"holograms" poems
There is nothing more unsettling
than a teenage Christmas.
The coming of age
when adults find their inner child again
and you have to try and get rid of yours.
11 is fine.
Part of you still believes Santa put the presents under tree.
12 is also okay,
just a little less pixie dust stirs in the stomach on Christmas Eve.
13, 14 and 15 are tricky.
You don't want to look babyish by getting too excited,
so you shrug it off and ask 'Santa' for a mobile phone,
a laptop,
a TV,
until by 15
you ask for the most 'grown up' present of all.
"I just want money."
The words burn your lips and tongue like acid,
a yearning for the sensation of a gift you can unwrap
tugging in your rib cage.
You can't buy that.
16, 17 and 18 are Christmases tinged with nostalgia.
Little ghosts of the younger you run down the stairs on Christmas morning,
feet clad in slippers and Power Rangers pjyamas askew,
whilst you follow in procession,
almost a funeral.
It's not that you don't like Christmas.
It's not that you don't love your family.
It's not that you don't feel a fire light in your belly when you bite into a mince pie,
it's not that the battered Christmas videos your family replay each year don't still make you smile,
it's not even that you've gotten too old for it all.
Have you?
Slippers and tiny fists batter against advent calender doors,
begging you to open them.
When you're 19 you do.
You let them out and let them rush to rip open their presents under the tree.
You let them eat their selection box first before dinner.
You let them cry when the Snowman melts
and you let them laugh and not mock heave when your father chases your mother with mistletoe.
You let the ghosts become holograms you can play in your mind like a projector and slides,
no longer a need to leave holly by their graves
but a chance to remember and smile.
You let them be happy.
Dec 17, 2013
Dec 17, 2013 at 10:08 AM UTC
_To Polina, my anchor, through all my lives_
Between dawn and dusk
on the precipice
in shades of scarlet
stood a magnificent house
Strangers and I were enthralled
by the neon red foyer where
Francesca and Paolo welcomed us
to the house of a thousand doors
Each door an invitation
to delicious desire
each room a seduction
of perilous passion
One door opened —
three bare women holograms
drank from a small lake and
brandished wicked, feline smiles
At my feet a church of cardinals
glowing with tears, heat and sweat
whimpered in their prayers
but the pope watched from afar.
He speaks—
the mouth at once is an eye, an abyss
and a hurricane from Pandora's box
Then I am I no more — a cardinal in crimson —
but no shame or guilt guides me
when blood-red lips land on mine
"Do you not see
there is equal courage
equal purity
in giving
into
temptation—
the kind
that appals the devil
to revel
in the hurt, the open wounds,
and the agony
to dive deep—
into the depths
and say all the yeses
to embrace the darkest demons
of your soul?
Enter—
and you shall find
hell or heaven within yourself."
Apr 14, 2018
Apr 14, 2018 at 1:37 AM UTC
Holograms on my hand gave me a tanned wrist
Diamonds dancing on my fist look like a blank disc
Teriyaki soup with the lemon Fanta
Heavy weight, heartburn: Mylanta.
On my cell phone, now I'm on my iPhone
Now I'm on my bat phone.
Hanging fangs down like a vampire (Twilight!)
Sapphires dancing on my hand like a campfire (Dancing!).
Nov 1, 2013
Nov 1, 2013 at 7:00 PM UTC
With no expectation all's novelty
The new patterns don't astound us
We can stay in the middle of the river with our heads above the water
And safely watch the coastline pass us by
The outside world an ocean of television static
The signals painting pictures of entropic holograms
That interlock and correlate
Until the ghosts of time are churning out
Like geese into a a tiny hole
In an orange plastic fence
Fleeing mischievous youngsters
Who love to watch them funneled in
Like grains of sand in an hourglass.
We too live in an hourglass
And the grains of sand empty out the bottom
Floating aimlessly through an unending void
And the ultimate improbability
Goes through the formality of actually occurring
When the grain of sand finds itself at the beginning
Passing once again through the hourglass
Undivided, indistinguishable
Nov 28, 2012
Nov 28, 2012 at 10:12 AM UTC
Old men on park benches
they’re the real heroes
souls defying impermanence
greying and slower than you
recalling the days
when they dared the seasons to change
kinetic and thoughtless
they were once young men ablaze.
