"histrionics" poems
Stumbling into ancient scripts, authored a decades plus ago,
ago being a modifier of time quantities, minute or large, unspecific
without an objective adjective additive, that faucets a stream of an interlocutory elocution of a batter of rooted emotional histories,
but not histrionics
fanciful words for dredged up memories, acute, but tarnished,
powered yet worn by a cousin of ago, a/k/a,
age
and yet
renews as of,
at this very second, as if it were a first, a tumult of visions, swelling of remembrances, embodied scars, and I weep anew but not
for me, as much for the resonating simpatico souls with whom
they even now vibrate with resonance of the immediacy of
If not now, When?
Aside: The exterior environment is noisy wet pelting of thunderstorms and ****** sheets of bulleting rain, piercing projectiles, but I am safe in the sunroom, sadly happy my dog is no longer here to shiver and tremble, cuddle and be soothed by steady stroking
But I am here, wrestling with this dredging operation, digging up
tons of sand that require dumping, and I ask, inquire, beg:
Who will take this detritus off my hands, once more, now uncovered,
now recovered, the soil is already soaked and can absorb no more,
the soul is already soaked and can absorb no more, the weakened
heart, damaged and occluded, suffer cannot bare twice the
outrageous misfortune
of unbared recollections, twice, or thrice, and I feel myself drowning in revisiting pain, **** **** **** these old poems, not nuggets, but boulders dropping from night skies, shot from a pitching machine, without letup, piercing of agonies that once ago
freshly desecrated and decorated my basic training in humanity.
Enough whining:
*I wrote those poems to
eject out those pains,
and I write this now, once more,
to realize that so so many still face
uncertain and unrelenting similarities,
doing their own sums,
and I wish them easing,
strength to compose and
thereby dispose of
the ineloquent
and eloquent
words of staining suffering*
3:30am
Thur
July 10
2025
Jul 16, 2025
Jul 16, 2025 at 5:39 PM UTC
kindness eats
least of all we defeat our enemies cheaply
steep the leaves in hot water gently
keep enemies close to you and weapons even closer
our friends are like sunbeams
I jump in the water
your sun-burned back is peeling
out loud you remind me
not to bend down too quickly
she hounds me with her questions
lessons on arithmetic
I’m so sick of it
histrionics and sonic lectures
his tricks are onto it
moronic manic accidents
red lions with long necks
deflect authority and wager on credit
the outcomes are certain
all will fade away indefinitely
understand this and measure your life
by breaths and not complexity
densities are hiding in visionary lightning
finding new faculties every moment
we are swift in our limitless
capacity for adaptation
a refulgent emulsion
immersed in water and poetry
under the highest authority
or just higher scrutiny
wrapped in a paranoid blanket
of heightened security
all is being watched right now
as judges redefine your beauty
if you are truly interested
in finding happiness
you must understand
that all magic is abraxas
and satisfaction unceasingly attacks this
as we collapse upon the backs
of ecstatic languages....
Oct 24, 2017
Oct 24, 2017 at 12:49 PM UTC
On Monday
you are sponges
Squeezed empty by
Pokemon tournaments and
Supernatural Watchathons
On Wednesday
you are dictionaries
lexicons of hyperbolic histrionics
thesauri of sturm and drang and
angsty angsty goodness
But Friday
you are IMDB
airbenders and Fassbender and
light bending across the sails
of a ship bound for the
unreal
implausible
impossible
unnatural
illogical
while Monday
you are rabid
like word-eating mongrels
and Wednesday
you are 1930's radios
spewing never-before-heard myths and mysteries
but Friday
you are careening
between the moons of Jupiter
ungrounded
unfettered
untethered
unrealistic
imaginative
but Friday
you are
gone gone gone gone
gone
Apr 10, 2015
Apr 10, 2015 at 5:06 PM UTC
I am raw, plucked
bare and overexposed;
ashamed of my emotions and
too vulnerable, too fragile
I am not threatened but I do not
feel safe, I ache to hide but where can
I hide from my own mind? I need
time to decay my histrionics and my
need for affection so that it never
resurfaces again, so that I never
resurface again -- I am drowned in
something benign but chaotic, replicating
it's mutation endlessly, perpetually, until
I cannot breathe because I am overexposed --
bare and
plucked raw.
