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JJ Hutton Apr 2013
There are only two ways to truly know someone: sleep with them or take them bowling.
Phoenix Aime was the woman of my dreams. So, I took her bowling.

Paid for a game. Rented shoes. Got the little, sticky bracelet thingy that said Slippery Joe Lanes.
That way if we got in some sort of accident on the way home,
the guy at the morgue could identify us as bowlers. Anyway, here's the bulleted list of what I knew about Phoenix up to that point:

• She looked like Diane Keaton circa 1972
• She talked with great pretension concerning craft beer
• She only patronized two restaurants: Denny's and IHOP
• She was eight years older than me
• She kissed my sister once on a dare
• Her shoe size was 7
• She was perfect or a near synonym

The bowling alley was empty save a World War II vet in a wheelchair and his wife at lane six,
and they were barely there. Country music played over the loud speaker. And I felt cozy. Predictable. Like a payment plan on the QVC.

That was until Phoenix said, "I forgot something. I'm going to go talk to Mack real quick."
Mack worked the front desk, according to his name tag. Talk to Mack. She just talked to Mack. Mack was sleeping with her. I untied my shoelaces. Oh, Mack, love your red polo with blue tiger stripes.
I pulled my sneakers off. Oh, Mack, I love it when you dip your finger in nacho cheese and feed it to me. Slid my right foot into bowling shoe. Halfway in with the left, and my socked foot struck something plastic. A stick of tiny deodorant. Like unsavory truck-stop-to-truck-stop deodorant. Oh, Mack, I love it when you deodorize -- so hard. Pull the strings tight on the left shoe. Oh, Mack, rub the deodorant until your underarms are SO CHALKY AND WHITE.

"You okay?" Phoenix asked.

"Yeah, what do I look like something's wrong?"

She carried a seafoam green bowling ball with a ****** Mary insignia. "It looks like you triple-knotted your shoes there."

And I said something dumb like, better safe than sorry.

"Sorry about leaving you all alone. Mack holds onto my ***** for me," she said.  I bet he does. "I hate talking to that guy." What? "He's a vegan."

Now, at that time in my life, I was a vegan. And had planned some stirring remarks about the processing of sweet little piggies into cancerous hot dog machines on the way to pick her up. Thought she would think me full of passion, "on fire" for a cause, you know? The wise thing would have been to say, oh well, I'm a vegan. But instead I asked, "What do you mean?"

"You know serial killer's get a last meal before they're executed, right?"

"Right." Where the hell is this going?

"Well, have you ever heard of someone on death row requesting a last meal that didn't involve some sort of animal product? Gacy had buckets of chicken, Bundy had a medium rare steak, even uh, ****, what was his name, McVeigh, Timothy McVeigh he had two pints of mint chocolate ice cream. Dairy."

"I'm not sure how this refutes veganism."

"Nobody is a vegan for their last meal. Nobody. I'm not going to subscribe to a diet that I can't follow until the very end. Live every day like your last, that's my motto."

"That's your motto." I said. To be a great listener, just repeat the last three or four things anyone says to you and raise your eyebrows a little bit. (Examples: "My dog died." -- "You're dog died.", "I never ate breakfast burritos again." -- "Never ate it again.", "I love you." -- "You love me.")

Over Phoenix's shoulder, over by lane six, the wife wheeled the World War II vet up to the lane. And he tossed the ball. Good team, I thought. Want to know someone take them to the bowling alley.

Phoenix removed a glove from her pocket. She had her own ball. Brought her own badass, jet black bowling gloves. And if her carnivorous tendencies hadn't already put a ***** in the Golden Days of Josh and Phoenix, that glove did.

She typed her name first on the scoring computer. Didn't ask if I wanted to go first. That's fine. Approached the lane, three fingers inside the ****** Mary. She brought her bony arm back with the grace of a ballerina tucked away stage right in the shadows. Mary cut from grace slid down the lane with a spin.

Strike. I couldn't really see the pins from my angle. But I recieved a transmission via the "yes" and arm pump. That was two marks against her, and I was going to three. I'd call it strikes, but well, the whole bowling skew.

Here's a bulleted list of what a "yes" and arm pump immediately taught me:

• She takes bowling serious.
• If you take bowling serious, when do you relax?
• She'd never relax.
• My life would be tucked shirts, matching belts and shoes.

For six frames, I picked up fours and sevens. Phoenix, though, nothing but strikes. I threw a gutter on frame seven. Like a normal human being, I shrugged. Made a face out the sides of my mouth. Kept it light.

"I thought you were a grown *** man," Phoenix said.

"Me too."

What happened next, I willed. I'm not god or anything like that. At the time, just cosmicly ******.
Her step stuttered. 7-10 split. "Mack!" she screamed. "Floors are slicker than a used car salesman's hair."

From across the alley,
"Sorry, Phoenix, baby. I'll bring you some nachos. That make up for it?"

"Ain't gonna knock down two pins is it?"

"So, uh, no nachos then?"

"Actually, go ahead and bring those."

She lined up. Back straight. Legs together. She rolled her neck. "You're about to see how it's done."

And I didn't. She broke it down the middle. Field goal. In that moment, that holy moment, I was knowledge plateau. Vindicated.

For about 10 seconds.

Mack swaggered over, nachos in hand. "Phoenix, sweetie, you okay?"

"Do I look okay?"

"No, that's why I asked."

"Just give me the nachos."

"Ah crap." Mack had gotten his pointer finger in the nacho cheese.

"Let me see it."

And right there, right in front the ****** Mary seafoam green bowling ball, she slurped the cheese off his finger."

Frame seven, a good as time as any to call it a match. The wife of the World War II vet kissed her husband's forehead. Handed him a ball. As I walked by, hand on shoulder. "Struck gold, dude."
How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!

How it clatters along the roofs,
Like the ***** of hoofs!
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!

Across the window pane
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!

                         

In the country, on every side,
Where far and wide,
Like a leopard’s tawny and spotted hide,
Stretches the plain,
To the dry grass and the drier grain
How welcome is the rain!
I was at the bar big ******* surprise I know .
The pub was empty well aside from a few selected drunks but really there more like a modern art display that has to **** more than a toddler .

I sat there good Irish coffee in one hand laptop upon the bar my normal morning ritual
No I wasn't looking at **** I'm kidding of course I was duh what goes better with coffee then watching total strangers ******* a circus ****** but enough about family programming.

I had decided to take a change of pace no I wasn't watching barnyard babes instead get your mind out of the gutter you ******'s who do you think I am the owner of this site?
No I decided to swing by my true stomping ground the true home of Gonzo Hello .

I as always stopped by to check the tombstones of my amigos now long since passed .
They were all there on full display a reminder of a past I truly cant forget.
Then I decided to check out the new who's who of the new Hello .

There poems about Mom and Dad and that first crush and other assorted high school horseshit
that was as about as interesting as watching a marathon of twilight backed up by that closet case
Harry Potter honestly I thought that was a great **** name .

Just then I herd a school bus with it's annoying *** air brakes come to a halt outside the Pub
The doors flew open and fifty or so hobbits came wandering in the bar dear lord was it some sort of strike?

Hey there Gonzo I'll take a Bud Light and a bag of chips please.
Want a coloring book to go along with that Bilbo?
Hey look grandpa just do your dam job and get me a  beer okay?

This strange little hamster must have fallen out of his crib and cracked his skull on his power ranger if he thought I was some sort of man servant I swear do these little ***** get there manners ?
I looked at the group of micro mini people thinking deep and long  and sort of ruff with a slap on the **** before I dared to reply.

Okay you little ******* I'll bite but not that hard just who the hell are you and what in the **** are you doing here?
Were the new in crowd of the site were poets father time!

After almost laughing myself to death I decided to entertain the little hamsters .
Okay short stack but before you ask we don't serve milk and cookies and nap time is whenever you hit the floor.

Hey what's with this stupid *** jukebox there's nothing but music on here done by people who actually play music duh what kind of **** is this.
I believe it's actually called music or as your generations rappers like to call it three mile.
Samples to talk over to your generations ****** music.

Hey old man you better watch it what you hate rap?
No I don't hate rap I hate your rap  by the way number seven your banana split is ready.
Hey I got to pay the bills somehow people I haven't had costumers in like five years .

Look Gonz the leader of the diaper gang  spoke up.
I know were younger but we have a right to be here as well were just trying to express areselves and share are work is that so wrong.

The Jim Jones wanna be had a valid point but I honestly didn't care for my mind was on a much deeper subject the music played as in the corner four little mini ******* hotties in school girl outfits
danced away to some sort of teenage ***** they called music.

I was lost in my thoughts of um like deep poetic **** it's to deep for you to grasp .
I'm kidding I was just watching the show thinking hey I don't have to pay for this?

Gonz hey Gonz earth to Gonz  .
Well everybody I tried I guess we better leave I don't think he's interested  in us having a
open mic  poetry night.

The music had stopped and the mini ***** were almost out the door but like some perverted ninja
I stopped them before they reached it.
Hey what's this I don't want to hear a open mic night duh I'm all about hearing your poetry
especially these little stripper poetry were do you all work I just love your costumes .

Um there are school uniforms pervert the one replied .

Hey look Gonzo It's  cool man we'll just be gone I mean you don't want to serve us and all.
I had to think  fast there leader was talking them almost out the door and I really couldn't afford
another kidnapping charge yet again don't ask.

Hey wait gang I was just ******* with you hell drinks on me what's your name Brittney Veronica Kelly hell it doesn't matter just pull yourself up a high chair and name your  poison.
What will it be beer wine crystal **** I know how you kids love that **** Brittney maybe you'd like a smooth roofie margarita I make the best in town just ask Lily .

Hey man what about that jukebox ?
I pulled out my trusty 38 the everyone hit the floor   as the sound blasted through the room worse than Justin Bieber getting **** ****** in county.
Oh baby baby Nooooo but enough with the foreplay children.

Honestly I never knew a power wheels could go that fast .

***** that jukebox amigo that's what mp3 players are for  .
I blasted some sort of strange music and poured the drinks as the hobbits began to
lose themselves in sort of twisted movements they called dancing dear lord man
they could really hold there drugs .

Then came there spoken poetry crap slash wet T shirt contest .
The party was a mad mad scene  like MTV's real world except with actual humans .

The mini strippers slash go go dancers were just about to get on the bar when all the sudden the doors flew open and the dark Lord himself once again stood in pub.

The room went as silent as when a semi  insane hillbilly on a **** TV show does a interview
and people find out he really is a backwards dip **** .
The dark lord spoke Gonzo!

A voice from under the bar spoke up he's not here *******.
Gonzo get your drunken *** from under that bar before I make my man servant come get you.

I popped up faster than a seventy year old man on ****** .

Hey boss how's it been dam you look great can I get you a drink hey have you been working out?
Look you halfwit clean this party out right now I could ban right this very moment .
Hey now look Adolf I was trying to connect with the hip new younger crowd is all because
I believe that a young mind is a terrible thing not to be totally wasted .

Seize him the dark lord called out to his staff of four halfwits .
I fought hard but eventually feel to the powers of those lady truck drivers let me tell you
those ******* fight ***** it was almost like getting *****  ****** if only I hadn't forgot my whistle.

Beaten shaken without my speak being slurred I was handcuffed and taken away .
And as I was being taken out the door a young little hamster spoke .
Hey Gonzo can I have your laptop yeah kids there real wise ***** sometimes.

The young hamsters all sat outside the pub as I was loaded up in the pinto hey poetry doesn't pay kids.

Goodbye Gonzo we'll miss you said one of the stripper students whatever the **** they were.
Goodbye little ***** I'll think about you often well I mean as long as I can remember.

I watched as the kids were scattered to the wind and my Pub was destroyed .
As I was taken away riding into the sunset like some outlaw in the back of a really ****** car.

Was this the end for are brain dead hero?
Would Hello finally see the demise of the legend slash guilty pleasure of Hello.
Would Timmy finally get out of that well to question his own sexuality?

Would this write ever ******* end?

Tune In next week for the exiting conclusion kids.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming .

Stay Crazy.

                                                         ­           Fin
I am a poetic bad boy
I am a poetic good boy
I'm a Poetic gutter snipe

Some words are good and cool
some crap and makes me fool
I'm a poetic guttersnipe

Read me if you want to
I don't give a f**k if you don't
for I am a poetic guttersnipe


By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris
spysgrandson May 2017
he sits on the curb
all twelve years of him,
waiting to be a teen

when he'll have to pay
adult price for a movie ticket
or bus pass

he usually has no cash
for either; but wishing and waiting
are art forms to him

he's learned to move
the brush of time slowly on life's palette
while he watches others whizzing by

on their store-bought skateboards
and Huffy ten speed bikes, while he has
only one gear for two feet

which now are clad in Keds
from the thrift store, and planted
firmly on the cement

by the drain gutter,  where he
last saw his favorite possession, a Super Ball,
get ****** into the sewer

when the storm ended, he yanked
off the manhole cover and crawled into
the dark, but the ball was gone forever

when he came back into the street,
yet lamenting his round loss, more boys
on bikes buzzed by

their circles safely spinning
on asphalt, far from the gutter and curb where
he once again sat--wishing, waiting

Baltimore, 1965
He told me I,  begged for a black eye

I had it coming

It was my Fault

Black eye, broken cheek bone

I'm trash

I volunteer at a shelter home for battered women

It's so ******* clear

Swallow me,  push me down  

I don't care if you can't breathe

You fell  slipped on the cats *****

Lost a tooth

"How dumb can you be not to catch yourself when I push you from behind?"