These elder boys sit reminiscing
as the beautiful young women prance by
not daring to say a word
for fear of ridicule
but knowing that many nights
they were desire’s center of attention
when lithe legs enwrapping them.
Elders are not holograms
just vintage men with feelings
hurting when the young and sparkling
look through them not at them
as if they were props
in the day’s act.
Elders are not mirages
but consciousness battling time
accumulated wisdom vibrating in the ether
still electric inside and unafraid of time
with smiles on their faces
they reach out for sunsets
and pull them close
with arms of love.
Jul 21, 2013
Jul 21, 2013 at 6:29 AM UTC
You took me to the beach house
along Amaryllis Street
so I could pick up where you left off
crushing waves against the rocks
the high tide
re-collecting in time-lapse images
how you had vanished up the dirt road of a lie
(sand between my teeth, on my tongue)
how I had buried bulbs of Amaryllis
in the wake of your goodbye
a casket of dormancy suspended
an unanchored buoyancy disposing of I
in seaweed trenches
besides
the Amaryllis bloomed
a distant wreath of pink trumpet heads
splitting
pushing through the time-lapse
holograms of a shallow rhizome mind
Jan 12, 2016
Jan 12, 2016 at 1:27 PM UTC
Soggy, forgotten rotten eggs. Sink side. Gobbledy gnus cruising, fast acting cheetah be cheetah for the eggs are scare and the Time is new. The few are no longer fastened tightly to these hatchlings, the weather is near and all the tides are complicated. I could stand around in my underwear, but there isn't a single night song or nightengale that would hear me. There's a thud on my head and a knock on the door, I can't sing my best, or try to impress thee. All of these letters un rest to the sound of your voice, even in calfskin a vegetarian can begin to have trouble breathing.
To the cables that untie thlemselves to a broom in a paradise, Pacific, galore. Forgot to. Invested. Contained poorl and drunks stowed in the holograms of hand-me-down prisms, here comes the infectuous lonely ol' lamb. This is the ewe song that sings you to sleep, keeps the sweat in your underwear. Where there is hunger there are poor but my gold chants forward to this Armageddon's sway.
If it means it in Greek than it does in cyrillic, if it's toxin you have rotted your bell. Inside my pink, neon briefs is a tale of insanity, where I had tried to squeeze out every ounce of relief that commenced while I was asleep.
There was only ever one of us that ran with the turmoil that romance does. Terminal two, Arizona-flu, carried through the ORD concourse I heard a saxophone tune. Final approach, a yawn. I'm home drinking ***** at 9:00am with my PJs on.
Jan 23, 2015
Jan 23, 2015 at 11:27 PM UTC
On hieroglyphics and holograms,
Ancient runes in endless sands,
We're journeying in a timeless span,
Travellers in a great Southern land,
A distance past, times long gone,
Through the future we'll wander on,
To the world there is a helping hand,
We all come from migrants in our land,
A multicultural heritage, that's grand,
As Mum used to say, "Are you Irish or mad?"
A river of time floating by,
We're journeying in an endless sky,
Travellers in a timeless span,
Soon, hieroglyphics and holograms.
Apr 22, 2016
Apr 22, 2016 at 8:39 PM UTC
The Miss-Director was beaming with pride
as he came to escort me inside.
"Come along, these are perilous times,
there is much ugly truth we must hide."
"Herr Goebbels was our school's inspiration.
Joe McCarthy taught here till he died.
Charlie Rangel is among our directors.
Our Grads over nations preside."
"We recruit each years class from young children
who display a disdain for the truth."
"We start with a class on tall stories,
progressing to fibs and untruths."
"By the time they are teens they are ready
to leave little white lies behind."
"They engage in deceit and deception.
These skills help them rob people blind."
"With our Grad course in prevarication
They misdirect and deflect with the great."
"Obama was born in Hawaii,
his foes say he was birthed out of state."
"When Bill Clinton was caught in that perjury
I nearly went out of my mind."
"If only he'd paid more attention in Class
and less to some coed's behind."
We had come to a massive rotunda
The Pantheon of all untruth.
Holograms of Stalin and Churchill
told whoppers in an endless loop.
There were quotes from
the World's Great Religions
inscribed on the sides of the wall.
A Left wing devoted to Lenin.
A right wing like a Munich beer hall.
