"hackneyed" poems
Hackneyed
Ruminative
Glasslike
Surfaced
Lake
Is
Never
Original
Only
Reflective
Mar 8, 2014
Mar 8, 2014 at 2:12 AM UTC
A bag of potatoes and a baseball bat.
Is merely a sack of starchy vegetables and a sculpted metal stick.
But on this blustering evening a bag of potatoes and a baseball bat meant an infinity more than that.
In this fleeting moment, I felt solidarity with the fact that life doesn't make sense.
I looked at you in your adjacent flesh ridden essence and smiled at this opportunity to connect.
The bat clashing with the pock eyed potato skin.
Our existences colliding with ebb and flow of a maniac pulsation.
This is not merely a hackneyed show of baseball bat on a bag of potatoes.
This is a boy and a girl realizing that this ever sacred moment holds more gravity than merely a bag of potatoes and a baseball bat.
It's just that we can't conjure what makes it so rich and ever splendid... so thus it must be
rich and ever splendid as the potato is launched into flight igniting the curiously enraptured mind of boy and girl witnessing baseball bat on potato
Dec 17, 2016
Dec 17, 2016 at 2:28 AM UTC
I've been paying attention more to the airwaves of ether we weave
And also the air around town or wherever else
I feel somewhat inclined to sit in a half crossed and dead legged pose
Clicking the keys of letters in hackneyed prose
You notice a noise and you look up to see
You hear the voice that you wanted to be
Calling for you from the opposite wall of the room
That smiles and laughs despite those people who
Scout out the cues like Jr. Detectives
May 10, 2014
May 10, 2014 at 3:12 PM UTC
scuttling across the valley,
the trench was deep and steep
scorching heat of the dry sun,
dried blemishes on the weathered skin.
Settling along the rocky facades,
hackneyed by the haunting past.
Sleepless nights of the perching predators,
Hibernating in aloof worlds .
Stymied by the wind in the barren land ,
Harnessed by the futile fears.
Simone Melchoir of the sinking ship ,
would not you go down with the fault.
Shunning away from natures affection ,
for every rose does share its thorn .
Sunny ends are reached ,
when the raging ravines fade away.
Slithering away the swirling serpent ,
The sun lurks in the brewing storm .
Sanctity of the witheld winds ,
sapping away the deathly darkness.
Serene air of the seraphic angel,
brought the plighting dreams to the refugees repose
Smelting ores and melting poles,
brimming with brightness the cradled cirque .
Summons of the exalted virtue ,
To burn the lizard and fly away like the phoenix
Succumbing to the wilderness,
to soaring heights and rising spirits .
Swanking in the soothing winds,
the phoenix looked down on the plundering valley.
Scorning at the downtrodden spirits,
The fraternity of the Desert lizard
May 20, 2012
May 20, 2012 at 1:23 AM UTC
(I hate poets.
They annoy me deeply.)
I.
There are the balladeers,
Working in service of their inner Service,
(Though, despite the seeming impossibility,
Their hackneyed verse is even worse)
Creating tortuous rhyme
Which slows down labyrinthine narratives
Ending up in some deus ex machine
So implausible that it would make Euripides blush
(Most often courtesy of some unforeseen projectile
Or sudden viral contagion;
Would that their creators meet such a fate!)
II.
I come not to praise the so-called sonneteers,
But to bury them.
They are an earnest lot,
(Lord knows that they are earnest)
And they will make their fourteen lines rhyme
(Though sometimes the rhyme scheme screams for mercy)
And hang the cost.
Though their narratives are head-scratching things,
And their iambs proceed with the steadiness
Of a nonagenarian church pianist
Doing her damndest to fight the wedding march to a draw,
They are content, nay, proud of their work
Because babble rhymes with Scrabble
(Though they are not particularly proficient with the latter,
They have the former down to an art.)
III.
Let us not forget the Buk-zombies,
Those apostles of aphorism,
Most of whom speak of their departed deity
As if he were an old drinking buddy
(Never mind that most of them were two or three
Or perhaps not even a bad idea
In the back seat of some mom’s Buick
When he exited this mortal plane, stage left, even.)
