"henchman" poems
PER NOCTEM IN NIHILO VEHI
( TO VANISH BY NIGHT INTO NOTHING )
my death approached me
but: went on by without
recognising it was I...
i hid in the filthy alley
of a passing hour
Death now furiously searching for me
no...Here: here
no...There: there - either
this tiny piece of time
the once and once
only
but Mr. Death had missed the moment
had to return empty handed
I finding myself madly in love with
the next second. . .
****
Mr. Death elects to speak in Latin...thinks it gives him a certain je ne sais quoi...
It's always great to cheat Mr. Death and his henchman Mr. Heartattack. I swore to myself that I would love the next second with all my heart!
May 14, 2017
May 14, 2017 at 2:52 PM UTC
membranes bleed in classic fashion
seep into my brain with passion
pump my heart with fuel and tension
feeling like a villains henchman
blow me baby, how did i know?
one more chance to powder my nose
i see whiter than the snow
and i dont know how far i can go
mr rogers asks for entry
everything gets past the sentry
powdered sugar makes me antsy
for whatever suits my fancy
im too focused for my brain
all the colours look the same
bow to gods that i dont need
if it'll cause my nose to bleed
blow me baby, how did i know?
one more chance to powder my nose
i see whiter than the snow
and i dont know how far i can go
blow me baby, how did i know?
one more chance to powder my nose
i dont know how you could appose
i'll just lay here taking several blows
i need you cause i want you bad
the sweetest girl i've ever had
is whiter than the winter's snow
i love it when she's in my nose
oh, i've been told to get in line
that my whole lifes a waste of time
but i've got everything i need
as long as i can do the deed
blow me baby, how did i know?
one more chance to powder my nose
i see whiter than the snow
and i dont know how far i can go
blow me baby, how did i know?
one more chance to powder my nose
hardly straight, no arrows bow
an early start for whole new lows
Tonsils set aflame
I can't complain
I've only got myself to blame
Apr 17, 2017
Apr 17, 2017 at 12:05 PM UTC
Space and dread and the dark--
Over a livid stretch of sky
Cloud-monsters crawling, like a funeral train
Of huge, primeval presences
Stooping beneath the weight
Of some enormous, rudimentary grief;
While in the haunting loneliness
The far sea waits and wanders with a sound
As of the trailing skirts of Destiny,
Passing unseen
To some immitigable end
With her grey henchman, Death.
What larve, what spectre is this
Thrilling the wilderness to life
As with the ****** shape of Fear?
What but a desperate sense,
A strong foreboding of those dim
Interminable continents, forlorn
And many-silenced, in a dusk
Inviolable utterly, and dead
As the poor dead it huddles and swarms and styes
In hugger-mugger through eternity?
Life--life--let there be life!
Better a thousand times the roaring hours
When wave and wind,
Like the Arch-Murderer in flight
From the Avenger at his heel,
Storm through the desolate fastnesses
And wild waste places of the world!
Life--give me life until the end,
That at the very top of being,
The battle-spirit shouting in my blood,
Out of the reddest hell of the fight
I may be snatched and flung
Into the everlasting lull,
The immortal, incommunicable dream.
4.7k
One for the man bunkered down in the trenches
sent in by his country as a henchman.
He's laying in the mud, praying for safety,
losing less blood than what's shed daily.
In this hazy hell, a drug buzz is needed.
Morphine seeps in, easing the beaten.
And in no man's land, a man cries for mercy
but his cries are cut off by the hands of Murphy.
Early in the morning, he packs his bags.
Rucksack on his back, heading back to base camp.
There's a damper in the room, sunken like the marsh.
Friends have fallen, it's clearly marked.
And his heart aches but they can't be dead.
Nah, he sees them every time he lays down his head.
From time to time, he jolts up out of breath,
but he never felt more alive, when he was close to death.
It's not a sob story, no it's just old glory
Two for the man bunkered down by the park bench,
clutching a cup, praying for penance.
He's laying on cement, waiting for change,
and trying to stay dry from the ******* rain.
In this day and age, a drug buzz is needed.
Morphine tabs, tap in the defeated.
Lungs splitting, teeth gritting, he's wishing for mercy.
