"imitation" poems
You fade...
Like a bruise.
Like the ones your mouth left on my neck and shoulders with its lustful pressure.
Your teeth, which brought moments of bright pain/pleasure,
Are now bared in an artificial, animal smile.
Your lips, which parted to taste my skin like it was salvation,
Barely part now to speak to me.
You whispered my name like a prayer.
You screamed it like a curse.
You sighed it in contentment,
And now you won't even speak it in passing.
Your hands, which half-playfully pulled my hair...
Now won't pause to brush it from my face.
All these parts of you,
None more telling than your eyes.
Those new windows, which once let me pry...
Now have blinds drawn tight behind them,
Leaving only a pretty, shiny reflection-
A passing, glancing imitation-
Of the passion they once held
When they beheld
Me.
No color left to them but the muddy colors of
Boredom,
And possibly mistrust.
You fade...
Like a bruise.
Like the one you left on my mind with your brilliant conversation
And beautiful, rusty prose.
Like the many you left on my tongue...
Which now can speak nothing but trite and meaningless words,
Which now can barely remember the shapes
Of all the shimmering, liquid phrases it spoke to you
That seemed so important at the time.
You fade...
Like a bruise.
Once lover and friend,
Now barely one
And never the other again.
May 3, 2012
May 3, 2012 at 2:23 PM UTC
I'd like to think that she's thinking:
"How far have I fallen?"
As she sits on the corner of her bed,
Listening to the soft buzz of his battery-powered toothbrush.
I imagine her,
Running her fingers through her clumsy, coagulated hair.
Glancing at her chipped, crimson toe nails,
Then looking to her class ring,
Made entirely of imitation ingredients,
Wondering when is the proper time to trash it.
When she was still a friend of mine,
I never saw her wear make up,
I never saw her show off in tight jeans
or low-cut tees.
But as he spews the toothpaste into the sink,
Skinny jeans lay tussled on the floor,
Next to the side door
that leads to his sister's side room.
The make up she wears
is from the night before.
It's skewed and shows evidence of running,
Like a wasted watercolor.
I'd like to think he isn't that handsome,
And that he's obsessed with Paul Walker.
I'd like to think when he re-enters the room,
He's in grey sweatpants,
He's wearing a black tank top,
With a Confederate flag backdrop,
With two barely dressed babes looking ******
in the foreground.
His hair, unwashed and greasy.
He rubs his belly,
And bears an idiot grin
on his face.
Looking like he just learned how to smile
at this pace.
"Did it feel good?"
feel good.
After he asks, he scans her body,
Beginning at those crimson toes,
And Ending at that clumsy hair.
Every second he scans,
He still wears that drawn-on
Idiot grin.
I'd like to think at this point she thinks of me.
Of my warnings and prophesy.
Her eyes start at the chipped toe nails,
Course over her tanning bed-inspired legs.
And finally reach the only thing she has on,
A t-shirt that belongs to his sister.
A t-shirt, when given by him,
It was mentioned, "thanks, mister".
Though she didn't satisfy all his redneck intentions,
During last night's expedition.
He still paid her back with a morning
one-sided session.
"It felt good" she says.
In reference to the ten minute **********
When her body was strummed and plucked,
Underneath his sister's Terri Clark T-shirt.
As she sits in the filth and the ****** fallout,
On a bed that is six days *****
While he is grinning,
Being everything but wordy.
I'd like to think she's thinking:
"How far have I fallen?"
Jun 4, 2010
Jun 4, 2010 at 10:31 PM UTC
Some say love's a little boy,
And some say it's a bird,
Some say it makes the world go around,
Some say that's absurd,
And when I asked the man next-door,
Who looked as if he knew,
His wife got very cross indeed,
And said it wouldn't do.
Does it look like a pair of pyjamas,
Or the ham in a temperance hotel?
Does its odour remind one of llamas,
Or has it a comforting smell?
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,
Or soft as eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.
Our history books refer to it
In cryptic little notes,
It's quite a common topic on
The Transatlantic boats;
I've found the subject mentioned in
Accounts of suicides,
And even seen it scribbled on
The backs of railway guides.
Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,
Or boom like a military band?
Could one give a first-rate imitation
On a saw or a Steinway Grand?
