"hodgepodge" poems
I do not like the architecture of the mall.
It's discordant and lax. The architects
dismissed all Edwardian charm
and even the Gothic grace.
When crossing my field of vision,
the mall concedes defeat,
whimpering against a prismatic sky:
"I am a hodgepodge of ambition distressed,
resolute on pioneering a style unlike anything past,
but locked off in dead history, trapped
in a monologue whose audience is myself."
I presume it's the same across the world,
architecture molded into something impulsive,
something so forced it falls flat.
Where have all the artchitects gone?
Jul 26, 2013
Jul 26, 2013 at 4:07 PM UTC
In a strange mood - see/write art
in a strange way, disorganized but straight on,
light tinted magenta, issuing, in frothy large pours, from my mouth,
knowing what to say, and the meaning too,
I can more than walk, can write, on water,
where all can read weeping, Mary-miracles of seeing, living words,
themselves, on light waves lapping in a
shifting rotunda vision, color reorienting spatial senses.^
in a strange, strange stitch, seasonal spirits and witches,
Chagall, Baez, Dylan Thomas, Donovan, Richie Havens
doing their knitting in my brain, from Montmartre to the Midwest to Monterey,
painters and poets in lockstep head-messing with me,
imperfect clarity but still one voice,
see/write art,
so went and caught the wind, going gently into night
to banish the hodgepodge of uncertainty from inside out.
knowing well you don't understand fully, but jumbling tumbling
verses are sliding off my rusted tongue as fiddlers fly above,
roughened words, hewn from a paper cup, spilling diamonds uncut, imported from Sarajevo, Montparnasse, the Lower East Side.
wretched me, in the hour I first believed, this amalgamated conception conceded,
seceded from my mind into your palate for a tasting,
tho neither drugged, nor deaf and dumb, just slammed poetical-like, this write is
all I have to portend is your affections, your attentions, to yours, am beholden.
a ***** well respected man in daylight,
the hidden references accuse,
woke up to see Wednes-day Caesarian born,
askance glanced at the prior passages of the night before,
when my palate clefted,
when eyes chose not to distinguish
between right and lefted,
in the nightlight,
a ***** man disrespects language convection/convention,
and lays before you activating stanzas and his mind, prone,
but always the truth, speaking,
the visions, leaking, mind to eye,
recombinant, into our minds eye.
^ http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/on-view/james-turrell
Rather than write extensive notes on the many references, inspirations in this poem, if there is a line that intrigues, ask me
Aug 28, 2013
Aug 28, 2013 at 2:49 PM UTC
Have we all become mere automata
guided by the ring of pings and notifs?
The spray of lather from a sea of data
carrying with it wrung celebrity whiffs
have stung us with a certain aphasia...
The written thought was a lifetime ago
long abandoned by the times and all--
where once there was soundness to follow
nonsense amassed like a rising cymbal
whose crash sent reason to the gallows.
The news of the day presents a delectable entree
of a hodgepodge of this, that, and nothing much.
Wherefore we find our tongues compelled to say
something about the aftertaste or to prejudge
as if we were connoisseurs--it must've hid faraway.
Are we perhaps amusing ourselves to death?
I am by no means a Luddite to such a degree,
but I believe we have bombarded and blessed
ourselves a little too much to see...
only time will tell us reason's final breath.
Sep 19, 2023
Sep 19, 2023 at 10:38 PM UTC
"What's going on in that head of yours?" you inquire.
I shrug and shake my head, trying to make the question slip-slide its way past me.
"Something. I can tell," you **** on.
I don't exactly know how to explain the hodgepodge of thoughts bustling around up there.
How all of the mismatched puzzle pieces sometimes inexplicably manage to assemble themselves into a picture, but it always comes out distorted.
How my mind is eternal dusk, that magical moment where anything is possible and the night is full of promise. But remember, that's also when the monsters come out to play.
How I have this uncanny ability to skew every word, look, or memory until every one of them is so tainted I will burn us alive while you wonder what the hell is going on. I'm good at sabotage, you see.
You don't want to know what's going on in this head of mine. You can try to connect the dots, but none of them are numbered, and you'll lose yourself attempting to understand me.
