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Terry O'Leary Aug 2014
The darkness, now descending, floods the city as it dies
while shadows lurk in legions 'neath the looming Evil Eye.
Its frozen stare envelops all, it penetrates and pries,
denouncing loathed dissenters to the keepers in the sky.

One’s inner thoughts are well descried before they’ve passed one’s lips
and cruelly crushed with grim contempt twixt despots’ fingertips;
but if no taboo-idea’s found, with which to come to grips,
the stymied Eye dispenses pus as fabrication drips.

The Eye peers down upon us now, to conquer and control,
and mark our every movement, whether hiding in a hole
or preening like a purple parrot perched upon a pole.
Our welfare and our happiness? No, certainly not the goal.

While phantoms fade, then reappear within the urban sprawl,
the gloom (adorned with Evil Eyes which pierce the livid pall)
pervades the ache and agony that poets sometimes scrawl
of plenitude to penury, how life endures the fall.

And should the herd dare whisper words of freedom's fragrant bloom
or murmur sighs of worriment at earth's impending doom,
the Evil Eye will squint a bit at those who so presume,
condemning nascent unchained thoughts to wither in the womb.

The Evil Eye bores everywhere, a tattletale to Kings,
who scrutinize their puppet people, strumming on their strings,
extracting secrets of their souls like spiders plucking wings
that flutter with the hangman’s knot as the corpse of freedom swings.

Yes, Princes rule with tungsten fists wherever they may roam
and sip from golden goblets, nectar, sweet as honeycomb
while peons (stripped of mind and soul) stray never far from home,
with faces 'neath the iron boot, ****** deep below the loam.

And peasants pass, parading by to fill the golden urn
with pennies for the afterlife wherefore the faithful yearn,
though screams of babes with empty eyes are never of concern
to those who covet silver coins, eyes cold and taciturn.

To hide the pains of purgatory, far-flung distant shores
(on islands of containment) cache the dingy dungeon doors
and inquisition water-boards that buoy their holy wars,
while sandmen drape our eyes with dust, with rainbow metaphors.

We’ll know the party's over when there's little left to eat
and all the learned scholars, lean, stay silent when they meet -
the Eye, withal, will spawn distrust on matters indiscreet.
The signs are all around us - even sheep no longer bleat.

                        Epilogue
One sightless seer scans the skies and mourns the heretofore.
Nine limbless men descend the stairs to find there is no floor.
Eight tongueless women babble, telling tales of nevermore.
Four earless children drown within the ocean's muted roar.

When hope becomes defiance, ask: Will bedlam soon arrive?
Will doves appear above us all? Or drones to guard the hive
while fed with milk and honey by the Queen and kept alive
to gut the gale below them? Will we let the Eye survive?
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2020
i return to these words that are barely
an architectural promise of a house as a mere:
rummaging squatter,
that this will eventually become
scrutinised by eyes beside my own...
well it's not like i rhyme-on-the-cheap...
i've been trying to watch some penny
dreadful episodes:
what would woman do without
the devil; i suppose man tangled with
god is nothing but an obnoxious brat...
the devil of emotions
and their plethora; this belittling god
fiddling with stones and creases
in york oak stand-alones...
                          then it came like
an itch: poached-taming-(of a)-toe...
just a tatty... a humble:
i am pretty sure i saw the letters
prefix a toad somewhere: po-ta-to(e):
ah... there! poached tame toad...
a sputniks for a brainz...
in penny dreadful: john claire
the name of victor frankenstein's monster:
oh dear old god: this continued
exasperation with poetry:
one must live a most unsatisfying life
to cross the rubricon of
old testament anemia:
            i think i admired wordsworth too... -

playing house with robert duncan -
especially now:
when the house is in complete disarray
and what was once cluttered:
is more an upheaval...

- i used to write while listening
to music - no i write for the scraps
of this yawning silence
and all of its blisters of interludes -
yes:
i want a noun to turn
into a verb: not a mere:
metaphorical "transgression"
of how it's impossible
for the wine to be blood
for the bread to be flesh:
this poetry of: cannibalism?

i pry open the adventures with
cats:
i own two... my house doesn't
give off whiffs of ****:
god... i know the horrid stench
of either **** or ****
that isn't my own:
solipsistic in that...
       it's not a field of strawberries...

it's acidic to the nose:
it's beyond anything i'd ever
want to ingest: and i have once...
giggled... ******* into a glass
of wine to: punk up
the sacrament -
then again: i also ****** on my leg
when standing in a shower
cubicle and i attest to disagree:
there's something...

unconsciously prodding:
the advent prior to... learning to stress
that bladder into a muscle
and keeping it in...
that i can counter the will
of keeping it in...
that i can unwill the sensible
lesson and: it's like... anything
aqua focused -
a shower is a baptism
jumping into a pool is a rebirth:
or an invitation to
beside oneself with: start-agains...

it's very much unlike
drinking... whether it's a coffee
or a whiskey sour...
the ingestion of liquid is less
starry-eyed gluttonous freeze...
having ate nothing but hot air
or...
the whole body needs immersion
or... the ******* on a leg
prior to: then taking a shower...
hell... even mixing one's own
**** with a glass of the goat's blood
is also... "something" / something-...

to pray for sensible things is
to mumble or there's that devil's
dozen of oysters:
12 by feeding:
the 13th in the form of a ****
by nibble lick and spoon
of the tongue and lips' acrobatics...

i'm playing house with robert duncan...
i'm not a householder -
a term as ancient as: librarian
by my account -
              but the house is in disarray:
the kitchen is being subjected
to a 24 / 7  dehumidifier drone
army... i can hear the machines
working their insomnia down
below:
i have custard feet and i feel like
sinking: not falling...
when i stand to these machines:
hellish-jelly-feet...
   when i turn on the stove
and make an omelette -

     the living room (civil room,
a joke from my youth i conjured -
a room where we learn civility)...
is also a makeshift kitchen...
i'm currently playing chess from time
to time with: the memory of:
where did i put these spices...
this spoon this plate...
       it's not chess but the game is
irreversible -
it's also time consuming and it's
not that i don't keep attention to detail:
but i'm gladly not thinking forward...
i'm strategizing in reverse -

but such is the game...
robert duncan - poet and householder -
a chance reading of a moth:
but this is what makes all of this
so enjoyable: it's a niche a cul de sac
of decisions: an expansion
of time that doesn't make it to the annals
of: better to... burn... than to fade away...
either make it in your youth:
nice and proper...
or... what's the game then:
last man standing?
the list of contemporaries
drawing thin, short?

playing house... that i had a youth
i remembered when i'd too play with dolls with
my neighbour's daughter -
clearly ken and barbie had a problem
with their missing parts -
eunuchs of the sun's blind spots...
unlike when we were allowed
to take a bath together as:
not siblings but as strange dialectical opposites
to this duality: that wouldn't encompass
my somehow yet to be owned:
me good & evil...

    me tamer - me: 19th century's frankenstein:
dr. Jekyll etc.
     a rule for life: apparently...
is to pet a cat when you see one
in the street...
it's not exactly an easy task...
i guess first a show of mutual
assurance (and respect) -
this black tubby - with a bandana
for where a leash-leftover could
have been (collar) -
he starts walking anti-clockwise...
i turn aside and start walking
clockwise to pass him...
then we shuffle our approach...
like... i would always want
to pass a pigeon strutting
senseless on the pavement
with enough space so that it doesn't
have to find it necessary to fly off...

luckily for me i managed to "pet"
a stranger's cat...
my luck that it was black
but then again it was that sort
of hour
that's always a presumption
of a lazy gotten afternoon...
rule of life: pet a cat on a street...
it's not exactly a ******* given:
an "oops"... done that... tick...
self-help guru sold this trick...
                    