I want to say I don't have eyes in the back of my head

If I did I would know you where a worthless *******
His Sweet love notes how I love thee. Sweetest guy I have ever been with.
Universal Thrum Sep 2013
Oh, But what does it all mean Hidalgo?
Are we to fly in the face of the North Wind forever?

My mind has gone blank at the question.
Stranger still, the story perceived in prescient anticipation of the exact mentioned query once expounded upon spanning millions of miles of eloquent esoteric linguini, wit and charm with a dash of philosophic consequence, to fool you (the eager) into belief.

What is belief Hidalgo, but the suspension of reality, for an adept deeper world of unseen truth?

Do we see reality at all my friend? It is already shaped by our perceptions, responds to our expectations, nay we have not a clue, perhaps the arcane texts written by the hobo scholars of old hold the answer, so yet we settle on the material and fixate it as the lone clear star in an otherwise dark and cloudy sky. Mysteries abound behind the cosmos. Even when we look, do we really see, or are we as an insect upon the written page, crawling over the plain meaning? Is our capacity to hear underwhelmed by our propensity to listen? All these senses must count for something, for God is in a blade of grass, is he not, felt by the trodden hoof of the foot.

You’re a clever mad man Hidalgo.

Ay, the penultimate creator, singing in a sea of song, shining in a wave of light, lost in a dance of fractals, we are all the same rascal, blind though we are to the portrait of man, always creating, same as my neighbor, weaving dreams into Technicolor realities to beam into a future unknown. Our descendants watching us as reality television, mocking our fallibility, or perhaps empathizing and learning through telescopes strong enough to win a foot race with the sun; flying around the bend of space time and back.

The birds of the island are calm today; think they favor a slumbering respite from the noonday heat?

Mayhaps we’ll take a stroll across the columnous muddy bed, risking grey clay mummified suffocation; I dreamt as such. Yesterday’s storms make the journey perilous. My own thoughts leak from the grandiose ether and compel me to genius, the condition of the interminably insane or divine.

My bare feet tread the good earth, the 3rd density, in a daily attempt to stay grounded, however my mind is always floating, receiving transmitted whispers. Sanctified secret musings of the muse. Scribbled poetry of another dimension, meaningless to the materially minded, yet wholesome for the moment. Like a thunderstorm whose power is plain, yet unheard and unseen as the forest falling with a tree. Where do the tree and the forest begin? Are they the same root? Like my thoughts from a universal mind, the zeitgeist of an all-encompassing mood, a social memory complex.

The sophists will claim you are dodging responsibility. These tangents serve only to feed your egoic mind, but put no food in your belly nor rent in another’s hand.

Ay, but its creation all the same.
A tirade of compulsions. The ringing of the hill grows, the natural chorus of bugly unison screaming its existence into the manifold, manifesting itself to the initiate.

For what are they asking, could it be peace?

Ha Ha! Those shrill like cries wound the ears of the prideful dog, but are contained in the silences of the infinite potential all the same.

A man may change one hundred lives in a day, and earn no material currency for his unasked effort. Therefore, who is trivial? I change the wind by simply being, its current flows over me and the endless blades alike.

Vibratory love, what is that feeling, the realest phenomena of all?

Bliss in its own awareness, reveling in self-revelation, actualization, the knowingness of the child who still sees the spirit existing in each of the physical realm’s shadows. The taste of the foul and pure passing without judgment to the innocent tongue. A simple being secure with the wisdom of the wise. Does the power come from you or the hill, inspiring motions, accounting on the page symbolically. Break it down further. Dissolve. ******* into nothingness.

What is cheating Hidalgo?

Is the ant called to my arm by its own volition, how did it find me here on this patch of earth formed into mound by ancestors buried below.

Opening up all channels now.

Death locks the door with life’s key.

Should I let him crawl over me repeatedly?

Ten words to speak before the coming of the night.

Creative Destruction
Awake from the trance
Guns and Bullets
Shoot from our hands
Teller of Tales
Faint whisperer
Of sordid man’s
Hallucinatory waking
Follow the Beam
Follow the beam
The world before this world
Secrets unseen
My best thoughts come
As I lie suspended awake in sleep
Before sleep
No troubles
The curse runs blood deep
He closes the book but still speaks in rhyme
The riddle draws madness
The tongue laps up the fire
Drawn from self same wells
Will and Desire
Pruning and Preening
Political Beasts are we
Lost in our notions
I find, I keep
Braggadocioc Players
Upon the Worldly stage
Every person has the story
Only what is real?
What is fate?
So I lift my hat
To another year born true
A quarter century passed
Play the tune


Am I awaken by words from another man’s sleep?
What is the source of the tetradactyl nature?
My hexagonal heap
Of flesh and bones
Earth and dust
Brought together again by unending sound vibrating ceaselessly
I sleep but am not rested
Eat but am never full
The piper plays among the sand
Whirling in the heart of the caged word
If I keep my eyes fixated on a point, in actuality my vision expands and visualizes all

Reputationally speaking,
I am an ant, with male pattern baldness
We forget to chuckle at life’s absurdities, just as we pass by flowers without engaging the fragrance.


Rest your head with the hillside now
Restless wanderer of fantastical dreams

Treading water silently until our legs melt
Just as the weary albatross cries its last song over the harbor or the butterfly ***** its freckled wings, so too will we see the setting of the sun and a coming of the new dawn. If the chalk works carved in the abandoned sidewalk are to be believed, so must we girdle ourselves for the coming tides and lift our spirits once more for the ebb and flow of circumstance. The bike rides in the gutter all the same, and the forgotten cemetery stone stands as testament to the age gone by.
Mother always called me the devil child
She said I was  loud, destructive and wild

Parents told sister I was bad and she didn't ever have to play with me
Much time alone was no fun, however for some friends I did make a plea

I'd beg for my mothers attention, she'd run off to her room crying,
Yelled for my dad to come get me, because to her I was very trying

I heard my mother double dog dare my father to hit me
Mother would refer to me as a **** in front of the family

When I was very young mother once said “I will ****** you in cold blood”
Today mother said “you’re crazy, I’d never say that to a child, you are crud”

Nothing I did would ever please my mother
Gifts I bought her were tossed in the gutter

All my cousins were smart, while I was failing all my classes in school
Got into many fights with bullies and teachers who were always cruel

My family would all make fun of me, call names bully and teased
I was the loser that anyone could do or say what they pleased

None of my cousins was I ever allowed with to play
Was always much of the time alone every and all day

I lived in a strange way my dad was very to the T religious
And my mother was always drunk and of course blameless

She’d drink when home from work, on the weekends or holidays
And could always hide it from all her friends and the relatives

No one believed me when I told them that she had been drinking
They acted like I was crazy by then I knew what they were thinking

Mother took me out Friday's to eat and buy what I wanted, after work
Last stop, the liquor store for drink and smoke, was left in car like a ****

Mother would always drive with me while she was drunk
I knew she'd been drinking because she smelled like a skunk

Bought games that took two to play, parents never had any intention  
Of spending time with me, I was a bad child needing intervention

If I didn’t act a certain way when opening all my very expensive Christmas gifts
She’d pout, leave, and I’d have to open my gifts alone because I’d created a rift

Wasn't  perfect I admit;  ran off when 16 regret parents sent me away,
Came for counseling I complained about moms drinking, she felt angry

Said drinking not my problem, she’d return when I could face the truth
Never could admit wrongdoing, everything was because I was a youth

Home from school one day mom was passed out on  floor drunk
Called 911 her Dr blamed me and said no visit,  he called me a punk

My dad arrived home, find she was throwing up while passed out in bed
He'd take bowls put them near her mouth to catch it,  something I'd dread

He’d walk to the bathroom, empty the bowl and go back to get the next one to do the very same
And replace the unfilled one repeat the process.  I was told by her doctor that I was the blame

Sometimes mom would run down the hall to the toilet bowl throw up then my heart would race
Because I always knew mom would do this and then she’d come to room to scare rant and pace

Since I was a badly spoiled child who had parents with money, nice house cars and good jobs
And I was not willing to help out or be responsible, was told I made the family look like slobs

My sister let her boyfriend talk her into letting him take me to dentist, instead, he molested me
No one believed me because in the past I had lied about things, and the truth no one would see

I was different all the cousins, my aunts and uncle could blame me when things went missing
Or went wrong I was then and still am now the perfect scapegoat yes about it I’m still babbling

My father ran out the back door when he heard me wake up and come out of my room
So he didn't have to  bother with me, I wanted to spend time with him he’d assume

Somehow I managed to graduate from high school and I then would move
To a different city, I felt I might have better luck and my life would improve.

Married two very bad guys both who drank, beat me and verbally abused
Divorced them both and had one child and how I’d raise this child alone I was confused.

Moved into an apartment I still today about it rave
Mother always referred to it as a little dark damp cave

Things I wanted my mother to do with me she would say no
But wouldn't turn down a chance with other family to go

But this home where I've written articles, poetry that's been published
Most of the things I've written, mother has said they are mostly *******

Tried to work and go to school never was competent enough to follow through
Each time I would start either I did not have the ability to complete anything new

My daughter grew up, became ill with a repeating debilitating disease
I dedicated myself to getting her well, and nothing about it was a breeze

Had to take her in pain for doctor visits many times she’d cry and wished she were dead
This broke my heart with no family help, just her and I to face things in the years ahead

Unable to attend school for years, the doctor signed permission to stay home
School system assigned a teacher who was mean nothing about her was tome

School Social workers interfered
And my name they smeared

She finally one day went into remission
And now the Nephrotic kidney condition

Seems, for now, to have forever gone for good away
For years it’s been don’t want others to downplay

For a while, I home schooled her and the first semester back in the public school
She was on the honor roll things seemed to be looking up and I felt like I was the rule

Then one day she lost interest in classes, homework, and attending
And the principal of the high school was calling and threatening

Took her out of school and put her in to get her GED
Then  she was soon graduated within month of three

A year before she was supposed to graduate
I knew by then that I was doing things right

Enrolled me and her in community college we made the Dean’s list and no student loan debt
Last May she and I graduated have a new life now I don’t feel things in my life are a threat

Alone I’ve raised a good child, published a book and kept things together
I’ve published some poetry and stories in that will be on web pages forever

Even though my parents have helped me out once in a while financially
I feel lack of respect since they helped family who treated me crummy

I’m still feeling and have most of the hopeless thoughts when I was young
I still try to steer my daughter to be different from me and hold my tongue

Sister divorced husband for molesting children told kids I was bad
Lives in my town and over 20 years never talked, by her, I've been had

I think it's because my parents never would face reality or admit
To any wrong doing of years of abuse, something I couldn't forget

Mother has disowned me going to court to remove my name
Because she said I've caused her embarrassment and shame

I'm damaged goods, only go to doctor and for groceries to shop
I hide inside and on computer, write stories and poems till I drop

Why am I talking about this after all these years still?
Because I think that it may just possibly help me to heal

Looking back I find so many things have not been my fault
But I still feel many days like I'm the only one under assault.

Copyright 2013
All Rights Reserved
Am not proud of this but I had 30 jobs that I lost in 10 years and even tried going to college
Unable to remember how and when to do things, my head from years of abuse was in a fog
SamBee Feb 2013
My soul yearns to give you the world,
But all she can give is this brown-eyed girl.
Her beauty was dim,
She was barely slim.
Her home got cold,
Her sayings- old.
Her future was full,
Of colors dull.
Her life was gray,
Until one day.
The light leapt,
Promises kept.
Blues blooms,
Reds swoon,
Grays in the gutter,
She opened the shutters,
Let the earth spill in:
Her world begins.
My soul presents you with this brown-eyed girl,
And hopes that she will become your world.
It was strange almost as strange as Thanksgiving with Justin Bieber  at his grandmother's house.
Yes I'm sure that wasn't the only thing getting stuffed that year.
Who doesn't enjoy being serenaded by their grandson as he's naked with his pick in one hand and
his **** in the other as he stands **** ball naked in the kitchen.

Thanks Canada your like a ***** girlfriend who instead of giving a great ******* gave us ******  What do I expect from a country that also gave us maple syrup and call me maybe.
I know we just met and this sounds crazy but your countries music ***** so never call us okay.

I was alone in the Pub as  usual hell what do you expect from a site that has a showcase yet has no more groups from which half of the showcases are named after .
Yeah the owner has that true modern day logic like having a music channel that only shows
reality show ****** and knocked up ******* who complain about paying the bills yet are employed by the network yeah common sense it really is lost on stupid people.

I was having like half of a case when a hamster who shall remain unnamed due to she would
harm me if I spoke the name of which is not to be spoken of walked through the door.
Gonz set me up with a cold one  I really need it.
Really hamster I never pegged you as a necrophilia kind of gal but to each his own
good thing I got the paper let me just check the obituaries and make some calls
You want something fresh off the highway or you more into cold cuts?