Is its singing at parties a riot?
Does it only like Classical stuff?
Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?
O tell me the truth about love.
I looked inside the summer-house;
It wasn't over there;
I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,
And Brighton's bracing air.
I don't know what the blackbird sang,
Or what the tulip said;
But it wasn't in the chicken-run,
Or underneath the bed.
Can it pull extraordinary faces?
Is it usually sick on a swing?
Does it spend all its time at the races,
or fiddling with pieces of string?
Has it views of its own about money?
Does it think Patriotism enough?
Are its stories ****** but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.
When it comes, will it come without warning
Just as I'm picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my toes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.
43.4k
You don't know me
The places I wanna see
The things I want to know
What I want to be told
No, you don't know me
You can't hold me
Or tell me everything's alright
When I know you hold her
Like you used to hold me
You tell her she's made of gold
You know her favorite food, her favorite dress
And all the other things
That you don't know about me
I know you've memorized
Her face, Her voice
Yet when you turn around
Can you even remember my name?
I guess it's too much to ask
For redamancy these days
As loyalty has gone out the window
A word of the past
But you used to tell me
That I was made of gold
And that in your arms
I was only yours to hold
But your hands have roamed
So far away from me
And it's not fair
To make me watch
As you do with her
All you did with me
We used to talk about the future
But in a single heartbeat
You have changed our destiny
All those words of yours
Come back and haunt me
Everytime you called me beautiful,
Was it just practice for telling her?
Well you were right about one thing
I am made of gold
And that girl of yours
No matter how much you try
To mold her into me
She will only ever be pyrite
Just a cheap imitation
Of the treasure you will never hold
Aug 2, 2018
Aug 2, 2018 at 10:25 PM UTC
You seeing me rapping will never happen
Before that I’ll start cappin
Walk off like nothing happened
Since I’ve mastered this art of war
I tend to take things too far
Don’t give a **** who you think you are
Your rap handle doesn’t exist anymore
My rhythms galore, your rhythms manure
Best left in a bag
On your steps
At your front door
Hottest your rap crap will ever get
I’m so polished this is a blemish not a scrimmage
I treat you little *******
Like a teacher’s pet
Up against a Vietnam war vet
Giving you your first shoots
Flipping the script
Double barrel twelve gauge extended clip
Special grip pressed against your lip
Having a hard time talking ****
A pistol whip left your tooth chipped
Fake rappers rapping hard
No street creed; they ain’t legit
This wack imitation ****
Got me ****** off
Don’t get me started
you rip offs should get lost at all cost
dealing with a real boss I can handle a loss
Testing me lyrically, you must be previously ********
Now you are dearly departed
I’m styling on you I’m wilding
Bloodline of Goliath
So go ahead start a riot
With my mic on autopilot
You can get chewed like trident
Eating wack MC’s
essential part of my diet
this ain’t even a battle verse
it’s a gift and a curse
running its course
on my high horse
Oct 7, 2014
Oct 7, 2014 at 12:33 AM UTC
Feel empty in your post apocalyptic City of Angels,
Where not even your pets are real!
An electric android, a sheep or a frog,
The whir-flutter of micro-electrical wings of a butterfly.
Good, and so you ought.
Now grab the handles of your empathy box,
And in a shared virtual hallucination –
Feel: empathy, depression, pain, delusion and despair,
The outré myriad gifts of consciousness.
Billions of discombobulated and disconnected wrecks:
Adam's sons; Eve's daughters,
And among them simulations too,
Fakes! androids!
A phony circuit of implanted semi-conscious memories,
A hive of neural malaise!
Welcome to our world;
know how dead inside I am.
You, yes, you:
Need a pet to make you more complete?
Maybe you can afford
A Fake Fakir Flake like me who looks like Jude Law,
Sounds like Richard Burton,
And silently romances you like Rudolph Valentino.
Come and stick what’s left of your mind,
In here,
In hair,
Hear her:
har, har, har…
A box of lies...
A voice, Mercer's,
With texture from an age you neither lived in nor dared in:
Al Jerry's, a TV actor,
Droning on in pre-selected tones.