Two times the dose, he curses out Murphy.
Early in the morning he packs his bags.
Rucksack on his back, he heads back to PADs.
He grabs a tray, sits alone, and says grace
because there's no space open for the "nutcase".
Arm's race to golden gates, he dragged a debt.
He carried his country as heavy as regret.
He carries his friends, they dangle from his neck.
But the thing about memories is that you can't forget.
It's not a sob story, it's just old glory
© Matthew Harlovic
Oct 11, 2014
Oct 11, 2014 at 12:25 PM UTC
True love cannot be tampered upon
Or enclosed in glass and released at will,
It is not an insignificant slave
At the beck and call of its master,
For love has no master and its power so great
That once touched by love's endearing caress,
One must blindly obey.
True love does not follow reason
For reason could not understand a lover's heart,
It is not a pupil that can be taught
Nor a henchman that can be ordered around,
For love is free and unbinding
And all feeble attempts to restrain it shall be in vain.
True love cannot be grown from the seed of lust
Or plucked from jealousy's petals,
For once the desire has waned
The fruits shall wither and rot.
It needn't ask permission to reside in one's heart
For like a thief in the night
Love can come and go as it pleases.
Blessed are lovers' eyes
For they can see true beauty,
For beauty can only be seen
Through true love's eyes.
Sep 2, 2010
Sep 2, 2010 at 1:56 AM UTC
im a let that bass set
back to the view you
been checking me at
you be asking me questions like
do you not love yourself?
***** better check yourself
i would have taken my strap
to the back of my right cheek fat
sprayed my old gang with shrap
the blood and my skull by the scrap
so please bare with me
child will you ever see
we on the attack
this country that we born in,
is the enemy to the ones that we once had
turning itself into the biggest group of bang
so now that you are stuck in this whirlwind insane
ready to die, bonnie and clyde , two thousand and nine
when you gonna see that this dynamic duo
dont make the world turn with our voodoo
they dont know whats going on here
they too busy across seas in the world
so what we doing 85 when we ride
they just wiped out a whole **** tribe
two bullets holes instead of their eyes
world dont even take this country seriously
they have us on every angle no peers
just the enemies, spitting prophecies
made in their fears
that we gonna collapse
everyone put money in us by the wraps
too many kids going to bed starved
when other fat *** mother *******
grow too many vegetables in their yard
turn nutrition into trash, so what if they compact
all you old *** troops, still living in the war that we had
were a whole planet of warriors, let alone were the home
to the worst and the best of the wickedly out of the world
celebrate your serial killers, and dead rulers, not even with curls
so even tho it took Jimmy Henchman seven days
the reaper follows me in ever track that i lead
believe that I never write the realest **** i ever spoke
knowing the secrets of the underworld let me bleed
shouldn't have ever seaked out the truth they wrote
setting all the serpents septers after me, black cats
shotty caps, bullet scraps, hub cabs, and shorty tats
Grim Reaper oxyacetylenes in my dreams chrome gleams
Protected by the Prince of Air, setting things right first in my dreams
Nov 8, 2013
Nov 8, 2013 at 12:39 PM UTC
When I was eight years old I told my mom I’d play in the NBA.
And she believed me.
A year later, I was nearly dead.
A quick cough in January caged my lungs with such force
I could almost hear them fighting for breathing room.
I don’t remember much.
All that comes to mind is the panic
Like an animal that lives inside your skin,
That only awakens when he is least needed.
I came to with my mind split in half.
In reality I was on a stretcher, in a hospital.
In my mind, I was chained to a sheet of wood.
Floating in a pool.
Spread out like the vitruvian man.
I watched the water run through my fingers.
On second glance, I was not alone at the pool.
Men in all black stood around the edges
Staring like henchman do at helpless prey.
On third glance, I am in a stadium filled with cheering fans.
I could never really tell who they were cheering for.
One of the men shouts out, and I am drowning.
A godlike force pushes through the chain and I am engulfed.
No breath.
No sound.
Just blue and black
And the muffles of panic.
Only interrupted by a brief resurface
And the roar of an audience
Followed by blue and black.
My mind began to converge,
And two worlds became one again.