a selfie contra the days...
when the camera was used and...
other people would take pictures
of you... or of you and:
when there was an "us" - together...
shorthand of the limbos of life -
magnum opus words
constipated into this: makeshift
of a hopeful paragraph...

no, this couldn't be a simple meditation:
confined to...
robert duncan's household -
and my predicament of... playing memory
chess: well it's not exactly clutter:
the kitchen cannot be used
so there's a makeshift refugee camp
version of it in the living room yadda yadda...

which is a commentary on...
my distrust for the h'american literary movement
of the 20th century teasing an abandonment
with the "old ways"...
buddhism, odd... mostly...
   fair enough:
              ezra pound abhorred the taoists...
my one lesson from tao...
the best way you can aid the world:
is for the world to forget you
and for you to forget the world...
which is probably a plagiarism
of epicurus or vice versa...

              i can't imagine the demands
of pop philosophy:
pop culture on the other hand is much
easier to stomach: it's even enjoyable -
but the pop philosophy of nihilism -
which is: a pop philosophy...
it's not even required reading -
unless: you're rereading your own?
thrown into the river -
i am becoming a being of more becoming...
change is the only perpetual: blah...
if it's not my own rummagings it's
probably someone else's:
which has probably become diluted /
filtered down and is a cubism's monstrosity...

books sell for two reasons:
(1) they are genuinely read by a zeitgeist youth...
which invokes social pressures of
the collected experience - in ref. to:
something that can be talked about...
(2) they are read by "propagandists" -
by a small majority who pressure others to...
but the pressure only lasts for
airs - for a mere ownership of a book
should one be met with a scrutiny of
not owning it - reading it is beside the point...

and here in the land of "leftovers":
the middle of the road the people:
who of their own volition write and read...
that i was never ****** into
a cult of stephen king...
i was born too late to be:
but i was: ****** into a postmortem
oeuvre deity picking almost
anything by william burroughs...
i: reader: dear reader: clicked...

- i can't objectify this house -
i am subject to it: coerced by it...
made by bias upon bias
whether there's clutter or there isn't...
whether the kitchen is functionable
or not: that some people have
a kitchen but prefer to eat out:
to be seen: eating...
             i check the gradations of
punctuations and i know: still...
i will not recite these words not
out of gestures for bombast -
or pride - but for some sinister
urge to not abuse this sacred silence:
******* taught man
to manouvre... manouvre...
manouvre... maneouvre...
        man-oeuvre...
                   drop the hyphen boyo:
manoeuvre... wow!
"too many" consonants
in ****** words... how about a
magic trick? how many *******
vowels are in: man-oovr'eh?
phonetics king of the anti-spelling:
but then...
the synonym sounds
with aliases...
towing two different meanings:
too hot to count two
          ooh ooze - zizzez...
              zyzzes...
                     i can bring this anglo-slack-son
to kneel but only for a while:
before the architectural scholarly-
  takes over and the phonetic becomes:
lost, crude... based feral...

- a robert duncan is not a...
it's not mediocre is not necessary to be:
gee-whizz of frank o'hara's
cosmopolitan...
it's flesh of the h'american tongue
it's: sensibly accurate to provide
the best outlet:
for those of us still born in that
century - of what remained of us:
or rather of what remained
of the innocence of the 1990s...

that i am not nostalgic is: no proof...
that i write hardly any word of fiction:
one spaniard, once... commented
on my shoes:
i think he played a miniature version
of a flute: it looked like a reed...
the "spanish" superstition
concerning: a comment on one's shoes...
he admired... my shoes...
what's that saying:
about shoes: to best walk in one's
own before wishing to fill the shoes
of others...
a verb as simple as: there's no
presence of "run": when coupled
to: i am running: i ran...
it's raining...
i run i ruin fun... concentrated
"rhyming": literally linear: no staccato...

******* me over "jenga"...
this microcosm of sounds -
yet to draw deep leverage from
a meaning: it comes back as a mere
sound: worse a... mimic -
an aeon of only hearing
the heaving of a crow's crackling
croak... like a breaking of a tongue:
or... the lost trill of the R in
either fwench or: english...

exemplified R: with a diacritical mark
to make emphasis of the trill...

yes... this democratic oath of poets..
well: we're not going to tend to
the republic of the wizened goats
ex athens... are we?
the democratic oath of poets -
unlike the hippocratic loaf...
            which is a spectacular failure
since i have seen what
little ambitions can do:
when... the boat is not being
rocked: yet someone is still willing
to throw someone... overboard...
now that the boat is rocking:
i see nooses instead of paddles...
the seas are still rife with calm...

playing house with robert duncan -
especially now:
when the house is in complete disarray
and what was once cluttered:
is more an upheaval...

- i used to write while listening
to music - no i write for the scraps
of this yawning silence
and all of its blisters of interludes -
yes:
i want a noun to turn
into a verb: not a mere:
metaphorical "transgression"
of how it's impossible
for the wine to be blood
for the bread to be flesh:
this poetry of: cannibalism?

i pry open the adventures with
cats:
i own two... my house doesn't
give off whiffs of ****:
god... i know the horrid stench
of either **** or ****
that isn't my own:
solipsistic in that...
       it's not a field of strawberries...

it's acidic to the nose:
it's beyond anything i'd ever
want to ingest: and i have once...
giggled... ******* into a glass
of wine to: punk up
the sacrament -
then again: i also ****** on my leg
when standing in a shower
cubicle and i attest to disagree:
there's something...

unconsciously prodding:
the advent prior to... learning to stress
that bladder into a muscle
and keeping it in...
that i can counter the will
of keeping it in...
that i can unwill the sensible
lesson and: it's like... anything
aqua focused -
a shower is a baptism
jumping into a pool is a rebirth:
or an invitation to
beside oneself with: start-agains...

it's very much unlike
drinking... whether it's a coffee
or a whiskey sour...
the ingestion of liquid is less
starry-eyed gluttonous freeze...
having ate nothing but hot air
or...
the whole body needs immersion
or... the ******* on a leg
prior to: then taking a shower...
hell... even mixing one's own
**** with a glass of the goat's blood
is also... "something" / something-...

to pray for sensible things is
to mumble or there's that devil's
dozen of oysters:
12 by feeding:
the 13th in the form of a ****
by nibble lick and spoon
of the tongue and lips' acrobatics...

i'm playing house with robert duncan...
i'm not a householder -
a term as ancient as: librarian
by my account -
              but the house is in disarray:
the kitchen is being subjected
to a 24 / 7  dehumidifier drone
army... i can hear the machines
working their insomnia down
below:
i have custard feet and i feel like
sinking: not falling...
when i stand to these machines:
hellish-jelly-feet...
   when i turn on the stove
and make an omelette -

     the living room (civil room,
a joke from my youth i conjured -
a room where we learn civility)...
is also a makeshift kitchen...
i'm currently playing chess from time
to time with: the memory of:
where did i put these spices...
this spoon this plate...
       it's not chess but the game is
irreversible -
it's also time consuming and it's
not that i don't keep attention to detail:
but i'm gladly not thinking forward...
i'm strategizing in reverse -

but such is the game...
robert duncan - poet and householder -
a chance reading of a moth:
but this is what makes all of this
so enjoyable: it's a niche a cul de sac
of decisions: an expansion
of time that doesn't make it to the annals
of: better to... burn... than to fade away...
either make it in your youth:
nice and proper...
or... what's the game then:
last man standing?
the list of contemporaries
drawing thin, short?

playing house... that i had a youth
i remembered when i'd too play with dolls with
my neighbour's daughter -
clearly ken and barbie had a problem
with their missing parts -
eunuchs of the sun's blind spots...
unlike when we were allowed
to take a bath together as:
not siblings but as strange dialectical opposites
to this duality: that wouldn't encompass
my somehow yet to be owned:
me good & evil...