The real thing, the men, the women, the children - their animals -
Made in the wild, wild desert,
In the green pulsing savannah,
On the open crusted sea;
Now too, washed, choked, and drained,
Too many spliced and diced mutations,
Iterating your image:
The thing that was my heart,
My Child, now its imitation.
Oct 15, 2017
Oct 15, 2017 at 7:42 AM UTC
The light pollution
from the lives of little people
in the big city
reflects off the lowriding clouds,
the same way my knees reflect
in the little puddles
from the big rains.
It hurts my eyes to look up
without sunglasses,
hurts my lips to think of tasting
the subway oil that
drip
drip
drips
I speculate at the transformers,
part automatic, part people
in their pre-ripped jeans,
learning to get their Ns
to drive themselves away,
yarn trailing from their sweaters
like parade float streamers.
Citizens run so fast
to catch the early train home,
freefalling down the stairs
breathing in the exhales
of the other racer’s exhaust.
Marking their triumphs
with participation ribbons.
The pacific pants at toes,
a puppy that only occasionally misbehaves.
Impatient for attention,
waves wagging back and forth,
up the imitation river,
past the downtown.
Kicking the sea wall with it's gravity boots.
The geese are on hiatus
until they can take back the city.
Making the drains overflow,
creating their own habitat,
they’ll strut their haughty markings,
distinguished from orcas,
away from any saline nonsense.
Were we to retrain the population
to turn blind eyes,
we’d be much more efficient,
stop wasting time contending
to society’s obsession
with documenting itself.
But then, what would we do all day?
Creating light pollution
must give immediate gratification.
Once all the lights are turned off,
the influence won’t continue,
creating a lack of permanence,
making our need to be remembered
seem trivial indeed.
Nov 11, 2013
Nov 11, 2013 at 1:57 AM UTC
in the middle of nirvana, ashima wakes up
she doesn't know how she reached this sphere
full of silver lights and black silhouettes
everyone she knows seems to be present
greyly shimmering leaflets are floating
through the air, gently, like mist
and red fireflies are clapping their wings
the crowd of shadows is starting to sing:
"ashima, you have come a long way to us
we are the voices of nirvana, listen
nirvana is the deep core of your soul
the land of your most secret wishes
sometimes, in your dreams, you reach out
when you are waiting for a train and the
rays of the sun are reflecting your thoughts
you never find us but we know where you are
you may call us your wishes, we belong to you
as **** as branko and your mom do
are you the imitation of your dreams, ashima?
or do your dreams imitate you, our girl?
certainly, you will become the thing you dread
we know that you took revenge recently
when you were slashing the pedophile's throat
as his blood was slowly flowing into the sheets"
in the middle of her apartment, ashima wakes up
she becomes aware of a crinkled and dark leaflet
it is more than twenty years old, informing about
something that ashima can not read anymore
the letters on the leaflet have become dust
ashima is taking a deep breath and sighs
her pitbull branko is strolling towards her
his wet tongue, ashima thinks, feels cute
Jan 30, 2021
Jan 30, 2021 at 11:04 AM UTC
At night-the light turned off, the filament
Unburdened of its atom-eating charge,
His wife asleep, her breathing dipping low
To touch a swampy source-he thought of death.
Her father's hilltop home allowed him time
To sense the nothing standing like a sheet
Of speckless glass behind his human future.
He had two comforts he could see, just two.
One was the cheerful fullness of most things:
Plump stones and clouds, expectant pods, the soil
Offering up pressure to his knees and hands.
The other was burning the trash each day.
He liked the heat, the imitation danger,
And the way, as he tossed in used-up news,
String, napkins, envelopes, and paper cups,
Hypnotic tongues of order intervened.
5.9k
*i think, you should stop going to italy, for one, oh **** me, keep going on hedonist piss-fuck fests to places like mallorca, but stop going to italy, you're making my stomach ache from laughter, with what you come back with, the so-called "innovations"; somehow i'd just poach my cauliflower, and drizzle it with fried breadcrumbs, and serve it as a side-dish to fried eggs (2), and some tatties; for goodness sake, even cauliflower cream soup makes more sense, garnished with some fried chorizo!*
first it was avocado on toast...
who the **** puts avocado on bread?
i can imagine putting it in pasta...
but on bread?
hey, what the **** does
the acronym f.a.d. mean?
i don't know, and i won't google it...