Jul 23, 2017
Jul 23, 2017 at 2:35 AM UTC
when I write to you to tell you
of my deepest emotions
you respond with 'calm down'
as if you picture me in histrionics
wailing and pulling out my hair
which mystifies me
for I was calm all along
May 30, 2012
May 30, 2012 at 6:31 AM UTC
I recalled the smell of junipers warming in the sun,
Or maybe mice nesting under the cupboard.
Or bleached linen hung out by Mum,
Reminds me of something about Dad from long ago,
You ask me…to say if it was gin;
There are things I can’t tell you, Son.
Some people think that it’s a sin;
So just use your imagination.
Another time I smelled crushed daisies of
The housemaids, I remember from Kleßheim.
Thunderstorms rolled down from the Alps at night,
Then turned at morning into clarified, buttered sun.
They remind me of someone’s blonde hair,
I just can’t tell you when or where,
So use your imagination.
Scent is the most potent mnemonic,
Triggering mystical cells inside,
Creating a stream of biophotonics,
Rapture returns in histrionics,
Tracking things from skin and hair,
To lips and eyes, to a groan, an intrigued stare.
Things we can never tell another, even if
He or she or they were there
What happened in those brilliant days?
Only imagination can say.
Crystal hanging in the window at nine o’clock,
Rays strike the glass, opening up the past.
Before me spreads a wide, green lawn,
Ladies and lords stroll with their finery on.
I sit and watch, while the procession advances,
Tricornes doffed and stays undone in dances.
Until the satin, silk and brocades lie on the ground,
Gavotte kisses become tender, sensual rounds
And naked, youth flees into woods.
And everything is happening;
Everything is good.
Jul 12, 2018
Jul 12, 2018 at 12:39 AM UTC
transparent boundaries in a mind
mark out the blank vacuum of space
scrutinize other minds discard all trivia
extract with a kinetic incisiveness
required information
in a chronological diversity of images
speak with the fluency of an abrupt halt
which is maximized to reduce an effect
on the skeletal calisthenics of
introspective histrionics
by acquired extrasensory faculties
by that very mind, by that very mind
a neurobiological transmutation
Mar 3, 2013
Mar 3, 2013 at 2:26 PM UTC
Dig deep poet;
You too reader;
Commandment One:
Both must obsess to possess,
Air the curvature of each line
shape with two hands, creasing and
no ceasing not till the air waves have filled
your flushed face with compressed comprehensions
You weep as you compose!
Good!
The well of tears where hid
the pool of emotions
in cavernous reservoirs
in the center of your
gravity,
needs a daily tapping,
a draining, a purification,
a quenching sweet and
raucous
where you dig, salted water will come
in the soiled, imperial but imperfect body/mind cappuccino,
there are swirls of treasures, sins and histrionics
that need discovery, expiation, expulsion,
when~then, object is surgically removed,
accept surging water will desoil,
and you can revel
in the revelation
of honest effort
Debate Commencement:
reveal, which, what and how
much, how much? how much?