    me tamer - me: 19th century's frankenstein:
dr. Jekyll etc.
     a rule for life: apparently...
is to pet a cat when you see one
in the street...
it's not exactly an easy task...
i guess first a show of mutual
assurance (and respect) -
this black tubby - with a bandana
for where a leash-leftover could
have been (collar) -
he starts walking anti-clockwise...
i turn aside and start walking
clockwise to pass him...
then we shuffle our approach...
like... i would always want
to pass a pigeon strutting
senseless on the pavement
with enough space so that it doesn't
have to find it necessary to fly off...

luckily for me i managed to "pet"
a stranger's cat...
my luck that it was black
but then again it was that sort
of hour
that's always a presumption
of a lazy gotten afternoon...
rule of life: pet a cat on a street...
it's not exactly a ******* given:
an "oops"... done that... tick...
self-help guru sold this trick...
                    
a selfie contra the days...
when the camera was used and...
other people would take pictures
of you... or of you and:
when there was an "us" - together...
shorthand of the limbos of life -
magnum opus words
constipated into this: makeshift
of a hopeful paragraph...

no, this couldn't be a simple meditation:
confined to...
robert duncan's household -
and my predicament of... playing memory
chess: well it's not exactly clutter:
the kitchen cannot be used
so there's a makeshift refugee camp
version of it in the living room yadda yadda...

which is a commentary on...
my distrust for the h'american literary movement
of the 20th century teasing an abandonment
with the "old ways"...
buddhism, odd... mostly...
   fair enough:
              ezra pound abhorred the taoists...
my one lesson from tao...
the best way you can aid the world:
is for the world to forget you
and for you to forget the world...
which is probably a plagiarism
of epicurus or vice versa...

              i can't imagine the demands
of pop philosophy:
pop culture on the other hand is much
easier to stomach: it's even enjoyable -
but the pop philosophy of nihilism -
which is: a pop philosophy...
it's not even required reading -
unless: you're rereading your own?
thrown into the river -
i am becoming a being of more becoming...
change is the only perpetual: blah...
if it's not my own rummagings it's
probably someone else's:
which has probably become diluted /
filtered down and is a cubism's monstrosity...

books sell for two reasons:
(1) they are genuinely read by a zeitgeist youth...
which invokes social pressures of
the collected experience - in ref. to:
something that can be talked about...
(2) they are read by "propagandists" -
by a small majority who pressure others to...
but the pressure only lasts for
airs - for a mere ownership of a book
should one be met with a scrutiny of
not owning it - reading it is beside the point...

and here in the land of "leftovers":
the middle of the road the people:
who of their own volition write and read...
that i was never ****** into
a cult of stephen king...
i was born too late to be:
but i was: ****** into a postmortem
oeuvre deity picking almost
anything by william burroughs...
i: reader: dear reader: clicked...

- i can't objectify this house -
i am subject to it: coerced by it...
made by bias upon bias
whether there's clutter or there isn't...
whether the kitchen is functionable
or not: that some people have
a kitchen but prefer to eat out:
to be seen: eating...
             i check the gradations of
punctuations and i know: still...
i will not recite these words not
out of gestures for bombast -
or pride - but for some sinister
urge to not abuse this sacred silence:
******* taught man
to manouvre... manouvre...
manouvre... maneouvre...
        man-oeuvre...
                   drop the hyphen boyo:
manoeuvre... wow!
"too many" consonants
in ****** words... how about a
magic trick? how many *******
vowels are in: man-oovr'eh?
phonetics king of the anti-spelling:
but then...
the synonym sounds
with aliases...
towing two different meanings:
too hot to count two
          ooh ooze - zizzez...
              zyzzes...
                     i can bring this anglo-slack-son
to kneel but only for a while:
before the architectural scholarly-
  takes over and the phonetic becomes:
lost, crude... based feral...

- a robert duncan is not a...
it's not mediocre is not necessary to be:
gee-whizz of frank o'hara's
cosmopolitan...
it's flesh of the h'american tongue
it's: sensibly accurate to provide
the best outlet:
for those of us still born in that
century - of what remained of us:
or rather of what remained
of the innocence of the 1990s...

that i am not nostalgic is: no proof...
that i write hardly any word of fiction:
one spaniard, once... commented
on my shoes:
i think he played a miniature version
of a flute: it looked like a reed...
the "spanish" superstition
concerning: a comment on one's shoes...
he admired... my shoes...
what's that saying:
about shoes: to best walk in one's
own before wishing to fill the shoes
of others...
a verb as simple as: there's no
presence of "run": when coupled
to: i am running: i ran...
it's raining...
i run i ruin fun... concentrated
"rhyming": literally linear: no staccato...

******* me over "jenga"...
this microcosm of sounds -
yet to draw deep leverage from
a meaning: it comes back as a mere
sound: worse a... mimic -
an aeon of only hearing
the heaving of a crow's crackling
croak... like a breaking of a tongue:
or... the lost trill of the R in
either fwench or: english...

exemplified R: with a diacritical mark
to make emphasis of the trill...
i will not heed to market emphasis...
(Ꝛ if you might ask:
there's no leg to stand on...
the "R" falls into a turddle -
a tumble: a trill)...

ꝛ - a missing hammer: it would seem...
a sickle my dreading of apparents...

yes... this democratic oath of poets..
well: we're not going to tend to
the republic of the wizened goats
ex athens... are we?
the democratic oath of poets -
unlike the hippocratic loaf...
            which is a spectacular failure
since i have seen what
little ambitions can do:
when... the boat is not being
rocked: yet someone is still willing
to throw someone... overboard...
now that the boat is rocking:
i see nooses instead of paddles...
the seas are still rife with calm...

clamour for the subjective experince...
none of this: hammer to a nail
sort of "magic" that leaves
one... sensibly "ostententious":

a semi-decent poem contra:
a good night's sleep...
always the latter...
   but unlike today:
6am wake... giving blood for
scrutiny - subsequently...
a broad need for 4 hours in...
a makeshift wilderness...
from Hainault Forest
to Havering County Park...

                        i would clearly have
to start all over again...
should i mind reading back into Tironian
notes and what i had expected to find...
it will suffice to mind...
the characters of empress wu...

         國 (guo)

beginning: coming back to bite some back
from a beijing pork belly:
where you'd first have to make caramel
from the sugar dissolved in oil:
before all the wine would care to glisten...

             𤯔 (ren)...

                              in reverse:
ren-guo - people (of) nation...
                      walking past this field:
impromptu: please keep off of field...
that's what i read...
      this was exclusive -
there was not need to denote further...

and this funny oddity:
saying good-morning or a hello
in an environment that's beside...
walking down the street with a stable
hound of anonymity surrounding
crisp grey blockage of: the amass!
yet people are so expecting
a common courtesy to brief you
on a morning: good...
is it? incessantly so! apparently!
switch them to the torment of the cements
and the back-to-basics apathetic crew
is on the counter...
ghost faces...
  but push them far enough to be alone
and into nature:
they pass a stranger and apparently
demand a prompt: hello!

i go into a depth of nature like
i have *** with prostitutes in a brothel:
i want to have as little to do with talking
that i'd loan: smothering someone
to shut up...
i came for the crows the knee-high-hallubaloos
of nonsense that...
i will extract myself to break
fasting to give blood by foraging
some blackberries...

i still prefer the lesser democratic voices...
it's not that robert duncan was going
to be a stand-alone show akin
to gibsberg...
but... my house is currently in disarray...
i'm playing chess by having
a makeshift kitchen in my living room...
i don't even know where the spices
are! but i'll manage
to bake a **** fine moroccan kobhz!

