"jailbird" poems
Tolstoy was a boy,
Ibsen was Henrik's son
Hardy had a father,
And see how well they've done.
Byron was a grandson,
And Wordsworth had a wet nurse,
Thoreau had a 2 to go,
Shakespeare a bad marriage,
Austen was a loner,
Poor Sylvia was a goner,
And see how well they've done.
Joyce had a ***** mind,
Fitzgerald liked to drink,
Richler liked to smoke,
And Wolfe enjoyed a ****
And see how well they've done.
Fielding was a misogynist,
Wilde was a jailbird;
Virginia a misandrist,
And Kerouac a simple ****
Yet see how well they've done.
Still with all their drawbacks,
Look how well they've done;
Like our old friend John,
We surely come un-done.
Dec 20, 2018
Dec 20, 2018 at 10:39 AM UTC
Poverty
This ailment clips my bare soul
My malady hides my ample sight
Penury loads my cognition. Watery hole
Shift not far my destination, yet too blight
It is corral, harvesting my living carcass
I don't egender chaff in the shining sun
this coop is an enclosure of my idleness
Like a jailbird my to be is limited and shun
*One day. My wandring ship will wheel
My fervor will ease and I'll scope my haven
My wounds and lesions will then heal
I will grab my revenue as in Heaven
May 22, 2015
May 22, 2015 at 6:19 AM UTC
Cheers from inside the catacombs of just-alive vagabonds & miscreant self-delusions of sagacious sabotage & pyrrhic moonscapes, brandishing our eternal return
a tabula rasa for respect & character - bottoms up, too. Mona Lisa
Shroud of Turin, ******* on a trunk. Gamble 66
for trays, dealing steam carrots.
Gag reflex to polite televangelists giving viewers auspicious immunity.
Habits cede to Power, acquiesce to Power, love power.
Peculiarity can recognize & organize to displace.
Something suspicious may run amok , antithetical to the divide & conquer trite.
Defeating paragons, i , Plumed Serpent of release & capture beats, borrowing color from a skylark in forever-flight, conjure remedial winds
Guide inimical bows subsumed in a cosmo-prole dew against the fasces of a few.
Apr 7, 2010
Apr 7, 2010 at 10:20 PM UTC
My life is like a keyboard in
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
I try and Esc those who are poison to my life
where I just need to Tab and skip ahead a week
or maybe a month
that doesn't always work so I try and find an Alt way
if all fails
push through to the End
Shift to the new chapter
and delete them from your life
phone
social media and all
I like to enter into a long dream
so I can wake up and start over
some days feel like I am on caps lock and everything is drastic
or way too exciting I just need to scroll down a bit to save some energy for the rest of the day
Some days I need not be alone
but to insert myself into healthy groups
full of positive vibes and energy
if I stay with healthy relationships
my f8 should be well off
but don't quote me on that
if I ever get to crazy
feel free to tell me to backspace
and just chill
I don't want my life to be just okay & full of JK's
but rather full of spontaneous adventures
while trying not to be a jailbird one day
I know we belong together
for that is why W and E are next to each other
like U and I
but don't #perfect us for we are like many others
so if you could let me clear my mind
and focus that would be great
for I am @ a point
where I shouldn't be worried about $$
and the % I make
to help do things for you and I
because it isn't about
money but taking
one letter one word at a time
Mar 27, 2018
Mar 27, 2018 at 12:16 AM UTC
"ALTHOUGH I'd lie lapped up in linen
A deal I'd sweat and little earn
If I should live as live the neighbours,'
Cried the beggar, Billy Byrne;
"Stretch bones till the daylight come
On great-grandfather's battered tomb.'
Upon a grey old battered tombstone
In Glendalough beside the stream
Where the O'Byrnes and Byrnes are buried,
He stretched his bones and fell in a dream
Of sun and moon that a good hour
Bellowed and pranced in the round tower;
Of golden king and Silver lady,
Bellowing up and bellowing round,
Till toes mastered a sweet measure,
Mouth mastered a sweet sound,
Prancing round and prancing up
Until they pranced upon the top.
That golden king and that wild lady
Sang till stars began to fade,
Hands gripped in hands, toes close together,
Hair spread on the wind they made;
That lady and that golden king
Could like a brace of blackbirds sing.
"It's certain that my luck is broken,'
That rambling jailbird Billy said;
"Before nightfall I'll pick a pocket
And snug it in a feather bed.
I cannot find the peace of home
On great-grandfather's battered tomb.'