o.k. avocado on toast...
nothing near guacamole,
but fair enough...
but what i discovered... pushes
the button where i turn into a fox laughter
(fuchslachen) -
i couldn't stop...
you can find it in the weekend
section of the saturday times newspaper...
written by nicola m.
cauliflower and mozzarella pizza...
you have to be ******** me...
cauliflower? on pizza?
one of my housemates at university told
me an anecdote:
i was in a restaurant once,
and asked for a pizza with no cheese...
he continued:
and then the head chef came out and
asked me... are you, insane?!
a bit like: bread... but no butter?
and i thought i was insane eating a watermelon
today, whole,
the red pulp, and the outer layers including
the skin included, allowing myself
a gorilla imitation cameo gimmick...
but i thought i was mad...
but there's avocado on toast...
and now... cauliflower on pizza...
it's a ******* side-dish!
wait, don't tell me... you're going to put
some potatoes onto the pizza the next frizz
comes along... right?
how about beetroot?
thankfully, if i have some
wacky ideas in terms of culinary escapades,
they happen, drunk, after 12a.m.,
and i'm the scientist, and the experimental rabbit
2-in-1...
a newspaper column?
apparently, you get one, putting avocado
on toast...
or cauliflower on a pi-zzzzz-ah...
to be honest, even though i haven't tried it,
grilled aubergines on a pizza could work...
the toast? marmite and cheddar...
english people should stop glorifying holidays
in italy... they're ****** cooks...
an italian would just look at
a pizza with cauliflower and say: cosa?
i'd suggest heading to scotland first,
and picking up the vibes from some haggis.
**** me...
avocado on toast...
caulifower on a pizza?!
now i can die happy, 'appy,
clapping: encore!
Jun 10, 2017
Jun 10, 2017 at 2:54 PM UTC
/I dreamed that wrinkled fingers pointed me backward down the road to teach me about faith./
there’s this plastic imitation leather
peeling off of my steering wheel
and it caught the edge of my chin tonight:
like a fingernail if I closed my eyes.
I re-find that people are flawed,
that I value flaws in a certain lilt or lighting—
I fall deeply in love with confidence like that
but fail to pull it to my own cheeks.
we’re microwave dinners, have you noticed that?
showcasing our dreams in caricatures we later regret.
we’re rotating in heat—pressurizing for perfection,
warming our raw insides to blend with what we see.
(it felt like a fingernail if I closed my eyes.)
spines are expressive—they make us easier to read.
no spine is more inclined to bring eyes the rising sun than yours.
our spines are expressive—they make us easier to write.
Jun 4, 2014
Jun 4, 2014 at 9:11 PM UTC
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.
Sep 21, 2014
Sep 21, 2014 at 2:08 PM UTC
Cause you're toxic Defiled
shedding the old you exposing a new person you have turned into
You're not around me... now
But when you are
I'm falling like I'm drowning
This friendships crowning
Evolved into another person that I just don't need.
Cause you're all full of passive aggressive rage that's melted my sight.
What's hidden and hissing waiting to devoure me.
Brainwashed to all the lies that you've been telling me.
Seducing me, loving me with self loathing injections, posioning.
Leading me to believe. Lies.
In the trenches abandion. Dark. Quite. So I stop being afraid. Nothing flogging me.
Reality: The unforgiving madness. Like a light in the darkness. My Heart.
I see that I can be worthy. I just gotta figure out how to get back my selfesteem again.
No one wants to lick my wounds of unchanging torture.
Cause I have been walking around in a salted skin.
Never healing, never dealing, with all the injuries that I've taken.
Don't want to soak up the death were you've laid me to rest. Cause it's changing me.
You are not me. I will never be you. You wanted me invisible, you still do, when all you can be is you.
Lets call it what it is: Resentment.
You will never be me! Sorry imitation. It's what's in the heart.
Look at me. Strong again.
Prying off the scabs of pain Disinfecting
Nine years and this is the end.
Oct 8, 2013
Oct 8, 2013 at 2:14 PM UTC
Love
Is not an equation.
There is no
x, y, or z
No variable
No shortcut to find a companion
If there was,
Well,
It wouldn't be love
But a cheap imitation,
The store brand of human emotion.
