
Know that so many people are already ****** to the underworld
because they have turned their backs on God,
and call the bible a giant fraud.
A book written by man to help you feel better about death.
You won’t be feeling that way after you take your final breath.
Condemn me to the guillotine all you want,
as you descend down, I’ll be above you ready to flaunt.
Martin Bailes Mar 2017
Leslie Howard
as the Scarlet Pimpernel
is a pure joy
to watch,
all big-collared foppish
tight-trousered dandy
& dainty eyeglass
peering,

& there’s scheming
from the glum & slightly
hunch-backed Robespierre,
weeping aristocrats,
in tumbrils,
& innocent playing
children,

oh so-tailored families
all huge-coiffured hair,
cravats & handkerchiefs
& cocky young jackanapes
playing chess,

the cheering crowds
all coarse & ugly,
with knitting bonneted-crones
anticipating as the drums roll,
& the blade falls,
to a mighty
cheer,

we can see
our own bewitching
Marie Antoinette,
our own sly & whispering
Rasputin,
our gold-folly Sun King,

but I cannot say
I want Madame
La Guillotine
to be set up,
in the square
this time,
no …
no that,

but a victorious
cheering mob,
does sometimes
haunt my dreams,
I confess
to say.

“I send them to the guillotine for the future happiness of the human race, but I do not allow torture.”

Robespierre
Andrew Rueter Jul 2018
We were equally matched
Until a plan was hatched
You became the subtle aggressor
By making appearances lesser
Using your passion aggression
To steer a passive direction

You perform a vanishing act
By canvassing flak
Balancing black
Against a sky so blue
Teaching me that which is true
Is different from what I knew
So my anxiety naturally grew

You launch a resistance
By remaining silent
On this plane of existence
Where you're the pilot
Not taking the right angle
Into the Bermuda Triangle
That is your social sphere
Where you disappear
From committal fear
Of love being near

So I throw a search party
But your presence is tardy
Because you're departing
On the journey you're starting
Without me
Slouching
From my submission
To your anti-admission
Splitting our position
Like nuclear fission

The air has become radioactive
Through light that is refractive
Through ways which are retractive
Living this ugly way to live
Sharpening my shiv
To escape this cell of decay
Where flowers bloom and fray
But can't see the light of day
Not one ray

Stuck in the marked moor
Of this dark war
I use parkour
To avoid aggressor attacks
Never cutting me any slack
Bringing pain back
Until I crack

Lost in your blank expression
I make a grave concession
Enslaved to your impression
Yet afraid of your aggression
Caught between
Taking heed
And fulfilling needs
Born from greed
I'll only impede

You scream aggressively
Like you're ******* me
Just by addressing me
After making a mess of me
With deafening quiet
You attack with a diet
Of a steady riot
And I won't buy it

You left when you were here
But stayed once you weren't near
You switched to a guillotine gear
Based on how you wanted to appear
Striking me from the equation
By utilizing deflation
For a sinister elation
You removed our relation

— The End —