I know I'm going to hell but honestly did you expect good taste  in reading this **** ?
Are you ******* nuts?
The agitated little hamster asked as she looked at me with anger and possible **** in her eye's.
Look I can always hope good thing I forgot my whistle.

Just give me a cold beer you pervert and that joke was tasteless really have you no respect for anything?
I looked at the hamster after handing her the beer and thought deeply and hard pulling my mental hair at the same time even though I don't have any don't ask.
Duh hamster!
It's my job  to make tasteless jokes and be a pervert what you think the time clock on the walls for?
Um employees ?
Well yeah it used to be until they whole health care **** I swear I give my workers one meal a week and provide a perfectly good basement for them now I got to give them health care duh
if I paid my bills what would I drink with ?

My customer who remains anonymous to  protect the safety of my *****.
Looked at me in disgust uh oh looks like I might be getting a spanking as well.
You really keep those poor people locked in the basement ?
Duh person I cant say your name there not real people there here illegally.
How can you say that I should call the cops on you .

The hamster was turning red and from the threat of calling in the fuzz I knew she must be
serious yet still I knew deep down she was just playing hard to get with her threats and restraining orders but enough with the foreplay hamsters.

Look I really don't see what the big deal is ?
You have people trapped in your basement like some dirt bag smuggler.
Now you hold on a minute hamster how dare you insult me I said in my grown up voice
I know I can act like a grown up shocking isn't it?

I was about to tell this hamster just what I really thought of people who take advantage of people
who just want a better life and exploit others and really preach some of that moral **** that sounds real good yet isn't what I think cause I'm truly a ruthless *******.

When I stopped and saw the clock oh **** hold that thought I almost forgot to feed the basement people.
I reached under the bar and grabbed four cartons of cigarettes and a case of wine.

What in the hell you only give those poor people ***** and cigarettes ?
Well  duh there French what else would they want?  
Just then a voice came up from the dungeon I mean basement of the pub gonzo more wine
you American swine I hate you yet still I applaud your efforts in destroying that vile
man child Selena Gomez  .

Ahh you got love the French sure that strange little man may stay drunk on a girl drink and smoke like a chimney but even he hates **** pop music as much as me.

My one and only reader slash customer slash person I enjoy annoying sat in shock.
You are so ****** up .
I looked as I took my seat behind the bar that no longer exists because some people
who shouldn't be allowed out of there cage run the site into the like button ground.

Yes hamster I'm a little ruff around the edges but when you get to know me.
You realize behind all the insults and perverted bad humor .
I'm well I'm far worse than you could ever imagine.

We sat there swapping stories the drinks flowed the French man in the basement yelled
something in that strange language  he spoke once I couldn't understand cause I
don't speak German.

It was a  true night to remember except for the part I forgot duh!
It was growing closer and closer to closing time I mixed us both a good strong drink
yet with a soft side and heart of gold like a awesome ****** or that man ****** Kim Kardashian .

Well I guess better head out Gonz.
Aren't you feeling like your going to pass out .
Um no why ?

****** its really getting bad when you cant trust a good street dealer to quality
roofies  .
The hamster was headed out the door but before she left she turned and said.
Oh yeah and you might need to grab a pillow.

And then everything went black but not like in the NBA .
No indeed I was out like Charlie sheen after a really good coke binge when he used to be cool.

I awoke upon the floor alone cold and hurting in a area far more strange than fifty one
****** man whya alien would travel across the galaxy only to corn hole rednecks and poetic madmen is beyond me but enough about what some owners of websites do in there off time.

Upon the bar sat the only cure for my troubles a double shot of good blended whiskey.
Next to it a note on a bar napkin .

Dear Gonz  next time remember to remember which drink you spiked you ******* .

I had to laugh and sit really funny the seat was a bit uncomfortable get your heads out of the gutter
children your almost as bad as me.

Until next time kids remember .
Good humor bad humor  its just ******* a joke to begin with so lighten the **** up.

Cheers and stay crazy.
When it comes to humor always be ruthless .
And remember if it offends nobody forced you to read it to begin with.
Drinks on me cheers.
Paolo C Perez Oct 2012
His Funeral was today.  Well, his wake rather.  It was in his old colonial home on Elm Street, a bought of irony that Paolo would never get.  Anyway, it was an odd set up at his house. Family and friends downstairs in the living room, acquaintances and honorable mentions meandering through the hallways clearly more interested in the intricate little floral patterns that adorned the wallpaper than how his family was holding up.  The company of the house was split, everyone either legitimately full of sorrow, or completely full of ****.  In everyone’s grasp either handkerchiefs or hand grenades it was as if the invitation read “Come see it to believe it!” In the study across the hall a small memorial was set up.  Big cards, tons of photos, some flowers, anyone who actually cared stayed there and stared at his once happy face, who knew what it looks like now.  
He had died of some sort of overdose, one that destroyed his heart, so he would have looked fine in an open casket.  The doctors say it was *******.  I don’t believe them.  Paolo had his fun in college, ***, *****, sure, but coke?  There’s no way.    The services weren’t to take place for another two hours, so his family rolled him onto the second floor balcony.  It was actually his dad’s decision, something about a “disgrace” and not wanting to look at his face.
Apparently his mom had felt bad letting her dead son chill on the porch for a few hours, so she rolled him across the hallway to his own room him and kind of laid him out on the bed, as if letting her baby boy take his eternal sleep where he’d have had most of his shorter ones.  
Picturing him lying up there was the first negative connotation I ever had with the image of him on that bed.  He had that kind of headboard that when we started getting at it the bed would hit the wall with each rhythmic movement.  Steady and almost tribal as our bodies danced to the ever increasing beat of a talking drum.  Our clothes off and our skin glazed with sweat it was like my own personal method for getting high. Now don’t get the impression that our relationship was based purely on a physical connection, we’d been dating for three and a half years, the love was there all right.  
We had met in the strangest of ways, through a mutual friend that I was kind of, almost, sort of, but not really having a “thing” with, you know?  Cisco was his name.  So we were together one day and he, being the adorable spaz that he was, had forgotten that his own birthday party was that same night.  He asked if I didn’t mind tagging along, it was a celebration for him and two friends whose birthdays followed his in sequence.  
This had been going on for several weeks, and I know we weren’t dating but I still had a feigning interest in the guy.  So we arrive to this girl, Cristina’s, house and I noticed this other boy almost immediately.  In a backwards cap and pair of boot cut jeans he was jumping around, tossing his arms, right in the middle of reciting some hilarious anecdote to any of his friends who hadn’t heard it yet; even those who had seemed riveted.  He was so full of charisma and with such assurance.  Besides that he was kind of cute so, though pathetically, I tried flirting with him for the rest of the night; he didn’t really catch on.  We left that night without having exchanged more than ten words between each other, I thought I’d never see him again, turns out I was wrong.  
“Broadway CAREols.  Show others that you care by enjoying a night of with your favorite blend of Christmas ditties and Broadway biddies” And before you ask, Yes, I did come up with that title, I think it was great and it was at the top of each flyer in big red and green letters and if you asked me “If you could do it again…” I would do it the same each and every time don’t judge me.
It was a show I had to direct for a community service project and of all people he played the piano for my show.  Only me and several other girls made up the cast, and I knew how easy it was to mistake a positive attitude for flirtation when it comes from a handsome young man.  He ran the music over three or four times individually with each cast member before the night of the show, but when Paolo and I worked that night he stopped me and just sang. For me.  
Each night after rehearsal I had to give him a ride home, I was a year older and thus had my license a year sooner.  I’d never mind allowing myself more time to bask in the glow of his perfectly understated confidence, so I was happy to oblige.  Technically Connecticut state imposed a law forbidding new drivers under the age of 18 to be on the roads past 11 at night.  My mom, being a government employee, really stressed this one.  His house was a solid ten minutes drive from our rehearsal spot, and my mom often warned me to allow myself enough time to get back home before 11.  What started as me beginning to drive faster and faster during the trip home ended as a routine each night, where I would finally allow him to step out of my car just as the clock read 11:00 PM.  
Our first kiss was in that car, my first uncontrollable breakdown was in the car, hell the first time he told me he loved me was in that car…right at the lip of the driveway.  I learned to ride my brakes perfectly to the point where I could park just beyond the edge of the sidewalk yet just before the point where the porch light would flash on, reminding his mother that his son is out past ten on a school night.  It was so warm.  I’ll never forget the cadence of his laughter as it trailed off, seamlessly merging with that next statement “Anna, I love you”.  I could have sworn the porch light went on.  

Now I know it may seem like I don’t care for his being dead right now, but the thing is, I did something.  I did something really bad.

You see, I had mentioned that he was up in his room, right?  Still, stiff, simply waiting to be brought down in a few hours as the catalyst to another round of tears.  Now don’t get me wrong, I did my share of crying the night before.  He’d been in the hospital for only a few days and when they told us he was dead…God, he was just so young, two years into college, the friend you have who was chasing his dreams down with a brand new pair of sneakers.  That kid the whole town knew because of the multitude of silly town functions he attended.  He would always insist.  Every other weekend was one silly thing or another “Oh you’re gonna love this.  Two words – ‘Poetry showdown’.  If you can’t take the heat, don’t stay in the kitchen”
The day of the funeral I just had to see him.  I snuck up the two floors to his room on the third floor.  As I neared his door at the top of that final flight of stairs each creak of the floorboard seemed to resonate through the house, followed by the hollow silence of my stillness.  I paused with each step as if stepping in larger spans of time would make what I was doing seem less suspicious, should someone hear me.  Upon touching his doorknob I felt an immediate chill. I couldn’t tell whether it was some ghostly feeling of being in the presence of a dead person, or the fact that the thermostat had been turned down to keep his body prime for viewing.
I held my breath as I opened the door, and blinked a couple times when I saw him.  He was wearing what everyone else was in downstairs, black tuxedo and a dark tie.  I know he would have scowled had he known he was going to be buried in a constricting penguin suit.  We had a conversation about it, you know?  Out on Academy Hill, right in the middle of a picnic. We were in enough shade that his transition lenses were only half tinted, and when he sat up, it was abruptly.  Pushing my head off his chest he kind of leaned in to the cemetery in the distance and pointed out how sad it is that no one really ever gets the chance to choose how they want to spend the rest of eternity dressed in.  He would have preferred his puma sneakers, still white after seven months, his striped green and blue socks, his only pair of ripped designer jeans and that express shirt he loved so much because it showed off his natural physique.  
I moved closer, inching toward him at first, then quicker as I broke through a place where I just relaxed, and for a moment he wasn’t dead.  For a moment he was just sleeping, all ready in his fancy get up simply waiting for me to wake him up.  I found myself sitting next to him, my eyes cast downward, half expecting his gaze to meet mine, and while stroking his hair I got an idea.  It happened quickly, and I kind of have a problem with acting upon my impulses, it’s something he used to criticize me on that and I never really improved.  Without thinking I threw open his drawer and pulled out what I knew he’d have wanted to be dressed in, should he have gotten the chance to create a will concerning his death-wear.  As I pulled of his starchy shirt my hand brushed against his chest, chilled as the room was, eerie as nothing else.  I finally got him down past his pants and saw, of all abominations, that he was outfitted in a fresh pair of tighty whities.  God, it’s as if the funeral home was asking to be haunted by his tormented soul.  I found his single pair of silk boxers and reassembled him in the way I knew he’d have wanted to be.
So great, now everyone will think I’m a loon for having desecrated his body.  Well what do they know; I’m the only one who ever really knew him! But how the hell would I explain it to his parents when the pallbearers march in and there he is, laying face up in his street clothes?  
This wasn’t right.  He didn’t belong here, he needed to be somewhere comfortable, someplace he enjoyed, not sitting upstairs in a suit with the lights off and the air blasting.  He hated the cold!  Certainly he would have hated a hundred people staring at his dead and lifeless shell, and he would, without a doubt, hate being six feet under, pushing daises at the Nichols Road cemetery.
I wrapped my arms around him, and as the building adrenaline made my breaths deepen I inhaled several moments of ecstasy off his clothes that still clung to his musty scent.  I lowered him gently to the floor and took care as I dragged him across the carpet to his door.  After fumbling, for what felt like several minutes, on his door handle I got him onto the awning introducing the stairs.  I even made it down the first flight of stairs without freezing up at the tiniest creak when I heard someone coming my way.  ******, they must need to use the bathroom, why couldn’t they just use the one downstairs like any normal person?  Without hesitation I throw open up the window near bottom of the stairs, heaving myself and him, sending us tumbling onto the garage roof.  Ignoring my probable bruises I spring up and slam the window behind me while taking special care to hide us both as far away from the bathroom window as possible.
Sitting up there, my heart racing, I felt his hand in mine and it was probably because my palms had gone clammy but I swear for a span of time he was alive again.  I closed my eyes and felt the breeze in my hair and was transported to a place where I spent a single moment in each day we ever shared.  Each beach side sandcastle, each afternoon spent cloud gazing, those same afternoons turning into evenings of star gazing, each and every night spent utterly and irrevocably lost with this silly boy that chose to love me.  
I was torn from my oasis as I heard the bathroom’s occupant exit and continue downstairs.   Knowing that my van was parked on the other side of the street I pushed his body as close to the edge of the roof as I could without his falling off and let him be. I hopped back inside and ran downstairs, but not before flying through the doors of the memorial and interrupting his mothers eulogy.  In an act of sheer brilliance I mustered a few tears and tore out the back door.  Everyone figured I was just so taken away by his death that I couldn’t stand to be there anymore.  Who knew anxiety could be mistook for remorse so easily?
I ran down the driveway, losing the grace I had composed in my dress in high heels the moment I slammed that door.  I jumped into Emmet, my van, because only crazy people drive around in un-named vehicles.  
I pulled out of my spot, nearly ruining the paint job on both my and his Uncle Ed’s car.  I flew my trunk door open and set the third row down, the general idea being his landing securely in my back seat.  I reversed up the driveway with the precision of a surgeon and the speed of a leopard right back to the edge of the garage where I had tossed his body.  I jumped out of my car nearly forgetting to put it into park before I shut off the engine.  I barely got halfway around my car before becoming transfixed on his hand, hanging off the gutter as if reaching for mine to grab hold and pull him to sweet salvation.  I jumped up a few times, unsuccessfully before I took off my shoes and got a good running start.  I flew up, grabbed his arm and ****** towards the car in a sideways downward motion.  He nearly cracked his head on the pavement coming down, he would have too if it wasn’t for my body breaking his fall.  I got up, too distracted by the sheer volume of my own heart to realize the pain I felt.  I shoved him into my back seat, slammed the trunk, stumbled into the car, stuck it in reverse and stepped on gas without even putting my shoes back on.