1.5k
Round the path these wraiths walk
paced to keep the gears turning
save for a few this is Lady Justice
her arms holding even the smallest souls
sounds of buzzing and locks clanking
dominate above the incessant chatter
backyard handshakes hidden from prying eyes
dogged deals shaping these shatter lives
and the word of the day is always "waiting"
taking one last look at the hands of time
before that dreaded voice bellows through
then its the cold slap of flash on cement
these veal on twenty three hour lockdown
spinning their tales these jailbird tailors
lying to each other for stolen smiles
each in a different stage of the same life
bathing in the omnipresent light of fireflys
dreaming of a wisp of smoke or a hand stroke
whichever waits for them on the outside
they'd believe in the patience of the buddha
if religion were on their tapered tongues
as it is there's always faces against the glass
eyes peeled to savor the brief passing drama
apathetic to the other prison dog's plight
drooling for the next passing hour
as they count them like sheep herding sleep
cleansing their conscience in the communal rainshower
everyone praying for the wings of freedom
to fly them from these sullen gates
the others still suspended in solitude
letting one man tell them when to eat and wake
their voices becoming mere whispers of wind
poets robbed of their rhymes and words
grown accustomed to breathing processed air
measuring their time in months, weeks, and years
locked away with the shadow of their fears
Nov 13, 2011
Nov 13, 2011 at 9:50 PM UTC
I don't play by the rules and she played me for a fool
If she knew I was broke then i'd bet
That she wouldn't even let me light her cigarette
She thought I was her lucky strike
She was staking out a claim when pay was right
She meant the world to me
A world on fire, she was gasoline
With a busted lip this jailbird flys
Some say i'm no good.. But they lie
Nobody ever wants to hear my side
She wanted me for my money
But i'm poor
Taken for a ride
Jul 1, 2018
Jul 1, 2018 at 4:14 PM UTC
In the cargo its cramped and small
People range from short to tall
the smell of death evades the air
Nazis loading people with seeming-less care
Separation,Deprivation
Wheels turning, stomachs churning
the taste of fear,sweat and tears
What I have lived for through countless time.
Mortifying sights to see
family memories
ringing in my bleeding ears
Triggering my deepest fears
Sun rays shining through barbed wires
too much time spent in death cars
when will i escape this hell
captivating feelings held
Trapped and caged like a jailbird
Loaded and treated worse than a cattle heard
intense heat keeps us beat
disease and death among me creeps
Bodies close
too close for comfort
but that is least of my worries
Where is this place they are taking me
will I survive or will they break me
emaciated,hunger kills
I'm still alive 'cause my strong will
Sweat dripping down my cheek
the thirst and hunger turn me weak
dust and dirt caked upon us all
the horrendous taste of death still crawls.
Jul 18, 2010
Jul 18, 2010 at 10:31 AM UTC
Manila is fray
Tough enough to die,
Brave enough to see ****** against
the billboards
***** on the marketplace
***** men haggling for prices
the corners are squalid -- rats with ambitions of men take their places in
the esteros
a car-horn blares, wanes old moon music.
I sing songs of malversation. Trains all graffiti.
My heart like a jailbird freed somewhere
in the big sur; love assuages nothing,
comes with a cheap price
a freak December night in Roxas blvd.
i sit on marble benches and dream
of artilleries, garlands on snuff-nosed
barrels, nuns grieving dust
in the ground. communal bathrooms
drunk in foolish caricatures,
the tabloids displaying flowerheads --
the democracy in the streets a ****
for kings, no love to lull
me to infantile sleep
tortured are the bulls
matadors hiding behind faces red like
faces of statesmen flushed with
the spirit of bourbon
whereas we are here river-facing
northern tip of its undying source
like wives on balustrades waiting
to catch the fragrance of inamoratas,
light reenters
interstice of chary webs of dull heads hemmed in like canopies in the throat of overthrown ponds, scraps
of metal sold for a night's worth
of gin and Sinatra,
Deep within the grave, the dead laughing
at the dead living. Atop waters,
yachts peering into drowning fish,
in the middle, a jam of buses
belching lassitudes that strangle
the console, the man in all of us
the same, cursing behind the wheel
and everybody else different
dancing at the top of our heads.
Feb 27, 2016
Feb 27, 2016 at 5:04 AM UTC
Welcome
Initiate
to the
Big Room
of the Summit
County Jail.
