"hashtags" poems
ME?
I am like a riddle
WRITTEN
but
UNREADABLE.
unless
you
know
that
ENDINGS
are
BEGINNINGS.
then
you
know me
as
{INFINITY}
Apr 25, 2016
Apr 25, 2016 at 4:42 PM UTC
Hashtag done.
Hashtag I give up.
Hashtag tired.
Hashtag alone.
All we ever talk about anymore is hashtags and Instagram and texts and snapchat.
I'm done.
I miss the face to face contact.
The way someone's eyes light up or dim down in reaction to something.
I miss the way your hand feels when you place it on mine.
I miss your hugs.
And I miss your voice.
And I'm able to talk about anything with you over a text message, but I'm afraid that you don't want to talk to me, person to person.
I like to think that we have a great friendship, but I realize that we don't.
You FaceTime and call other people, but you won't do that for me.
I try to initiate more conversation than we have, but I feel like you hold back.
I pour some of my heart out into a message that I sent and your only response is an emoji.
I'm hurt.
As childish as it sounds, I'm hurt.
I'm broken and I feel like you keep taking pieces of me away.
I'm broken and I wish you would actually talk and listen to me instead of typing it out.
I miss you because there's no one else and I'm sorry that there isn't.
I don't mean to burden you with everything that's wrong, but when you say that you're there for me, I expect you to follow through.
I miss you a lot.
And I need you to know that.
Because you mean so much to me.
And I know I don't mean as much to you...
Apr 14, 2014
Apr 14, 2014 at 1:56 PM UTC
Everyday there’s a new story
A new plea that goes ignored
An outcry for protection
That the government “can’t afford”
A community is broken
A family in bits
A mother holds her dead son
It didn’t need to be like this
“My thoughts and prayers are with you”
What’s that gonna do?
It’s easy enough to stand back
When it isn’t affecting you
People post on social media
About the horrors of the crime
But how can they truly comment
When their school isn’t next in line?
A march to show the ‘big men’
What their little minds can’t see
Real humans suffering
At the word “death” they turn and flee
A 15-year-old boy bleeds
His life already done
He wants someone to hold him
His last word escapes, “Mom”
This is real, this is wrong
This is happening now
Children scared of education
In case they get shot down
So, now forget the hashtags
Now forget the thoughts
Now we need action
Not more ****** news reports.
Jan 24, 2019
Jan 24, 2019 at 1:20 PM UTC
I gotz no life.
I gotz no cash.
All I got is these pimpin' hashtags
#money
#grill
#dddddaaaamncheckoutdatfineassgirl
May 11, 2014
May 11, 2014 at 10:31 PM UTC
come & find me
i've left my phone plugged
into the wall because i can't feel
you breathe through your fingertips
and i can't read your lips through emoji
your belly-button doesn't look right shrouded
in 8 mega-pixel dust and i want to touch you instead
of a keyboard on a screen and tell you about my day because
even though it's written doesn't mean it's real meet me offline because
i don't want a five second snapchat victory snapshot of your panty-line
i don't want my silly romantic poetry to be re-grammed on your insta
framed against a picturesque city skyline or a stoic mountain lion
with hashtags and sexting doesn't turn me on like the sound of
your voice i can write you letters until my fingers bleed but
they always arrive seven days late and you never cry
when you cut them open with a knife and i'm not
looking for a pen pal anyway or a friend
instead i seek a mirror with glowing
teeth or an outlet to plug
into and charge
me up
Nov 19, 2015
Nov 19, 2015 at 12:04 PM UTC
Before identities and allegiances are even confirmed,
The cries of anger rise up like a thick, black smoke,
Heavy and suffocating, it flows through streets,
Over the English Channel, across oceans,
Seeping into social media and blanketing all else.
Cries for vengeance,
Vengeance,
Vengeance.
And those cries barely manifested into a wisp
When Beirut was attacked the day before Paris.
I didn't see any Facebook pictures of the flag of Lebanon.
Do any of us even know what the flag of Lebanon looks like???
To **** innocent people is a crime except when we do it,
Then it's "There are always casualties of war,"
But if this isn't a war except when we're killing people,
Can it really be called a war?