- this little but current focus for a genetic
"protection": half of me,
then a quarter, an eight, a sixteenth,
a 32-and-a-third... jump toward
64... 128... and... from all these fractions:
half and half:
beauty is no longer viable:
i imagine love as being a prized
bull kept for nothing except
for ******* the gene pool silly...

that's "love" from a darwin from
a materialism: breeding racing horses
or... both the submissive
and the contentious workers -
pay up! but i am not looking
for the generic beauty of
the plateau of the women
employed as surrogates
in this darwinistic harem...
            
isn't it obvious? it would have been
better have be allowed ourselves
to be dead: aborted...
but then: critter load: make-up...
i actually offend my own existence
by affording these dorian gray
parades to take hope in puruing
norms...
i like the scaps i like the wounds
i even like nibbling on the shellfish!

****-****** literature is my achilles
heel...
better a heel than trodding along
with faking a ******* knee...
robert duncan... jack spicer...
i like reading eyes by (metaphorically)
licking up the ****...
and it's not like i might give good head...
i employ a growth of
***** hair to convert my chin
to a niqab like i might: perhaps blink...

then again: face-masks and fashion?
is... this... somehow...
a "thing"?
            well it must be new:
it's nothing from the sort
of the elders i might care to remember...
i walked the scenic route...
blackberries and horseshit...
everything is baking in a procrastination
of: tickle the rats' nibbling...
scrutiny of the lesser of the food
hierarchy: omnivore that i am...

yes... that i like petting criters
that find themselves adamant in their
superiority...
but who have yet to see me:
teasing myself with
a: what if...
                 hours match-up to
not keeping count: there's a fog of them
that goes way back to...
out of the womb... then abandoned
by the scholastic detail that
allows them to float: limbless...
and then return to earth: degenerate...
and less than amiable...

        douglas murray is probably
a hot topic... i too sometimes bewilder myself:
it would have been best to have
allowed the pendulum to swing both ways...
but he (ol' doug) speaks very well:
his writing is... beside the generic...
salt of grain: akin to my own...
for a cubic's worth of water...

    i don't want this tongue to be somewhow
exasperated with concerns for this / an "art"...
or that it can belittle a scientific bone...
thrown to the politics and red herring marches...
spins the doctor: no plates...
forever the new lies
kept in the same old... rhetorical: quirk-and-quickness
of the quilled-tongue...
a knock-knock stone cold: generic...
must: mediocre...
tired of living tongue of poetry
that has to become tired:
truth has to tire so easily...
so that politics: and the freshness
of lies and the no-niche-audience-allowance
can cast their:
"vote"... their... archaic... illiterate "X"..

i will not poetry for rhymes for
exasperations - fooled i: to you: to pursue
that paragraph of fiction - either...
but as freely as this will not:
become an exercise in myopic-claustrophobia...
so it will not rhyme:
perhaps: to advent a coming of my
prescribed punctuation:
but more: your own, your "post-nationalistic"
canadian:
something the people of India or
China will not share with you...
because:
they are still of the mindset: China...
India... hell! Russian is towing suitor!
individualism collapses nations...
whether with a homogeneity of ethnicity
or the heterogeneity of liberalism...

           a wonderful collage of stories...
from the 20th century:
agony aunt israel bewildering
to either confront or defend...
            2000 years have somehow passed
and: europe is no new: "anew"...
it's the same old bland palette
of readily ethno-primed availability
of spices...
hurrah for thyme! and rosemary! mint!

from some mythical above
to this drudge of the pressurised castor -
there was something about robert duncan
that might always have:
made me... diverge from...
it could have been expected...
stash a tonne of bricks by day...
weave in an escapism posit of cinema
come sabbath...
now... escapism into... where?!
critical reignition of marxism:
that sort of marxism my parents escaped
from from under the old soviet
yolk of the satellite state
of poland: thank **** i too am an
immigrant:
but i see no repatriation politics
either...
               go back to a state of
the littlest of all bald envy necropolis
Impoleons?

            no among my native people:
among the natives of these isles...
a thespian: knee deep in ****...
           faking best predicts a survival
rate of this uncoiling...
it's a nation full of: self-
pre-determina...
                  automated prefixation that
can never allow itself to:
make sensible coagulations
of the odd sociable pint...

this atom world this atom's worth
of man...
best life lived as designated
to a harem...
  my and my leftover "blues"...
this world of god and the adventures
of...
no longer available...
thus this one "reality" presented:
playing by man's rules
for the purpose of man's eventual:
transcendence...
a dwarf riding a hunchback
        toward a goal that's a talking donkey!

what's otherwise best?
this has to be an: exercise in futility -
that it had to come from somewhere like:
borrowed prior -
that it could only be borrowed prior:
this tongue had to be inherited:
it could never be acquired -
that a native speaker is...
of a higher status to a bilingual -
because the earth breathes rights...

i forget: i am not equipped
with the desirable physiognomy -
problem being:
when i might find black males
attractive like i might lions: distinct...
i have this ****** on my brain
that says to me...
  well... well...
     i'm not gay.. but i'm certainly
not heterosexual:
even if Flaubert might ask the question:
blondes, brunetters - afro-beauties:
ivory envy?
  what can i do? fest on a hard-on
chemical "oops" / short-cut?
i can't possibly have... a beijing fetish?
a mongol fetish?
i can't? there's only one variation
of interracial mixing...
i guess... so...

     it would be so much easier
to just be gay and leave this world
with a ******* massive **** salvo
of: not coming back!
               to **** a black girl:
not enough...
to not **** a black girl: doubly knot...
******* a lemon while
staring at the sun:
the sado-masochism of
all the post-colonial empires...
and me: whittle ol' resurrected
******... or searching:
the elder prus - the new estonians...
some little european *******...
i imagine...
going to Kenya and running
for parliament:
to concern myself for the voices
of the: minority!

it's... fiddling with the already
prescribed narrative:
trying to make a lee evans jokes
out of it... but...
it's not ******* happening woe-o'-sunshine...
is it?!
it's not like i'm strapped
to a northern monkey
reservation... while still retaining
my: immigrant southern fairy:
commuter hell "debate":
this is not devonshire...
this is not bristol: i'd love to scoop
up a life of a decade's worth
up in Bangor... but it's not even that...
pay by way to:
a collective identity crisis of:
zee vest...
            
if it's anger: perhaps...
it's more a seance in glorifying confusion:
it was once perhaps a little
bit... naive...
but then... who's naive enough
to repeat two-folds of yesterday
within the confines of a day:
to- / to- are not future even
if subjected to incremental changes...
fx/dx changes that might
spawn alternate realities...

        the breaking of a donkey's dollars
worth: i do fishing in the indian sea...
with some... somali pirates...
it's not like i'll ever wake up from
this guilt... the guilt that might
riddle a people that inherited...
i inherited exile from my fathers...
i inherited: no...
the ****** aristocracy didn't tend
to their garden... there was no Eton...
no rugby no football...
there was only a partitioning...
to look toward the past is
an agony that i wish to only hide
in the english countryside...
after all, i thought: who would't want...
make a feast of conquest of this land...
but in a way that was norman:
that the anglo-saxon debauchery could
be... delianted
and brought to a celtic-esque heel...
with a dash of neo-paganism:
a york-up sort o' pie...

without disturbing this dilligent
people of: a most fervent... attention to detail...
it's an island... it's devoid
of any continental squabble...
no mongol ever... no ottoman ever...
it break my heart...
it reminds me: although it shouldn't
remind me...
the aristocratic class (they deem themselves
as much, so why deny them?)
of this country are like the ******
aristocracy
of the three partition "era"...
as napoleon was celebrated "elsewhere"...
with the resurrection
of the duchy of warsaw...
and... england made a beef from
a wellington...
and how the confederacy of germans
repaid the english during the first:
thirst for war...

                   a shogun's pride:
no one would invade japan:
given the persistence of pressure
from a civility of: glamour creases...
it's still the ******* canon rolling
the pawns and pins...