I told you I had done something bad.
This is a first draft, please, I welcome your critiques.
Akemi Feb 2015
All that lead in their bones
Smoke lingering blood

They placed masks on their graves
Unmarked in kitchens
And fields of grain
Washed out and bitterly red
Against a blue white skin

Liberty fell with her rifle
Pointed at her own knees
Crown set a gutter for soldiers to cower and puke in their false beliefs

The only absolute in this ******* war is death
You freedom ******* hypocrites
7:47pm, February 20th 2015

I watched Taxi to the Dark Side.
These pointless wars have only reinforced prejudice, perpetuated disdain, and reduced the civil rights of all involved.
Rhianecdote May 2015
Sitting in the gutter
Cause its the only place to see
What guts are

Wondering does anybody
Fight for anything
Anymore?

Cause I don't see it

I see people walking past
Opportunity
Walking away from things
With ease
Cold feet
Treading cautiously
Feeding doubts fire
Going about Life so passively

But Hold up let's join a cause!

Direct our anger
Politically, racially,
at poverty and inequality
Donate some money
Rant constantly about
Overturning regimes
Then retreat back to apathy
Woe is me!

Bleeding hearts in their masses
Floating past me
In the gutter
Cause its the only place to see
what guts are...
And hearts
Cause no one has heart anymore

Where is the love?
Where is the passion?
The courage and the loyalty?
All Going about life so Half heartedly
And what can you do with half a heart?

Give it to Me

Cause as I'm sat here
Reading entrails like some gypsy
Passing judgement on you
A poor reflection on me

It seems I lost mine

So I embrace the pain
that migrates from
an empty chest to
A swelling stomach

Lift myself up from that gutter
And feel what guts are
Take half that heart
And see how far it'll take me...

**To make it whole
And think ****, I best get some Rennies on my way past the shop :P
T R Wingfield Jan 2017
Ours was like fireworks
in the mid-summer sky
Radiant,
       Iridescent,
                   Incredulous,
                              Alive
but the finale came suddenly, unexpectedly soon,
& the band played on,
as if nothing had changed,
as if a fountain of sparkling embers and flame
had not just erupted mere inches away.
And now,
where explosions once seared summer's sky with crackling thunderous incandescent delight
Only whispers and wisps of smoke remain,
Scattered by the breeze,
Whithered, then, by rain.
And of the evening's reveries precious little can be found:
some soured beer in crumpled cans, discarded haphazardly
surrounding a threadbare picnic bedspread
rumpled beneath the branches of an ancient live oak tree.
Dew now wet where lovers once had lain,
staring up into the night
in wonder, ignorant of such banal things
like: masquerading lust in love's robes, declaring,
"I've never loved a love as deep as the love I have for you,"
and truly being unaware of the uncanny substitute;
Or the unbridled disenchantment unleashed by abandonment
and the inevitable transience of an insufferable pain.

We ****** on bar balcony balustrades, over looking city streets.
We ditched tampons into trees rather than wait to satisfy our needs.
We left your ******* in a planter
on a patio under an eve
On purpose, So that some poor, unassuming shop-keep
Would find them
(along with cigarette butts and an empty bag of ****)
and have no choice but think to themselves,
"Did someone **** here?"
and then immediately understand the answer is
"Yes. Exuberantly!"

We defiled. every. place. we went;
giggling with glee at all of our indiscretions.

Oh how many indiscretions could there possibly be?
We shall know;
All of them!

And so we did,

And we were free.



On new years eve I carried you piggyback in your peacock blue sequined gown through the streets of our ****-soaked-gutter-of-a-town.
You were barefoot, drunk, and refusing to be told what to do,
that you had to wear your shoes,
that the streets were far to ***** and dangerous for your tender little feet- you said "Just let me be, It's fine. It wont **** me..."
then, looking at the gutter, continued,
"probably.
And these shoes already are, so..." sticking out your tongue
But I couldn't put you down.
Not in that place, not at that time.
Nor did I even want to. I could have carried you all night
(which was fortunate, because for most of itI did.)
We were declared the city's cutest couple by a stranger on the sidewalk whom we passed while galloping down the street, you, giggling, alight upon my back, running at full speed. This declaration was reaffirmed by everyone met.

A pixie, you know, will always trip you up
(they're natural pranksters you see).
Their magic is undeniable, but oh what trouble they can be.

- My toothsome little faerie - You meant trouble for me;
but what a beautiful, beguiling mess you turned out to be,

You snuck pixie dust into everywhere we went, and
Dispensed it with abandon-
Spread it like caution to the wind.
Sanctifying everything and everyone we met.
That poor city was baptized in our joy.
It's sins washed into glittering gutters,
where we lay sparkling, genuine and loved.


We broke the records that night,
all of them, known and not.

We loved harder than diamond,
than a trailer-hitch to the shin,
Deeper than the fathoms of the trenches at the bottom of the sea.

We made soulmates seem like strangers.
We spoke nonsense fluently.
We shared mind and body, food and drink,
and careless wanton play.

It was

The most
     *******
          Fun
   I've ever had
       in my life...

Probably the most that I ever will.


Every moment I was with you had
the sizzle and the tease
of a bottle-rocket, lit
and held between my teeth.

I knew that I'd get burned
If I held it to the end,
But I did it just to prove I could;
To prove to me
That I was brave enough
To be unashamed
  To be unafraid
   To be.
First draft catharsis.
Second draft refined.
Third draft- shape and tone, structure and rhyme.

I've been holding on to some very dense emotional pain relating to a relationship which, for lack of a better word, collapsed. When it did, I was buried by my depression, and sank into drug and alcohol addiction. The depression and drugs had taken there toll on the relationship, but I couldn't not understand why someone who had loved and been loved so deeply could just walk away. It took a long time to understand that it was self-preservation. And that is a hard realisation to make. Still the love we shared was enigmatic. Like nothing I've ever seen in a movie or a song or a poem. This is hardly a testament, or even a rough approximation of the experience at its finest moments, but it is a reflection. A memory. She took a piece of me when she left. One I want back desperately, but also one I know cannot be found. So I'll have to search until I find something of a similar size and shape, maybe a little larger, and cut the whole to fit.
Martin Narrod Apr 2014
angry men who do not know I do not have a dollar or a cig to spare. Ugly irrefutable contagion-handed howlers. Angry mischievous heathens that pantomime on 6:00a.m. sidewalk, Wicker Park gallow stop-sign, choreographed gutter-punk drunk walk. And of all he wants and could ever want splits down his gooey membrane brain in the outline of a noun shaped fragment of a clause, "Couldja spare 80¢ for the train," but of course I don't spare on the ellipsis or the period. Semi-colons I won't! My rubber-bottomed leather boots lash out, heavy scraping sounds trail this mirrored shadow half an angle behind me.

*****!! Blonde framed sunglasses from American Apparel, a gift from my sister in a folded Ray-Ban case is scattered on last nights bedroom floor, my girlfriend has certainly not noticed, the gloom-coated morning sun spray has not noticed; but I have unzipped a fissure in the ocular lens. My heart skips a beat. Her bedroom might as well have swallowed them whole. Now the house can halt and have the shade, swaying in Spring air in 10:22a.m. shadows. The aviator himself Howard Hughes would strike me with his 488 aircraft. Edwin Starr in his invincible sinister calypso of War would turn me round. I was sturdy as a rock until I began to forget my forgottens. These unknown unknowns I knew I needed. I'm over a quarter-century on to noon going nowhere- and quite blindly.

But then, still she could stand upright and find me. Her neck crooked, looking onward through the East, the gristly roots of rhubarb buried in her searching fingernails. She's threaded worse, and of course if I could just tell her- this is the kind of nursing which requires acute temperament and flexibility. I am thus on a journey to strike nonsense and fear from the idiotic vocabulary that put this nonsense in my head. Split through me like a butter knife into my apotropaic. Perhaps tar water could cure my ails. If not, certainly a sliver of vanilla would set me straight. Or if could just rain rain rain all day, then I'd make do without, but she is at school. My pistons are racked and nervous, and I'm not going anywhere but my rucksack stoop. I am camped in midwestern Spring soup. Fog, rain, and shade. The nightmare of day.
Inspired by William Butler Yeats 'Beautiful Lofty Things'
Marshal Gebbie Jul 2018
How tenuous this grip we have, how slight our hold remains
When all around  loud braggards boast that power now pertains,
We see the banner headlines splashed across our daily rags
And redneck demonstrations cleans the streets of Spics and ****
When blood runs in the gutter as the battons rise and fall
And whilst taking tea in style the filthy rich ignore it all.
The blonde leader of our nation struts, postulates and brags
While the rest of us skive off around the corner smoking ****
Our  kids ingest confusion as they loiter on the street
Unknowing  our delusions make illusions held, replete.
How tenuous the grip we have, how slight our hold remains
As our allies shower cold distrust convinced our fault inflames.
What chance of clear redemption, what remedies revive
When truth is lost to darkness can our honesty survive?
Reputation cut to shards, confidences ******
That leaders of community no longer hold our trust
When white is caste as black and then to green and then to grey
And sanity refuses pontification one more day.
How tenuous the grip we have, how slight our holds remain
As twilight turns to darkness caste against a larks’ refrain.

M.
The White House
HAMILTON, New Zealand
25 July 2018
Despair across the nation, good people sitting quietly in their kitchens not quite believing the chaos and disunity sown by the White House amidst their communities, not knowing which way to turn to seek reason, to seek an element of promise for the morrow.

Who would have thought this possible in what was once, the greatest nation on Earth?

M.
Olivia Kent Aug 2015
In the gutter she sits.
It's raining again.
The drain is calling to the bobbing twig.
The twig that she snapped from the sapling.

She's so bored,mummy's at work again.
Now she's sitting in the rain.
Ripples at the flow with her cheap laced up shoes.
Her shoes all stained with salty water residue.
Kicking at the water.
She truly is her mother's daughter.
Stubborn to the rotten core.
Mother's job is not too pleasant.
She's a pheasant plucker.
She always works on rainy days.
Her daughter knows not what she does.
Mummy says it won't be long.
You know she needs the money.

She oughts go home.
But she'll still be alone.
The owl in the tree at roadside suggests she finds a towel.
Great notion, but little lassie can't speak owl.

The sky's wide open now.
It's pouring frown.
Releasing it's stress.
Wet shoes, wet skirt.
Sodden hair, soggy vest.
Supposes she really should go home.
Her hair's just a dripping mess.
Soggy tresses.

Time to go home little girl.
Mummy may be worried.
(c) Livvi
Rob Sandman Mar 2016
You’re a poisoned rose in a wedding band,
A glad eye with a stabbing hand,
A tumour ,vicious rumour surrounds you,
BP Exxon -death abounds you,
I first found you amusing and witty,
cutting remarks a stick with both ends ******-

Gutter scumbag with a glaze of charm,
Only interested in doing harm,
A sociopath with a crocodile smile,
always had the last laugh,- real fight? Run a mile,
Backstabber Judas priest,but **** was I deceived,
Each Lie you sold I truly believed.

I stood by you ,defended you til the bitter end,
Bitter irony I know,with you as a friend,
Who the **** needs enemies, its all a front,
An affront to my instincts,get out of my life you ****.

chorus

"My toxic friend this is the end get out of my life for good,
Every time you smile a child dies you’re up to no good,
Don’t call me-text me unfriend me before you end me,
You’re the epitome of the new word-Frenemy."

Now I hear you’re spreading rumours behind my back,
Bad move,wrong play better stand back,
Your malicious manouevery no longer stands,
I’m two steps ahead your end is planned.