As the water around me turned to tile,
My hands still felt wet from the pool.
The nurse asked me why I kept screaming to get out of the water.
I never learned how to swim.
I never played in the NBA.
Oct 10, 2017
Oct 10, 2017 at 12:13 AM UTC
“Yes, master.”
A shrill groan slithers
Across the gray stones
Of the tower, spiraling upward
Until it is trapped in loftier cobwebs.
“The lever is down, master,”
And the darkness is whipped by electricity.
I beat out these lines with a bare
Foot, tapping to every syllable,
As the madman donning
Green-tinted goggles and
A tumbleweed of hair curls
Closer and closer to the cluttered lab table.
“Need more light, master?
I’ll hold the lantern,”
And the light begins to praise his smooth hands,
Sloping precisely to pink fingernails
As the needle dips into his
Experiment like an eel
Flowing beneath the sea’s wake.
“Are you close, master?”
Illuminated are the gashes that mar
The ridges in my knuckles,
The calluses etched into my fingertips,
The wiry hairs that strangle
My throbbing, grey veins.
A life of delicate accomplishment,
Filled with a strictly inward turmoil;
It has never been mine to choose.
“It isn’t fair, master...”
And his lips purse in the effort
Of affording me a cursory glance.
“...That your genius go
So unrecognized,
Sir.”
Grunting satisfactorily,
He grins only toward his beloved creation
While I continue pondering
How a pencil might feel against
The paper if I knew how
To make the words.
“I want to write, master.”
“Poetry?” he mumbles to the scalpel,
and I nod my head vigorously as
His rumbling laughter becomes
Smoke that snakes leisurely toward
The skylight.
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 3:23 PM UTC
nestled in the fist of fury
followers following followers
machine numbers generated
to the size of egos
the devils henchman lurks
saturated by cryptic code
destruction embedded
in his fused brain
waiting
to puncture your alterego
and spill your conscience
into a crucible of sacrifices
on the altar of recognition
indecent pictures
bloated for primetime consumption
on the sidewalks of galley slaves
surfing social media
with oars of phony cosmetic
happiness. where do you stand?
welcome to a world of make-believe.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, 27 days ago
Nov 8, 2014
Nov 8, 2014 at 5:54 PM UTC
For the last five hundred years, posh “society,” is where the wealthiest and most influential people in the world mingled, inter-married and conducted business. If you’ve ever watched “Downton Abbey”, “The Gilded Age” or even “Crazy Rich Asians” you’ll know what I mean.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs - a psychological pyramid that describes human fulfillment - states that part of our human nature (once your basic needs are met) is the desire to attain social position. Having mere wealth is just not enough once you are in the top levels of achievement.
In the 1970’s Arab money started pouring into the west. Arab petro-dollars bought swaths of land in the UK, in London and New York. The Arabs dazzled everyone with their wealth and bling but they never penetrated posh society.
Then in the 90s the second, Asian wave, of new wealth washed eastward and they had a bit more success in society. But starting about 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russians started coming to the west with new money to invest - in the UK, in particular.
Russia became the billionaire capital of the world, oligarchs were everywhere buying anything not nailed down and eventually trying to insinuate themselves into posh “society”. Tatler (THE magazine of society) even began publishing a Russian version. If you were a wealthy Russian, you were moving up. By 2022, they weren’t too far from the edge of REAL success.
That’s what evaporated three weeks ago - with the invasion of Ukraine - Russia’s luxury infrastructure and their hopes of acceptance into posh society. Gucci, Chanel, Hermès, Dior, Apple and Tatler (just to name a few luxury brands) have left Russia to rot. If you’re Russian now, the chances of being admitted into posh society are gone for the next 20 years - at least.
You may say “so what?” Well, one way a dictator holds onto power is through mercantile largess. The granting of rights within the Russian sphere of influence - to control and distribute goods and services - is how oligarchs are created. The support of these oligarchs is important and transactional.
A man with a 100-million dollar yacht - looking at what chunks of their wealth may well be confiscated in the west - or lost to the Ruble’s collapse - could easily offer life-changing wealth to any henchman willing to end Putin one way or another.