i have but this little interlude in time
to entertain: a history i have learned...
beside citing the obvious apple
hanging on a tree...
who? the burning vietnamese monk?
that's who i am going to... erase...
2000 (circa) years of history with?
this is how i play: conquistador-catch-up?!
this is my whittle muhammad
stage-fright?!

these new surgical masks are
not imitations of the niqab...
the arabs are not drying up their dinosaur
marrow reserves and are not
scouting for willing sodomite freshers
to their gargantuan wealth-soiling
of "morals"?
no? this is all... a pauper's conspiracy
theory... god!
i try to imagine the conspiracy
theory of kings!
it must invite a realisation of
a god or gods...
and at least a quarter of an abstaining
pademomium!

the poets and the sceptics
living under: the... gates are open...
a republic under "scrutiny"...
the philosophers and the
geocentrists - have allowed
for nothing more... than this...
thespian "bureucracy" of
shadow "fiddling"... tail with now:
tail best quite...

attention spanning the glorifications
of non-replica, generic
Solomon comes to the furore
front: then a mismatch
when the brain: swiss cheese project:
is treated at the Avignon
pontiff...
the harem and debauchery shifts
focus...
there's that "we're" and...
dumb-lasso-dumber than you'd
pay the libido of a camel with: for...

i have to always imagine myself
petting cats... or dogs...
to have to dissociate myself from having
perfect: the needs for either halal or
kosher demands of leather...
i best prefer the pipsqueak of
a meow to... an actual oink
in the litany of cogs and perhaps:
clogging up the machinery of
"jurisprudence"... as some Jain might...

borrow from... export very little to...
come the omnivorse of the east
and all succumb to:
boy-scout avenues of:
yes ss'ir...
most loathsome ss'ir...
                     i have to interrogate
the dead man as i am:
the best example of a cul de sac
of dreams: the...
pedestrian could mind not thinking:
imagine: imagine the corpus deity
of: unimaginable thought...
or one which has
an alias: unthinkable imagiation...

memory freelance architect prior
to noon...
is somewhat justified with...
a boredom of a cat come
5pm... but by then...
no cat is ever really bored...
and i have no need to concern
myself with dogs... or leashes...
or desires to: address a
workability of legs...
          to: give scrutiny when all
other examples are wheelchair bound...

he held a piece of paper:
between his hands... like my shadow might:
hold a butterfly...
exasperation:
that philosophers of ancient greece
said: poets begone!
no wonder this...
currency... of wanting to imitate
a petting of animals...
and... this thespian autocracy
that no elders could abide by...
it can still be excused:
the role of actors:
the role of shadow-thieves...

it can still be salvaged...
some of us are still the same rummaging:
in ruinous...
wordsmiths or... best...
plumbers... not some aspirtation
beckons for youth...
it must rhyme:
it must come down to: 2 + 2 = 4
sort of: flimsy poetics...

i'd must prefer to be a
homosexual plumber these days
that my very own mediocre leftover...
thank god i do not encompass
a courtship of a woman:
then imagine!
what did i do with my time:
that i do so much!
having made... so little money!
ghosts can't spend: ****!
i did with my time that
would not allow woman
to turn time into money!
thus i turned money into monkey's
play on elephant and
called tha pennies: p'p'eh-nuts!

  the old man dies:
the youth of man was never
supposed to be born;

god... this was supposed
to be profound?
with this idiosyncratic lost...
spontaneity of punctuation...
i take this reading as
a leverage for making
image: of an anchor dropped:
that would sink the ship.
crowbarius Jul 2012
The beauty holds herself with grace.
Piano fingers weave a lace cocoon around a golden tress,
In full view of the populace.
An autumn exhalation
Breathes an epitaph for every secret limbless layer of her mind;
And all that she can do is laugh
A brutal laugh. Their smiles are so unkind.
C J Baxter Dec 2014
With sleep I fell and fell deeply too.
Into his withering meadows and among rationality.
Where those who are living have lost all vitality.
Limbless are some, some thoughtless too,
Never had a dream yet mine they walk through
Painting disbelief with their faces: I look to the sky
But my eyes are drawn to a castle at the end of my view-
Far off, far from the far out margins of mind.
      I walk with a beat, leaving the limbless behind,
I walk in his circle until it loses its point.
I fall, crawling around each and every wind.  
Until I feel time grabbing a hold of my knee joint.
I try and kick back- along the ground my teeth grind.
Then I break back untouched, but still trapped in my mind.  

I awake again, toothless and out-worn. A
broken spirit, hoping without it. Spinning madly.
Amidst my spin I see her arms, into watch I do fall gladly.
But being without time, I miss the perfect second.
And I awake again before the castle, its sombre music
somehow whispers as it calmly beacons.  
           Without wit or a winding tongue, I alone embark
up the hill as the songs grow louder in my head.
I pass a ‘laughing dead” as it rolls off into the night. Dark
is the blanket that descends on my plight. Its fed
by fear, but I have nothing but spite.
So I carry on alone, and with myself begin to fight.


“ I dare you to pass me. You’re a coward.
You’re a weak little druggy,  who’s ego empowers
him to believe that it is he who should belong at the top.
I’ll leave you to rot. Remove your mind from its shop.
I’m telling you stop. Turn round. And awake.
Or you can die here, while in sleep you but shake”
Murdered by the sky.
Among the forms that move toward the snake
and the forms searching for crystal
I will let my hair grow.

With the limbless tree that cannot sing
and the boy with the white egg face.

With the broken-headed animals
and the ragged water of dry feet.

With all that is tired, deaf-mute,
and a butterfly drowned in an inkwell.

Stubmling onto my face, different every day.
Murdered by the sky!
Sentimental person, stars in your eyes and longing in your heart.
Looking everywhere but within, broken. Sentimental person, lost and stolen.

Leaning on a falling shoulder, drowning in another man's tears. Everybody running,  running from you.

Always knew you were pretty, but never truly understood your beauty; your worth tossed aside like an old rug or blanket.

Never stepping back, never taking a breath, your worn out body on overdrive. Spending your days in a psychological prison, a suicidal mind; a deadly master.

Walking with armored shadows by your sides, defending you from adulation and affection. Much like a wealthy man in an infamous alley, the territory of an infamous criminal.

A daily shedding of tears. The hot waxy tears of a candle rolling down your charred cheek. You continue to burn alone, ever surrounded by darkness.

Always reaching out for others, until your arm is ripped off, now you're limbless; disabled, stuck in the mud.

A waste of space, according to your unjustified terms, a lonely species that serves no purpose.

Fearing yourself, hiding yourself and disregarding yourself. Labeling yourself as a burden to others.

Ghostly smiles and ill-suited facades, eyebrows dragging themselves towards the earth's centre.

A body-builder's weight on your soft-jointed feet, the mass of your lonely misery strapped to your fickle ridge.

Being used; you in exchange for your acceptance. Clinging to past love because your present has none.

Enduring the pain of stationary motion,    going nowhere fast, constantly crashing into tragedies, repeatedly ramming into heartbreak.

Walking with cracked and bleeding soles, like an American Slave, whip marks on your back, a result of self-induced punishment.

Every wake is unwanted, everyday painful. Living for you, is like sea salt on a new born wound, only it never seems to heal.

Your body taken over by plaguing parasites, under your own toxic control. Forced to walk to the beat of a tormentor's drum, your tormentor, you.

Your tongue removed, unable to express yourself. Even in the tongue's presence, pain forces you to keep your mouth shut.

Nearing the Precipice, afraid of jumping, but desperate to be hauled off. Anxious to fall into the river down below, the River of The Dead, where, in your hopes, life is happier.

Your wrists and chest like sliced beef, every tear drop accompanied by the unwilling swipe of your razor blade. The redness of your being splashed onto the floor, then wiped away before anyone notices.

