"holstered" poems
Just because it's suggested doesn't make it right.
In the hands of teachers, other staff.
What other purpose could this directly serve.
To defend our institutions.
To further endanger those around.
The knowledge instilled from book to teacher a different practice.
Now holstered, hidden in the drawer of a desk.
What goes through the mind of the victim that's been bullied.
What training can be set in place to stop the next bulletin.
Shooting across the screen.
The kid in 10th grade that carries the weight of the world.
Sitting all day staring out the window.
Mother in hospice.
A fragile thought swallowed by deafening silence.
It no longer becomes a listening session of encouragement.
The after school sessions of comfort sped up.
Another bulletin of hysteria fired across the screen.
Teacher student affair.
15 year old student found with 42 year old man.
When in reality she was seeking help due to a troubled home.
Afraid to sleep knowing the door would creep open.
Leaving her terrified to close her eyes. The relationship between step daughter and father without boundary.
Where's the specialty training for those who care.
The proper resources that extend beyond that of a pamphlet.
The dark skin kids that's made fun of because they look different.
Stereotyped as aggressive.
The dope boys, the baby mamas.
The light skin girl that's made to feel inferior because she turns red with every hit.
Her hair is longer than theirs so she wants to cut it.
Aggressively forgetting all the beauty she possesses.
The active shooter managing to make it pass the metal detectors.
Rallying the attention he didn't get at home.
The debate carries on across every wall except the right ones
Jul 13, 2018
Jul 13, 2018 at 11:33 AM UTC
We named our brothers ****** Boy John
We shoveled indifference with our ignorance
Into the grave of civility and brotherhood
The white family – we are the majority in the school of intolerance
Leading to social starvation
A minority of one is not wrong or mad
One is the last line before
an infinite sea of negative
Under God we are all equal and even
I hope we’ve cracked the whip for the last time
One more might sound louder than Judas’s kiss on Jesus’s cheek
Whips of words are seen holstered
On the tips of tongues and the points of pens
If the worth of your values breaks, and dogmatic hate begins to leak
Then stick the gum of pride you’ve been chewing on for years
To protect whatever you have left
Dr. King was an inspired man and leader
He painted the pages of history with red, not black
Sacrificed his blood, while accepting his skin
It was the kind of idea that seemed too extreme
Never forget the words: “I HAVE A DREAM!”
Nov 26, 2012
Nov 26, 2012 at 12:33 AM UTC
I remember a story, it starts at fourteen.
I had a crooked back and low self esteem.
I was afraid I was gonna end up in a ditch somewhere.
I had to devise myself a plan
of which direction to go if **** hit the fan
and I knew my mother wanted a prodigy child
So I figured I could sing or get really smart,
but my voice would crack and my mind was dark,
so I decided, in this crazy world,
that I could rob graves.
So I left home when I was sixteen
my boredom peaked and my senses keened
I grew with a morbid fascination with the dead
It started out
me figuring that
they wouldn’t miss their dimes, their shoes or their hats
I tramped on the dusty trail with an evil eye
As I ended up along the borderline
I met another young man who had gone insane.
He just got back from the war.
Like he said: “I’ve seen some things.”
So we rode together for quite a while
in the dust on the trail for a thousand miles
until one night, we came upon an unmarked grave.
My partner fumbled around in his pockets
evading worms and maggots from his sockets.
He turned around and looked at me with his crazy smile
It turned out what he found was a letter
and with this smile he said: “The dead have it better.”
So i reached out to grab it while the stench arose.
He handed it to me and on front and back
I read about this lonely, old, sad sack
who, being sick of life, ended up hanging himself.
This really put things into perspective for me
for the attention me and my partner was giving, you see,
was often more than these people received in life.
But one windy day the law caught on our path
and with a holstered gun me and my partner had
we stopped by a local tavern to wet our throats.
The law had converged in the front door
my partner flinched before I could do more.
And before I knew it he had bolted down for the gun.
Before I could say another word
he dropped to the floor and his fingers curled.
He rattled and faded away while I was restrained.
As I was lying on my stomach on the ground
I looked over and I heard a sound
It was my partner whispering his final words.
“The dead have it better.”