One’s mind is boggled whilst considering
The expanse of the bar required to accommodate
Everyone who would like to
(Or worse, have claimed to)
Buy old Charlie a beer, not that he’d stand for a round.
They are a sullen horde, this lot,
Best dealt with by aiming for the base of the skull.
IV.
Ah, the confessionals, Lord have mercy upon their souls
(For they shall have none upon ours.)
They feel so many things so deeply
As such things have never been felt before
(They have not read their Sexton, their Snodgrass,
Their Lowell, their Pl--well, no,
They have all read their Plath.)
It is, from the moment they arise in the morning
Until such time they set aside their fears and let sleep take them,
All too much for them,
And they bravely face the days
Until such time they care bear to take action
And fling themselves from some convenient precipice.
We should, as a service to them and ourselves,
Ensure the soles of their shoes
Are sufficiently worn and slippery.
(I hate poets.
They annoy me deeply.)
Jan 12, 2017
Jan 12, 2017 at 11:22 AM UTC
That ***** Named Desire
I had a succubus try to take my seed
in a dream today
I broke the connection and said
***** you gotta pay to playyyyyyy
You so used to controlling my desires
well, NOT ANYMORE
Best get on your knees and call me sire
“Sir you have the floor”
I wage war on the empire
of the realm of desire
So if you conspire to be in my line of fire
Don’t say I didn’t tell you,
You’ve earned my Ire.
The rhythm of my war drum goes:
BOOM BOOM KAT TiS KAT
OHHHHM
Mah heart BEATS ta da Rhythm of the
BOOM BOOM KAT TiS KAT
Dreeeeeiiim
We illuminate truth, or sooo it seeeeeeeeeeeeim
But still.....
The rhythm of my war drum BEATS:
BOOM BOOM KAT TiS KAT
OHHHHM
So I wage war on the realm of the evil fae
Ima PURIFY da demons until
dey take me away (screamed)
Bleed out into LIFE;
reverse the vampire effect
place succubi in a hearse
and drive them straight ta deaph
cause lately You been drivin me crazy
and making my will, focus, an determination
sooo haeeezzzzy
But NO MORE
cause now Its time to
Settle DA SKORE
Ritually open my wounds
and bleed acid on you
Don’t worry theres enough
cause your hackneyed and few
Ima chase the Daemons off
Smoke my dreads to their lungs
and make dem young cough
so offten I put em in a hot-boxed coffin
Now your outta breath
But im just not stoppin
huh (echo(
whats this? whats this....(echo(
Claws,
talons,
teeth,
and uh oh
Blood barrels stacked Its a wierd supply depot,
for that army growin
and growlin behind your eye, see though....
They Perma-
on your shoulders,
and now mine, Truth Show
!!!!!!1111RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP!!!!!!!11
So my wings tear free of my back
For so long they’ve been bound and compact
I look to my lovers and brothers and CRy
Stand!
Pick up your weapons,
Humanity,
Its time to act
A TRUMPET BLOWS,
BEATING WINGS
THE DRUMS CONTINUE INTO THE DISTANCE
The rhythm of my war drum goes:
BOOM BOOM KAT TiS KAT
OHHHHM
Mah heart BEATS ta da Rhythm of the
BOOM BOOM KAT TiS KAT
Dreeeeeiiim
We illuminate truth, or sooo it seeeeeeeeeeeeim
But still.....
The rhythm of my war drum BEATS:
BOOM BOOM KAT TiS KAT
OHHHHM
Feb 22, 2016
Feb 22, 2016 at 1:08 PM UTC
"So all of this was because you liked me?"
"No, my love,
when I sang Ave Maria to wake you up to see you,
when I complained about the peach fuzz on your chin,
when I called you a ***** *** and that all you want is a hole to bone,
when I teased you for the way you say "hackneyed,"
when I walked over to smell and "guess" your shampoo (I'd known already),
when I let you cheat on games,
when I made fun of the constant holes in your socks,
when I decided to learn about baseball to figure out what so great about it,
and when I smacked you on the leg with a spatula for getting cheeky with me in the kitchen...
those were because I liked you.