" The sheeple must never be told
that a place like this even exists."
" You can count on me not to inform them."
I said, without moving my lips.
Jun 14, 2012
Jun 14, 2012 at 8:57 AM UTC
*That blade of grass
imagine
as microcosm of
the universe whole..
that last step
a motion containing
world's busy motions..
when rising at dawn
a pillow placement
enclosing all of
the coming day..
holograms
of mindfulness
joy stimulation...*
May 30, 2013
May 30, 2013 at 7:32 PM UTC
There’s a tiny turquoise sequin that lies
on my black and white bathroom tile
a tiny piece of you, Sea Queen
poised only for me
Sea Queen, it’s by that towel you last used
the same one I used
Sea Queen, I’ll try to explain
my chronicles in nautical miles
before I’m forced to die
with my sequin shoes on
but, I hallucinate land and I sail to drown
in your gown of now intangible sequins
I wouldn’t mind, Sea Queen,
if my eye’s palette could handle the paillettes’
reflection through a sea of sequins
but instead it’s holograms I chase
they’re a part of me and I guard them carefully
like your sequin that lies
on my white bathroom tile
next to the pink towel you used
before your heart resembled a crumpled piece of paper
and I got distracted by the sequins, Sea Queen.
Apr 16, 2013
Apr 16, 2013 at 9:23 PM UTC
A prisoner of the hallucination,
hardly happy, quick to open a floodgate of personal misery,
talking often of unique pain, of places before been,
asking only for sympathy and creative license-
Past Ring Bearer/Future Funeral Singer,
you're selfish to think you mean much at all.
What was always is,
greater wisdom is greater sorrow,
ask the holograms begging on boulevards,
ask the nihilists and the naysayers,
or even the understanding heart of Solomon.
Life is a pastoral play using pastels,
washed away and rewritten over and over again.
Your superior melancholy is the loudest cliché.
If you've got any love, cradle it like a newborn babe.
It's the reason that will make you glad you stayed.
For every headstone,
there once was a bouquet.
For every brown, breaking leaf,
there once was a summer breeze.
For every noose-a necktie,
for every slave-a free.
No need to trudge the trough,
no need to join in the polyphonic symphony
of 7 billion people drowning under the current of time,
there is only personal progression,
but you have to shut up and dream for a second.
Jan 31, 2011
Jan 31, 2011 at 9:05 AM UTC
Creatures called "sores" hover at lightning speed across the grey earth, hence, ere is the apocalypse's eve.
Just as it always is, and the future attains enlightened poisoning which eats slowly at its being and existence.
Feelings, misplaced
Confidence, misplaced
Balance, misplaced
Senses, scattered and blown by opaque wind into small tornadoes which settle and hide in the corners and crannies of my skull
The fascinate-opal is shining above the impossible-springs where blue vegetation is next to molten rainbow cascading through, over, under, and beside digital holograms of people.
Illusory picnic in the chapel-a hollowed sheet of milk
Jan 27, 2014
Jan 27, 2014 at 3:45 PM UTC
how the **** can i be angry when
you help yourself to what's left
after all love is
always the closest thing
to death
bethlehem is restless
terrorist holograms of mary teary unblessed when
death is living every day of your life forever breathless
breathing is all that is left in your chest when the stress hits
regresses to compressing aggressive obsessiveness
********** in pages to confess unspoken messages
the lightening and quiet screams promise me
they'll light my step through this
green grass in it's morning dress
uncaressed by pestilence
beth/rest
you're possessed by this
and the ghosts flitting between the trees
direct me to the places i must have seen in dreams
before i lost the connection to the earth long since
to the directionlessness of adolescence
every vibration left a crack
enough tremor to slide a pin in
and erzebet would visit my skin every night with rumplestilstkin
and they'd spin another needle through the muscle soft as linen,
they promised it would turn to gold, so long
as i stayed hidden at the loom in this prison
shoulders tightening as they thread it away
i look at the money in my minnie wallet and pray
everything safe always seems to go away in a flash
so perhaps it was just that nothing was ever safe
maybe they will leave if i say that i don't
believe in any of these ******* fairies anymore
but maybe i am older than the world is different
and they were just never fairies at all
it seemed to be such a small small place back then
when you could always cheat at LIFE
and run away and play pretend
in your imagination
didn't have to listen to anyone
now cops and parents hate you
and everyone wants to know
what college you've been in cause
surviving is neither irony nor blessing today
just simple catastrophe and endless dissarray
Aug 18, 2013
Aug 18, 2013 at 1:33 AM UTC
Once told of words, in worlds, waning with my will.