We care so much about the injustice of it,
How the innocent are mowed down without mercy,
That we want those bombs dropped and we want them dropped now.
When those bombs destroy homes and blast children's limbs apart,
Bloodless and pale, until the area looks like it used to be a porcelain doll factory...
Will we all have Syrian flags for our Facebook pictures?
Jul 15, 2016
Jul 15, 2016 at 10:37 AM UTC
Ordinary words in ordinary order
Slouch across the page unnoticed
Mundane metaphors and trite observations
Destroy catch phrases with every old saw
Memes are dragged behind overused hashtags
Until they morph into yesterday’s news
Dusty and bent and soiled on the edges
Same ole rehash of the same ole crap
Whitewashing the fence of involvement
The old wive’s tales are alternative facts
That dance to the tune of an illiterate piper
In a boring routine choreographed by
A sullen pre-teen who finds herself grounded.
Wherever you’re going,
You can’t get there from here.
ljm
Jul 2, 2017
Jul 2, 2017 at 8:44 AM UTC
After multiculturalism struck this
week, Vervoort said, “I would like to express
my support to the victims
of the attacks of this morning …”
Twitter bristled
with supportive hashtags,
the Belgian flag and professions
of solidarity. The Times editorialized:
“Brussels, Europe, the world must brace
for a long struggle against this form
of terrorism.”
All this would be perfectly normal if
we were talking about an earthquake or some other
natural disaster — something humans have
no capacity to prevent. But Muslims
pouring into our countries and committing mass
****** isn’t natural at all. It’s the direct result
of government policy.
Mar 24, 2016
Mar 24, 2016 at 4:18 PM UTC
Depression heartbreak
Lovelife sad death lost you pain
Hashtags are poetry
Jun 23, 2014
Jun 23, 2014 at 10:39 AM UTC
I'm listening to Chance the Rapper
And there's some whimsy in these veins
Some
Give me a weeken' of sleepin'
I think I can come around after that
Hashtags
Yolos
Swags
Take a tire iron to the side of my face
My mind's lost its wheels
All I want to do is **********
Just to feel
******* to self-sabotage
Explosions of regret
And possible highs
of Seratonin and Dopamine
Let's get high
It's weird
When I was a kid
My goal was to make everyone
Stop smoking
Seeing that white puff
Trail from the mouths of adults
All I wanted was for them to realize what they were doing
The un-healthy choices they were making
And now
all I think about
Is buying a pack
Just to cut the
Edge off of
whate'er
the ****
I'm feeling
Keyholed poet
See what I did there?
It was an on-purpose accident
Am I really meant for priesthood?
Is that something that's in my life?
I mean, what, 4+ years solo?
Dates in between,
and ladies, thank you
For the times where you remind me
I'm worth a ****
Or an hour of your time.
But for the most part, I'm solo
My mom, God Bless her, has been single
Dates in between
For 7+ years
Maybe I'll catch up.
Maybe I'll outpace her
She sent me her will the other day
You're looking at the guy in charge of her life
Should she be unable to make decisions.
Well, I guess you're not looking
You're reading, some half-assed-therapy foreplay
Ladies, love me, I'm a weird, depressing sack of ****
Aww, poor baby
Maybe
Pick yourself up off the fuckin' floor and make something of yourself
God willing, there's something
I just gotta put on some different
Lenses
These are getting dark
Maybe I need to drop off the map
And find a cleaner
Do they have those for rose lenses?
May 2, 2013
May 2, 2013 at 7:43 PM UTC
Our land of stars and stripes, now glows,
with screens that flicker in hallowed halls.
Entranced humans shuffle, with eyes fixed below,
on small gadgets that have us enthralled.
Should the Statue of Liberty, our symbolic girl,
be holding a smartphone up to the world?
While tweets fly like eagles and hashtags swirl,
foreign disinformation trends as fast as it’s purled.
In lunch halls, real conversations take rest,
as influence is sought—in hoity-toity, binary quest.
Friends are backdrops—originality in short supply
as likes and shares make our dopamine fly.
America’s zombies, though *********** drained,
shuffle endlessly on, with Wi-Fi stimulated brains.