Hiding in a thorn bush from your predetermined destiny, each day comes and thorns dig deeper into your blue skin. Thick needles that you've become physically immune to, thick needles that still emotionally hurt.

Sharks further below circle around your tasteless body, patiently waiting to change you, rearrange your features, devour you for their own satisfaction.

Plebeian people disguised as friends, they show passing interest in your melancholy,  your sadness is what they will soon forget.

Wandering and stumbling in a plain white plane. No colour, no sound, no mercy, no gain. Trapped in Dysphoria. Trapped in a worm hole, eternally alone.

Forever falling into a bottomless pit, a hole reserved for the undeserving. But unlike other times, the rope let go of you. The rope that you clung tightly to, the rope that gave up on you.

One tone played on your broken piano, dysfunctional instrument. Your second chance stolen from you, your body deemed as junkyard worthy and thrown into the jaws of a junkyard dog.

Your mirror image distorted, visions clouded, unrecognizable is your face and your pupils, a vacant shell where your soul once hid.

Relying on heavy drugs after heavy drinking becomes ineffective. Heavy feet, a heavy heart, heavy burdens, heavy sadness.

Given a useless name by those who never knew you, forced to go by it, forced to go by them.

Your sweet pink lips hiding, behind them, bitter secrets. Secrets that you've become too ashamed to discuss even with yourself in the darkest night.

Cut short by the knees, not given a chance to run like the others. You've no choice but to let the storm cloud rest on your soft-haired skull. And when the cloud releases its rain, the drops are sharp like daggers. They shock and stab and hurt like the truth.

Your teeth white and pure, are the prison bars that trap you inside you, your smile is now your limited daylight break, a breath of barely fresh air before returning to your forcible detention.

Sentimental person, wallowing in your pitiful emotion, an undesired sensation that seems to follow you physically.

Emotional person, more valuable than you think; more exceptional than you Know.
Paddy Martin Nov 2010
A Corpse amongst the corpses
in this God forsaken place.
No love to come and hold me,
no lips to kiss my face.

With rigid grasp I hold
the gun my country gave me.
Frozen on my lips the prayer,
I had hoped would save me.

Both a brightly coloured parrot,
that sqawks the coming dawn
and the wondeous scent of eucalypt
are from me ever gone.

Here between the limbless soldiers
in a land that widows dread.
Here I'll dwell forever,
with all the unknown dead.

Until the battlefields are covered,
with a gown of emerald green,
to hide away the image
of the horrors they have seen.

Until war's thunder ceases.
until man's hatred is all gone,
no brightly coloured parrot
shall sqawk the coming of the dawn.

(c) 23/08/2009
To my father who survived The Western Front in 1917
Nielsen Mooken Jun 2014
Through darkness, laced in edges of light,
And rain, falling like angels plagued by blight,
Shattering their heavenly bones and wings,
Onto the eyeless dust of their return;
Through paths stranger to the hope of spring,
Where voices of ghosts hang with cries of “Burn!”
And moss mottled trees, like macabre jesters
Dance, limbless, leaves flailing grotesquely
To the secret japes of wind-bourn nesters;
Through corpse-ridden forests of insanity,
To where the rocks dress as the three witches
And chant midst their vainglorious riches
*“All hail, Eremita, bound to the adamah altar,
All hail, Eremita, your blood soma from the mortar,
All hail, Eremita, thou shalt be dead hereafter”...
Micheal Wolf Nov 2013
So desolate, I walked onward
An expanse of sand running mile after mile
In the distance the sound of thunder
Then as if a mirage at sea a village of ramshackle homes
Single story on a sandbank all with gardens of the strangest design
A flea farm,  gooseberry bushes and butterflies in net cages
Children playing, the voices of grandparents
The sea now lapping at my heels and between their twisted porches, where on earth could I be
In reality?
For I no longer walked the earth
The thunder was the howitzers shelling the beach
The vilage, that of my childhood
For my mind in its last throws had given me a thought of memory,  that of childhood and family that of loving not war
The sea and sand being of beauty
Now limbless, face down on a Normandy beach drowning.
Then darkness
Silence
Peace
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2016
me and my drinking? no... in the next sandpit with christ saving all the retards so heath ledger can **** himself, because the best defence people have against their ****** escapades are a bunch of retards limbless, a crucifix, and the modern trend of premature depression with nothing accomplished and the torture of the immobile christ only trying to provide moloch babies ****** herders: while the rich worry about lip-gloss and gucci spectacles of torn shirts that cost a mammon's tonne but were lighter than an autumnal leaf: yeah, blame the retards on sane people's *** mistakes for saint ******. your choices obstruct my will: fated loathing is my compromise; and by god i hate to be a moraliser.*

i drink to excess when a populist
wants to speak,
and poetry becomes just
another art of the privileged
and i become simply ***,
god give me a life where i don't want
to write, a night without national socialism
and global capitalism:
where's the next competition, mars?!
i used to like playing silverchair's shade
with my guitar, my guitar became an acoustic
5 string rhythm which was hardly a bass...
so i stopped playing...
it's talk about moral darwinism when
a tsunami or a tornado has no darwinism involved:
force of nature, some theories had to fail.
i'm more accepting a retired drunk footballer in me
or an alex hurricane higgins in me that
i wish to delve into poetics:
when the next informal figure of speech
to buy an iron or a jumper? when? oh, never...
never?! ****.
***** acting killed off *** of the usual people,
i knew on the basis of numbering fake *******
that switched sides....
they call objectivity superior to subjectivity...
but in relation subjectivity comes from having
a talk about it, not automatons disposing it...
have talk about ******* and all you can think
of in your little nerd brain is the foreseeable pay-rise
of garbage men... hence?
subjectivity comes from overbearing certain objects
for rhetorical purposes...
and leaving other objects automatically based
like sewage...
objectivity says: this many objects exist
but i don't talk about most of them...
subjectivity says: this many subjects exist
but i dare not see most of them as related to
a specified object for argument that's nonetheless there:
acronym tangle of being relevant, otherwise not...
politics... in rhetorical terms there's a superiority of
one against the other...
i see a fern... can i explore it subjectively? no.
can i explore the fern objectively? yes....
there's a tree next to it...
how does that make feel? it makes me feel like:
i exist, i think, therefore i philosophise by faked doubting
like a woman faking ******... mind that:
men are more nautically optical when it comes to pleasure,
women close their eyes when *******,
they internalise what's otherwise exposed masculine
genitalia forced like a beauty hernia -
male eroticism is optic, female eroticism zeniths are
internalised for the bred fact of being both vaginal
and womb, so scary the eroticism dies when
the foetus replaces the post-virginity fancy of the phallus;
but still the ****** actresses that destroy marriages,
but none can destroy the joke:
lips got the treatment of balloon augmentation
and clitoral lips got islam: the former puffed up
and the latter got the snip-factor for less oral ***.
now will you please play me the arabic trombone?!
Lendon Partain Mar 2013
My arms have been.
Cut off.
Feet.
Nailed to the floor.
I don't know what,
But I'm doing it wrong.

I feel so much.
At stake.
Like stakes through the heart.

I am grief incarnate.
No one's died.
I feel like all,
the flowers.

I'm sitting in a gravesite.
The ceremony was beautiful.

Was it.
0nly held.
And was I.
Only to be put in the ground.

I feel petrified in dirt.
Then dismembered,
De-powered, and swaddled in earth.

Can't move at all.
My brain's been eat out.
Imprisoned in this bed.
Being swallowed,
Whole trying to keep.

My insides down.