And yet
I still yearn to be a
Derivative
So that I might lie tangent to your curves.
Apr 30, 2014
Apr 30, 2014 at 2:54 PM UTC
life doesn't come with instructions....
we should do what is right, not what is easiest....
if you fully trust someone without any doubt, you will get one of two
results: a friend for life or a lesson for life....
if the only thing making us unhappy is our own thoughts, we change
them....
patience is not the ability to wait, but the ability to keep a good attitude
while waiting....
it is never too late to get your **** together..
AS WE GROW OKDER we learn that. . .
happiness is found when we stop comparing our life to others....
sometimes the wrong choices bring us to the right places....
if we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.....
others should make no mistake between my personality and my attitude -
my personality being who I am, my attitude depending on who they
are....
the body heals with time and the mind heals with laughter and the
spirit heals with joy....
AS WE GROW OLDER we learn that. . .
to be old and wise, we must first be young and stupid...
just because we you're breathing doesn't mean you're alive....
inside every older person is a younger person wondering what the hell
happened....
youth is a gift of nature and age is a work of art....
rudeness is a weak persons imitation of strength....
time shows us what really matters....
happiness is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do but
doesn't get you anywhere....
the meaning of life is to find our gift and the purpose of life is to
give it away....
Jon York 2016
Sep 18, 2016
Sep 18, 2016 at 5:58 AM UTC
This will be no sad song,
I don’t want to overflow the rivers of tears
with a flood of my own.
We have all seen enough to fill oceans,
In dark corners I have seen the fates
sitting around and smile.
Some rivers overflow, and other scrap together every last
penny just to fight another day.
You die, I die, the president will die.
Our voices will not crawl along the edge of
a river rasping at the others to accept the
waters.
We will trumpet the tail of the glory of life from the after-party.
Chatting casually with a soldier wearing the wrong colors.
Is there one among us who does not bear the blood of countless souls?
The best champagne will not open to the highest bidder.
Nor will it be enjoyed by one, but by the prostiuite by the cop
by the technician, yourself and I. All of us enjoying each other’s stories,
none shall be left from the table, the best champagne all shall toast
with it.
An epic of a fight with a lion and the wind, of living through time
and the difficulties of never cutting the delicate surface no struggle
greater than either.
The old skeletons will find new life and I will dance freely with them
arm in arm, for a second or eternity.
We will stand proud together singing and dancing before the after party.
Then we shall toast to it all.
We shall toast the ever so careful historians,
did they really think they could fit, even the after party on
any number of pages?
May 21, 2015
May 21, 2015 at 10:37 PM UTC
The Emperor's new shoes
Painted imitation leather, polished and treated with care
admired and envied, all eyes drawn, especially yours.
Look at me, envy me, look how I dance.
Look at my silhouette marvel at how I make you feel,
Throw yourself to me, l make you feel so true
We are elite .
Walking stronger, dancing so much faster
How fanciful I am you,free unaffected
How do I make you look and feel, the emperor's new shoes,
Legitimizing your nobility
But how I pinch, and how I hurt you, how contorted you’v become,
How you twisted and bent to fit with me,
contrived , like me ,our artificial natural .
Your need for me and performance reflecting my own.
This illusion , only granted by me.
You never really chose, i led you to believe you are some king.
Your allegiance will not be rewarded the crest has to fall,
You can not always dance for me .
Remember i am painted and cannot become worn ,
I will not become comfortable for you,
I will not become misshapen from accommodation and give.
I will not shine if you dull me, my radiance is painted ,
Only you my emperor masked our deceit.
Now i leave you barefoot .
Jan 27, 2014
Jan 27, 2014 at 4:11 PM UTC
I steal her hand, sit by her side
A whispered tone, a swift goodbye
I kiss her deep, and she is gone
I feel too weak to be so strong
I stand up straight, begin to shake
I clench my knees to keep my shape
I stand again, and am not sure
That I can fight, or will endure
I slowly turn the clockwork ****
The old wood groans the more I ****
My loved ones all sweep into view
They act, but they all know the news
A tiny figure takes my side
She grips my leg, begins to cry
I take her up, I kiss her head
I let her cry till tears are dead
I look down at my little girl
I see my wife, emotions swirl
My eyes go red, a heart torn deep
But I have promises to keep
And years to go before I weep
And years to go before I weep
Dec 21, 2011
Dec 21, 2011 at 5:04 AM UTC
Monica,
she said her name was.