(this reverbs)
what must be shared,
what must be reburied,
what must be refuted,
what must be reconstructed,
refurbished,
and what must be
demolished & deconstructed
ah, but as soul judge,
you hold yourself to a higher standard,
but in all of this but two constraints rule:
the quality of the recalled data,
the quantity of storage space delimitation
do not tease us with rivulets, nor bury
us under thunderous rushes of memories
spilling and cresting with a reek of abandon,
unless, you’re abandoning the memory en tout,
giving us your newly orphaned all innermost,
then, we must accept the product of your labor,
whether it be spoiled fruit or glorious
truth
Tuesday Apr 16
8:32AM
(the year of pollard, a/k/a 2024)
Apr 18, 2024
Apr 18, 2024 at 8:51 AM UTC
*moiety: a half, an indefinite portion, part, or share.
writer reader
can't have one without the other
normally don't fool around with linear spacing,
there but for the grace of god the words come a tumbling
so fast I plant them down in rows as is customary
but when it comes to that moiety times two blues,
when you've been up all night laying down tracks
and nobody has read you latest histrionics,
you wondering what for do I gig this gig,
fingers asking what's the point of ink staining
heart bugging you, never satisfied, even alone,
needs somebody to know, a status update,
a poem unread is a sin my maybe friends,
so if you should you trip over a stumble bum's poem,
good or bad matters not, when you read, you complete,
so dying on the vine, untouched, incomplete,
be the first to have moiety times two with it,
the first read is the like the first kiss,
a certification of what is called
po-moeity carnal knowledge
a half, an indefinite portion, a part,
when shared, whereon it be writ-read,
your place on heaven and earth insured,
when you seal someone's else's deal,
I'll know and I'll be putting that checkmark
in my assignment book, and if you should go so far
to press the little red heart, my finger I'll crook,
and install you as co author of the words
a po with no mo
is half a dream half remembered
tired of singing the moiety times two blues song,
*** going, go forth and like it,
the Frenchies they got style,
when reading a po-mo they like,
they call you up on the phone and ask,
voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?
which is French for moiety times two blues no more
Jan 19, 2014
Jan 19, 2014 at 2:50 PM UTC
You, obviously, have something
To say.
Dancing around the words
Unnamed.
Spitting fire and brimstone
All day.
Shielded by adjectives
Unashamed.
This act you show us, this
Little play.
Just come out with it.
Be unafraid.
Jun 25, 2014
Jun 25, 2014 at 12:41 AM UTC
Shut up and go to bed
Put the pillow under your head
I'm sick and tired of all your worries
Shut up and say goodnight
Say your prayers and turn off the light
I'm sick and tired of all your sob-stories
Shut up and shut your eyes
No more histrionics, no more college tries
Stop pushing, stop shoving, stop straining
Shut your mouth and button your lip
You're a late night faucet that's gotta drip
All you're doing is merely complaining
The excuse that you're crazy is useless
You're not biting you're barking you're toothless
But you're ruthless
Shut up and count some sheep
And do me a favor, don't ***** in your sleep
No more agony, please no more sorrow
Shut up and catch some Zs
Ice cream with a cherry plus a big pretty please
I promise we'll resume tomorrow...Goodnight.
Aug 14, 2014
Aug 14, 2014 at 3:49 PM UTC
There is a dark musk in the air,
the breeze in my lungs explode with despair,
a remark of my tribulation,
my forlorn, eternal damnation,
the burden of my affliction,
my relinquish, my submission,
my loss, my plague,
this abandonment, vague.
-
The hour approaches where I renounce histrionics,
this ridiculous existence, shallow and ironic,
-
as I slash through these weeds,
I become ever weary,
trying to grow soon-to-bloom seeds,
I can’t conceive clearly,
what I had set out to do first,
yet I encounter pain, and wish for rebirth.
-
I look upon obscurely scribed lines
and take them as commands
and as I gaze up
I realize I have failed to meet their demands.
-
the blood on my hands, and in my thoughts,
the bodies in my mind, turn to be naught
to frequently miscarry and meet with disaster,
just to be in the shadow of another caster,
makes one wish for eternal rest faster.
-
a prisoner an only go so long,
before hating his cell,
ask for another,
and hate the most recent still.