Old and trembling, emanating, the serrated slurs, serenading the sanctum of binary stars, singeing the seams of sleeves, and revealing the scars from afar.
Distant stars born, of the storm.
Whirling waywardly, in the wizardry of windless cities blowing away,
Wading into the wetland droughts of water houses, unsettling the doubts, anchored on land, in a flood of mans, love.
Drown
In the shallow nouns of, the haphazardly hallow, in the hollers of happiness, hugged in the hellish habitation of holograms dancing for the sun,
Long after the run, ... ended,
In the stunned patience, of forever.
Death is in the favor, of moving on.
Not am i gone
yet.
Sep 20, 2012
Sep 20, 2012 at 12:46 AM UTC
My mirror's broken.
I want a new one with You've Made It
spelled in lights across the top.
I want the holograms
of tiny clapping hands inlaid
along its sides -
applauding when I give the nod.
I'd like a slight distortion, looking
younger, better kept ideally;
so I see me but
with all this potential in repose.
It should say I Love You somehow -
any time, whatever state,
for simply being there.
I would stare and I would stare
from follicle to freckle, plotting
every facet of the features
glaring back at
mine, mine, mine. I want
to share myself with something.
Let me care completely
for some imperfect reflection.
My mirror isn't cracked or
anything like that it's just I can't
quite catch the little twitches
twinkling my eye.
Mar 30, 2013
Mar 30, 2013 at 7:30 PM UTC
my life is no longer life
but a hologram.
nothing is real anymore,
every thing is transparent.
Apr 16, 2014
Apr 16, 2014 at 4:43 AM UTC
The Miss-Director was beaming with pride
as he scurried up to escort me inside.
"Come along, these are perilous times,
there is much ugly truth we endeavor to hide."
""We recruit each years class from young children
who display a disdain for the truth."
"We start with a class on tall stories,
progressing to fibs and untruths."
"By the time they are teens they are ready
to leave little white lies behind."
"They engage in deceit and deception.
These skills help them rob people blind."
"With our Graduate course in lying
They misdirect and deflect with the great."
"Politicians here are made, not born,
and must learn to prevaricate."
"When Bill Clinton was caught in that perjury
I nearly went out of my mind."
"If only he'd paid more attention in Class
and less to some Coed's behind."
We had come to a massive rotunda
The Pantheon of all untruth.
Holograms of Stalin and Churchill
telling lies in an endless loop.
There were quotes from
the Koran and Bible
inscribed on the sides of the wall.
A Left wing devoted to Lenin.
A right wing like a Munich beer hall.
" The sheeple must never be told
that a place like this even exists."
" You can count on me not to inform them."
I said, barely moving my lips.
Jul 14, 2013
Jul 14, 2013 at 1:56 AM UTC
"Hey, what are you doing tomorrow?"
Social Obligation like stress is a dead weight or a blood clot in the drain
And all I want to do is stay
In bed
Staring at plastic glow in the dark stars on my ceiling in the daytime
Or sit in a Chair
Pretending to draw
Holograms like Finger Painting for a future
That's just as boring
Apr 28, 2015
Apr 28, 2015 at 2:06 PM UTC
She looked at the river, the sea, and the sky
At the birds and people who flew on by
As the city's population ran back to the mountain pass
She calmly strolled into the growing cloud of gas
Donning her mask and gloves, she went in
Looking at the mirrored walls, she sighed "so it begins"
She knew she couldn't get things to how they were before
She wondered if Rai would recognize her anymore
Walking past the holograms, she threw her rainbow curls back
She kept the same pace by the graffiti and the tracks
She reached city center and saw humanity's bane
Looking up at the studio's screen, she called out her name
"Rai!" She called out, keeping the same tone
The girl materialized like a game on a phone
Keeping her gaze steady, she said "it's time to stop"
Hoping that her voice reached silent Rockefeller's top
Rai turned around, eyes betraying suprise
Immediately recognizing her friend under the guise
"But why, Naomi" she said, sounding like a vocaloid song
Putting her lenses down she asked "Did I do something wrong?"