Aug 8, 2014
Aug 8, 2014 at 9:53 PM UTC
Life was amazing. Boats will fly causing mass transportation. Sometimes I think exclusively until I erupt through word Bothered, enlightened, and hungry watching gay cinema eating bananas but not ripe until next time I hate myself for liking weird cinema, Striking matches without touching myself when hearing groans from my basement which come apart from the throat. Knocks, bangs, and poottitangs among our findings in timely minute fashion. The weather will forever be surpising under a burnt out hookers muffintop. Mashed feces under but over kinfolk of a studious wellbeing transcendence, stupendous sacred.
Feb 5, 2013
Feb 5, 2013 at 12:12 AM UTC
I hardly breathe under a hodgepodge
of starched and creased clothes
my heart beats pell-mell
every time clocks take a halt
dragging one second behind
when batteries are low
(could this be a deviation towards red light?)
with straighter and longer fingers
I bow down worshiping
in front of the rising sun
the nunnery pelargonium
the red silk bookmark
forgotten inside the Book of Job
(rose hips will bloom upon my grave)
the empty space on my front
from where a star fell down
still burns with pride
I’m guilty like the deer youth
putting its muzzle damp with love
in the palm of his future hunter
(maybe time doesn’t roll on like a river)
Sep 13, 2013
Sep 13, 2013 at 2:50 PM UTC
I’m a hodgepodge today
partly truce and partly friction
In angelic disarray
I veil myself in primrose and rhyme
and skate across a frozen lake
past chilled goblins on stilts &
princesses pierced with sorrow and doubt
the day surrenders to a night of unsightly sounds
strangled breaths emerging from the lower depths
the dance of the crows has begun
Oct 31, 2011
Oct 31, 2011 at 1:42 AM UTC
Take me back to Chelsea please
Where the flossed and glossed smile at me
And everyone’s kind to an open mind
That’s materialistic in design.
Where locals embrace me all open armed
Whenever I’m crinkling cash in my palms.
So eject me fast from this boorish ******
And take me back to Chelsea please.
Take me back to Chelsea please
Outside the city’s financial squeeze
Where mummy and daddy pay the cheques
For my escargots and Ready Brek.
I’ll wield through the system with the family name
And use all the power of my local fame.
Oh, to live life without la joie de fees
Come take me back to Chelsea please.
Take me back to Chelsea please
To put my social norms at ease.
I miss my measly excuse of friends
Who constantly ***** to make amends
For their failed entrepreneurial careers
Their dialect a hodgepodge of gobbles and sneers.
I long for their monotonous wheeze
So take me back to Chelsea please.
Chelsea, Chelsea you’re all I adore
From the A308 to the A304.
You’re the sole nirvana I can’t bear to depart,
Your femmes fatales know the paths to my heart.
But you will always have the its lock and key
So Chelsea: come and take me back please.
Jan 8, 2017
Jan 8, 2017 at 5:47 PM UTC
floating heartbrain
silly cilia stickin' out in all directions
antennae with fingertips extrapolating the surrounding situation
form dictated by the circumstance of inward pressure in correlation to outward pressure in conjunction with the trajectory and spin of itself and all others surrounding
indescribable without it's surroundings lest it be left lacking; it is the result of touch
the ethics of touch
it is the reception of signals from all directions; a hodgepodge of waveforms
a hot tangled spaghetti dinner forever forcefed to the happysad hungerstriker grateful
forever hateful
love is all we need
love is all we are
grateful
for hatred
pain gives way to bliss
sensitive cilia
feel me
feel you
feel all
Oct 19, 2015
Oct 19, 2015 at 9:26 PM UTC
I was stung by a wasp
But I wasn’t poisoned
Instead I fell in love
Now my heart needs an inspection
Is it swollen?
Is it fat?
Is it mad?
Is it sad?
My heart's become a hodgepodge of emotions
Is this an illusion?
This is a double dose of bloated emotions
Noxiously in love
I’ll ***** until I’ve had enough
Because this
Fatuous love really stings
Sep 25, 2015
Sep 25, 2015 at 5:23 PM UTC
What is the crisis
a quarter of the way
through life?
Existentially existing in the moment,
I'm constantly inside of myself
while also out.