Will this happen? I don’t know. But this is the system they’ve set up for themselves.
Mar 22, 2022
Mar 22, 2022 at 4:12 PM UTC
this is death
the irreversible-you're-not-going-to-make-it-out-of-here-in-one-piece kind
the "we're going to break you down until there's nothing left to break"
"but bones"
"and then we'll break them too"
i swear! i paid the piper
i paid the piper
i paid the piper
but Piper doesn't care-
he wants more tears
more lies, more lives
more fear
the piper wants you dead
and no blood on his hands
i am not the willing henchman
but my hands are caked in dirt
and i couldn't stop digging these graves if i wanted to
or is it just the truth?
Jun 12, 2014
Jun 12, 2014 at 9:48 PM UTC
I chase the Scarab until the morning glows
With a winged friend I mistreat following a henchman's horse
To the Dunes we ride eyeing the night sky waning
The face of my child entreats for me to be weary.
A diamond in the raw, uncut was never the most valuable.
a board game logic parks upon the boardwalk of Santa Cruz
A friend would never charge for you to stay in a hotel they owned,
a game is a game only if one refrains from believing in consequence
as reality, that time is a space left between motions created by decision
evidenced by interaction precise a dreams manifested sequenced as love ever after.
A price is one custom we have all come to be adapted too, yet how are the best things in life free, if Jewels are the most expensive?
Mar 16, 2015
Mar 16, 2015 at 5:12 AM UTC
6 days of work
On the 7th day you rested
Seeing all was good
In all you had invested
Took the hand of man
And gave to him the charge
The taste of freedom and
You his loving God
To ward off loneliness
Made for him a helper
Inside of Edens bliss
Paradise the shelter
With only one stipulation
Listen what you're saying
Do not eat from the tree
The only rule you're making
Listened to that snake
Lying in his hissing
Made the fatal mistake
He was just a henchman
********************************
Eating from the tree
Who told you, you were naked
Sin has been set free
Paradise has left ya
Look what you have done
Kicked out of the garden
Hear the whole earth moan
Nothing's more alarming
Nothing now has been the same
Since the apple then was bitten
Think I'll give this poem the name
Let the festivities begin
Apr 7, 2016
Apr 7, 2016 at 8:10 AM UTC
(alternately titled: ah me go march'n home on derange)
I'll play the devil's advocate, yet
prepare a stance with pitchfork
against misinterpreted faux attempt
to describe, how whet
d'ya column re: immigration officials coe vet
patrol, police, and poison tranquil casa blanca
where killer attack dogs fiendishly pin set
ting sharp fangs at jugular vein of respectful,
dutiful, and blissful (or at least
prior to being sniffed out) innocent
long time laborer on American soil now get
ting Das Boot to their unfamiliar Motherland
(despite living social
as law abiding righteous folks) fret
full, cuz unfairly punished, and
cruelly deported, dispirited, doomed
pained visage non verbally articulates
at un war rented deportation you bet!
with just a flick of the wrist
and alien hated, pigheaded,
and xenophobic ventriloquist
bring back the Alien and Sedition Acts
with a Trumpeting Latina, Hispanic,
and for good measure Mulatto twist,
where original writ (signed into law
by President John Adams in 1798),
historical footnote, aye cannot resist
spooking (like a ghost), those *** pill
born south of the border pooped and ******
in potties of this proud country, sans free and brave
now frightfully get flushed out
glad to feign dis guise
as one among select Geronimo cadre
we henchman lubricate
wheels of injustice myst
tuff hie hiding dark shadows
(along the edge of night)
thence paddy wagon comes
to screeching halt nabbing
an "illegal alien" name on hit list
code word "bag dad" (biggest quarry)
and score a win
for Barren Trump Tah Mahal Incorporated
impossible mission special ops sentry slithers as trained
fearless to shackle ******* ranked big hest
catch also including ***** prize,
as you correctly guessed.