Jan 13, 2014
Jan 13, 2014 at 7:12 PM UTC
faked botulism
and Beulah reds
Abyssinian horses
purportedly dead
all night blindness
that 'gravel' soothes
hovering indentions
southwestern barceuse
luminaries marked
tiny infantries swell
conically formed
so steady with shell
dihedral burns
for unlucky hands
swaying cognition
oh, little demands
sanctums ******
the sputum reigns
tenderness denied
a proper grave
you were ferried
holstered soul
lift your head
and let it go
Sep 28, 2011
Sep 28, 2011 at 5:20 AM UTC
It's hard being perfect in a world where it's physically impossible when everybody being flawed
Don't expect me to be your Jack's Mannequin
I have my flaws and i'm proud to be human
I wouldn't want to be someone who never has a defect at all
I want to come off as human and real for others
My ship usually sinks daily
But i'm the Captain so i got this
Or it will be a mental Lusitania
Causing me to prepare for war
Towards my conflicting thoughts
I won't wait like President Wilson
Action will be called upon
But i won't waste a second
I'm keeping this ship above water
My passengers will be safe
It's all on my shoulders
Keep your cannons holstered
We don't want this to really happen
Send your youth back home
They didn't want this.
I sure in hell didn't either.
Nov 30, 2015
Nov 30, 2015 at 10:54 AM UTC
If the echoes in my head subside
When the train finally halts
And I look all around
Wonder if you will be there
Will my heart still yearn for you
My mind flying high in your sky
Will it ever stop
When it finally descends
Moving forward, but moving on?
Can we derail, decelerate the pace of a loving heart
Some weaker, semblance of fuel, my engine's funneling
Will I ever fly the same without your gravitational pull
When the train finally halts
And I look all around
Wonder if you will be there
Will my heart sill call your name
Dirt and debris hitting the surface
You were the cleanse keeping **** out
Will anyone else give me your wonderful phrases
Keeping me lighter like I would amount
Healing my wings, always keeping them fearless
I never knew I needed you to fly
Now I wonder if my heart can start
When your no longer there
Keeping my engine safe and strong for war
The new ware of my flight
Will it ever resemble the speed or freedom your sky gave
When I'm no longer holstered up by the tracks of your love
Will your traces really fade away
When the train finally halts
And I look all around
Wonder if you will be there
Will my hearts still holler your name
Will it hold on in vain
Even if I'm in my grave
Will it move on, see you, and manage
Knowing our love could be gone
Aug 24, 2012
Aug 24, 2012 at 1:13 PM UTC
"A holstered product secretly hunts after its own end product-"
"-not metal targets nor flying geese, but mortality."
A man, with graying hair and pursed lips, told me this. A well-trained and prayered piety had crept along, pounced, and overcome him. Like Edison, a creative obsession gripped his spine and puppeteered the entire body. It was a plague, he called it, or something like that. Even at a young age, gaurdian 1 & 2 lulled him to the steeple's hiding. He noted how the steeple was always at mast. His children would observe the same detail, live the same routine. I studied the curious character for weeks. A facsimile of the Word seemed permanently pressed on his brain, trapped behind devout eyes- For weeks I studied him, give me more time! Each biblical page was scribbled and creased, share and reused. -no longer. "My holster found its mortal tonight, friend. I'll raise the barrel and create a grand scene."
Slight pause, heavy breathe, slow speak. "Colossal at best."
by Kendra Cook
Sep 29, 2010
Sep 29, 2010 at 4:13 PM UTC
ey yo if you think that 9/11 **** is crazy, take a closer look at jfk pushing those daisies, you could mistake this for the facts of life theme song, sticking its head up the rabbit hole and now you just seem gone, but if you grab on tight and then you pull it, up comes boundless theories of grassy knolls and magic bullets, wheres the love when a 10 year old can a spot a liar with his vision, swiftly points a fat finger at the entire warren commission, what happened we all forgot how to ask questions? lips tremble from a holstered police smith and wesson, never stopped to think if its just water their testing, scapegoats getting arrested, and then promptly murdered, just to take this trip a little further, leaving a **** taste in your mouth like ******* down an entire bag of werthers,
people laugh at 9/11 **** and downplay all the evidence,
but would you put it past a country that murdered their president,
for political gain, theyll put 4 shots through mine and your brain, keep us detained, for days, chuck us in guantamo bay, and then one day we're on a plane flying towards some towers, or wait no we're picking out flowers, bang flash, for my wife, shroedinger's life on the end of this knife, so stop you ***** just listen, this **** may seem sick and twisted, but please wait there is absolutely no reason we live in a police state, thats just what you've been told needs to be done, had consumerism forced down you, and you're told to have fun, and you say thank you and walk way, i'll take my stand another day. and yeah that farmer was an ******* i loved when he got overthrown by the pigs, but we'll wake up one morning and want bacon for breakfast ya dig?
