"likability" poems
Better natured today than yesterday,
smelling less like cigarettes and more
like laundry detergent, you sit across
from your therapist at the bar and
ask for one more boilermaker.
You say, How do you desire what you already possess?
And your therapist says, Don't go down that drunk.
That's a bad drunk.
You're in a floral print A-line dress, one
you bought from your sister-in-law.
She's doing one of those multilevel marketing things
and though her Facebook posts make you want
to suicide yourself, she's happy and independent
and at home with her kids. Despite these lukewarm
feelings, you harbor some resentment as you finger
and thumb a seam that's already coming undone.
Sloane. Your husband keeps mentioning a woman
at the office named Sloane. You're at the bar,
almost alone, and promised yourself
you wouldn't think about Sloane. But here you are.
Sloane in a pencil skirt and stockings. Sloane
with a fresh ****** energy, the kind you can't
seem to summon, and you wonder why ***
is such an important thing. It's so brief,
forgettable, full of abject compromise.
*** is an inherently violent act, don't you think?
You say to the therapist.
If your therapist hears you, he doesn't respond.
You don't repeat the question.
You watch yourself broadcast on the TV above the bar.
They're commenting on your hair and your arms
and going on and on about your likability.
Your therapist changes the mood. It's 6:30.
He gives the place a nighttime feel.
He kills a row of lights and turns on the
colored bulbs, the blues and greens.
The TV is turned down. The music is turned up.
This is what you've been waiting for, the lights, the music.
There's an hour before anyone really shows up. You can
close your eyes and drift.
Two or three drinks pass. A couple walks in.
You have your therapist put in for an Uber.
Maybe I've been asking the question the wrong way, you say.
Oh yeah? the therapist says.
Yeah. Maybe the question should be reversed.
Maybe the question should be
how do you remain desirable to the objects you possess?
That seems like a lot of work. Seems like you'd have no
sense of self. You'd always be bending.
I've been a plus one for a long time.
You say bending. But I wouldn't be
doing anything new. I already do all these things.
But I see them as a compromise. I'm just trying
to reframe, you know?
Why? your therapist asks.
You open your mouth and find no words. You smile. You say you've had too much. You're rambling. You're sorry. You better go.
Nov 7, 2016
Nov 7, 2016 at 12:15 PM UTC
She held him like a dangling participle,
as mothers sometimes do.
Disconnected from her sentence,
he was held on but stiffly confused.
He possesses a birthright to her hard-wiring,
or is it mandatory?
Woman-datory?
Umbilical, precedence will or won't inherit addictive behaviours.
Likability of some traits but not others, wishing he wasn't.
More like her, realisations go awry.
Pattern of outstretched arms dangling that boy.
His diaper is off, and jettison's stream, so caution.
Hiking along the forgotten path, brambling overgrowth blocked his continuing.
He cuts a new path.
She cuts the umbilical.
Jul 5, 2017
Jul 5, 2017 at 9:39 AM UTC
For the sake of betterness or quickness,
The life is all about developing own customized extensions or plugins .
Better sitted pees
Better stand-up pees
Better view
Better trails
Better quality
Better quantity
Better pace
Better Understanding
Better likability
Better knowledge
Better green
Better pleasure
Better writes
Better disorientation
Better philosophy
Better stimulation
Better cycles
Better science
Better calculus
Better reads
Better rain
Better gulps
Better art
Better calendars
Better wilderness
Better awakening
Better flirting
Better cooking
Better carpentry
Better tactics
Better silence
Better touch
Better light
Better technology
Better sunsign
Better blue ticks
Better mixing
Better chaos
Better mutation
Better round-tables
Better deals
Better excretion
Better burial
Better fertilization
Better moon
Better sun
Better fun
And It rhymed , thereby set for n number possibilities.
Nov 15, 2017
Nov 15, 2017 at 6:06 AM UTC
Why am I running to him?
When he’s running from me
Its as if this determines my likability
Stay present
Focus on you
Rumination and worry
Will only lead to doubt.