-
yet I yearn, yet I crave
for the love of another and better days
-
all the while, forsaken stress
consumes me blind
how can it be possible
when I again fail to find
that which I seek, ever so
and continue to be, ever alone,
although those who speak of which they know nothing of
will one day find themselves answering above,
-
I find myself fallen and broken
with no trace I had slipped
no one to me my answer spoken
without as much as a quip
so shall it be, so shall it stay,
I will arbitrarily search for the light of day,
i honor perseverance, and my vigil stays,
As I seek, need and want, the light of day.
Jan 19, 2013
Jan 19, 2013 at 11:52 PM UTC
Fate is a cop-out.
There is no divine plan, no wind of fortune pushing you toward death
Like a gruesome sailboat.
There's no grand path, that, try as you might
You end up stumbling back onto every time you try to flee it.
**You
Make
Your
Own
Destiny.**
Don't **** it up because life gets hard.
Don't give me the fatalistic excuse: "My life was meant to end."
Of course it was.
Look at us all, little nothing's springing into existence
On this tiny planet
Like dust motes in the sun
And then we go dark.
We all live to die, sweetheart.
That doesn't make us dead yet.
You have a pulse, use it.
You have lungs and a brain and tastebuds and fingertips.
Breathe, scream, make something, learn something,
Cook a gourmet meal and relish it,
Read a sordid novel, eat some chocolate,
Watch the sun rise.
You are not fated to die any more than the rest of us.
It is what we do with the space in between that counts.
Don't tell me I've got strings I can't see,
Jerkily dancing through life in directions I don't control.
Don't tell me there are puppeteers plucking threads like harps
Or blind women spinning gold just to cut it off.
We are vast, but tiny.
Nobody cares to control us- we don't mean enough.
There are so many of us, we swarm like ants.
Nothing takes the time to force a plan on us.
You're free. Free, and insignificant.
Realize it. Grow up.
In fact...
Grow up, grow out, grow down...
Just...
Grow.
And lose Fate on the way, lose the excuses.
Lose the indulgence of self hatred, and needless pain.
Focus your suffering like a laser, hone it to a point,
And make it have a point if it has to happen.
If you hurt, hurt big, hurt with purpose,
Hurt so deep that it comes back to brush elbows with Joy like a playful old friend and says,
"Good job, there."
Lose the drama, lose the histrionics, lose the idea that **the only way to be loved
Is to be weak.**
And grow.
There is no Fate.
Fate is simply an excuse for not owning one's existence.
Leave it behind.
*Take your world in your fingers
Like wet clay
And make yourself a life
That fits in every contour of your hands.*
Jul 28, 2013
Jul 28, 2013 at 10:29 PM UTC
she said she’d wait forever
so she took the pills and
chased them down with fine wine,
picked up the phone
and waited till the end
for you to pick up the line.
was it selfish?
was it romantic?
was it kind?
she was a wet dream come to life,
she would have been such a prize.
a hand on the curve of her hip-
you couldn’t handle it.
there were
grainy photos of you both,
some fancy motel
maybe by the name of
the shangri-la.
there are moments you can see
just how deep her sadness stretched
inside of her,
just how deep her need stretched
inside of her,
for you.
there are state of the unions
adresses and inaugural china.
long lasting feasts.
she might as well have just been
the lady hiding in the cake,
the lady singing you to sleep.
everybody’s wet dream
could’ve been a reality
for you.
she said she’d wait forever
and you probably passed it off as histrionics.
and maybe you couldn’t live
with that sort of guilt.
she said she’d wait forever
so she did.
she picked up the phone,
pills and fine wine.
waited for you in this world
and ready to wait until the end of time.
Nov 18, 2014
Nov 18, 2014 at 11:54 PM UTC
To the limits!
And the heaves are harmed, in our lungs
and arms. Tendons flexed on their utmost,
and breath at play in the drowned coast.
To the shores!
And the leaves are left as specks of colour,
from the moors.
and vacations left the hinterlands
of the decayed, breathless holler.
For the greater good we stood as imagined heroes,
Yet for happenstance to lend a chance in our woes,
required a great many motifs
to clamour and climb
In glamourous time
to the raised butte
of a finishing sublime.