Specialists
will handle
the theft
of your blanket
while you're
watching TV
The game of Hearts
shall be played
each morning
after the pancake
with cold coffee
and the
entertainment
features your
inaugural public
performance
on the alfresco
commode
Jul 25, 2013
Jul 25, 2013 at 8:42 PM UTC
quite drunk in this evening tender with rue – there is a gentle hand
that whirls against the bougainvillea.
things remain to be constantly in the tranquil as I am not
yet shaken in my fragile frame –
the leaves rustle in the 19 degree cold moon,
the beer bottles emptied, stacked beside the receptacles.
she and I could be dead, and it took me 3 years to know this:
there is a photograph of her thrown somewhere
behind scraps of metal, caged there, like a jailbird
in a jailhouse, screaming blue against redness.
I had love, and love died.
you neither flinch nor move at the very slight of me,
passing over the porch of your reading.
the thing that once moved now festers
with stillness, and so many vibrant explosions begin in the sky
and there is nothing discernible in her abject eyes.
I remember driving past your home in front of
a little, quaint house and I swore that the even your voice
speaks to me in evenings full with the thought
of never knowing you again.
you are so real like the horse that grazes the field
underneath umbilicus of power-lines,
yet so fake and feigned like the truth that tries
to assess itself , crawling mazy back into my drunken arms
like a child startled speaking a thousand things
I have already no use for.
sometimes the sun is like a house on fire.
sometimes the simmer of onion smells like ******
most of the time, the look on my face, half-drunk and half-believing,
looks like a night distilled and fractured by voices.
I will never ask for your hands to touch,
I will never ask for you body to make heat,
I will never ask for your footsteps to chime in grave music:
I have my own defeats to keep me
that way: toppled and scrounging for light.
let me be.
I have seen many warfares and not a single shot of a rifle
has broken me into the man that I once was.
I drive back to you and it is never the same:
it is banal to say that you have yourself
and I have my own, deep in study.
let us drive back to roads whetted with kisses
and from there, start to disentangle
like leaves from boughs
deep in December.
Dec 18, 2015
Dec 18, 2015 at 7:03 AM UTC
Look, all I’m saying is
I’m the cracks in the sidewalk
That they warn you not to step on
Or you’ll cause chain reactions that
Cause you to question whether or not
Blood is thicker than water. Because maybe,
You want her dead. Not in the long run
But in an instant where she drags you
Across the room by your hair, and
You break the ******* mirror
Because it shows you who
You’re not. All I’m saying
Is stand up and seep up the
Remnants of how much your daddy
Loved you, once upon a time, crumble
His cards and flowers made of prison cigarette
Packs and he said “I always thought of you,”
Meaning you’re a jailbird tattoo artist’s
Well-meaning card that he swapped
Cafeteria lunch cards for. And yes,
You were hurt, but the teacher
Tells you hold your tongue
And your bladder, even
Your first ever girlfriend says
That it’s not as bad as you make it,
When you realize you can’t love her,
You can’t love anyone you run so fast
Your legs squeak, you never want to run
Back to a house where they killed your dog
And your dreams and strung them up like laundry
On hot days. Eventually someone uses the “A”
Word, the “V” word, “victim” of “abuse” and it
Only hurts because deep in your swollen,
****** up core you know that it is true.
Mar 15, 2013
Mar 15, 2013 at 5:03 AM UTC
listen--
it's two-thirty in the morning.
there is a song playing, and it doesn't remind me of you,
but i thought you should know
because this next part is important.
the singer is Elliott Smith,
and he's kissing his darling between jailbird bars
just like that time--remember?--when we kissed
through the gap in the barbed wire,
and our hearts danced like the strobe of police lights.
(we were trespassing)
i'm not thinking of you,
because while i'm out here smoking,
and i wet my lips so the paper doesn't stick to them like heartbreak,
i don't imagine your cherry Chapstick or the way it left
mellow pink stains on your cigarette filters.
these are the facts:
i've nearly forgotten you;
i'm not still hung up on the smell of lavender handsoap;
i haven't rifled through a single Facebook album;
i don't know the name, address, and telephone number
(not to mention, i haven't memorized a single
stupid, snarky tweet)
of your new boyfriend
with the pretentious French last name.
anyway, i don't know why i decided to call,
i guess it was just to let you know
how i'm doing just fine without you.