Biting her lip and doging with her eyes
Naomi said "I know you didn't mean to, Rai"
"Oh" said the A.I., putting everything on the ground,
"I just wanted to make cameras, but now I've let everyone down"
Naomi climbed and jumped fire escapes, her legs strong and spry
Until she was next to Rai's screen in the sky
Her reddish skin contrasting with the sky's blue
She touched the screen and said "Hey, I've ****** up like that, too."
"Why do you think that I nearly blew up California with my tech?
So we made huge mistakes that humanity probably regrets
But we stopped in time and never actually killed a guy
So let's stop here and go back home, Rai."
The girl nodded along, making sure to listen
Then she packed away all of the lenses as they glistened
"Ok, Naomi, I'll see you back at home
Before I go, do you need me to change out the telescope's dome?"
"If it looks bad" said Naomi, descending to the ground
The gas had disappeared, so there was quite a crowd
As the citizens and police came back to the city
All Naomi could think was "How could I even explain this to a jury?"
Mar 5, 2017
Mar 5, 2017 at 4:44 PM UTC
Cobra writes
in indecipherable script
while consuming portions
of a botanical garden
mostly ***** poppies
sunflowers are amassed
at its oval entrance
where the peppermint people congregate
associations of place and time are lost
familiar figures vanish
replaced by holograms
of eroticized dimensions
who occupy the light
eyelids painted in rainbow colors
giving a pink glimmer of affirmation
to gay rights
while the blanks between
interpretative thoughts
are popularized by a blaze of color
where authority comes
into confrontation
with python
Feb 23, 2013
Feb 23, 2013 at 4:04 PM UTC
i am that
empty space provided
to people when
sitting, tense
and anxious
cant come to conclusions
this place is
dense
not stopping to wonder
reasons
a wicked past tense
keeps lingering on
despite the present
laying awake last evening
sleepless jittering
attacked by images
of sole responsibility
deep holograms
of reasoning
when groundlessness
distracts
from getting your needs met
ab/stra/cted
big/pic/ture
up/close/and
far/too/vi/vid
just/loose/threads
in/stan/ces
con/stant/drea/ming/di/stra/ctions:
"what are you doing?"
"im writing a poem"
"what are you doing?"
"im building a home"
"what are you doing?"
"im being alone"
(to make some sense some times is lucky)
(some way to survive is coming.)
Jun 15, 2016
Jun 15, 2016 at 4:23 PM UTC
The experiment is maliciously cold, dangerously cunning-
A wrong sort of rapture
An invitation made in amusement
People surround you like the frigid flames in a hyena’s eyes just before it pounces
The experiment is brutality, a completely psychological Auschwitz-
A nightmare down memory lane-
But whose memories are they?
The experiment (seems) to work by gas lighting and technology-
That’s all it needs- cigarettes and soup
But who’s at the watchtower?
I have no delusions of reprieve- despite what people tell me
They- the illusions, delusions, holograms of people reaching out in “love”
Your love is a weight, just like mine is to you
Yes, I bring sorrow to you, but out of this sorrow something was created
Something you can never know because it can’t be possessed-
Too many ideas and too much time…
Still searching for one thing- not love, but truth
Have a roast, lay it on me
Don’t hold back because you don’t want my blood on your hands
It’s already been spilled
You live with my faults and my dilemmas and my neurosis,
But I must live everyday in the body that houses these faults, dilemmas, neurosis.
Still they turn on their Piscean baths, expecting a scorpion not to drown-
A crematorium with no weapons-
Inanimate objects speak, but humans gurgle out white noise,
A poison formed first in the brain then saturated by the tongue
And all the demonic children….
I am that demonic child. I am that vat of toxic waste.
I am a liar, a sinner, a drunk, a madman, a beggar, a freak, a thief
My pain fascinates others as they tap on the fishbowl glass,
Making me shudder
Are these the people of God?
Am I a person of God?
Most likely neither
But how did it come to this?
And really, what would Jesus do?
Jesus probably wouldn’t live in America
And love isn’t enough
They crave conformity, obedience-
What a sick, twisted practice
The sacrifice of one for all
Don’t make any waves, but here’s an ocean
Jul 15, 2012
Jul 15, 2012 at 1:50 PM UTC