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
Nov 30, 2011
Nov 30, 2011 at 12:56 PM UTC
Your reader quakes like a ready reactor
Steady burn an incalculable factor
On your mark, we approach the next chapter
A quiet pen, without ambition
Keeps each plan from happy fruition
And pressure mounts, some new type of fission
Carve yourself out a space in time
Mark it well so it’s easy to find
History don’t repeat, but rhymes:
Solicitudes concede to style
Somebody just filed suit for libel
One more murmur to add to the pile
To be a made man is to be man-made
And so you dull your colors down a shade
The arsonists took over the fire brigade
Step outside of your burning home
Pavement stand, dial your phone
Ask whomever if We are Rome
The receiver will no doubt laugh a little
That is, if she caught the preceding riddle
Somewhere Nero bows the fiddle
Tell me something, if you please
About the world pregnant virgins see
Oblivious to a state emergency
A noble fourth, our D’Artangan
Has the sharpened instinct of a jealous man
Oh, you know him? And you’re a fan?
He’s wants a girl who drinks whisky and gin
Musket holstered, what a sin
Somebody asks, “What shape’s he in?”
One assumes he’s kind of tame
A lion, yes, but with a shampooed mane
He don’t play ***** but he plays the game
Shoes on, button up, wipe your glasses
Time to shake up contented masses
Donde hay educación, no hay distinción de clases
Mar 23, 2010
Mar 23, 2010 at 4:34 PM UTC
Cheap mascara ruined.
Trixie started to cry,
as she watched the doctors
rot the apple of her eye.
Not with worms,
and not with disease,
but with scalpels and masks,
holstered with their fancy degrees.
As the gas evicted her
from our reality,
she slipped into a false state
of peaceful prosperity.
Then came along,
to Trixie's surprise,
an image of an angel
descending from the skies.
The angel was sarcastic,
and foul and rude,
appearing drunken and angry,
ruining her sedated mood.
The angel stumbled up,
and slurred some words,
about how only humans killed their offspring,
never the bees or the birds.
Then the angel smirked,
and said **** you!"
Not only did you manage to **** one,
but two.
Trixie died inside,
just as Trixie's twins
died alive.
Jun 28, 2014
Jun 28, 2014 at 1:17 AM UTC
Patience is a virtue,
it's too soon.
I won't shoot,
I'm holstered.
It's a moot point,
point blank.
Thanks.
Where are my manners?
Managed to stick myself between
a rock and hard place again.
Not a bad spot if you're a lizard.
Not a bad shot if you're cold blooded.
You didn't check the scene, now it's a crime scene.
I've seen this all before,
and yet it seems to get
darker each time.
Maybe it's finally getting to me.
They caught up to me,
my demons did.
They hid
within my skin, hungering.
Taking control
of my limbs, and I'm fumbling.
Mumbling phrases of praises
erases their faces.
Slate clean but shivering.
Deliverance is chilling
when your captives kept you warm.
Be forewarned not to enter their house again.
They will tempt you with fire,
and so you must
build a hearth
within your own heart.
Feed it your own breath
to keep it burning
while the world turns.
Yearning to be at the center
of something you can't quite remember.
Sep 16, 2013
Sep 16, 2013 at 3:38 PM UTC
Katie loves gin
and the way it makes her act
She states her thoughts about the world
as if each of them were fact
It makes Adam feel
Like she's the one
Because Adams been lost
since the day he first found
the first pretty girl
he made make a pretty sound
Her name was Sara
And they’re still friends
Sara liked to move fast
and liked to leave even faster
until she found the perfect ****
who she's dubbed The Master
His name is Max
And he keeps secrets well
He only sleeps with women
when he's drunk and on the run
He's never shared the secret
of where he holstered up his gun
A pistolero of a man
Who's name is Tom
Who only met with Max
when he was mad at his bride
Who had a secret of her own
of who she sees on the side
A therapist named Paul
Who pretends to listen well
Paul likes to drink
on the job he calls weighty
and finds irony in his favorite patient
a little drunk named Katie
Whom he's often told
Should speak her mind
So she had a party
and told friends to invite friends
But once the therapist arrived
it began to spell the end
Secrets spilled
And people cried
Tom and his wife
ended up in a divorce
During which he left Max
in an attempt to make it work
And now Max drinks
Almost every night
He almost always ends up
on the couch in Sara's house
after putting down his bottle
and getting lost in her blouse
She tells all her friends
She thinks she's in love
It forces Adam into envy
who try's to make something out of lust
with a crazy little drinker
for whom he could never be enough
She's already been asleep
Wrapped in a doctors arm
Who's already unraveled
This strange ball of yarn
Aug 22, 2013
Aug 22, 2013 at 3:45 AM UTC
Power holstered on a hip the slang
slips and hisses like a snake,
sharp venom fingers fiddling with handcuffs
he roars like a lion
when confronted with energetic excuses.
soon he will slide
behind turbo charged expressions to keep
the world clean of crims.
what he may add
to this sterile law is a hard fist
of dollar bills taken
from alleyways of shame.
hiya, brother!
we see him steering through
traffic lanes and troubles
enjoying everyone scampering
away from his lordships chariot
winning batmans race.
bring him down to the dust.
all for a chrome plated medal
a starched salute
a piece of paper that sings
of power invested in a holster.
outside of the uniform
he feeds his pet pom
pellets of crunchy biscuits.