You better watch your back,you’ve got no back up and no spine,
Juggling hedgehog maze lies through a field of land mines,
I’ve got my eye on you ex pal,don’t worry your time’s come,
we’ll see who can outrun the .45 from a gun,
That you’ve been begging for for years no tears at your end,
You’re a poxy oxymoron my toxic friend.

So come out to play my way and see who draws first,
I guarantee you a surprise not my blood burst,
Flying in the air like a hose god only knows,
You’re a fly in my eye a burr under my skin so out she goes,
The left that hits your jaw will saw your head from your neck
You talk a good fight,good night,I’ll leave ya wrecked.

chorus

"My toxic friend this is the end get out of my life for good,
Every time you smile an angel loses wings you’re no good,
Don’t call me-text me unfriend me before you end me,
You’re the epitome of the new word-Frenemy."
This is a Song I wrote for a female singer  that I forgot about...any takers?
The first inductees were named I sat there half hung over and a stiff drink in the wait to  kick the party off once again.
The names were called and they were the people who actually started this site not just came long afterwards to pick the bones clean of a already dead animal that ones for you like button zombies.

They were all there Bathsheba ,Richard Shepard although his where is Waldo new persona had not allowed him to be seen yet again.
Chris Smith they were all announced minus one name that shown through the dark like a true beacon  of total debauchery  the man the myth the walking train wreck yours truly Gonzo.

After the announcement everyone made sure to give the lucky panel a good dose of the clap once I'm sure wasn't the first time some of are panel had encountered that.

What?,They are all excellent writers and deserve the applause get your mind out of the gutter you loveable pervez  you.

I knew there must have been some mistake so I approached the strange little **** who runs the show here to ask had my name been forgotten by mistake.

Hey there person I cant say your name or you will banish me to the hello closet with your co owner and life partner .
Yes Gonzo can I help you ?
The dark lord himself said in his usual why wont this ******* die and leave me alone little naughty  voice of his.

You mean in a ****** sense ****** ?
Adolf looked at me in his usal look of is this ******* insane or just ******* with me sense .

Look you misspelling ****** what the hell do you want?
For ****** and **** to become legal and Justin Biebers  head on a silver platter .

That is in such bad taste.
Yeah I replied I know maybe just the ****** thing cause that man **** is terrible have you ever seen deliverance?
Made me want to never go camping again I mean honestly why couldn't it have Mark Walberg being rode like a piggy mmm twisted .

Gonzo what the hell is wrong with you !?
Honestly Adolf to much to explain in this write I believe it all started when my mother sold me for crack yeah she only got like four rocks duh I'm at least worth ten what a ***** love ya mom.  

I swear you drunken perverted halfwit if you don't just get to the point I'm going to shoot you myself you insane ******* .

I was shocked by these words never had anyone said such nice things about me with there outside voice once was strange being we were inside at the holiday Inn convention center deep in the mental wasteland called Ohio .
Yeah I know why Ohio?
Well cause Hello has no money that's why we beg more than those cheap hookers at PBS.

But enough with the foreplay children.

Adolf I will for once in my semi sober existence speak clearly .
Why the **** am I not a part of the ******* hall of fame being I was here from day ******* one before half the people who think there hot **** ever ******* were you ******* cyber ****!

Was that clear enough ?

I must have hit a chord for the mighty cyber warlord shot me a look of pure rage that made me wish I had brought my trusty **** whistle.
Sure   I know that no one will respond I just like blowing it the whistle that is cause Gonzo don't swing that way yeah sure there was that one summer in college and I know  what your thinking.

Gonzo went to college?
What it could happen hell were did you think I got my black belt in drinking?

Look you demented ****** you may have had a audience of perverts and teenage girls and demented old ladies who raise coyotes for there ******* job fooled into liking your work but I will never ever ever Put you into the Hello Hall Of Fame ever ever he continued on for awhile beating his little fist on the podium he was such a loveable little **** kind of a mix of Elton John and Martha Stewart.

So maybe next year ?
No ******* .
So what your saying is maybe after I'm dead and the world has gone into a state of thank the ******* Lord we don't have to read this long winded ******* work anymore  then maybe?

Don't you understand the word no?
Well being I hear it all the time from my teenage wife you think I would but hey I've learned like after some very manly crying and begging like a dog eventually  she caves  in or if I pay her like her other clients  .

I'm kidding I'm a writer I have no money.

It was clear this egg wasn't going to crack or go sunny side up for me now maybe get a little scrambled in-between as you sit there reading wondering what the **** is wrong with this guy writing this story on a poetry website.

It's cause I'm black isn't it Adolf ?
Do you own a mirror Gonzo?
Duh what do you think a snort my lines off of ******* besides  my heart is more black than that of any twisted freak ego maniac who enjoys a good drink and some even better hookers .

Look Gonzo I'm tired and I got to get out of here cause if we don't clear out we have to pay a late fee besides there's a star track convention waiting and you know how those nerds get when they when you put off them meeting there messiah William Shattner .

True those strange little hamsters were worse than rednecks at a monster truck show with no beer in sight.

I had to for once admit defeat Adolf held the keys and much like a hot ******* chick The Hello Hall Of Fame wasn't in my cards .
Yeah rules and stupid laws can be such a **** block.

I was broken so I did what any grown man in the same situation would do went to the bar and pouted in a corner and flipped all my old friends off then realized that the bar was filled with a bunch of Sci Fi nerds who kept wondering who the **** is that weird dude crying in his beer flipping everyone off.

And after one to many insults the nerds decided to go all Chuck Norris on my *** I'm kidding they threatened to call there parents and have them give me a good scolding and being it was the first time Mom and Dad  got them out of the basement this year I knew there would be hell to pay.

I looked deep into my darkened soul and had to think fast .
So I did what any good con man and half *** writer would do.
Told them I was Gene Roddenberry's son and signed autographs and took there free drinks and had a good ***** with a green chick .

And who said I didn't believe in happy endings .
Live long and stay crazy hamsters .

Gonzo
And upon reading this you may wonder hey is there a Hello Hall Of Fame?

Really do you need a answer.
Newsflash neither is Santa Claus , The Easter Bunny, Or Katy  Perry's ***'s .
Cné Jan 2018
Climbing on the bus
Not looking forward to this trip
But it meant so much to her  
And how could I predict

That it would be her last hurrah
Before she passed away
Just one year ago marks
The anniversary of that day

It was an annual trip, with her twin
They took to different cities
With a group of old church folks
They called themselves
“The Traveling Gypsies”

As it turned out to be
My last fond memory
Of my mother and her twin
Before they were stripped
Of all their memories

Alzheimer’s was their reward
They gave it quite a fight
Bed ridden in their final days
Until they saw the light

Who's to say how it will end
Or where that place will be
A gutter in the streets of life
Or home where it should be

So as I sit and contemplate
These moments I recount
I think about the road ahead
And how I’ll make it count
My mom and her twin sister both had Alzheimer's. My mom was significantly more progressed than my aunt's. My aunt acted as my mom's caretaker long after we had them both moved to a memory care facility. They both did well there for about 6 months. Then my mom became aggressively depressed and crying all the time. At that time, they both had a bad sinus infection at the same time. My mother recovered but was still crying and complaining she couldn't breathe. However doctors could not find any ailments in her. My aunt ended up getting pneumonia. While in the hospital they discovered and diagnosed her with stage 4 terminal lung cancer. She died 4 months later with the last month being bed ridden, hardly eating until she was nearly only bones and on a breathing machine. My mom and her twin were always connected in the weird twin way ... knowing things between them, beyond normal comprehension. We all believe my mom knew (not in a cognitive way but in her own twin way) before diagnosed that her twin was going to die. None of us expected her to live much longer than her twin. They both had long life forces even crippled with cancer and Alzheimer's. My aunt Lorea (other mother) died Oct. 27, 2016. Up until that point my mother could still walk, talk, eat and recognize me and my siblings. However after she lost her twin she could no longer walk requiring much more individual care. We moved her to a residential home care facility. They worked really hard to try and revive her willingness to live. It wasn't a conscious choice to give up because with Alzheimer's your brain doesn't work right. She lasted less than 3 months after the death of her twin. It was heartbreaking, to say the least, to witness. I rejoice her being reunited with her twin and my father and free of the confinement of Alzheimer's but I'm still working through the finality of it on the earthly side. Growing up as a child of twins is a blessing of having two moms (one being the cool mom ... the mom you could tell anything to .. knowing she would know how to explain it to your real mom in a way you couldn't bring yourself to do) and a sister cousin, my aunt's daughter. I had an older sister (10 years) too. So in my case I had three moms I love dearly. I am grateful to still have my sister.
All of the time i spent locked up, I wanted more.
but i couldnt handle the leash i was given.
I understood how every one was effected besides my self.
I wanted my drug. over and over.
just to get over the loss of you dying.
and the last memory kills me every day. but all i can say is thank you..
thank you for my twisted mind and the abuse that get's me to give and give and give so no one feels the same,
but i cant fix the world, world peace is impossible all at once,
every one has had ****  thrown in there face, but only those who got through it have the power to dig out of there hole they have dug.
along the way i want to take the rotten decaying part of your heart.
and throw it away, but part of my addiction takes it in the soul and reminds me of depression of my own,. and gets me caught up...
in mind and site we are all clearly blood and bones.
and a brain that is one tenth of our bodie's, but we feel 100% in reality
out on the streets thrown to the gutter rats, came back with potential.
came back wanted, legally. in the safe way. Jesse applegate
Maria Imran Apr 2015
I left you
darlin
'cause you din care an
din' want
and now I
live alone in tis
gutter 'cause ugly
old filth I am
you said
so am
nobody jus' a
***.
Nigel Finn Dec 2015
The darker side of my mind is where
Abstractions of fragmented poetry breeds;
A baby lies dead in a Hong Kong gutter,
And my lines fall into place.

Broken hearts sing lullabies to me,
Two savage beatings spare me a verse,
New Orleans lends me four at low interest,
And throws in a haiku for free.

The old veteran quotes me three lines
And gets buried with the last.
The rhyme festers with his body;
Both soldier
                      and verse
            are
                       free
                                       again.

I can't explain the beauty I see
In the dying faces of the abandoned ones,
Nor tell you why, if the bomb were dropped tomorrow
I should weep in both anguish and delight.

I can only tell you, should it all end,
Should all modern horrors dissapear,
The future will weep for the joys of the present
And smiles will dissapear forever
The voice Jan 2013
A teacher: The Villain and the Hero
One inspiration, one true motivation  
That one person who gives his powerful students  
The right direction
That one teacher who fights for the future of others
Who finds success in the success of others
That one person who further form a teacher
Is a human-being
He might seem like a villain to some
But he is a hero to others
He is my hero

Picked me up from the gutter
Made me strong enough to deal with
X equals A to the second power multiplied times two
He is that one teacher who taught me how to leave problems behind
And solve equation easier and faster
That one teacher who became a role model
The perfect inspiration any student needs
His way of teaching the concept  
His way of giving us the chance to be teachers our selves  
That way of making us the main importance
His way of giving us our place in his class room

Taking possession of our minds and changing them to capable ones
Making each and every one of us students who can solve anything
He expects a lot from all of us, He expects a lot from me
He gives me the challenges that I can handle
Gives me a chance to prove my self
He taught me that X is just a variable
That X is the solution
That you should not be afraid of the variable  
That the solution is hidden behind the other factors
That lesson I use in my daily life

I'm not afraid of any problem in any subject
Because he taught me how to deal with problems
And when finding X was hard,
He was there ready to answer my questions
As I walk away during lunch  
I wish him a good lunch
But what I'm actually saying is
You have done a lot for these, your students
Now give yourself a break and do something for your self.

He might just be an algebra teacher
Or a staff member at Riverside University High school
Or just Mr. Sepulveda, to some people
But for me he means more than that.
For me he is a hero
That can travel the distance
And can fix any problem with time
He is the Hero who inspires me  

He is a teacher
Whom I admire greatly
Not for being a teacher
Or being at Riverside
I admire him because he made me strong
In Algebra
In my problems
In life  
And now In my poetry

You sometimes are the villain
For giving me a B in a test
But you are the hero because for every B
I get another challenge  
And I know that with your help
I will get an A in Life.  
You are the Villain of my mind
But the Hero of my Heart
Thank-you Mr. Sepulveda
Written by: Estrella Luciano
For: A true hero
P.S. I still think I deserved an A on that one test. ;)
For my favorite algebra teacher
it was warm
for a winters eve
unusually warm
but damp very damp
birthing a persistent
midnight mist that
crawled over everything

avenging
halogen angels
flitted down from
streetlight perches
skidding through
bare limb bars
of broken trees
roped in by sagging
telephone wires

skulking
seraphs
joined
ebullient
neon auroras
laughingly
brake dancing,
jittering away on the
pock marked rims
of hip hop streets

the fine drizzle
descending from the
black urban heavens
splayed holy water
over the bodies
of anything
that moved; and
layered mounds
of transparent beads
on all inert things
chiding those yolked
to weighty burdens
to seek relief of
a much needed
breaking point

our
slouching city
mired in a cycle
of a prolonged
historical rut
beavers away
to lift the lid
on tomorrows
tipping point
in a desperate
labor to stop
tripping over
itself...

a dinged up
Sentra’s
flashing spinners
twisted round
our dark corner
nearly clipping
our troop

inside the
yakking low-riders
scuttled along,
their hidden ***** eyes
cruising the stoops
and cyclone alleys
scoping opportunities
for the next
jolly hustle
to feed
a growing
angry fix

tonight
Mother Nature was
running a *****
to the wall third shift,
manufacturing a
stationary low
of gagging precip
churning volumes
of Vulcan smoke
conjuring
convective spirits
from all the
dim places

emanations lit
the balmy January air
rising from
stubborn gray patches
of despoiled snow
and rancid ponds
organic gutter water
composting
in distilled pools
awaiting leakage
through flotsam
clogged sewage grids

Paterson’s
litter police
could close the
city’s budget deficit
if all infractions
were properly cited
and paid in this
neighborhood

this queer elixir of
rising vapors from
evaporating snow
escaping the cracks
lining the bowels of
mordant streets
joining descending
screens of billowing mists
blurs boundaries of light,
diffusing temporal time

people and things
lose precise definition
reducing sentient beings
to moving silhouettes of gray
photographic negatives
framed in dribbling palettes
of pastel hues

our
5th Ward mission
planted in the
hub of a neighborhood
still holding on...