Mar 13, 2018
Mar 13, 2018 at 2:33 AM UTC
Flickering like a tentative alpenglow corraded from profaned time
A whisper jostles through a crowded rumpus prescient of teleology and design
Jolting with pangs of panic a screech emanates from the brontides of tomorrow
A chagrin outpaces the gingerly apprehension of a peevish sorrow
Among the ruffled plumes quaffed from pedigree and put to disuse
A banausic electricity galvanizes the ****** of the amalgamated acuity pinched from the sordid, the obtuse
Refracted like off a darkened moon that clenches the darkness in an abstruse tomb
Combs through sentience of Saturn presiding over ineluctable doom
A silence louder than a plangent ****** of phantasmagoria debased
A looming victor erodes with the putrefaction of sworn and utter distaste
How to obtrude on the evening with triaged fulmination
Is an affront to the rudders of a piecemeal civilization in tatters with exacting doddering calculation
Graveyards bustle with the eidolons of scurrilous spite
Congregating around a blackened epitaph on an alabaster palace gilded in the swanky pinnacle of light
Scuttling the outmoded flanks of an abortive war
Against a henchman of state too ostentatious to hardly ever ignore
We clamber with insistence hoping on fortuitous deliverance
Yet we are deranged of the clasped distance between the crevasse of the clerisy and the satisdiction of futures passed with meticulous diligence
Absconding with furtive furrows on a wizened guild an entrusted world we helped build
We witness the silence creep over us like a trepidation contained as lethal killers of the cartel willed
That which frightens a self-fulfillment is a fatalism gone awry
Someday soon omens excavated from immolated tombs will beseech a more universal backlash, an alienated sorrow that will one day cry
But until that fetched disaster occurs
Let us meditate only on the process of emanation among wayward words
That dance with a destiny that the hegemony of momentary circumstance much prefers
Feb 16, 2018
Feb 16, 2018 at 2:19 AM UTC
Proponents of the plague
Henchman
Obedient cogs in the endless wheel
Blooddrunk money ******
We feel your oppressive ways
Your boot against our neck
Your hand in our pocket
Your lidless eye on us
Your lash upon our back
Your hunger to enslave the next generation
Hide the Children
Dec 29, 2014
Dec 29, 2014 at 5:38 PM UTC
And if she were my world,
she'd be right in the center,
between the soil,
where our skin would suffice a splinter,
I tried to call death but heaven already sent her.
Her stinging euphoria exhilarates my touch,
her body against mine has never felt so cold,
I've never felt a lifeless hold,
until I looked into her shimmered, crevassed eye's.
Not until she embraced my souls walls,
I listened to her indigenous call,
now I'm trapped in her concrete noose,
and I wouldn't wanna hold on any tighter to her recluse,
her voices music is my only muse.
I'm coiled up, tattered, and blue.
Now tell me,
where the **** are you?
a corpse has never been my reluctant seal,
but sometimes disgust brings the prettiest of deals.
Edging down these thick gray slabs,
the inebriating smell of your stench takes hold and grabs,
down my jaw-line,
her favorite feature,
and around my neck paperless and thin,
then tightened at the top,
She was holding the lever the second before I dropped.
Now I subdue into this henchman's knot,
fading into her chaos I decay,
death and I will go far away,
where the luminous meadows enrich our souls,
and my body forever in her rotting lifeless hold,
we'll float away onto burning coals,
'cause life ain't nothin' but gold when you've got a noose around your neck,
and nothin' to hold.
Mar 29, 2017
Mar 29, 2017 at 8:25 PM UTC
Perhaps you think not what you did
Nor of bad or good
Not of the shells that hit the ground
Nor the stands we stood
Perhaps you think not of the hearts
The ones that loved a marriage
Nor of the ones that didn't fit
Like a horse without it's carriage
Perhaps you think of blood lust people
As your killing henchman
Or maybe of the ones that died
Helping in the trenches
Perhaps you think is what we ask
Day in, day out, all day
Perhaps you think not what you did
Nor the price we paid
Nov 18, 2014
Nov 18, 2014 at 10:50 AM UTC
After today's four steps
I'm sitting in socks by the fireplace
My heavy boots are standing straight
and my back is still rattling
I am a henchman
I push the boundaries
of the ladies in love
and the rich gentlemen
I leave horse **** behind
and take the scent of freesias with me
The water in the bucket sloshes
like yearning love
I don't travel alone
We are armed
The papers are precious
Sealed letters
Beginning and maintaining
of relationships and major interests
Between the stops, the reins
of fate are in my hands
May 9, 2023
May 9, 2023 at 3:39 AM UTC
black coffee on the table,
clean cold steel-chiselled Glock
loaded and placed in the bed-drawer.