But when I woke up two hours before you to make you breakfast,
when I sing sad love songs to you in my imagination,
when my tread skips a beat,
when I got so angry that someone talked bad about you
and I wanted to ******* rip their meaty heads off,
when my heart breaks to hear your hardships,
when I stayed up with you until 3:00 in the morning on the roof before I gave up
or again until 5:00 in the morning indoors a week before you left
when I didn't move away from you when our arms touched,
when I learned you stood up proudly gay in this brave new world
when I see you on an angle and you look so serious,
so pensive, so handsome and I sigh, sigh, sigh from afar
those were because I loved you.
And the list can go on and on and on."
Oct 10, 2012
Oct 10, 2012 at 10:50 PM UTC
Sub-atomic particles
the atoms they form
molecules, cell organelles
cells, machinery of life
organs, organisms
communities and ecosystems
planets, solar systems, galaxies
galactic clusters and their inverse
black holes the doors to other
universes, a contradiction
in terms.
For language and its shadow
consciousness must hold matter
the material world snugly inside concepts
theories and hypotheses to be
experimentally verified using vision
and the other senses, collecting data
and interpreting the known facts
accumulated over time.
Can matter
exist without a consciousness to behold it?
Believing in
our mortality (the species)
we have created God
(a supreme being)
probably not carbon-based
to encompass every universe
but is God
inside or outside
consciousness? Can God
tell us what to do
or must we tell God
alone
what to do?
Here is ego
projecting personality, exerting force
on community, asserting the existence
and predominance of component DNA.
An already hackneyed theory that DNA
survival drives
procreation, personality, savings bonds
everything but poetry (most poems included).
Mustache, cowboy hat
horse whisperer, gulag master
Odysseus, King Lear
salvation in the details.
Yes, these personalities individual and interesting
as opossum, bear
oak and ash
beech nut, pine cone
Grand Canyon sandstone, Green Mountain granite.
Aug 9, 2015
Aug 9, 2015 at 5:13 PM UTC
this morning I awoke to find little lettered squares imprinted across the side of my face,
then didst I realize, that cyber space had finally done its number on me
slither slather blither blather slobbering cyber chopper
knee-jerk hackneyed pavlovian dog speak of impetuous heartlessness
stereotyping label blasting categorizing pigeon-holing generalizing
multi tasking bifurcating bloviating palaver, ever clingy maudlin inflamed impassioned souls
trolling the myriad disparate windows looking for some misbegotten stimulus
so invested in their hatred and fear that peace is the most threatening thing they can imagine ------ and me?
the sneering cynical maladroit among the masses of averageness and mediocrity...
Apr 27, 2013
Apr 27, 2013 at 9:34 PM UTC
*What does this life desire of me,
that it granted and
then removed,
the knowledge of perfection?
leaving me striving,
writhing,
shivering unceasingly,
in my saddened, bursting,
hacking and hackneyed chest
Jul 4, 2020
Jul 4, 2020 at 4:56 PM UTC
We are lovers in color,
salted scents that stick to covers.
Splayed out on your coral-reef couch
hackneyed and bleeding,
bleary but needing,
I've settled quietly into your imprints of indifference.
Stale ***** tongue I'm late for work.
speaks insipidity: Shower if you want to.
Lock the door as you leave.
It was nice seeing you.
I lay there greying all morning.
Soaking into everything, your carpet seas
brine my feeble, shadow-casting lesions.
Unsure if you've left me ***** or clean (this time)
I drag my body down your tainted hallway.
In stark fluorescence, there is no clarity
but the echoes, like reflections
of the emptiness of eve.
Blood-letter run dry
somehow still high,
****** into the thoughtlessness
of
your
tides
(I am disregarded, but alive.)
Dec 10, 2012
Dec 10, 2012 at 4:51 AM UTC
America-- you’re about as inspiring as vanilla ice cream puddled in the summer sun
a damp dishrag, america, you can’t clean up the mess you are.
Your subjects, or should I say, Objects--
your agency bereft gdp drones--
they hanker, they brood
like a syst; they’re ****** vacuoles: private, malignant, caverns of capital
your pride? starving children, dying cities?
it’s a grand ole’ flag, you pathetic ****
How about considering this:
The people, inside your prisons?
They’re free.
The people outside?
minions, hackneyed excuse for existence, and pestilence.
the ones who know oppression are free, and the ones oppressing do not know.
that’s why I love you, America.