Old WASP’s
of St. Paul’s
long ago
winged away
from this
princely
Episcopate
principality

the abandoned
conical nest, its
chambers filled with
the mud of 50 dead rectors
precariously clings
to its shivering
boulevard corner

its endowment depleted
its earthly treasure rusting
grandiose Tiffany windows
remain the last legacy of an
opulent faith now
shamefully rattling away
in moth eaten frames

once icons of
adulatory reverence
the final sparkling asset
of a distressed religion
begs to be monetized
by flummoxed vestrymen
yearning to extend
a stewardship
over a dissipating
ESL flock

distress in the hood
parades down Broadway
in all directions

a few blocks east
a shuttered
Barnert Hospital
transfigured into an
urban enterprise zone
for health-care privateers
working overtime to
extract federal
corporate welfare
rent subsidies
dutifully fulfilling
fine print obligations of
Obamacare legislation

Old Mayor Barnert’s
namesake synagogue
once hard by
City Hall
is long gone
its absent footprint
now centered by
a thriving
White Castle

near Broadway’s end
on the outskirts
of Eastside Park
Art Deco Emanuel Temple
the last anchor
for the city’s Judaism
lies vacant
awaiting a renewed
purpose

fraught with irony
a thriving Islamic Center
stands juxtaposed
across the street
from the old
Hebrew Temple

we wonder what
will emerge
from the
hallowed chrysalis
of decommissioned
Emanuel?

rumors of a
Great Falls Art Center
trickle like a leaking faucet
failure to secure a mortgage
in the post credit
bubble pop economy
dams the possibly
of a new centers
coming to fruition

will
the city’s
changing
demography of
reverent Muslim’s
genuflecting
across the street
take time away
from prayer to
patronize a venue
offering decadent
bourgeois jazz and
risqué reviews
of retro Borscht Belt
vaudeville?

when Constantinople
became Istanbul they
converted the Christian
churches into mosques

when the Inquisitioners
drove the Moors from
Granada they converted
the Grand Mosque to
the Cathedral of the
Incarnation

what incarnations
will this city’s
twilight bring?

As Byzantine
begets
Constantinople
begets
Istanbul
the links
in the Silk Road
spanned west
to the new world
of mechanized looms
powered by
Great Falls
raceway water
and a distribution
and procurement
chain anchored
by the Morris Canal

Capitalist
modernity
begets
our Silk City
it also bespeaks
its demise

in the courtyard
of St. Paul’s
a muffled chorus
trawls the thick air

a posse of pimps
done wrangling
their stables
of $5 ******
sing reveries to
the evening haul

midnight lullabies
of corner crooners
lift a Capella hosannas
from the dark armpit
of an alley behind
the Autozone

“i said
you say
what can make
me feel this way
my girl”

juiced pimps
cashin in
livin large on
a skanks
50 cent haul

the trade in flesh
of distressed
human capital
remains a
growth industry

Music Selection:  
Temptations, My Girl

jbm
3/1/13
Oakland
Part 1 of extended poem Silk City PIT.  PIT is an acronym for Point In Time.  PIT is an annual census American cities conduct to count the homeless population.  Paterson NJ is nick named The Silk City.
Twelve o’clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations,
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Half-past one,
The street lamp sputtered,
The street lamp muttered,
The street lamp said, ‘Regard that woman
Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door
Which opens on her like a grin.
You see the border of her dress
Is torn and stained with sand,
And you see the corner of her eye
Twists like a crooked pin.’

The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.

Half-past two,
The street lamp said,
‘Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,
Slips out its tongue
And devours a morsel of rancid butter.’
So the hand of a child, automatic,
Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.
I could see nothing behind that child’s eye.
I have seen eyes in the street
Trying to peer through lighted shutters,
And a crab one afternoon in a pool,
An old crab with barnacles on his back,
Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.

Half-past three,
The lamp sputtered,
The lamp muttered in the dark.

The lamp hummed:
‘Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks a feeble eye,
She smiles into corners.
She smoothes the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand twists a paper rose,
That smells of dust and old Cologne,
She is alone
With all the old nocturnal smells
That cross and cross across her brain.’
The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust in crevices,
Smells of chestnuts in the streets,
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors
And cocktail smells in bars.’

The lamp said,
‘Four o’clock,
Here is the number on the door.
Memory!
You have the key,
The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair,
Mount.
The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,
Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life.’

The last twist of the knife.
Her mouth, hot and wet, breathes lies and ***** secrets.

Your mother warned you not to use those words.

Gutter language gushes innocently from the slight part in those glossy cherry lips and teases diamond reflections in the top ridges.  Talk is not cheap.

The dim light swings closer over your shoulder. Are those jewels in her lips, or was that thrill through your body the white panic of a police spotlight?

Pouting lips now slashing through words and trickling filth from the smeared corners are the only thing existing outside this honeyed haze. Your chest rises and falls in the shaky rhythm of those lips crashing against each other and bruising the air.

She will melt into the air and take her disturbing, wonderful raving with her as you are drafting and redrafting the words stuttering on your teeth to keep her here.

Slam your fist forward to those dancing, jerking lips and crack your hand on the mirror. Blood snuggles in the smashed glass lines, the same color. Insane, frothing, living scarlet. Her distorted mouth in the reddened glass crater. Her flared nostrils and thin purple bruise across the bridge. And your eyes. You stare into the mirror and her eyes narrow back. Your mouths stretch and scream in the same piercing wail. The police siren shrieks in commiseration as the strobe touches the mirror and blinds you both.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
i can't believe i came across this today,
but i am certain did...
   an experience so vague i couldn't believe,
i actually experienced dyslexia,
call it quasi call it pseduo... but it was very
much akin... from the book's narrative...
but not from the footnotes, i read the footnotes
at perfect cognitive speed, but perhaps
returning to the narrative i did experience
a slack of the + (add) of how words are
dissected and quickly put back together...
  yes, that other arithmetic with very little
breathing room, yes, that thing without
a soul... the word... or god...
    i turned custard brain, fudge...
     i felt like watching the gymnastics at
the para-olympics... and if i was going for a cheap
joke / english black humor i'd probably
laugh at that... but since this is the most
perfect ideal, i can't only make that comparison.

and so it was, i sat there doing nothing productive,
nothing... counting sheep to encourage
day-dreaming...
       so i said: 'i'll read a book', like i might do
on the whim in my grandparent's house
(one of the many reasons i decided to be "canadian" -
and establish a firm belief in bilingualism -
since if i didn't speak the tribal tongue
i wouldn't be rummaging in my grandfather's
library... and stealing books from him...
  well, exporting them to england, where he said
on my last visit: your library is bigger than
mine, isn't? well... it can fill a double-bed
   and be stacked at about 300cm up...)
    maybe the fact that being immersed in the tribe:
polish on the radio, on the television,
the fact that i can be without the internet for
weeks on end and have no quick-canvas outlet for
my earned tongue is the reason i could read
Kraszewski's* Dei Ira / bozy gniew / god's wrath...
    (there is too much subtle differences between
capital iota and little-town lambda -
   or why iota had to have the dot above it, anyway) -
so dei ira looks better... which is why i'm
not orthodox about using capital instances all the time...
   what a whirlwind...
         but prior to that i was watching
a david jacoby film - love is the devil: study for
a portrait by francis bacon...
                                         and all i could think of:
what marvel, to have a **** shoved up your ***
and speak so beautifully...
  have such a vast array of narratives...
     i can only assume that experiencing **** ***
gives you the other man's **** shoved into
your mouth that acts like a tongue and speaks
      so many truths as could be possible,
as in Freudian dream: when a woman wears a hat...
a talking ****** on her head from slurping
at the vaginal grotto of another woman...
     such a marvel though, homosexuality, esp.
the type of homosexuality that has art to express
rather than a civil partnership, civil rights...
  i mean, i could watch this stuff for days and never
yawn or need to watch protests and marches...
  just the image of what is best described
   john william waterhouse's
   painting hypnos and thanatos...
      i can't help but see it like that...
         francis plays the female role, his model the evident
dominant male... and sure, francis having his
**** punctured for what could be best described
as diarhhea either side of the equator does so...
it's as if he is eloquent enough / intelligent to allow
this to happen, for another man to speak through
him somehow... the model's phallus in francis' ****
becomes the model's tongue in francis' mouth...
    which becomes the stage for hypnos and thanatos...
in that francis' tongue becomes a phallus in
the mind of the model: and it whispers him nightmares
in his sleep... a vicious cycle indeed...
           that's the homosexuality that's highly regarded
by me, not the confetti functional type that
    exploits science and social norms and can no longer
lend itself to art, to transcending the taboo...
      with homosexuality divorced from art...
i can't see anything profound by gays from now on...
i really can't... if there is no art in this deviant
love, no art is worth being expressed by this
once glorious realm that has grovelled into the gutter...
so let's start once more: with Onan!

and everyday i awake wake with only one identifiable
fear: will i not write a single verse as of today?
it's not a case of a single day encapsulating my
fear, but that that crux day: furthered into a silence
that can't compensate the act of writing with
anything, other than sleep... i just can't seem
to smarten up concerning this very rational phobia...
    and having said that: here is the incision mark
denoting an interlude, and how: what are originally
intended to be of enso quality, cannot
   stand up to the biological tick-tock of needing
the loo...
     and do i think o'keefe's music foundation
by children is so much better than the original
done by tool concerning the song forty six & two?
yes, yes i do... just look at the kid on the bass guitar,
the fact that bass guitar is allowed to state a layer
of cake just above drums to set the rhythm
means the rhythm guitar doesn't have to solipsistic
******* and scale the everest of solo...
   it can remain in the rhythm section,
actually be worth a rhythm,
   the guitar doesn't need to overload into a solo...
the vocals belong to that domain...
   as long as the bass guitar is allowed to be heard
(unlike in metallica) - then i must be tone deaf!
revise me!
                    jazz knew the importance of every instrument,
and the need to be spontaneous, but also
the need to be anti-synchronisation,
  and therefore anti-muddle tsunami of:
all together now!
            n'ah, **** that **** (yes, the Vulgate is
coming along, i like the pooch, i don't care what things
i might say, the rude growl-bark is coming along:
so we can admire him licking his *****, and for no
other reason he's coming):
as in the birth of sexes... which the animals don't
seem to comprehend that much intently...
                 i can't like my ******* or **** one off...
but i know i can abstract a woman into
a hand and just pretend it's me doing the ****
crap with her... than myself included,
   or as i might add: never drink or *******
before the mirror... soon enough your reflection
becomes a bit odd, not because of what you do,
but because you hide so much perplexity before
you in Lucifer's daylight with which
  the moon Narcissus governs the moods...
that you start to look at your actual shadow
   with more clarity and fact...
  looking in the mirror is the reverse of looking
at your shadow under a street-lamp at night...
the mirror sort of becomes a shadow...
             the form becomes a bit (ha ha, what
an exagerration) vague... i look into
a mirror and i am but looking into shadow...
                   and i can't exactly recognise the eyes,
or make our geometric approximations
of a skull...
                      it's not even a case of a poor Yorrick
blah blah.
    or as the new governing body put it:
there are to be no mirrors contained within
the gates of Pandemonium...
        each to his own shadow, each to his own abstract...
   for the shadow will be deemed the new mirror...
   the new found glacier of, yes:
when salt water freezes, comes pure white floating
on the oceans... but must you freeze fresh water
and there's this matrix...
as in icecubes...
       dropping from a vendor machine...
and i knew i shouldn't have digressed so much,
but then again, if there was no ****** tick-tock
       rebellion, i probably wouldn't have revealed this much...
with ancient lore...
    who'd use the word Pandemonium these days,
if you're merely trying to call it: the Houses of Westminster...
well sure, accusation due: i prefer
a bunch of kids feeding me a nostalgia over a song
i heard aged 14... such is the power of the song 46 & 2
done to a... wait wait...
  i was talking about bass guitars and jazz...
(i could never get to like rap...
            i liked when the blacks deconstructed classical
music, but they did after: i'll never like,
mainly people of blackies and that general fanfare
of rap feeding tribalism) -
          the greatest aspect of jazz:
that on some recordings there's a chance to hear all
the instruments having a solo moment...
you'll hear a quintent solo:
  the piano, the drum, the saxophone, the horn,
the double-bass solo... each doing a solo...
not some erectile dysfunction of rock music from the 1980s...
i mean: each one will do a solo...
  and **** me, that's grand... and given there's no vocals
makes it all the better... but where, the ****, can i hear
jazz music being kept with such high regard as i
might find mozart pickled and even mummified
     to suddenly rise again and compose like i might hear
it on classical.fm... maybe acid jazz killed it...
   i can't seem to hear of one place where i can hear
the range of jazz music i have in my collection...
which probably mean's i'm lazy and don't fiddle about
with the radio fm and am channels... to "look" for jazz...
  i'm all applause though: jazz allowed for
deconstruction of classical music and paved the way
for the current state of polyphony in plateau...
    meaning: too much drum, too much ump-pst-ump-pst...
   jazz paved the wsay from orchestra,
   and yes, maybe because it was too impromptu
as it was necessary, that there was no jazz composer...
  there could have been no jazz script... no pre
           to what was otherwise alway and only: uno...
a once...
    sure Thelonious Monk did use an orchestra at some time...
  but if only someone decided to do a solipsism
and write out jazz like mozart wrote out
      concerto... but no... jazz descending from on high
and invoking african villages could never do to
its practitioners the deadly fate of breeding a jazz
composer...
                   it was the communal idea, the musketeer
unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno:
   you could never allow a silent dictator like
a mozart dictating to a throng of people contained
within an orchestra... which later made the once
silent dictators very very vocal... speeches in Munich
alike...
           the fact that jazz has no script,
and the fact that if someone tries to play a Miles Davis
from script... is completely an ***...
     put him on a donkey (backwards)
                     donning a sanbenito and lynch him
to the nearest traffic junction to **** louder than
a car klaxon... that will do the trick...
       they did bother to script led zeppelin though...
    maybe it was the stiff competition that did it:
jazz. airy... breezy... but what a quick moment it was...
i'm almost jealous of the beat poets experimenting
with jazz musicians... but then i'm not:
i like to think of them as parasites...
   you know... those things feeding of spontaneity...
parasites... or dare i say: plagiarising leeches...
plagiarisng what? well, not the content, the context:
feeding of jazz spontaneity... not working from
old composers like Milton or Dante...
thank god for Ezra Pound and Sylvia Plath.