Author Notes
Cop.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, 7 days ago
- See more at: http://allpoetry.com/poem/11592757-blue-stripes-by-Marshall-Gass#sthash.GhZAMgon.dpuf
Aug 5, 2014
Aug 5, 2014 at 7:02 PM UTC
So many feelings so many failures. I'm up im down I'm here I'm now. When I'm there im gone. Inside, outside, upside down. Here I come again. Always leaning on my own understanding. That I'll be always with me. In my captivity. Feeling so human. I wonder how my senses. Can decieve my honesty. I have walked down a dusty road been goin through things I don't like talking about just to find my start out there. Thank god for freedom. If there wasn't an option I'd probably hate him. Right now I need more than before. So many tours I have taken. Ohh now my mind is thinkin bout where to go from here. Can you make the road seem clear. This rollercoaster I've Been holstered needs a new engineer. I hope you hear that I'm not the best person to feel, for the pieces I left to fix. Myself in this mess. Dont close My grasp to tight. Cause it will cut me like glass. Somewhere in the clouds. I can the trumpet sound. Calling ne out my shell. Father to seek faith to believe that something could save me from hell. And in the cold I know your hands are my deliverence. To get away from my skin. The only thing that beings me falsified try. I've need to denied my own life. I'm up I'm down I'm here for now. There but gone. Seen but not heard. Was my direction. Inside outside, upside down. Lays me turning my head around. To catch a glimpse of the crowd. Who have battled through thus walk that I'm on. At the end of it I'll reach them where er they are. I thought I was Fallin apart. Submitting to my flesh But now I've know I was really crumbling in your arms. Choosings to take a chance. In know youve Always wanted what's my best Letting you mold my heart. You moved away the rocks. That gave me reason to believe in your voice. And choosing to follow your love.
Mar 24, 2010
Mar 24, 2010 at 6:47 PM UTC
What a shame! Even (mouth thick with honey) the poetry, tarr'd n feathered, pimped out, holstered to the inside thigh - Promiscuity as a promise, the clouds fil and zzz leet ::: sleep, sleet. Only if I'm paid. Bruise shaped acorn on my shoulder, I hide out in my car, in the cold. Hello solder, hand me a high 5! And it turns into 7, which turns into 9, which turns into night. There is no shame in words, in swallowing tiny torches and blacking out ochre eyes - say, sleepy head - If anything this [poem] is a fragment of some whole puzzle-u, a wannabe winsome trove of squiggly lines.
Oct 4, 2015
Oct 4, 2015 at 10:06 PM UTC
the simmering summer heat
lingering like a blanket of sticky tack
weighing on the leaves of the
bright summer suns,
the radiating petals
golden array of sunlight
rows upon rows
where the eyes tend to meet,
holstered with swaying stalks
thick, green leafy stems
whispering in the slight breeze
the sweltering heat humming with life
as the buzzing increases in strife
the screaming cicadas, the speckled path
striking down the field of suns
for the secret, secret place to sing
Apr 4, 2017
Apr 4, 2017 at 9:57 AM UTC
Inadequacies
The self inflicted gunshot wounds
From holstered weapons going off
When you least expect it
Sometimes in the foot
Usually in the heart
Incurring maximum damage
Precisely at the most inopportune
Moments, made possible by
Years of unconscious conditioning
Loading the chamber with
Hollow points of self worth
From the hip rapid fire assumptions
Sudden onset Alzheimer's headshots
And ****** marvelous notions
That actually is the worst
In the History of Bad Ideas
Some of you conceal and carry
Pistols, others tote around
Semi automatic rifles
And then there are those of us with
Gatlin Guns
Still turning the crank
As we blast our Happiness into
Smithereens straight to Hell
Jul 24, 2017
Jul 24, 2017 at 12:36 AM UTC
Holstered at high noon
Blistering with festered wounds
First of many moons
Fire raining down
Tap a vein of blood in the ground
Void of life and sound
Shelter for relief
Burn the place around my feet
Respite that I seek
Perish in my youth
Yellow candles light the room
Cultured yet uncouth
Painted red the town
Carnage glistens all around
Gone and left to drown
Woken by the cries
A place I still recognize
Dreams arrive to die
Atone and bleed the sin
An evil presence descends
Quell the rage within
I won't die in vain
Nefarious and insane
Poppies soothe the pain
Worn upon our sleeves
Phasing unpredictably
Nature of the beast
Tread lightly forward
Origin of vile scourge
Yet ventured onward
Grains of salt and sand
In reunion holding hands
Flee this barren land
Aug 19, 2020
Aug 19, 2020 at 6:16 PM UTC
the fragile boy shepherds his pulse
among bigger bodies and into
the bruise and into the bruise’s
unkissable bone, that grey
area where holstered
his invisible gun dispenses
with metaphor and metaphors from
a pep rally
held in theory
in a stranger’s garage
where his brother’s
accidental birth
expired in his brother
who himself
was part bruise
part cream
added to the bruise
by a father whose lightning
stormed
from the hip of god
during a dream
had by a full
gallon of milk
mother held steady
for hours, back to back,
above the form
of it unstirred
Jun 27, 2014
Jun 27, 2014 at 8:42 PM UTC
You wake in a cold sweat,
Alone with the grip of your past.