You are what humanity needs; a slow, painful drain on our existence.
Consciousness slowly being ignited and swallowed, only to be ******* out and flushed away.
You, america, are a popcorn bag popping in the microwave, left on for too long.
You can’t expand any further, and you taste like cancer.
America, you are beautiful, and the death you bring tastes like lime flavored popsicles
that we lick to take away the taste of reality.
Your society is a cattle car, for the mind, and your messages burn the body
when it gets there.
Jun 18, 2011
Jun 18, 2011 at 9:03 PM UTC
You could put it down
as youthful folly, or spit out
the hackneyed line about
pride and what goeth after.
It's true, I over-reached,
wanting to limitless kiss
the sun's crisp lips.
I did hold her glowing cheeks
firmly in my palms
for one exquisite breath.
Can you, rocking there
in your comfy prison,
say the same?
There comes a time to sit
astride clouds and burn off
the waxy buildup of childish things.
The weightlessness before
the plunge feels
like it will never end,
but, I can tell you, it does.
Jul 6, 2010
Jul 6, 2010 at 8:55 PM UTC
in an effort to be original, unique & different
we really all end up the same
your independent stance
and your expostulation
is hackneyed
we all seem like social justice warriors
fighting the same core issue
with different diction
Sep 24, 2018
Sep 24, 2018 at 11:34 PM UTC
Religious zeal and explosive prowess make incendiary bedfellows
searing calculating moralism where all fall short and deserve to suffer
self righteous corrupted calumny put forth in a sally of sectarian selectivity
your ilk is heading for Hell and I'm (already there) not
fanatical zealots marginalize intellectuals with their mythical mire of mucked up claptrap and copious lack of a priori specificity
a glorified preposterous plethora of pompous pontificating platitudes
the sins of others they deplore but of themselves they don't keep score
Sunday's best is Sunday's worst
you sanctimonious ******** just can't leave people alone
who elected you to point fingers anyway
Jesus was born in a barn to an unmarried woman
And your mommy got shtuped when you were conceived too
you don't walk on water you insolent impertinent fool
the brain police can't wait for Sunday's
oh the satisfaction of a mutual admiration society
knee-jerk hackneyed pavlovian dog speak
Is anything anymore real if you jump around and shout about it
recipients of adulates get accustomed to sycophants
fawning complacent obsequious kiss ***** and Sunday suck-ups
pass the plate
May 5, 2013
May 5, 2013 at 5:14 PM UTC
I made a blog that no-one wants to see.
I might as well have stripped and posted ****
I should’ve baked a chocolate cake for tea.
I twittered, face-booked, tumblred, endlessly,
but still it languishes in quietude.
I made a blog that no-one wants to see.
I promised video with poetry;
no cliché, hackneyed rhyme or platitudes.
I should’ve baked a chocolate cake for tea.
My blog is but a trickle in the sea
A place of literary solitude.
I made a blog that no-one wants to see.
I treasured all my followers, all three;
and yet, with heavy heart, I must conclude
I made a blog that no-one wants to see.
I should’ve baked a chocolate cake for tea.
Jan 29, 2016
Jan 29, 2016 at 5:32 PM UTC
My daddy—he once told me
don’t ever play with nuns
they’ll hit you with their rulers
it won’t be any fun
I snuck out of that prison
and now I’m on the run
Once freed from that schoolhouse
I sunbathed in the sun
I stayed out late, I went on dates
looking out for number-one
When I think of what I went through
of all the tired repressive lies
I keep running wise, in slick disguise
my purpose is renewed
Don’t ever let ‘em tell you
you can’t have any fun
If they preach that hackneyed drivel
grab some things and run
.
.