Jul 20, 2014
Jul 20, 2014 at 6:46 PM UTC
My Jailbird Brother
you are both selfish and foolish
and i'm not sure which is worse
or which i envy more
less than five hours you were home
less than t h r e e h u n d r e d minutes
a careless release, really
but you wasted no time finding your way into trouble
the same kind of trouble that got you taken away
kept under lock and key
when you should have been here growing up with me
this wasn't how it was supposed to happen
i envisioned hugs and tears and rambling stories
instead i found drugs and fears and repressed memories
i thought that when you came back it would be like you never left
..it was exactly like that
in the worst way
like you really never went away
you'd been here the whole time
making messes and breaking hearts
among so many other things
making mom cry
because look at you
you're not the same
you came back worse than when you'd left
maybe they got it wrong
maybe they sent back someone else
you adapted to survive
but there's a point where stoic turns cold
and resilient becomes defensive
and you're hiding your feelings to the point
where you can't even even find them
i never saw you as a criminal
but now that's all you know how to be.
smndi
Jul 18, 2014
Jul 18, 2014 at 5:43 AM UTC
I have woken up too often
to the prodding of a phone number
I refuse to remember.
I have collected these mornings
along side your letters,
words I refuse to discard.
Nov 23, 2012
Nov 23, 2012 at 3:37 AM UTC
I hate the way I refer to him and "you" and you as "him"
I hate the way the passage of a year means nothing to my aching heart and
I hate the way the thought of her lips that are too thin and her eyes that are too dark and her hair that is too long is what he's chosen for three hundred and sixty seven days because I hate the way she told you you didn't love me the day you called me to tell me they told you what love was and I hate the way that I will always fall back into you and the jail cell that traps me between your ribs
but I love the taste of the glue from this envelope that lingers on my lips I love the way you wrap your arms around my waist I love the way you look at me as you **** me until I can't breathe
I love the way the blue of the skies I see when I wake up in the morning and the seas that lull me to sleep at night pales in comparison to the blue of your eyes and I love the way I miss you when I stop at stop lights and you aren't there to unclench my hands from the wheel
and I love the way we look at these stars together from this distance but ******* christ I hate the way the specks of light in this god forsaken sky are so far away - just like you from me tonight
I just hope they find a way to tell you that I love you with their whispering voices in the dawn cause baby now it's just you and me
Jul 13, 2014
Jul 13, 2014 at 2:49 AM UTC
Fly Jailbird Fly
Because my wings are broken
And my sight is weak
Fly thru the skies
And over the tides
Out of my hands
And out of my control
Give me dreams
Make them bigger than they seem
Everybody’s after you
Everybody wants you
Fly Jailbird Fly
Nov 21, 2017
Nov 21, 2017 at 11:15 AM UTC
They wound me up and left me to play
So, there I sat, day after day
Playing songs for fortune's fools
In the room they filled with tools
But, my songs grew weary as time did tick
And not much later I began to feel sick
My melodies faltered, clashed, and fell
With every toll of the midnight bell
Then one day my tunes did fade
So, I cowered in a lonely shade
My heart had been forever broken
Darkness was my only token
Then one day I heard a creak
And in the room a boy did sneak
He approached me with such nimble steps
And in my soul raised a long-forgotten pep
Boy, you wound me up and left me to play
So, there I sat day after day
Playing songs for jailbird fools
In the room still filled with tools
But, my songs grew morbid as time did tick
And not much later did the feeling stick
So, when I heard that eerie knell
I continued to play, bound by a spell
Songs were things that had been forbade
But I continued to play from the place that I laid
Never a word had a useless tool spoken
Until the day that my spell had been broken
For, in the room did a young man peek
And whispered softly for me to speak
My lack of answer caused him to fret
So, further in he swiftly crept
Man, you wound me up and left me to play
So, there I sat day after day
Playing songs for bones and ghouls
In the room without the tools
Aug 20, 2013
Aug 20, 2013 at 7:56 PM UTC
the boy on the stairs won’t be around much longer. three days time he’ll choke on a paddle ball. a detail will be passed around how a passerby tried to save the boy twice by pulling the paddle only to have it slip and snap the boy on the nose. sadness over it seems impossible.
not yet, but a tunnel under me as I carry my adult daughter from jailbird to jailbird collapses and I lose her to walking.
before my mother’s eyes were terrible things
she believed evolution would inform her next move.
Aug 12, 2013
Aug 12, 2013 at 4:58 PM UTC
Life of millennials are so juvenile
A day they walk down the stars
A night they run through a beaconof light
Encircled by a drape concealing darkness
To baffle those minds with no clue left aside
With no hope to survive
Either to curb those filthy signs
Or to get chucked in broad daylight
Is this how those spotless minds
Keep their body & soul together
With lies and iniquity all together .
Life's so miserable and impolitic
All we do around is so hasty
With a bunch of ethics to live by
All we do to turn Equality upside-down
With a flock of literates heading through
Under the norms of monestry
All we do to be a cannibal out of misery
Is this how we dream of a paradise,
Where there's no humane ilk left in human minds.