Modulate the past and harmonize the future.
Together tapestry'd, akin to patchwork suture.
We weren't raised this way.
To remain forever at play, workhorses neigh.
And sawing brilliance and sawdust eyes,
rapier wit with no equal.
But together a two-parter,
to the shores to see the sea quell.
Wildfire lick like lit flame.
Burn it all down and give me the blame.
It's a carried burden worth the worry.
In mountains some exist as prideful barons.
Barring the loss of their barren,
their smiles turn smirks of heathen carrions.
Which is fine, and the motif licks again.
And the motive is sublime; it's only sin.
Cherish the children and their rue of thresher-born,
Thomas Ligotti and his party of philosophy,
but I'm too caught in histrionics to allow the matter
to matter.
Beyond the kicking feet of the mirthful pitter-patter,
pitted against the coming solstice of time saving;
forward and back and ouroboros we may.
Hold on tight to this singular day.
Ignorant of the causes of our own decay.
Lost during summers covered in spittle and seaspray.
Only to mount a return, a loss,
to the area most unaccepting of the cost.
To the mountaintops!
**** what you see, and reap what you sow.
Push the mountains down into the crow,
and call out for the all the denizens below,
"Here's another landslide." As you call; Heave, and **
Pile them neat and plant a seed,
of a tree that hasn't belonged or had a chirped song
in a placidity.
Aug 5, 2018
Aug 5, 2018 at 4:24 AM UTC
The Bachelor Spectacular
by Michael R. Burch
One heart? Tossed aside.
The other? A bride’s.
In all his great wisdom, the bachelor decides.
Eeenie, mean-ie, mine-y, mo’, ...
one gal must stay and one must go.
If she hollers? That’s the show!
No heart can handle such despair!
But hearts get broken, hearts repair.
Next season? The treasoned will rule the air!
Tags/Keywords: Bachelor, Reality, TV, show, spectacular, spectacle, date, dating, nonsense verse, light verse, humor, satire, parody, heartbreak, tears, hearts broken, bride, groom, script, scripted, histrionics
Mar 9, 2020
Mar 9, 2020 at 3:04 AM UTC
The door to the apartment was unlocked when I got there, knowing I was minutes too late. The place was typical, exactly what I expected. Tiny kitchen with the basic bar and two swivel stools. TV on a stand and a floral pattern couch with the sliding door opening on the balcony to my right. Straight ahead was the hallway to the tiny bedroom. I gently closed the door and locked the *** and dead bolt. Walking straight ahead, noticing the bathroom door closed to my right in the tiny hallway. A queen bed in the one bedroom, red sheets and red comforter, white walls and an open closet. Fake flowers in a red plastic vase sitting innocent on a bedside table. No window and a single hanging print of Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son on the wall above a folding desk. The desk was home to a record player, circa 60's, vinyl still spinning, Brand New's The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me.
At least she died to something good I thought to myself. I didn't handle the torn remains of the acid green dress laying on the bed. She had put her shoes away and selected the vinyl before they arrived, probably had a glass of wine since there was one of those stemless glasses sitting empty on the bar. I doubted those who had come were the wine drinking type. Death was not unknown to me, neither was **** and retribution nor cruelty to make a political statement. But I did not want to go into that bathroom. I did not want to find what was left. I did not want to add her face to the long, long list of empty faces kept in record by my memory. I hate histrionics and false drama, but expecting to find the Countess gone, I reset the vinyl.
She was still breathing when I walked in. Naked except for her black hose, splayed out in the tub, a perfect 9 millimeter hole six inches above her left breast. It was two in the morning on the dot. In that moment, everything left me. All loyalty, all ideology, all thoughts of advancement, all regrets from the past. Gone in an instant. I gathered what was left of her in my arms.
It was hard carrying her down the stairs, but she put one hand through my hair and it helped. To this day I'm not sure how I found her car keys, but I do remember she whispering to me that her's was the grey Buick out front. She was dead by the time I got to the hospital.