Of course I didn't believe her,
but it wasn't important.
What was important,
when she met me
with a cheery professional
smile
at the window
in the waiting room
of Anfu Massage,
was that she was
willing
to take me by the hand
and lead me
down the very dim corridor
into a dimly lit room
with a bed
where she and I shared
an hour of
******
pleasure.
She made me feel
like a great lover
and gave me her best
imitation of passion
so skillfully
that I believed,
because I wanted to,
for that hour
that I was
making love
to my lover.
I used to agonize
and feel guilty about it,
but in this solitary
autumnal season
of my life,
haunted
by the ghosts
of loves lost,
I am grateful
for even this
sweet counterfeit.
And, yes
I revel
in her gentle feminine
warmth,
her softness,
and in the primal
connection
we make.
Somehow, it
feels like
it is keeping my heart
alive.
Jan 11, 2011
Jan 11, 2011 at 8:28 PM UTC
queer creature of white stone:
the spirit of the island in the head of this lion,
the soul of the natives in the body of this fish,
spirit and soul, lion and fish, mingle together by
mere wry humour of evolution’s word
we revere this beast, (it watches over us
from nine metres above), we bow down our backs,
(worship it as our exemplar): for many of us,
unknowingly, we emulate the spirit and soul
of this queer white creation of stone.
standing tall (unshaken!) even as jaundice bolts of heaven’s
creep tip-toed behind its scales and strike:
its cemented steadfastness of stone we emulate,
for through the towering grey waves of crisis, and
the threatening dark clouds that foretell our very fears,
we too, have floated and transcended and appeared
unscathed.
mutated monster – child of bad genes,
they despise such unfavourable antagonistic features
(shall it rule like a lion or flail like a fish?):
its unlikeliness of surviving, of thriving we emulate:
for this dotted smudge of red pen ink on the globe,
destined to bow down to fate – bowed down not, and
flourished.
beams of white water spouting out in a
perfect shape of a quadrant’s circumference, endlessly,
its majestic spewing action we emulate:
this island of expectations, sterile smell of success,
fate of our future in the setting of an exam hall,
(in there do you not think we resemble the merlion,
our mouths the hoses, the papers our well?)
but, oh, the merlion – so many of it –
the merlions, same-maned, same-scaled,
fluttering and bursting with imitation across our home:
such congruity, conformity we emulate:
for years of yearning to swim in the mainstream waters,
of being goldfish, instead of losing the waters for flight like flying fish,
have made us very much, about
the same.
queer creature of white stone:
do you see not how we resemble your very self,
how we offer you praise (by
lifting our human arms, arching on our mere knees,
hoisting our lowly mortal heads, surveying your colossal royalty,
camera in hand)?
Dec 27, 2011
Dec 27, 2011 at 7:02 AM UTC
Daffodil, daffodil, can’t you see?
I love you sweet flower,
But you don’t love me.
You know me not, so I suppose,
I am but a mirror,
Blank as shadows.
Without people I am mute,
Mere consciousness,
A playerless lute.
Around too many others
I am a scramble,
Their presence smothers.
Daffodil, daffodil, look not listen,
I am a poor imitation
But my eyes, they glisten.
I am nothing at all of my own:
Composed of distant fragments,
Patchwork of all I’ve known.
I have nothing you could call a true voice;
The words that I speak
Are not mine of choice.
I love you, I love you,
I can never say,
Unless you do too.
Sep 26, 2019
Sep 26, 2019 at 10:15 AM UTC
We plucked eyebrows
from the clover.
Caterpillars
contracting as
we pinched each one
between our plump
baby fingers,
expanding as
we lined them on
each other’s arms—
wooly train cars.
They would ripple
blindly, segment
by segment, scoot
across the floor
of the rusty
coffee can we’d
prepared for them
so carefully—
braided hairs of
grasses, flowers,
twigs, stones and all—
a crude and cruel
imitation
of their clover,
but certainly
better, somehow.
We were sure.