seems i have a ****** for a larynx...

perhaps i just seem to mean: i am a firm believer
in bilingualism... perhaps that's based on
some sort of religiosity,
    and let me tell you: it's born with
a schismatic nature, siamese, but not like a
siamese twin, in that it really needs a surgeon...
  it's a nucleus that's inherently schismatic...
i can't blame the english nation being
so lazy in its multicultural ethos,
i quiet like it: i don't live in a ghetto...
but forgetting my native tongue just so i could
sing a national anthem with conviction?
na'ah, that's not me...
            we'll come to Kraszewski's rex piast
in a minute, and it really was a genuine
experience of placebo dyslexia,
the one on the other side: should i have written
zilch...
      i believe in something quiet Canadian...
i don't believe in isolated communities,
   or ghetto tactic... i am a firm disciple of the advent
of bilingualism: forget the *** for just one day,
your genitals won't suddenly drop off with
gangrene scabs... you don't need a doctor
to say that...
                i mean: bilingualism as a concern
for incorporated culture, and the culture you were
born in... why can't these people just care to juggle
three testicles?
                   oh, elaphantisis got in the way...
sure, two oranges and a watermelon: makes sense...
no!
      have mutual respect, you come to me sprechen
Piast i'll speak Piast to you...
   well: given that polish and polish aren't that far apart,
i'd feel inclined to utilise
           idiosyncratic lingo...
   lingua genesis...
                children are so much easier to utilise than
angels: they have yet to experience anything at all
on the Socratic basis...
            so if i talk Piast to me, you will know what
i'm talking about?
     it doesn't matter if you do... i chose to be
a library, rather than an encyclopoedia of immigrants...
    there's not need to test me on general knowledge:
the stuff i "know" already gives me membrane...
     i respect both the culture of my birth and the skin
i am sometimes told to make sure is called tattoo,
and what i see before me, and quiet frankly:
i see nothing before me... a turban here,
    a sausage & mash there, a pint of guinness there,
noodles elsewhere... all in all: globalisation
and the elements: earthquakes... torandos...
   there isn't much to see in a poly-ethnic society...
there are too many major changes taking place
in a pyramid of non-ethnic ascriptive
         non-this-and-that pawns...
  it's not even painful: just a bit disgusting to watch...
  and yes i have access to a voult of monochromatic
society:
   you know how many ethnic minorities i spotted
in a train station in Warsaw? three...
two asians and one black woman...
              i haven't experienced the cold winters in Poland:
but i knew there was a limit...
         only about three apaches in a crowd of
albinos... which doesn't translate as:
    i was somehow content, it just meant
that most signs in Warsaw are written with a bilingual
bridge of Polish... and Ukranian Cyrillic...
plenty of Ukranian Mecca-bandits, for sure,
     but that's the end of the line with what
western Europe is doing to itself...
        every time i come back from Poland
i'm smeared with a rainbow of variety,
   it's either: i want to **** all these girlies
or i want to **** them... mostly the former,
  but you get the picture of experiencing the alternative
of the western experiment: since marxist economy
was "doomed" or simply expected to fail...
the economy finally seems reasonable with safety
for the old and the pension plans...
that marxist-culturalism had to emerge... if we are not
on the same dough plan of being content with a table and
a chair: might as well say we're all prone to don
a ******* afro.
                ***** are naturally curly, no?
going back "home" is always a weird experience, i tend
to read books there... like Kraszewski (who,
even the locals **** as being an unbearable bore
and joke that Joyce is easier read)... with his dei ire...
my grandfather just dropped it into my hands
as an experiment, thinking i wouldn't read it...
    well, in terms of translation Kraszewski is a myth-broker...
no one would read him,
  meaning: i'm kind of grateful that poles
seem to sorta: not exist, when it comes to citing examples
that include modernity and the history being
formed... i could sorta believe it if i were Estonian
or Lithuanian, or from Liechtenstein...
          but we're talking about a place with a large
enough population to be a major player in some
wordly conflict... Poland isn't that small...
    but yet it appears like it appeared from
the 18th century onwards... a state partitioned...
    and what i love about remaining tactifully bilingual?
i can talk about my native in a "colonial" tongue...
hence the " " definition: self-acquired...
             that's why i became spastic-fantastic reading
Kraszewski's rex piast - nothing came in,
i lost all trace of syllable construction, i read the books
so slowly i had one page done in about 10 minutes:
prolonging my musing of world powers, thrones
and crowns on a toilet...
        *******... another interlude.

can anyone see the, dodo project? i really just see a dodo project, yes: eine dodo projekt... i'm white, i'm male: can i be allowed to express these nouns in a pronoun, or am i schizophrenic prone? it seems i c
Lilacwine Oct 2015
White dress
Black heels
I pretended I did not live in the gutter
Company
I smiled on cue
I am someone I told myself
10:27- my life as an actor ended
I hoped I'd receive gifts of a brand new person
10:27 my eyes start to scream
"I am lying"
"I am a beast"
"I cannot laugh"
"I am sour and full of hate"
My eyes are strong and honest
The time was up
Everyone sees me
I am ignored
The  lie that I am festers inside of me
She comes out to play on nights like these
When my body craves companionship
I fall asleep promising myself I will never pretend not to be a gutter
The oxygen secreted from the walnut tree,
the snap-pole green beans growing
up the side of the rusty garden fence, and
bags of aluminum cans stored  in the shed
with the old cash registers from the antique store.
These are the golden frames caught and
edited onto organic film, etched into grey matter,
projected from a foggy lens onto reflective marble.

We abandoned the clubhouse because of spiders;
they took the place for themselves after a storm.
Our new abode was the patch of grass between the
walnut tree and the fence in the back corner of the yard;
shady, rough terrain from fallen walnuts, and
the grass always had a slight dew in places.
"The place where the snakes live" is what we called it
when we were sprouts; now we could catch them in both hands.

One night, the wind blew over the shed doors;
flimsy, sliding rail, aluminum thing.
We slinked in and got to play with the old adding machines,
foreign tools, jars full of door hinges, and
rusty hand-crank egg beaters.
Eventually, the roof of the shed collected so many years
of twigs, walnut husks, and foliage fallen that
tiny trees began to pop their heads up from the clutter.

Crickets underneath the gutter guards-
two types; the black singers and the
ones you have to dig for that will draw blood
if they get a hold of one of your fingers.
Sometimes, if bravery was roused and boiling,
we would drift closer to the railroad tracks
in attempts to catch yellow jackets, or even hornets.
One popped their stinger into the back of my neck.
tlp
Nico Julleza Dec 2017
∙∙∙◦◦•◎•◦◦∙∙∙
Every year to me, now and then
Families and hollies filled with merriment
Only steps away of the outside snow
Sprawling emotions underneath the mistletoe

Glisten, the pavement covered in hue
Journey of a thousand crystals falling anew
The icicle dew at the gutter lines in row
Constellation tales upon the sky-light glow

Enchant pines adored by ornaments
Treasured memories flew like a firmament
Wreaths to every door, signs of triumph & joy
Bringing glad tidings from God's little boy

Trains in and out of the winter-night
Gifts and glory offered with endless blithe
Hymns from a choir trailing every post
Greetings to an old friend even to the unknown
#Christmas #Holidays #ChristOurLord #Joy # Glory

Merry Christmas Poets and Have A Glorious new Year. Hope I'm not late..
The inspiration just came to me, and this is to be my very first Holiday poem. Inspired with many traditions and observation all around during holidays.

(NCJ)POETRYProductions. ©2017
Hell with Manu! Manu go to hell!
The wrath of your interpretation,
Put us under an inhuman subjugation.

You turned a group,
Dictators of a merciless culture,
Transformed us worse,
Than a scavenging vulture.

You gifted us the psychology of the worst slaves,
And robbed our culture, worship and God,
Who is there to get us out from these graves?

For centuries till now continue our struggle,
We are forced to live with worst strangles
In the poisonous jungle,

We the humans treated much worse,
Than dogs insects and poo eating pig,
Our scars wounds and blows,
Still remain untouchable and big.

Poisonous **** declared the crops untouchable,
Proclaimed itself the most unconquerable,
Less than a second it takes,
To **** the poisonous weeds with a cutter,
Throw them into the useless gutter.

Landlords, who rule the land and hill,
Put the lives of untouchable crops to a standstill,
Multiplied the existence of poisonous ****,
At the expense of the healthy crop seed.

Our journey in the doors of
Movements, struggle and legal
Was quite a win,
That proved out to be absolutely lethal.

We won successfully in the battle of right,
Till the end of the topmost administrative fight,
We lost to erase your caste ridden thought,
That is useless rigid and tight.

With your caste names,
You remind and hurt us, with useless exhibition
In hearts, we created die hard flames,
To take up the long term ambitions,
And get us out from these addicted inhibitions.

From mother's womb to a cemetery,
We have a same human life,
But when it comes to temple sanctum,
You **** us with a political double edged knife.

We built the temples,
You played a gamble and created troubles,
Pushed us to convert,
Got our identities to subvert.

World belongs to everyone,
Our life does not hold value.

Nature belongs to everyone,
We do not have access to water by Vedas virtue.

God is equal to everyone,
But we are restricted entry, as an oppressed queue.

There is no use to argue,
Of course it is untrue,
Let's put ourselves to the rescue.

What's next? What's next?
Let's create a new humanity societal text,
Let's create for ourselves new religions,
Let's begin to reach out to the next generation,
Work with them to build new revolution.

Let's create a new religion,
In nooks and corners, all areas, rural and urban,
That treats humans as humans,
And give life to the humanity slogan.

Change the rules! Yeah change the rules!
Throw into gutters all these useless fools,
For human lives, there can be nothing to tally,
Human life remains invaluable and holy

Being human is my true breed,
Crows and cuckoo belong to our creed,
Mountains and sea belong to our human group
Be proud, you will belong to this peaceful troop.

Let us get up, where we fell
And put this curse to the hell.
India suffers from the world's toughest disease named caste and untouchability. When we rewind through the history, we can understand that Manu’s interpretation of Veda, as Manu dharma created the evil ground for castes to hit its foundation strong. The person from the oppressed and suppressed class sings the poem. In the midst of the poem, the poisonous weeds are those inflicted with caste ridden superior thinking. Landlords are the rulers of the land or present politicians in India. Healthy crops are the oppressed class. Till today the pain of those in the oppressed classes had been unremoved. Caste ridden superior thinking is a psychological thought instilled through generations. From drinking water to honor killings, caste has taken its never reached big form. It's time we respond to it and work towards creating a world without any discrimination. I dedicate this poem to all caste warriors in India like Dr B.R Ambedkar, Bharathiyar, and Periyar, Jyotibhai phoole, vallalaar, vaikundar, and Rettamalai srinivasan and ayoddhidhasa pandith. It's time we reach out to the next generations and first teach them to treat humans as humans. It's time India wakes up to this human crisis.
Kyle John Somer Oct 2012
Our fingertips are getting so cold in the places we call home.
Putting themselves to sleep with braille goose bump bed time stories.
As our bone marrow weathermen  predict another liquid nitrogen winter.