Jan 21, 2015
Jan 21, 2015 at 2:48 AM UTC
I tried to ask her the name of the trumpet player she did the twist with. She hasn't got back to me.
I tried to give him away to a woman who looked somewhat like me so I had more time to hammer sheet metal. That didn't work out.
In my garage I found a handmade nail, I found a pellet gun with a red lettered alias, the tongue of a camaro. I wonder if I will practice the histrionics to death.
Poem is overkill, body is alright. I drink water like a drain. I spin like a drain, sit still like a drain.
Maybe I'm ****** by you in the worst way: rubbing cloth over a model t I found at the gallary, like it's my job to keep it clean, to keep it safe.
Dec 6, 2014
Dec 6, 2014 at 11:45 AM UTC
Echo, Wood nymph of folklore
Punished by Goddess Hera
Hated, there was no choice
Fated, deprived of her voice
Repeating words you hear
Punishment for a puppeteer
You fell in love
so you thought
With Narcissus
But he got caught
Looking at his own reflection
Turned him into a flower
Not his finest hour
Leaving Echo lonely and sad
For all the cads that
Never met a mirror they didn’t like
Who’s self-absorbed refection
Removes any trace of reflection
A thought can be misleading
Even if informed by a feeling
Don’t think
Because you think it it’s true
Consider others point of view
Don’t think because I disagree
There’s something wrong with me
Don’t always refer to you
Your grandiose style
Is just a grandiose denial
And while you deny that it’s true
Only an echo believes in you
Must I echo your words
How utterly absurd
This I can’t do
Even if it displeases you
Nothing moves you
Except for the powerless, you occasionally feel
Let’s you know you’re real
And yes
The rage is real
Hidden so well
That no one can tell
As you covertly hide from yourself
Your histrionics are first rate
Always out of date
A recording from the past
You’d think, you’d have worn out the grooves
Of the characters you cast
At last
There’s never an end
To the people I meet
All the friends you absorbed
Into the persona that’s you
Each has a name
But there nameless to you
I say
I know where you got that from
You say
There’s nothing new under the sun
I say
What about originality
You say
Plausible deniability
I say
I really, really need to get away
I say
Then, why do you stay?
I’m in search of my voice
I left it behind
In another time
I need it
Have you seen it
It could be
Anywhere
Under the couch
In the closet
Under the bed
You’re looking in the wrong places
The world’s a reflection
Of the spaces
Between the thoughts
Of your stasis.
It’s true
I’m never alone when I’m with you
Like living in a zoo
Forgive my sarcasm
Lack of enthusiasm
That’s what it feels like
Being with you.
First, you’re uncle Fester
Then you’re Grandma Ester
Who are you really
You don’t know
Do You
You never looked that far
Skin deep
Go that deep
Take a look
What do you see
It isn’t me
I’m not the object of your hatred
I’m not your scapegoat
Forgive the diatribe
For I am a scribe
Looking for her voice.
I am Echo no more
Nov 4, 2018
Nov 4, 2018 at 11:55 AM UTC
There is no need to shout at us-
If your words paint a picture we will see it.
We can squint and peer through lowered lids
And find the image in a myriad of dots.
It is not necessary that you push us-
We will follow if you gently lead, and find the storm
As fierce and moving as you think you need
To act out with your thunder voice and flailing arms.
Inflection works a well as histrionics,
And a subtle tone allows us space to build
The structures that your words describe.
There is no need to hammer us.
Singsong forces us to wade into the stream
And wield our nets of understanding endlessly
In hopes of capturing like silvered fish
The thoughts we’d rather cast for from the shore.
Just stand and calmly pull away
The drapes that hide the cake you wish to share.
In simple words divide it up
And we will eat it and be filled.
ljm
Apr 17, 2025
Apr 17, 2025 at 10:50 AM UTC