Conundrum of being up while
I'm also down,
freedom within a blockade.
Oxymoronic hodgepodge of
tantalizing confusion,
tastes sweet on my brain
and thoughts ponder bitter on
my tongue.
Half and whole,
part and full,
questions answered with questions,
seeing things through in simultaneous
interrogatories.
Top here, bottom there,
rights are right,
and lefts aren't wrong.
Phone, texts and emails,
vibrating inside my skull
as I laugh and I cry,
as I seek to find.
Orange to yellow to green to brown,
seasons coming and going
inside my soul,
and I constantly blossom
and refreeze.
Everywhere feels like nowhere,
nowhere my somewhere as
I await a somewhere that's
everywhere.
Losing myself as I find it too,
letting some parts sail away
at sea,
and too there comes new
horizons,
as I surf, skating on the
foam, on the water's edges.
Wading into one crisis,
I'm swallowed by a
wave,
until I burst through the sea and the
salt;
and then the next wave
comes...
for life, it seems,
is salty and sweet,
one tide coming in to sweep itself away
in place of another.
Nov 5, 2015
Nov 5, 2015 at 5:10 PM UTC
for Beau
this mixte bag of nutty facts,
compote of this's and that's,
fragrant but yucky tasting potpourri,
sordid assortment of
seemingly unseemly
random collection of
facts, whoppers,
recipes and formulae, and his 'n her
stories (my fav!)
useless motorized drivel,
running around my head
that you have with me creme-filled,
data conglomerated,
transformed by mongol hordes of grey cells
urged on, nay transformed,
by **** and beer into
a magnificent miscellaneous mile of jumble,
virtuous and verifiable grab bag of
ever so humble,
tuneful melodies of a medley of
snatches and patches
of Jagger and Liszt,
a verifiable pastiche of
vital and downright dumb
Factors and Factoids,
I thank you suchly muchly
musta taken years, maybe even
decades to collect and codify,
this assemblage of verifiable factoids,
after-all, took you twelve to
feed me in eye dropper ingestible quantities!
though with Wiki this and Wiki that,
I coulda save us all some time,
and since it is all on the Internet,
and any way 99% I forgot
like a cell phone number
no matter, I can reads and counts
and writes term papers downloaded,
but caught my eye you wrote
of a mutton stew denominated as
hotchpotch,
but we variant truants,
ici, aux Etats-Unis, on dit
and spell our salmagundi as
hodgepodge
but in summary summation,
thanks for teaching me creative thinking,
for without this skill,
I would but be,
a tool
of Wikipedia
and not its creator
P.S. It's gadzooks,
not gad zooks,
according to Wikitionary,
even them Oxford fellas agree,
tee hee,
you could look it up
on the internetsky,
Teach....
Jun 15, 2014
Jun 15, 2014 at 5:50 AM UTC
HELLO POETRY;
A HoDgEpOdGe of poetic heaven.....
©Brandon nagley
©Lonesome poet's poetry
Aug 8, 2015
Aug 8, 2015 at 3:47 PM UTC
One day Frick when to the place to buy some stuff
While Frack stayed in the area to do some things
Frack tossed out some junk
He used the the whatchamacallit to clean the thingamajig
Pick up the odds and ends
And he scrubbed a doodad with the thingamabob
Frick purchesed some knickknacks and bric-a-brac
A few sundries
A couple of tchotkes and trinkets
Some whatnot
A gizmo
A gadget
And more miscellaneous paraphernalia
When Frick got home Frack asked "What'd you buy?"
Frick said " Oh, this and that" "What'd you do all day?"
Frack said "Just a hodgepodge of etcetera, etcetera"
-Tommy Johnson
Jul 2, 2014
Jul 2, 2014 at 7:46 PM UTC
There was egg salad in the fridge,
half a container of that store bought,
neon-green guacamole that nobody else
likes but me,
tortilla chips too.
So, we sat together and ate
this hodgepodge lunch,
the dog and I.
She never once complained
that there were no crackers
or a few pieces of soft, white
or even dark, crusty
pumpernickel bread.
We thought about whatever
it was that we thought about
while we chewed thoughtfully.
I looked up the word: tincture
in the dictionary that I keep in my
office,
right off the kitchen.