What if a girl wants to live her life
And breathe the air under no ties
What if a lassie wants to be a bit sassy,
To fulfill every yearnings that come by
And to be around those masses
Who makes her feel devine.
What if a wife wants to outlive that happiness
Which she craves round-the-clock
Even after she pampers indubitably
Every requisite her spouse endures.
No matter what she contemplates,
Alas! Those desires land to oblivion.
This generation never fails to stagger
Even if she suffers and serves
Every needs of a man that deserves
And ease his pique even if he resents.
But a man never blunders to let her guard down
Frowns like a ruffian who got on the loose
Hit & slap her as if she's the lost cause
All he does to take control
Over his priceless possession
As if he enslaved a jailbird in his mudhole.
This mankind never rue
Slapping someone without a clue
Even if there's no rationale to go through.
Such a despisal is hard to ponder
Even if a girl neither hold out against
Nor cross swords against those odds
Till there's nothing left to lose.
Maybe it's high time,
One should stand audacious to those crimes
To stand tall against the ferocity
That beholds million lives
Maybe it's time,
To let go of those henious folks
That make their life miserably unknown
And oppose against those slaps
That make them devour,
As everyone's one and the same
In the eyes of the impartial law.
Jun 9, 2020
Jun 9, 2020 at 2:19 PM UTC
life the grandest stage.
life, gelid waters – I, the pompous admiral.
life, thorns withholding enigmas,
clenching the true blood of flowers.
life, the flimsiest avant-garde.
our measures
conceal all our knowledge,
our fondness of exactitudes
bludgeons us to back to our smallness.
the heart, like a riot,
will always scream blood.
the soul, like a jailbird,
will always carve a song.
the mind, like a grave,
will turn soundless filled with bones.
some will beat back to the same old music,
assaulting the others with a concealed knife
gutting all of us as we lay still – the rest shaking around us.
when I was young, I was unsure of myself
and now that I have aged, it is all but the same:
I am a horde of drunkards.
I am the incessant pendulum.
I am the night-watch
and sometimes I am being watched by the night itself.
I am the loutish vandal on the wall.
I am hot, steaming music I am an earful of ***
I am a handful of hollow I am the dandelion whittling away
in the garden of full women seething with woes
I am the catapult of air from the sling of trees I am a somber god
I am an ungodly god I walk over toppled waters past genuflected hills
like maddened horses screaming victory
I am a limbless beast crawling back home
I am young I am old
my blood ravages the sinews of my body – I am a binaural cinematheque
of slow minutes I am a mausoleum of chiaroscuros
I am all pleasure pleasure pleasure
I am just as ****** as everyone I am sour mash stirred in a wide-mouthed
glass clinking together with this heavy slither of attendance around me
somewhere in Pasay
I am love I love I am hate and I hate
I am forever the lion that roars at what life has done to us
and they will cage me soon when the roses shy away from the deliberate daylight
and when all of this is through
I have only just begun.
Jan 8, 2016
Jan 8, 2016 at 9:39 AM UTC
headlines read,
'pope calls for "action now"
to save planet,
stem warming,
help poor'
article goes on to say
'his call has already won him the wrath of conservatives,
including several U.S. Republican presidential candidates
who have scolded Francis for delving into science and politics..'
though i'm not catholic,
nor am I even christian,
on behalf of the pope, this jailbird
needs to chide the politicians
for delving into organized crime
while neglecting the needs of life.
Jun 18, 2015
Jun 18, 2015 at 1:25 PM UTC
With clipped wings,
It flies,
Almost.
On broken limbs,
It stands,
Almost.
It is a jailbird,
And i,
Almost.
Mar 10, 2015
Mar 10, 2015 at 7:44 AM UTC
the day is passing like a riot
a cloud of people
chant the jailbird's song
a string of placards
encircled the throng
a meteoric rise in the atmosphere
has reigned in the souls of many a fist....
the heart of a crowd
is listening wildly
to speeches and voices
emphasizing a point
and views that each and
everybody shares
a unity that binds the masses
there is one man
that head the arms and bodies
of this throng
and he comes on strong
to those who have done
the nation wrong
a slim and simple being
seeing, seeking and wanting
some changes
some soothing replacement
to this scourging arrangement
the sun shines through him
and although wounded with scars
knowing one cell to the other,
he keeps the challenge
in his soul
and tried to reach a porch
in the sun
for his people, for his children
and for all that will come,
after him.....
Apr 9, 2015
Apr 9, 2015 at 7:53 AM UTC