Once the land of the free, we’re now the land of tech
with minds wrecked by truths unchecked.
As we rock and sway—the new robot way—
will our old, analog-republic simply fade away?
.
.
Songs for this:
Airhead by Thomas Dolby
.
Oh, and a Christmas playlist because—it’s December!:
https://daweb.us/xmas/Christmas_01.mp3
Dec 4, 2024
Dec 4, 2024 at 10:47 AM UTC
Arise all people who heed our call
For our nation’s girls are about to fall.
Heard are their cries
From thousands of miles.
So let us ride to Chibok,
Mounted on horses in bulk.
Your retweets and hashtags will not save them!
We need more than goodluck and patience!
We need more prayers and action!
Indeed, we shall meet them in battle!
When shall we Bring Back Our Girls?
When the campaign becomes Bring Back Our Women?
Nov 18, 2014
Nov 18, 2014 at 2:09 PM UTC
The game played no longer how it once was
No votes on new posts
don't check the trends
or check your own for views and comments
The substantive roaming data of broken WiFi connections
Mangle your jangling words, hide your swollen faces behind forced smiles, Rembrandt bastardisations or smeared oil paintings of the black soul(less) beasts that lurk in satiate tree shadows fawned over the lawnmower blue cycle rinse washed acid soaked daydream ***** slap nation
So you revere the works once read on poetical facsimile sites
only to smear words of younger wordsmith wrangled teen angst
and now in your age and ardor it seems advantageous to judge
But then that will leave you hollow inside
or in fact, you could jump from a tall building only to bounce off the concrete into a children's pool and drown there in three inches of **** coloured rain water
But so instead the workload decreases as your dementia bedpost nightmares
all come aflutter
The laced lily white throng of petal pinched patterns masks
the marked men on their dusty knees
There, watch how heads explode
or listen to foley artists rendering the lacquered finish of the watermelon headjuice
Make up words
or make up lies
Wear make-up daily, earn some prize
or don't
I don't care
idc
idk
Resemble rhyme or reason
Disassemble the times and season
Return to pejorative pretensions, rants in verse verse verse verse prose format and **** the rest
Or simply return to the old ways of playing the game
Upvote this, and maybe they'll take interest
Comment here
return one there
Use tags, hashtags, wash rags, fat slags, arm chair fat cats
But always separated by spaces, prettyblankspaces
No, I don't do slam poetry, I'm too white and not nearly rich enough to not care
Reassemble the times and season, maybe make sense of it
Maybe not
Just don't let them become a passing trend, please
Jan 26, 2015
Jan 26, 2015 at 12:23 PM UTC
with bodies relaxed,
but eyes observant,
they sell
five dollar bags of
***** weedy poetry
mixed clientele,
there is no age or gender or ****** preference
discrimination,
certainly none requiring critical taste,
in the buying and selling of
***** weedy poetry
commercial savants,
organized by topic,
available for purchase
love, depressing, rants and whines,
discounts for pre-owned
anti boyfriend rhymes
in his day, they say,
Whitman partook,
ferried up from his Brooklyn nook,
William Carlos Williams too,
from New Jersey came,
better to understand
the most common patois
they'll do custom stuff,
the suppliers,
mix and blend all
kinds of ****
their database exponential,
give them the
requisite hashtags,
and within it,
in it,
thirty minutes,
no more,
they'll requisition,
providing an acquisition -
you'll get your
name-your-own-hash,
Freedom
to entitle your own
***** weedy poetry
or you could grow you own
on the window sill
in the earth of your discarded
despair
Jan 4, 2015
Jan 4, 2015 at 10:24 AM UTC
On a Sunday it was dark; girls infatuated with attention
Consuming on facebook uploads, and hashtags that have no explanation for your comprehension
I stand alone in a world, a total suspension
From the societies of fake likes and relationships and self pent up tension
I had faith in you, but your beliefs are not worthy of my mention
For the things you lived for, the mundane delusions that causes your detention
For you are detained in your self- created stress and your feverous passion that is derived by convention
You are stuck in a world not yours, and once I tried to liberate you from it you couldn't stop clinging and clench'n
To your false priorities and you call this a life… you call yourself living when your hollow ego and pride has out shadowed your repention
And sin became a right, and good became a privilege, all this in the world craving attention…
Souls like me are buried, embodied by peace we have with our existing forms
Free thinkers; attached to our beliefs and religious rituals yet deviated from your filthy sociological norms
And values we have created and you chose to forget
And destinies we work to change, yet your destinies are set
For sheep follow each other into circles of indecorous confusion
And every one of you follows what he thinks is fun, or cool or the trendy illusion
We have reached a time when we follow people, not thoughts, material not ideas and we demand respect
How could I respect clones? For their values become lower than that of an insect...