A friend of mine had used the word
in correspondence, and I was rather
embarrassed that I’d not known what
it meant.
But,
I found that embarrassment wanes
when one is scraping the last few globs
of guacamole out of the container with
one’s finger and is saddened because
the accompanying tortilla chips have
been reduced to crumbs.
The dog wasn’t embarrassed of me.
She was busy cleaning the remnants
of egg salad from the inside of the
old butter dished I’d packed it away
in.
I’d already packed what had been enough
for a decent sandwich away in my guts
using tortilla-chip spoons,
doing my best not to ***** more
silverware than I had to.
The hour was almost up;
I had to be back at the office
in about 15 minutes.
We,
the dog and I,
took this small measure of time
as an opportunity to listen to a
couple of songs…
one by Iron Maiden.
the other by John Coltrane.
While the discs spun,
the dog wiped any excess
egg salad or tortilla chip crumbs
from her muzzle
onto
the living room carpet,
by sliding around
on her face.
It was funny to watch.
I’ll have to be sure and not
tell Angela about it.
Soon enough,
it’s once more around the yard
dear doggie,
a Marlboro for me,
another few hours at the office,
little friend,
and I’ll sail back home
to thee.
***
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2019
Mar 29, 2019
Mar 29, 2019 at 5:32 PM UTC
*I see her and air is snuffed
Out of my lungs in one swift
Swoop, my usually perceptive
Mind is a hodgepodge of disarray.
Speech is caught in the labyrinth
That’s my voice box choked from
All sides, an irredeemable hostage.
I stare long and hard at her eyes
Then I realize, her eyes aren’t
Ordinary, they’re a canvas on
Which the Milky Way galaxy is
Exquisitely captured. It’s this
Precise moment that a shrill
Mention of my name jolts
Me to wakefulness, and well
My heart’s a pitiful husk
After being exposed to two opposite
Extremes of emotional excitement.*
Apr 24, 2017
Apr 24, 2017 at 3:52 AM UTC
I just wrote a Constitution
Amendment One says no pollution
Three and Four ban prostitution
The penalty's electrocution
The people cry for retribution
I can't think of a solution
***** those anti-federalists
I hope they develop monster cysts
And writhe and scream and slash their wrists
I'll pound their face in with my fists
They'll be sorry they made me ******
These stupid states won't ratify
This document; I don't know why
I bite my lip and want to cry
I don't know why I even try
I'll mash them into pretty pie
I hope they die and die and die
So sign this pretty pretty please
I'll kiss your feet and shine your knees
But only if each state agrees
To sign this hodgepodge of decrees
Excuse me now, I have to sneeze
Feb 4, 2015
Feb 4, 2015 at 8:38 PM UTC
The first time I saw
Betty Grater swoon
and heard Ms Arnault sigh
in expectation
I knew I had found the answer
that all young men seek
Instead of good looks
and the scent of money
I realized that the tippled sound of Thomas,
the piston drive of Cummings,
or shroud and mystery of Rimbaud
could accomplish what fumbling
postures never could
They could make a button come
undone and stay that way
part a leg and have it
remain languid
see an arm brushed
and not pulled back
Ah, but women are not
so easily wooed
You see, poetry is but a beginning
once is never sufficient
and Cyrano found
he was forced to return
and return
to keep those fires burning
Soon you discover it is not enough
to merely sing another’s tune
and you must learn the art
whose muse is not so
easily tamed
So the new poems to Emily or Mary Lou
are steeped in ignorance, stumbling tongue
and emotion that knows only extreme
a Dickinson hodgepodge of flowers,
spring-rain and metaphor trampled
by testosterone expectation
And as these women grow
you discover the magic is fading
that they have learned these lures
and their virtue will not part quite so easy
Ah, but art is ever inventive
and for those hard to dissemble
there are the more obscure songs
of Baudelaire, Jefferson and Yeats
these will free even the firmest
of corset-strung objections
But to truly reach the promised land
there is need to create one’s own
to wrestle the evening with nature’s muse
and tease a line between the sheets
Then, if you've still a mind
you can glance to see
if her clothes have been shed
But the sad and beautiful truth
is that poetry’s muse will suffer no others
rarely will that graceful form stay the course
she will leave to find yet another
that can keep them
coming
May 17, 2013
May 17, 2013 at 12:28 PM UTC
You may see a hodgepodge of wood electronics and strings
But to my eyes it's disguised as a beautiful wonderful thing,
I'm not sure what made me want to play but when I got one I found more than my voice that day,
They don't talk back they talk for me
They don't scream at me or nag, they scream my lungs out for me
Now I'm nowhere near any of the greats
But that's my brush with which I create
Oct 3, 2014
Oct 3, 2014 at 9:36 PM UTC
The circle of life:
Rays of the sun
burnt the santol leaves that were
Dried, red, brown, in a mound
Acrid, pungent.