Your vision is blurred by tiny needles,
A lonely street lamp shines its light heedless.
The twisting noise of the city piercing your ear,
Interrupting the brief rest you hold so dear.
This respite they pushed away now punctuated by a sharp horn.
Thousand voices and a thousand footsteps, a glaring shopwindow of scorn.
As you look past the glamour of the city,
You see a thousand tiny souls flickering for amity.
Hiding behind hardened stares, and holstered gunfire,
Expensive high-life and luxurious privilege.
If this is what it means to make it, so be it.
A line to stop at and take a step back.
Fighting for something that is so grossly transparent,
Means to an end, something that has no merit.
The shadows give you comfort, a freedom you'll never forget.
Jun 8, 2016
Jun 8, 2016 at 12:59 PM UTC
… our bodies in our clothes like holstered guns…
love is when you draw... and shed the holster
… that sweet crunchy click blowing your pupils
the arching trajectory of the safety-off smile
Aug 9, 2018
Aug 9, 2018 at 3:52 PM UTC
Death is to familiar, I keep it at my side.
Life is nothing special I find solace in suicide.
Holstered at my hip, covered by a duster.
Heaven in my eyelids, devil on my shoulder.
Hold it in my clutches so nobody can see.
Have a date with two destinies
and
they both wanna **** me.
May 1, 2015
May 1, 2015 at 8:10 AM UTC
Six-shooters are holstered, swords are scabbard, arrows are un-nocked, blades are sheathed.
Not in the course
Of one petty conflict,
But comparatively throughout history.
There is more intergovernmental cooperation,
More trade and tourism,
More declarations and treaties.
The common person
Has greater breadth of movement
In travel of classes & region.
The ignition of all these dormant conflicts
Will not lead to any new or better resolution
But, more likely than not,
More conflagration & revolution.
To win or to lose
In a game of confusion
With the strategy of lies & ambiguity.
Better than to limply concede
And forfeit all claim to belief
In what you fought to seat.
And in fifty years from now
Some blasted fool shall say:
The ignition of all these dormant conflicts
Will not lead to any new or better resolution
But, more likely than not,
More conflagration & revolution.
Feb 13, 2025
Feb 13, 2025 at 1:00 AM UTC
I don’t want to talk about love I want to talk about the shields you’ve used since preschool to defend yourself
What habits were you forced to create from such a young age you will only recognize them for what they are if you get called out on it
I want to discuss the weapons hanging on your wall I want to know why you depict cutting your brother out of your life with a ****** iron pipe
Why does your hand race to your hip searching for a holstered handgun whenever someone says the word “father” and who was the one they found dead at the scene
Maybe instead we should talk about the security system you’ve been so intent on keeping running from sheer willpower and why you feel like you need to be watched so closely
Darling love feels like learning all of these things so that we can put them all away without your lungs sealing themselves shut
It can make you sick like you’ve been caught in the middle of a tornado that you knew was coming but still caught you off guard
That moment after you hand over the keys you’ve guarded so closely for years with shaking hands until theirs close over yours and their lips meet your forehead
It’s the grove you find after those moments where you rest your head on its softest grass with morning dew clinging to your hair
But first we lock away the weapons
You don’t need them anymore
~W.C.
Jul 4, 2019
Jul 4, 2019 at 8:21 AM UTC