I trusted you were different, but I grew beyond that thought and realized you're the same
You just yearn for the spotlight, live on opinions, and follow your low life leaders into a path of misleading fame…
Jan 8, 2013
Jan 8, 2013 at 7:38 PM UTC
While the mother crow cries
over the dead bodies
of her children
the doves fly away
as if the murdering of crows
is not any kind of crime
as the doves
see evil
hear evil
protect evil
The crows heart
a constant target
of the doves violence
Who's next?
Whose name is destined for hashtags and ******
how many lives
will it take
before the hate
and fear
in the doves heart
bleeds out
The deadline of
the life of a crow
is drawn by the jeweled crown
of loathing the dove wears
on its head
and the fear inside
the loaded gun
of the doves eye
and the hate beating
wildly beneath its wings
and blindly in its heart
Hope is a heavy burden
under the pounding
blood red sky
Where the doves
practice ******
more often than
they protect the peace
As the oath has changed
to protect and serve
their own kind
and lady justice
has been blinded
by a white wash
of white lies
And the murdering of crows
goes on...
and on...
and on...
While the living
can wait their turn
to be murdered
and crucified
and martyred
on the next hashtag
while serving their time
from inside the freedom
they have behind the bars
of the cage of poverty
and there is always
more room for another
and another
and another
inside the skin
of the prison cell life
they were born in
The crow is suspected guilty
until pronounced dead
and its innocence
is nothing the doves
cannot beat out of it
even after it is already dead
as the color
of the doves guilt
is judged to be
more pure than
a corpse with
a crows dead heart
no matter the weight
of its innocence
and the murdering of crows
goes on...
and on...
and on...
While the feathers
of the doves wing
spread out sharp like knives
with a seemingly
bottomless hunger
for the heart of the crows
and we lower the body
of another martyr
into the earth
how much longer
will we allow
the murders of crows
to walk free
as if the murdering of crows
is not a crime
the doves can bury
the body of a crow
after crow
(one after another and another)
but never their songs
never their names
never their hearts
and the dead will speak
for the living
as long as the living
never forget the dead
one day the crows
are going to rise up
over the black asphalt
city skyline
singing into the
blood red sky
hearts crowned
with fire and hope
flying high and free
flying over
the mountain tops
singing of the
promised land
singing for the dead
but not forgotten
singing words
of flame
and poetry
singing for
freedom
and unity
carrying the weight of hope
and hope is a heavy burden
we all must carry into tomorrow
and tomorrow
or tomorrow will never
be better than today
we must always lift our dreams
with love and hope
and one day may we find
our way over the mountain top
and into the land of promise
where birds of every feather
are free to fly in a sky
without violence
and fear
and hate
where tomorrow is a river
flowing into a better today
Feb 18, 2019
Feb 18, 2019 at 2:22 PM UTC
First it was #PRAY4MH370
which swiftly changed to #RIPMH370
and now it's transformed to #REMEMBERINGMH370
Two weeks of unrealized hope
dashed one late evening by some satellite scope
Only to be faced with the deep blue ocean
and possibility of confirmation
That dear ones lie in some ocean bed
Perhaps forever trapped, it was tragically said
Technology so advance, that can find a particle in an atom
and a black hole in the universal chasm
Yet mystified that none can locate the so-called plane crash site proper!
*cue - Twilight Zone music
Mar 27, 2014
Mar 27, 2014 at 12:59 AM UTC
Marching on thru our circuital seas:
A moat lurking beneath tremendous Facebook walls,
delineating our impalpable fortress of solitude (irony).