Songs for this:
Cold Heart (PNAU Remix) by Elton John & Dua Lipa
I'm Still Standing by Elton John
Jan 16, 2025
Jan 16, 2025 at 11:48 AM UTC
Should’ve listened to those didactic tales,
those voluptuous sores, like vines in the heart,
those tantrums and those fits of ‘can’t get enough’,
should’ve played a lil nicer,
should’ve loved a lil harder,
this truth was never pragmatic, baby,
never concentrated, fixated, never stifled, appreciated,
never what you wanted to feel,
but, babe, it was always real
in your eyes and mine,
‘guess you never thought this time
I would actually walk away,
diluted, squeezed out, filtered to a drip,
your hackneyed fibs
burn me more,
dissected into tears,
you planted all of these fears
in my conditioning
with your temperamental code,
hypocrite –hypocrite –hypocrite,
corruption in this affair,
still ain’t playing fair,
but why am I surprised?
tripped into a hole of utter depravity,
shaking in those wet boots of bull-fucking-shit,
I’m so ****** off with this I could spit!
Or, I could quit you entirely –
comradery broken,
revoking that affection in me
that has been stuck on you,
Nov 8, 2011
Nov 8, 2011 at 10:53 PM UTC
I would say it all to you if it would make a difference;
I love you
and
I'll miss you
and
I'm better for having known you
and
I will never forget you
I would say all that and so much more
if it would make a difference
if it would matter at all
if somehow hackneyed words could break this fall
I would say them
(I would say them all)
But ******** can't stand up against time
Those words would be washed away and forgotten
so hold me tight in this moment
say nothing
and
say nothing
I know and you know
and that is enough
and that is all
that is all
and all
and all
Jun 23, 2014
Jun 23, 2014 at 12:00 PM UTC
As you **** and jiggle
hop and knock
slip and giggle
keep a foot forward
and the other forewarned.
Slack jawed and hackneyed
you're endlessly forlorn
slack kneed and jack knifed.
High on strife and ******
car crashes on black rock
cracked streets and hard
sweets lined teeth so
stained with self love that
your internal apathy fits
glove-like and I am hungry
struggling against your
thundering angry words
filled with fifty year old
angst ugly with stretch
marks but more from
the sadness dribbling
down your philtrum un-wiped
like I was and the only thing
I now want cleaned off is my
memories of you smeared
erratically and etched eternally
onto my life.
Nov 13, 2010
Nov 13, 2010 at 8:23 AM UTC
Write me a melody.
Nothing too simple, though that’s what you lead on
Building a bridge over a lake of fire
Ah!
If only fire could swim
Grilled fire on a side of living gargoyles.
Forked tongues shoveling rice,
And chicken,
Into a newly refurbished brain.
Does it burn?
All the seaweed and hackneyed
Washed up krill,
Burnt up, skewered, and caught in the nets.
New mesh scales
Mashing mesh sha shooting into the skin
While the sun circles
And the animals follow and dance
Preying themselves into everything you’ve done
As though you’ve done anything new.
Like addition multiplication,
Surely you’ve done all of that.
A tear in the paper
And you’ve spilled the white out.
What a mess.
A great tear in the universe
Arranged.
Separate colors of
Grass and sky,
The trees and sidewalks form into one.
Everyone adjoined and nothings lost
Because even this idea has a partner.
What a lovely
(shattered)
Dream.
Sep 19, 2010
Sep 19, 2010 at 5:07 PM UTC
and we met up, same place,
seats still cold but comfy.
Your cheeks were fuchsia pink
from the squally breeze outside
and I had one of my scarves
wound around my neck,
red and black
like a chunk of children’s candy.
The story you'd started
was going well,
ideas popping up
as a villain would
in a hackneyed horror film.
I said a sporadic poem
spilled onto the page
but little else,
just comatose dross.
Twenty past,
coffee swam over our teeth
like sepia-bikinied swimmers.
Somehow you were more beautiful
but unaware of it,
your hair brighter
under the glare of the lights above.
The youngest pair around,
early twenties, 'whole life ahead.'
How wrong.
Our relationship a radiator
that fails to heat up enough.
Everybody has one.
I'll write about you someday for sure.
Some day.
Dec 27, 2012
Dec 27, 2012 at 12:37 PM UTC
*I lay, of my own volition, in a space meant for her:
a confined and achromatic scene.
My hands, malodorous, muddy and splintered,
leisurely rest on my chest, free from labor machines.
Here I rest, hackneyed and discouraged
in a pitifully human attempt to simulate death
I curse my virtue; it chastises back as it
mourns the curious exploitation of my health.
It was meant to last only a minute,
as sorrow chains my putrid despair in place.