But it doesn't work
Powerless
Micheal Wolf Feb 2013
I didn't know her
In the coming hours and days I will
I will know of her travels her dreams
Her passions, her brother her, sisters
Her mother, her father and her best friend
Her boss her colleagues.
I will meet you all,
In turn

You see I don't know her
Though now I'm her only counsel
An honoury counsel if you will
A go between, an artist in some ways
I will paint her picture
I will paint it without compromise
It will be a "still" life not impressions
I will give it my all
I always do

We met only a few hrs ago
The bright sunlight in your flowing hair
Eyes fixed in a warm gaze
A smile, yes a smile
Perfect teeth and jaw
Lips the envy of any model
I never heard your voice
Just your last lost breath
Gone now

I don't know you
Yet now your laid bare before me
In the bright light it seems irreverent
You clothes gone your body cold
Why so young, why on a beautiful morning
Why at all

To work now
The attendant comments "You alone?" he is here
As the pathologist enters my colleague arrives
All here ready to go, and yet each of us I swear pauses
Is it respect for her or shock
So young

I know now
I mean I know the cause of death
I've scribbled dozens of post mortems
As has my exhibits officer, shes the best
The drink drivers, the druged the racers
The limbless the headless biker
All have a story, a reason when flesh divided
***** by ***** the answer presents
This time no different a ruptured aorta
Yet different

Ok done
My notes go to be transcribed
We wash, dress. Hungry? Yeah ok
The pathologist joins us for breakfast
He jokes about a fry up "it will be the death of us"
We eat on, it's dealing with it I guess
A last supper for them in a way
A black closure

The picture? Oh yes
Death by rapid declaration. Not a pretty one
One side perfection the other bones exposed
None of them will see that.
The attendant is a seamstress a consummate professional
They will see a friend a daughter a colleague
Not what we see or how we answer their questions
So many questions

I now know more
An amazing daughter, fabulous friend
And a lost lover who worked late
Partied early but didn't drink
Emotional after a romantic split
Fatigued tired out with colleagues
Tieing one on to forget. How then?
You drove home In the mornings sunlight
Radio on you went a little fast only forty two
Miles per hour that is.
At thirty you may have survived
But not today

Now goodbye
The coroner's verdict accidental death
Tired, fatigued you simply fell asleep
Drifted and weaved, you couldn't see his Uturn
You never saw anything again
It was your turn, my job is done
No other to blame all the canvas used
The full picture painted
I never knew you, yet think of you often
Some you simply don't forget
The needless
The good
The honest
Sleep now
Eslam Dabank Nov 2023
For the first time ever; I truly do not care
    if you, him, or her wished me a happy birthday;
But, I wouldn’t mind if you did. Though it is fair;
    I am one of the lesser friends; I am a boring play;

A play so fake; I am of made up characters,
    Sometimes I am the flattering villain in smiles,
And at times I am a copy of the Westerners,
    At others, I am gullible, yet I never am;

I pretend to be; but I am miles away,
    For interesting I am not; so funny at least be,
Says my brain; for maybe they will remember,
    That my birthday was today; It is an endless plea:

I always remember and prepare pages of wishes,
    For almost everyone, but all I get is 4 days late
One liners sent out of guilt; to stop the guilty itches,
    Not out of care, love, or from genuine friendly state;

I deserve it; for again; I am merely a boring play;
   A paradoxical headache of weird introverts,
And annoying extroverts; I barely even weigh,
    To a normal person; I am made of endless alerts;

Alerted, focused, attentive; all on your acceptance;
    I am what I feel you want me to be; a nice man,
A racist gangster, a diplomatic figure; I am resemblance,
    I resemble everything I see in you and scan;

I am stardust that was never meant to shine,
    I am a thread; intertwined as I feel pleases,
I am a road with temporary signs; I am grapes;
    For you I squeeze myself into juice; or ferment

Into wine; I am a fake play where you write scripts,
    I submit, because all I cared about is receiving,
A birthday wish. On that one day in the entire year;
     I do not want even want gifts; because when you don't,

I feel like I am ceasing to exist; slowly deceasing
    from everything that we were: teenagers ambitious,
WhatsApp stickers collectors, School runaways,
    Kids deceiving; it feels like I am dead; for the dead

Do not receive birthday wishes; I feel peerless;
    A white beans *** lidless, a body complete limbless,
A walking sickness, a moving flesh in stillness,
    unpardoned by my faux and obvious silliness.
  
I do not care about not getting birthday wishes;
         But I cannot not overthink what it means.
zebra Jun 2020
body genre
at a carnal address
sensory and sensuous effects
materiality
digital images
anthropology of desire

she tied a knot around his ****
a wedding band made of licorice shoelaces
for the art of tongue and ****
driving it in her pink throat
back and forth
like a shift stick

flared for the retina
a puzzlement and fascination
haptic screen of fiction

adventure of  being pinned down
an unpremeditated punctum
fucktum sucktum

the stadium of desire
a shop window
banality transcending banality
the literal transformed
into the ******
a ****** smiles red

girl in a suitcase
with a hole to ****
a treasure chest
the leaky boundaries of erotica
sing in
musical blood whistles

I packed her up
limbless and threw
her on the bed
and with tender kisses
of endless
wet permutations
banged
three oozing holes
into finger ponds of oblivion

she taunted   
age play- ageless
***** class
a weird ethnicity
from Timbuktu
racially motivated lust for a
conveyance of
fleshy intensities
way past help

a big **** dips
a tender dimple
like a barnacled whale
in a deep dive

the violence of
a preemptive strike
for everything imaginable
across raw lips
in her cosmos
of swinging hips
and cross bone riddles

oh happy *****
suicide ******
at the computer screen
**** bullets birthday cake
in a River Styx of flames
Akemi Jan 2014
A stiff wind broke the morning clouds. It was another gloomy sunrise, in a string of second-rate days. Kiera woke much like the sun, downtrodden and wishing to fall back down. She snapped down on the alarm, knocking it to the floor, and with two blinks was out again—back into a world she was beginning to recognise.

First the flooding darkness. Despite two weeks of this her body still rejected it. Her body hated it. Pathetic. Limbless shakes as the throbbing chill tore its way through her lungs, gripped her skin like sweat. She could smell the sharp stink of iron. When her vision came she saw her arms were covered in blood. A red too bright.

A figure she hadn’t noticed flickered out of her view. She turned her head sharply but saw no one.

Kiera realised she was walking. She held a square, brown-wrapped package, which would not stop squirming. As she struggled to keep hold of the ******* thing, ****** prints coated its sides. A postbox lay on the other side of the road—the same colour as the blood on her arms.

Kiera was furious. The ******* package would not stop squirming. She needed to reach the postbox before she dropped it. She was desperate—scared shitless. Why?

Kiera began to cross the road. Each step sent the package twitching, twisting. Her legs were bone thin. Her skin was shredding apart. Another flicker—edge of the vision phantom—appeared, but she barely noticed. The package was growing so heavy that her toes were breaking on the asphalt. She looked up and saw the postbox had receded.  How dare you? How ******* dare you, you *******.

She was on the wrong side. She had never left the sidewalk. How could she? She had no legs. Blood began to pour out of the postbox. It crossed the road, coating her torso, lapping the bottom of the package. The package stilled and began to deform in her hands. It was rotting.

Kiera had an urge to *****.
5:30am, January 2nd 2014

Well, this was a dark piece. I'd begun daily writing to get my long form up to scratch, and this little piece came tumbling out. It touches on the topics of ****, unwanted pregnancy and abortion (sorry about that), and the feelings of helplessness, rage and guilt.
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2019
. and i am only ascribed, a relevant nation status, within the individual, by only having to "enjoy" an exile... back, "home": merging into an NPC-meme, so not the mahjong solitaire acronym "game"? you know: PSCAPE-complete, NP-complete... NP-C? NP-complete problems? nondeterministic polynomial time? guess i was the only dumb 'un to self-teach myself to play mahjong solitaire... i guess that's not expected to be hard... hey: here's the map, you figure it out.

the current climate of a crescendo
of events...