Jumping crustaceans play with
Sige-sige, puyo, fishes;
Screeching of kikik, on the background
That winged insect, luminous wings before
Trapped that kitten on Alaska can, 370 mL
I see the abandoned casing with a hacked back:
Red, brown, dried, clasping
the bark of that old mahogany tree,
Or santol, leaves
A mark on that childhood memory:
Mother screams
“Go home!”
Arms akimbo
You boil that tower of beer crowns and eat you will!, later
Sweats, sweltering sky
She’s towering.
Pot's rim, circled, I opened.
Ah, the circle of life!
Apr 7, 2016
Apr 7, 2016 at 8:02 PM UTC
Paper is my canvas
A Paintbrush is my pen
I search for the right colors
To paint a beautiful scene
Blotches
Splatters
Smears
Paint thrown by the can
A rough texture surface
Spanning miles where the eye can't see
It’s a mural of my life
This hodgepodge I’ve created
Is me
Dec 30, 2014
Dec 30, 2014 at 11:06 AM UTC
meandering stream of consciousness
flowing this way and that
without substance or context
just fleeting images of fantasy and memory
veritable hodgepodge of indiscriminate
out of the blur solid ideas begin to take shape
formless visions develop hard edges
as I slip deeper into the ether
aided by copious amounts of
ingestible cannabis
and the belief that I am one
with the universe –
long dead relatives guide me
down pastel paths of cotton
as we float through and past
holographic pyramids
still stained from blood sacrifice
travelling faster and with purpose
tracers elongate
giving the illusion of streaming ribbons of neon
stretching in all directions
geometricizing the skyline
reminding me of the chemtrails
back in reality –
May 23, 2015
May 23, 2015 at 11:49 AM UTC
Even lousy writing is terrific practice
Or so they say
I have been practicing
Painting ink on a page
All I can produce
Is sketchy scribble
Illegible and unintelligible
Words that I let dribble
Leaving the canvas blotched and stained
Maybe some will appreciate my thoughts
It is my medicine
From going insane.
Jun 11, 2018
Jun 11, 2018 at 3:15 PM UTC
we have faded
like the denim overalls
that belong to the haggard farmer
once a sturdy, deep blue
now tattered with fatigue
color melting away as did time
below the sun's scorching breath
we have faded
like pencil in an antique diary
formerly confided in with dismal feelings
once an intriguing charcoal artistry
now a hodgepodge of insincere gray
the pain receding away as did time
beneath weary shelves of dust bunnies
we have faded
like the end of a film
with the screen darkening by each dreaded
millisecond
once a glowing, vivid sight
now a parcel of despondent credits
slowly vanishing until every speck of light
has dissolved into an unfortunate nothing
Nov 29, 2014
Nov 29, 2014 at 12:24 PM UTC
There is fun no
more in chasing believers of a flat in world in
circles. A dry preacher, evoking hell.
This journey always started with others
and ends with others wise ghosts watching
hoping to be seen as a ghost to have made
a footprint on the most trodden path.
Life without fear of it.
A magician with the knowledge
of an ace always able to come up
next yet I still bust.
The white marble embraces me,
the old white marble tries to embrace me.
Only seaweed floats.
A City of canyons built for climbers.
The fish saw death yet death waited off the hook
Better odds on the hook.
Now she’s
given her coin and
crossed the river
and I sit at the shore
confused at why
I suddenly care.
Feb 26, 2015
Feb 26, 2015 at 10:24 AM UTC