The sharp wire that smells of the skins
and flesh it has strangulated. A black pair
of gumboots, a black overcoat, a black void
of past. A distant daughter who loves strawberries,
cats with abhorrence for your existence.
Cadillac, a pair to tan gloves, a love for silence,
love for the sight of eyes turning red, pleading
A packet of cigarettes, a bottle of Miller’s
An emptiness that spreads, a death that patiently lives.
Jun 5, 2018
Jun 5, 2018 at 4:29 AM UTC
".Nothing is what it seems, what we see is just a mirage, what lies underneath, is the truth."
What do you see when you look at me
Harmless dog that I am
Fawning at your feet
Piddling all over myself to please you
This shabby mongrel you shoo from your table
Haughty in your pedigreed inclinations
Wipe my spit and dander from your petaled hands
I am nothing but a casual diversion
Banished from your hearth
Steward the beautiful things that catch your eye
Chain me up out of sight
I will always adore you
You cast this sadness
whips of words against my hide
I bleed out in the shadows
You've made me crazy
When all I wanted was your love
Curled up next to you
But you were too ashamed to let me in
Now here we are
My teeth in your throat
Your personal henchman
A killing machine calibrated
By your hatred
Surprise in your failing eyes
I would have rather died for you
But you left me to my own devices
I cannot stop myself
From survival
behind the mask of civility
Perhaps I've always been
A monster of your own creation
I can taste your poison
Beauty only the cast
Shadow on your surface
Tear the mask from your face
I cannot bear to see
Another monster staring back at me...
TLBoehm
05/21/10
Oct 3, 2014
Oct 3, 2014 at 2:56 PM UTC
The lips of the sky breath a sigh of relief,
freeing spirits fallen, to go dance among the sleeping world
whispering in broken ears, "please remember, life is not grief."
Dreaming of swimming though stars blinding with a beauty unfurled.
Ancient shadows crawl along the horizon painting tales long forgotten,
as a piano sings with a voice of shivering leaves,
the moon is the hero, the sun is a villain,
while the frogs are henchman playing washboard in the reeves.
Please remember that music is wind trapped in a box,
raging waterfalls pulling drum beats down into its murmuring heart.
A scream of fear uninhibited by dark tricks and locks.
Haunting echoes, flavors and alluring aromas tear a past apart.
Remember, each breath we take is the soft summer wind
Please, do not let your life end... let it begin.
Jul 2, 2017
Jul 2, 2017 at 11:03 PM UTC
we do not want let into the room, we want to smash the ******* walls
call it diversity not ‘decentering whiteness’ not, smashing white supremacist cis hetero patriarchy,
not THE CANON IS ******* RACIST
THE CANON IS FOR MEN BY MEN PRAISED BY MEN
FOR THE BOURGEUIS BY THE BOURGEUISE OWNED AND RUN BY THE BOURGEISE
THE CANON IS AS WHITE AS THE PAGES YOU TURN AND THE PAPER YOU WIPE YOUR *** WITH.
THE CANON IS A CLOSED ROOM WITH A BARRED DOOR
WITH QUEERS ON THE STREET NOT EVEN BOTHERING TO KNOCK
BECAUSE THEY KNOW THAT THE DOOR WILL NOT EVEN BE CRACKED OPEN IN THE SLIGHTEST.
WE DO NOT WANT LET INTO THE ROOM,YOU BUILT THE ROOM YOU OWN THE ROOM, IT IS YOUR HENCHMAN WHO CONTROL THE INS AND OUTS OF THE DOOR.
WE WANT TO SMASH THE ******* WALLS.
IF YOU DO NOT LEAVE, YOU WILL BE PART OF THE RUBBLE.
YOU WILL LEARN WHAT IS LIKE TO HAVE YOUR HOUSE BROUGHT TO THE GROUND.
Sep 16, 2017
Sep 16, 2017 at 5:37 AM UTC