Lately we have been falling apart like glacial walls.
Our chips off the old block selves falling short
Sinking deeper with all this new pressure and all the cold.
The last of our oxygen seeping through the cracks of our lungs as our time on the bottom runs out.
As our face in the gutter hourglass runs low.
Until we forget why were looking up.
The air bubbles are slipping through our lips like rubber balloon landmines that we've blown our hopes into.
And the places we house those dreams are beginning cut loose the strings that we have been holding onto
The childhood fantasies that are better let go.
Mostly our views of perfection an
d of affection that we should no longer be grasping.
Until we are almost bursting and all that fills our minds are the thoughts of red iron razors
The ones we grow when we think of our wrists.

And I am hoping that they can drag their metallic fingers through the flesh of those message in bottle balloons til they burst
so we can cut out the silence we have been thinking so long and fill it with some ****** inspiration

But the nights are still getting darker with tongues of shadow frostbite
and ever since our nomadic tendencies saw our survival expectancies
we have been moving around in our own skin with foster kid frequencies
wearing our heart sleeves rolled up because we don't want to get hurt again.

We are sensitive to light and you are diamonds and that scares us.

because even sunlight has a history of dripping agony
and the chances are high that we end up dancing with bad luck when the sky falls.
Stepping on cracks and filling shoes with puddles.

There's a cold war going on in our hearts
and were scared of the deja vu fallout of another nuclear winter
and you like to tango with destrucion
so we duck and cover behind the bright side of the sun
we live in shadows to protect our eyes from unclear reactions
Seeking shelter in empty alleyways
Under Gothic styled rib cages

And in the hollow places that we locked away our heart
We thew away the keys.

We have the same sickness as Icarus and we are burning up like a candle in the core of the earth.
Because we already have swallowed so much blue sky salt water
We have downed glasses and glasses of your unpredictability
and its been flowing counterclockwise down our throats
stinging like back stabbed golden friendships
like out cast creation
like the heartbroken rejection that had so much promise that we believed in it
and put our hearts into it
and then were broken
and burnt
like Alexander libraries and tornado explosions

Its been so lonely being safe.
Its been so cold.
So if you ask me how many heart beats I skipped for you
Ill tell you millions
Ill tell you life times
Ill tell you that I have missed you symphonies and that you should come home.

I've carved a place in my lock for your key.
I've looked up at the stars with wide eye telescope desire
and I want to dance with you and your big dipper hands.
I've worn chameleon skin for far to long and loved you under my breath even longer.

Your brilliance scares me but please let me join you.
I am sick of hiding behind shutters and stutters and dark water.
I am sick of thinking of razors and space and being alone.

We could blind the world together
You and I
Two happy people burnt into the memories of the universe.
Kelsie Kullman Jun 2012
I stood outside watching the rain slowly melt from the clouds

My porch let me step onto its short pathway, for it knew my thoughts

I stood there and looked up at the sky, being guarded by the small roof above me

I watched as the rain fell silently to the streets and listened as it hit the bushes

I kept waiting for it to change

I kept waiting for it to change me

For it to wash away something deep inside me

I wanted it to wash away any hurt

Wash away the insecurities

Wash away the denial

Wash away the sins

Wash away the thinking of “You’ll never feel the touch of someone in love”

Wash away the scars

Wash away the memories

Wash away the impurities

Wash away

I stood waiting but the rain still poured on my outstretched hands

My hands opening to God asking,”Why me?”

The hands of a woman who has never felt the hands of a man in love

The hands that can make me whole once more

As I stood watching the lightening soar across the sky and the thunder gently hum

I wondered “Is this life real? Is this God real? Is love real? Is any of it real?”

I shivered and stood waiting for the rain’s response

None came; the only response was the silent tread of water heading toward a gutter

Funny, just like my life, always fighting against gravity to stay clear of the gutter

Shivering I stepped back inside and heard a small clink of a piece of broken glass

I held it, amazed, wondering if my life would end this way

In the hands of a tiny piece of melted sand

I looked at its tiny iceberg shape

I turned it and it suddenly transformed into a misshaped heart

A heart, like mine, so clear, so ready, so fragile

I tossed the tiny love into the air as lightening made its last hoorah

Hearing only the distinctive clink as it hit the sidewalk

The rain responded joyously as it picked up its pace

This was her response

Nothing may be real but the rain

In the end, sometimes, it’s all we can depend on to wash away our old selves

To stand, like an escape from Shawshank; free

This was my answer

That my tiny glass love lying patiently on the side of the road will someday be picked up and thrown wildly into the wind hoping that it shall find the fingers of a lovestruck current

This time instead of a slab of concrete, I shall be there to catch it as lightening strikes my heart

I looked up at the tiny roof guarding my head from the cold drops of reality

It was then that I decided it was time to take the roof off of my life, leaving me unguarded

I closed the door, shivering with a renewed sense of myself

I curled under the blanket asking again the same questions that haunted me,

“Is this life real? Is this God real? Is love real? Is any of it real?”

The rain answered,

“Yes”.
rogue Apr 2015
pretty girl with her head in a book,
trapped inside a silver tower,
dreaming of places that don’t exist.

handsome man with his heart on his sleeve,
trapped inside his mind,
dreaming of his daughter that doesn't exist.

gorgeous city filled with gorgeous people,
happy smiles and happy laughs.
it’s a lie and they know it.

handsome man tries to save pretty girl
but she’s already saved herself,
with the help of her dreams of places that don’t exist.

songbird comes along and they don’t know what to do.
handsome man wants to **** him. destroy him. end him.
pretty girl feels songbird’s sadness and cries for him.

handsome man can’t bear to see pretty girl cry,
so he lets songbird go.
pretty girl smiles and handsome man can’t breathe.

pretty girl and handsome man discover the city together.
from the seedy underground fight clubs
to the high society tea parties.

handsome man doesn't fit in at tea parties.
pretty girl seems to blend right in.
handsome man’s eyes never leave her.

pretty girl feels his eyes on her and
she turns away to hide her cheeks turning a dusty pink.
pretty girl doesn't look him in the eye anymore.

songbird comes back and tries to take pretty girl.
handsome man sees red and kills him.
pretty girl’s heart mourns for songbird.

pretty girl spits words at him like knives,
he flinches as they cut him.
handsome man doesn't look her in the eye anymore.

pretty girl wants him to leave.
handsome man walks away and doesn't look back.
pretty girl lied.

handsome man finds himself
back in the seedy undercity.
bloodied knuckles, broken nose and a black eye.

pretty girl finds herself
wandering the city’s streets,
wishing handsome man was there.

pretty girl finds him in the gutter
with blood running down his face.
he still looks handsome.

handsome man struggles to speak.
blood seeping from between his lips
and his broken teeth.

handsome man tells pretty girl he can’t bear to see her cry.
pretty girl cries even more.
handsome man isn’t handsome anymore.

handsome man dies in pretty girl’s arms.
this isn’t how the stories go.
she was supposed to save him.

pretty girl is on a warpath.
handsome man would hate to see her now.
dark red lips and an unforgiving gaze.

pretty girl is tired.
she hates what she’s become.
she wants to see handsome man.  

pretty girl dies in a back alley
with a gun in her hand, pressed to her head.
pretty girl isn’t pretty anymore.

pretty girl, pretty girl, with your head in the clouds,
haven’t you read the stories? don’t you know?
the handsome man always dies.

handsome man, handsome man, with your love in your eyes.
haven’t you read the stories? don’t you know?
the pretty girl never survives.

pretty girl, handsome man,
don’t you know?
the heroes fall and the city falls with them.
Evangeline Ashe Aug 2015
Fahnd 'im lyin' int middle o' t'street
bruised an' battered from t'tramplin' feet.
Ee'd crawled aht from some gutter
an' them cries tha' ee did utter
almost like a knife through butter
cut mi quick an' deep.

'Is broken wings ah tried to treat
gently praying that ee'd be reyt.
But when 'is cry became a stutter
t'world rolled dahn its shutters
an' rahnd mi someone muttered:
" 'is prospects ain't 'alf bleak".

An' that poor lost little 'eap
ah cradled but coun't weep,
til mi arms discerned a flutter.
So in mi chest ee'll see the summer
from that 'ollow haven like no other
where ee can safely sleep.
The piper coming from far away is you
With a whitewash brush for a sporran
Wobbling round you, a kitchen chair
Upside down on your shoulder, your right arm
Pretending to tuck the bag beneath your elbow,
Your pop-eyes and big cheeks nearly bursting
With laughter, but keeping the drone going on
Interminably, between catches of breath.



The whitewash brush. An old blanched skirted thing
On the back of the byre door, biding its time
Until spring airs spelled lime in a work-bucket
And a potstick to mix it in with water.
Those smells brought tears to the eyes, we inhaled
A kind of greeny burning and thought of brimstone.
But the slop of the actual job
Of brushing walls, the watery grey
Being lashed on in broad swatches, then drying out
Whiter and whiter, all that worked like magic.
Where had we come from, what was this kingdom
We knew we'd been restored to? Our shadows
Moved on the wall and a tar border glittered
The full length of the house, a black divide
Like a freshly opened, pungent, reeking trench.



**** at the gable, the dead will congregate.
But separately. The women after dark,
Hunkering there a moment before bedtime,
The only time the soul was let alone,
The only time that face and body calmed
In the eye of heaven.

Buttermilk and *****,
The pantry, the housed beasts, the listening bedroom.
We were all together there in a foretime,
In a knowledge that might not translate beyond
Those wind-heaved midnights we still cannot be sure
Happened or not. It smelled of hill-fort clay
And cattle dung. When the thorn tree was cut down
You broke your arm. I shared the dread
When a strange bird perched for days on the byre roof.



That scene, with Macbeth helpless and desperate
In his nightmare--when he meets the hags agains
And sees the apparitions in the ***--
I felt at home with that one all right. Hearth,
Steam and ululation, the smoky hair
Curtaining a cheek. 'Don't go near bad boys
In that college that you're bound for. Do you hear me?
Do you hear me speaking to you? Don't forget!'
And then the postick quickening the gruel,
The steam crown swirled, everything intimate
And fear-swathed brightening for a moment,
Then going dull and fatal and away.



Grey matter like gruel flecked with blood
In spatters on the whitewash. A clean spot
Where his head had been, other stains subsumed
In the parched wall he leant his back against
That morning like any other morning,
Part-time reservist, toting his lunch-box.
A car came slow down Castle Street, made the halt,
Crossed the Diamond, slowed again and stopped
Level with him, although it was not his lift.
And then he saw an ordinary face
For what it was and a gun in his own face.
His right leg was hooked back, his sole and heel
Against the wall, his right knee propped up steady,
So he never moved, just pushed with all his might
Against himself, then fell past the tarred strip,
Feeding the gutter with his copious blood.

*

My dear brother, you have good stamina.
You stay on where it happens. Your big tractor
Pulls up at the Diamond, you wave at people,
You shout and laugh about the revs, you keep
old roads open by driving on the new ones.
You called the piper's sporrans whitewash brushes
And then dressed up and marched us through the kitchen,
But you cannot make the dead walk or right wrong.
I see you at the end of your tether sometimes,
In the milking parlour, holding yourself up
Between two cows until your turn goes past,
Then coming to in the smell of dung again
And wondering, is this all? As it was
In the beginning, is now and shall be?
Then rubbing your eyes and seeing our old brush
Up on the byre door, and keeping going.
Zack Tallman Nov 2019
Slice his throat with the burning weight of his bleeding mind—leave it for somebody else to find.
He looked up at the greased up stars and asked, “Why is this life so unkind?”.
His hands clenched a black barbwire dream box, then it all broke down; he felt a cold shift from behind.
Tortured brain seeped again and again, then again once more—he was just a ***** to life’s chore.
He sat in his bright light chariot and counted his dough, crying because he only had four.
On his mind was a Chelsea red door, of which he would give anything to open and soar.
Biting his tongue, he told himself he couldn’t take anymore; twisting and swirling on the tile floor.
His face in the mud. His nose in the gutter.
He knew he couldn’t escape this place—leaning there watching everybody win their race.
Wondering why these people hold so tightly to their grace; it’s nothing but a ******* disgrace.
After all he would die one thousand times just to get a taste; die one thousand times just to forget this haste.
The loneliest nights break him apart, they tear him down as they create his art; giving him a start.
They never listen to the best part, ignoring what’s inside of his heart.
They mock him and spit on him, saying, “It doesn’t pay to be smart”.
He falls forcefully into his green stained chair, giving up to the filthy nighttime air; his eyes tear.
He cares—he cares but nobody gives a **** what he wears—it’s not ******* fair!
He works ******* his hair but they tell him it’s nothing—they glare.
They strip him naked and bare, killing the dreams he wears; ****** whatever ideas that make him care.
Gutter! Gutter! Gutter!

— The End —