Dec 15, 2015
Dec 15, 2015 at 4:04 PM UTC
someone out in cyber-land
might just be
copying a poem which they'll
attribute to their own tee
unscrupulous replicators
have no qualms
on flagrantly stealing the lines
from genuine arms
when they take a fancy
to your brilliance of verse
they'll naff off with all or part of it
and stow it within their purse
piracy is rife around
online writing dales and dells
it's the pilfering of an authentic
author's heart and soul bells
they say that imitation
is the sincerest form of flattery
but an alternate opinion
would say plagiarists are bereft
of an original wordage battery
Aug 2, 2018
Aug 2, 2018 at 8:15 PM UTC
It is so measured that rising arpeggio, only to fall and rise again in quicker values, through the dominant seventh to the heartache moment of that minor ninth, a very apogee of dissonance. Then it goes higher still to the fifth, holding to that Phrygian harmony before returning to the tonic minor and a measured fall in the bass. This is a deliberate descent to the sub-mediant, and Bach’s touch of magic, the equivalence with the dominant minor ninth. But then he gives us hope: an extended and joyful play through sequences that rise and fall within each bar, to rest finally on the mediant’s echo of that opening, that measured rise and the quickening fall. We have hardly smiled with relief when Bach pulls us back into the insecurity of the dominant of the subdominant, that V of IV acting like a bridge to a long, long discourse in the dominant, a pedal E holding firmly to itself whilst rising arpeggios and falling decorations and sequences pull and pull through innocently related keys. Longer and longer play the rising passages until short motives of imitation interrupt, treble to bass, tenor to alto, until: a first inversion arpeggio of the dominant seventh measures out the opening rhythm. This happens twice in short succession, as though holding the progress of the music to account. A questioning perhaps before a four-fold sequence asserts the dominant and a chorded caesura. There is a pregnant, though faintly resonant silence as Bach spins the dice of tonality and chooses the subdominant to bring the music towards a waiting Allemande. The music moves through a play of subdominant to dominant, minor to major, the mix of flattened fifth and flattened ninth. It is those intervals that determine Bach as the father of ambiguity in the 20C school of jazz harmony, Arpeggio then a falling scale, and repeat and repeat again, but moving ever higher by sequence. At last five chords – merely a shorthand for closure via the expectation of a right display of the performer’s improvisatory prowess. They prepare us reverently for the tonic minor before the stately Allemande leads the music into the elegant steps of its walking dance.
Jan 5, 2013
Jan 5, 2013 at 3:13 AM UTC
*we are witness to atrocities
committed by regime
over its peoples
over time*
1.
we are witness..
shattering glass of reality arranged into chosen shard-feeds
like omni-gov surveillance into meticulous mind-grafts
spluttering eternal-stats for public mind control
spewing mini-truths of perpetual war raids
disillusionment of history forever rewritten
control supply-and-demand
create dark-cloaked dilemma and monitor shortage and famine
make-believe elements so well played to auto-frenzied latch
thinking is degraded and actions.. well, less said
2.
diligent and loyal yet harbour secret-hatred
feed visions stilted by politrix
deception and manipulation
propaganda is the oleaginous-game by wand-over-mind
totalitarian is the kingpin-holder of cards
and yet, who is really being played!
eternal marionettes on a conveyor-belt
can't even play with yourself alone
your **** your **** your every move..
watched - surveyed - and studied
by that ubiquitous-bulge eye you cannot escape
right opposite your low hard-bed
you're broken into popping-parts
that YOU won't recognise!
thoughtcrime-police is gonna accost ya
get up, comrade.. get UUUUUUUUP!
3.
we are witness
life-tube covered in darkened vapour-swirls
we are witness
children conditioned to watch their parents.. too closely
we are witness
truth so smothered, now re-fed by repeat-metaphor
we are witness
dictata.. dictata..
we are witness
austere existence in a tacky one-room flat
we are witness
subsist on black-wheat and imitation-repast
we are witness
regurgitate the party-dialect on and on and on
(after a while, we end up half-believing.. )
*only the clock which strikes thirteen
can smell the charred-reality
as leftover-truth is shoved
into incendiary obsolescence*
tick-a-damn-tock
and that would be..
one
S T - 26 sept
Sep 26, 2013
Sep 26, 2013 at 11:53 AM UTC