Yet I, to this day, cannot begin to explain
how the darkness manifested itself a face.
I attempted to strike a movement but remained still
as the daemon began to smile.
The plan was to endure without oxygen for seconds,
yet the creature stayed my conscience for a while.
In a surprising and trepid consternation,
I find myself in service to mendicancy.
The creature, a devil with venetian red oculi,
salivates at its newest and prized delicacy.
I cry at the fleeting mastery of my faculty,
yet the tears remain inattentive and departed.
Time blesses the creature with a dominant sentence
as reality registers a dialog that I had started.
“Where is my daughter? I demand to know.”
The creature’s smile grows ever wider.
He then takes the form of the stuffed turtle toy
that used to sleep right beside her.
The creature, in a droning and unmelodious voice,
utters a perplexing, yet commanding noise:*
“ATIV ARETLA NI MAN ES ED OLEF”
*Frightened yet discouraged, I aim to find the sense
in the puzzling command the creature produced.
“She’s been missing for days! I need to know where she is!”
The beast speaks again, letting its anger loose:*
“FELO DE SE NAM IN ALTERA VITA!!”
*Suddenly, albeit boundlessly, the stillness was lifted,
and my structure was free from this tenebrous stead.
I raise myself and clasp at the summit’s precipice
after having danced with a beast in this wooden bed.
The vacant coffin remained pristine,
fitted with natural calico cotton lining.
The devil you fear the most is the one you create
and mine emerged with impeccable timing.
The creature’s malevolent ballad persistently tattles
as The Lapse rebroadcasts the “truth” it wanted to utter.
It had told me, “Become a felon of oneself,
and thine own life shall be traded for another.”
I refuse to concur with the creature’s decisiveness
as my unyielding faith will ensure my daughter’s return.
Her weighty and boundless absence must cease
and lead to the terminus of my inexhaustible concern.*
Jan 25, 2018
Jan 25, 2018 at 6:57 PM UTC
<>
“Stop this day and night with me
and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun,
(there are millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things
at second or third hand,
nor look through the eyes of the dead,
nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either,
nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides
and filter them from your self.”
Song of Myself (1892 version) by WALT WHITMAN
§§§
*These admonitions are the ten conditionals
commandments of straight talk,
boy,
you’ve spent a life lessening and lesson-learning
and all laid before you for taking, gaining,
but for what? for naught?
Start this day, having spent my night with you,
possessing less than what is my now
completed,
this,
my unfinished commencement,
provisioned, a simultaneous beginning and finishing,
emptying a void of
fulfilling questioning.
What does this life desire of me,
that it granted and then removed,
the knowledge of perfection?
leaving me striving, writhing,
shivering unceasingly,
in my saddened, bursting, hacking
and hackneyed chest.
I walk the same cobblestone streets,
observing the descendants of your ancestral tugs
portaging, paying homage to East River tides,
carrying those goods,
the origins of all poems,
from where? to where?
unknown,
but always past our conjoined eyes.
And yet do I look, with our merged eyes,
filtered by a century’s discoloration,
forgive me Walt, for now recalling sights
that you first observed,
that I witness first hand,
100 and fifty years later,
sharing a stolen wisdom with you.
Todays new millionth sunrise bids me stand,
observe the river traffic from my kitchen window,
accept that my takings are debts,
a few, even paid back,
yet, most still owed,
for the origins of all my poems,
are oddly and oddity old,
unoriginal, second, third handed
as I look through the eyes of the dead,
and yours too,
this my unoriginal,
original sin....
(pretending I am a poet)
§§§§§
6:24AM
Manhattan Island,
By the East River
Thu. May 14, 2020
May 14, 2020
May 14, 2020 at 8:33 AM UTC
My days crawl in a vapid succession
My eyes fixated upon the inscrutable way
In which pastel days fade into pallid nights
Languid sunrise dwindles into dreary sunsets
As I wander in between listlessly
Gathering it's dusty remnants
And threading them together
In unembellished phrases
Hackneyed to death
As the first weary ray of dawn
Ruffles through my hair
I yawn, sigh
and repeat again
Mar 11, 2018
Mar 11, 2018 at 4:11 AM UTC