Break free
Don't stress
If it's meant to be, it will be
If the glass is half full
You can’t fill it to the top.
It needs to be filled by two.
To create lasting harmony
Heart raw
And wanting more
There is a hand suspended
Hanging in the air
Love me or lose me
Mar 12, 2021
Mar 12, 2021 at 9:54 AM UTC
I don’t even recognize myself.
At some point I stepped into a fog and forgot who I was before,
while acquiring a new likability and endearment.
Time stops
I reflect on my former self and she is a million miles away.
Yesterday is a million miles away.
The sun is ninety-one million miles away.
I descended into the stars and landed ninety-one millions miles from earth,
to touch the fiery surface.
My skin melts from my bones into an olive puddle.
Gathering the molten remains into my pocket,
I am thrown into obsidian.
Tumbling and falling, gasping for air,
while remnants of my light trickles into the night sky.
Entering the Milky Way and crying for solace,
my ascension to earth comes to an end.
Landing so heavily,
as the weight of my sorrows burrows within,
I think back to the particles within my clothes.
Slowly and solemnly the remains are picked from my pocket.
Changed
and unrecognizable,
I stretch them over my charred bones, until finally,
I am masked from their eyes.
My eyes have darkened and my soul has weakened.
The weak and weary screams from my lungs
detonate the irrational beating of my heart.
The heart that once beat for life,
like a clock ticking towards excitement now ticks as a timer,
pending my inevitable end.
In the end,
Edward Bloom became what he always was,
and that was a very big fish.
Will I die with the fish?
Will my soul be trapped in this echo in time I’m forced to repeat every day,
where I’m drowning and drowning;
my lungs have tightened,
as exhaustion overwhelms me.
I’ve exhausted my options.
There is nothing left but the act of living.
My body has lived but my soul has died.
The goodbyes were said long ago.
Remembering what life was before I died is unimaginable.
Was there a life before this?
Were my eyes ever brighter to the average man?
Was the hole in my chest ever filled with content?
To speak of this would assure my final farewell.
The farewell of my body as well.
The memory of my existence as well.
Jul 3, 2016
Jul 3, 2016 at 6:15 AM UTC
Don't let me be the kind of *******
Who hides behind the facade of fake morals
Blinded by the who's and what's of the society
To carefully navigate into the spectrum of likability
Murdering ideas
Shepherded by the popular beliefs that the self proclaimed "ubermensch" with values smaller than the faith of a mother consoling her dying child propagates
Don't let me be the kind of *******
Blindly seeing the disarray of colors and beliefs
Waving divisive flags of identity
While failing to identify the core of what makes us humans in the first place
Erasing the tiniest sketch of personality
To enjoy the recognition that comes with society's impeccably placed self serving values
Foolish enough to think that they're smarter than the rest
Smart enough to recognise the falacies that dont serve their interest
Don't let me be the kind of *******
Bayoneting the rights of others to exists
Carrying big guns
Compensating for the personality they lack
Their inability to break the circuit
Their brains programmed to applaud
The orange bleep on their screens that rule their lives
Their messiah
Don't let me be the kind of *******
Pretentiously answeing to a higher cause
While dismissing the cries that really need answering
Leading life one line at time
From a forged manuscript
Playing my part just right to be recognised at the pearly gates
While closing my doors to the here and now
To the damaged
To the rejects who dont see the white and gold
Or the the blue and black
But simply crave the warmth of the fabric
Of a touch, of a hug
Maybe a warm cup of humanity
Not the body or the blood of
A humanbeing just like the rest of us
We're all capable of miracles
Not a trick like walking on water
Bur changing the world one life at a time
Not as gods
But humans, in our truest forms
(Fort Worth, TX 12/02/2018)
Dec 2, 2018
Dec 2, 2018 at 5:57 PM UTC
He has a con mans likability
A cunning sly agility
Disguised as civility
With an ego of nobility
He has a con mans likability
A shallow loud tranquility
Illusioned vulnerability
To hide his own futility
May 26, 2018
May 26, 2018 at 6:32 PM UTC