We slog through the trenches like Lee's troops,
drudging on a fatal course
to an awaiting Grant in Appomattox (destiny?).
Soldiers falling at the wayside,
from wounds, starvation, disease,
hashtags for dog tags draped around cadaverous necks--
Perhaps you can identify us by what's trending.
Had we the strength to shout,
and tear down the walls of Digital Jericho,
would we have been able to do it,
in 140 characters or less?
Apr 12, 2016
Apr 12, 2016 at 4:19 PM UTC
Nothing to you
Because they look like me
Hashtags, forgotten in a Facebook feed
Should have done this, should have done that
All becomes irrelevant from a rata-tat-tat
Quick on the trigger, when color hits the eye
That racial bias keeps fatalities high
But that's me too, in case you forgot
Behind every tragic black body shot
Always a moment away
From a cop's bad day
They'll take their leave from work
And still get paid
The facts exist, believe it or not
Silence is compliance, so we'll still get shot
I'm white and black, but they'll only see the latter
So stand with me, shout Black Lives Matter
May 2, 2017
May 2, 2017 at 1:29 PM UTC
‘Are you a boy or a girl?’
They shout down the corridor in a chorus behind me
Like the cries of “Good morning, Miss” in assembly
The patronising tone
in sleep deprived confusion
Droning throughout the halls
ringing around ‘she’.
Going to lessons is the scariest thing
Head down, walking fast hoping
they’ll never say anything
Hoping no one will question you
Glance around and notice you
not daring to look up
in case you make a wrong move.
You can’t know what it’s like to be
in a room all alone,
in a house that is not your own;
'Your body is a temple’ they said.
But they don’t tell you how to treat it
if it’s right in your head
but wrong in your skin,
and that feeling
of being and existing
is like dealing
with a thousand anxieties
suffocating within;
Chest too obvious
voice too loud and feminine
not enough to be ‘gentleman’.
'Why does this bother you?'
I hear you enquire,
it's because society’s construct
of gender is too based on attire,
an old fashioned concept-
Telling your children
that 'blue's for boys'
'pink's for girls'.
'Is it really?' I say.
Gender is not just binary
it fluxes and changes,
just like any scientific theory;
Einstein for instance,
didn’t come up with special relativity
in a night!
It took years of work
until he was right
Let this apply for gender too:
not just black
and white it's not as
clear cut as that
this is black and this is white
Evolve the theory
from system to spectrum
of freedom and pride
to reside in one's body happily:
Humanity allied.
This is what I dream about,
but it is not what
I've been living throughout,
in our world of shame;
where we are reduced to words and themes.
Driving my community,
those who love and support me,
to thoughts of suicide.
Being known
only when they're reduced
to rags and bones,
dead bodies
hanging
from their hashtags
thrown in the corner
another into the pile of disorder...
But people think it’s okay
to come up to you
abuse you in the street.
Knocked to your knees
to cries of 'queer'-
you end up living in fear-
'well, what do you expect given
who's watching Wall Street?'
Yet I stand here
talking to you
a queer boy-
with all connotations of the word-
a queer boy with a voice.
Look at me!
My chest,
My unbroken voice,
My broken mind.
I am not proud of what I am,
what I’ve become and
how much it hurts
is indescribable to you.
I am not what you want me to be.
I am a man.
Not trans.
Mar 27, 2017
Mar 27, 2017 at 12:24 PM UTC
well there goes another parade,
we're now marching with rainbows on our bodies and hashtags on our face
our roars pierce the skyline as the guns fire
bang! bang!
another bullet
in our direction
another life lost
and now we have a new sensation
young man murdered for a skin colour he didn't choose
young man murdered because 'he seemed like he was from the hood'
young man shot dead for following the rules
hashtags flooding twitter, photo sets on tumblr, double taps on instagram and likes on facebook
debates firing up and questioning the truth
we're marching
with the names of the dead carved on our skin
girls murdered for loving girls and boys murdered for loving boys,
a girl being murdered because she no longer wanted to be a boy.
we're crying,we're laughing,we're screaming and we're dying
and now the walls are covered in our writing
because we will never stop fighting
Jul 16, 2017
Jul 16, 2017 at 12:47 PM UTC