****...
        i can't say maine ****:
even though i own two cats
of that breed...

it's all...  (sniff sniff):
very much like being back
in a catholic high school,
of a highly irish choice
of breed area
of outlier "london"...

       with black girls...
putting vaseline cream
into their hair,
to keep the frizz out...
or the afro...
whichever...

     getting into cat-fights
with each other
and some outlier white girls...
stephanie:
oh i remember stephanie...
while the "other"
time i learned what
a "kit-kat" was...
   lucy...
with ambitions to become
a stripper...

    "kit-kat":
  one hand, does a four-finger
*******...

but the fact that the current
climate
doesn't allow dialectics?
i mean: debate,
without all the rhetorical
******* of:
pre-staged "events"?

i take two beers,
or three,
   a packet of cigarettes...
spot a park bench,
sit on it,
and...
              wait...
some old timer is bound
to chat me up...
hardly complaining
about me drinking in
public,
i excuse myself,
asking him:
is it o.k. if i light a
cigarette?
  no complaints...
he might just come
back with
a rayleigh bicycle...
green...
******* plush specimen
from...
  i'm guessing the 1950s...
and then we'd juggle...
opinions...
because opinions
are not debated...
not in a dialectic environment...
juggle...
two clowns: first pucker
to the punch of a smacker
of a pair of lips of a woman...

and you know...
there would be this...
aura of a whispering silence...
like...
somone was listening...
god... ****: perhaps god...

and we'd sit there...
spewing opinion after
opinion,
   and we'd talk about bicycles,
about his grandchildren's
supposed autism,
and i'd try to comfort him
saying: just give them some time...

but the pop media doesn't
do that, does it?
dialectics on a park bench
is as alien to pop media
as seeing a ******* ****
saucer, all phosphoresent
in the night sky...
   like: neon a. zero...
neon a. zero
  to b. abide blackout,
come in c.
c. piccadilly circus
                             neon out...

i was saying something:
yeah, i was:
never pity the drunk...
he'll just turn inside out and
tell you:

   'the best poached eggs
i ever made... were...
when i was blitzed...
  plastered...
  *******: goo....   goo'n:
gone...
but the perfect poached
eggs...
        yeah yeah...
whrill in a movement
for a tornado,
drip some white vinegar...
  drop... pouch you
limbless chicky-coco-clock-in!'

or... that what i expected
from... not taking
boxing lessons...
did about 3 lessons in martial
arts...
was kicked in the *******
by the teacher...
so i flunked...
  **** to that sort of "club"
of self-defense...
you kick me in the *****,
i kick out your ego...
and thought?
  hell...
         either a stephen king
novel
       or a shot from a shotgun...

honest to god,
i once asked an afro-saxon
if i could touch his hair...
guess what?
  i touched it...
   ooh...
goose feathers...
they would really replace
goose feathers with
afros...
  it's like:
the engineering
concept that went into
springs
of cars?
    ever touch an afro?
cushions...
  i'm feeding goose feather
stuffed pillows...
or springs on both
the bed,
   or a car,
or any variant form of
transportation...

i prayed for chop-sticks,
instead...
they gave me drum-sticks...
but no drum...
they said:
   air-drum...
  ****... that's a tough gig...
air-guitar is once thing...
but air-drum?

i had to start thinking
about my inherent
physical "disability"
concerning the *******
as...
   leech...
  or  yiddish:
     schmuck...
       and... i went to the elders
and they...
didn't expect i was
handed down the script
of william burrough...

imagine...
   a world...
where there was "excess" skin...
associated with the ****...
like... a floral pattern,
protruding out,
and not in...
   so i said:
  sleeve off, or sleeve on?
am i to **** some maiden
or simply do some
jamaican recipe replica
of a *******?

you sure eve of eden
confused the phallus
with a serpent...
or more... a mushroom?
well... if you circumcise
the ******...
that's more a mushroom
than some reptilian
                   artifact, no?

well... we're not going
to have a dialectical spectacle
with the way we're going,
are we?
  i'm juggling opinions,
midly drunk,
with some elder,
bicycles,
the weather, seasons,
grandchildren and autism...
and on the center
stage...

              ONLY RHETORIC
ALLOWED...
       i'm as ugly as Socrates
inside and out...
at this point,
at this point: inside and out...
so...
  if only i was dyslexic
akin to the modern and ancient
greek standards of
not having
the capacity to write...

        writing has become
a famine of conversation...
i don't want to speak because
i chose the medium of writing...
i like ballet...
  i also like watching someone
play the piano...
and then i watch myself
itch away at a keyboard
of, thus, arranged letters.
chase philip Mar 2014
I ponder of something great on a sonderous level can a man a sentient being ever exist like an omnipotent being
am I just a subsidized being is the vanity of a self-absorbed world
the pneumatic indifferent fascist question my legitimacy so I question the society of a world more cold and more active than an incestuous birdy and the bee
They question an artesian hand slightly smaller than the average man yet the
significance of the difference in that artesian is not the manic who refused me
embarrassed me
rumored me
****** me to a dark inexsistant inbetween
the coldness of a lover never to be
because she is in league but out of reach
like a lion her simple minded pedagogy has left her to everything and everyone
as she is not mine and I am not hers  just the birdy and the defective bee
a farce love story the ending of a never beginning trip  why o so dramatic
because I just can’t help falling in love with one
a selfish self absorbed vanity in a repugnant world disgustingly this pedagogy stays to me like glue on this dying bee
this is true of our starcrossed unrequited drug induced comatose that put me into this ponderous level
the inevitability of what truly will never be yet for some reason these
sounderously significantly radical thought I ponder just like a pneumatic bot
have you ever felt this lost
this cold dark nonexistent in-between
a limbless sentient rushed in the ever invoking might of hysteric emotion
I ponder this cold and warming toiling notion
The one like a lion can you and will you requite and love me
OpiaOnism Oct 15
– – –
Death
is not a wound
that heals,

it is
an amputation that
remains.
– – –
For F.K. and C.K. and all the other which pass away
Martin Narrod Sep 2016
My happiness comes from me ask my friends and the world around me blossoming in a spark of crimsony red moon glow on forethought walks through the shivering lenses of percept that trickle down our backs as we enlighten ourselves with all that is in between and unseen.

It is as if our aged limbs were caressed into a symphony of leverages and their shapes. We cannot be cadavers. We are arms of cheer and picture jasper, adolescent googled-eyes gathers with virile fixations on our partners as we prey on the map lines subtly employing our eyes as we dart across each dimple, pimple, freckle, and gently worn rash lines.

These are the dogs of our incessant barking. Idling for sincerity, as actors swiftly press Winter into us while our limbless diction presents our inadequacy Rd upon our ugly and I'll-tempered neighborly-things. Aliens of the afternoon, first floor agony and karmas standard for living in a reduced climate One.

Wearing down the hooves, undulates from Pepperdine mark trails with breaking breads and twigs and bones. Undulates from another world, behoofed and bemoved, curdling their sappy reselling a of drat and unkindly remarks. And we have begun to wonder when evolution will kick-in. When will the military come for them at the doors and vacate is all from our nontoxic lie-shrouded apartment complexes, condos, and cabins. Slaughter numbers of letters and integers right out in the street; loonies in the town square and the moose are crying.
Jonny Angel Jan 2014
Swirling colors
paint the market square,
shrimp lie heaped
next to the
bananas & chilis,
there's lemonade,
tires with rubber patches,
a sense of community
hangs in the air.
Deals are made
in hard currency
or in trade.
A natural flow exists,
as if everyone
is on autopilot.
And behind the scenes,
just under the surface,
one feels the depression,
pain is palpable.
You can see it in
the eyes of the dogs,
rib-poking-skinny,
hairless, manged & skittish.
They hang with the limbless ones,
half-humans,
legless & starved,
dragging themselves
on cobbled streets
through ***** matter & *****,
wallowing in the mire,
begging for peanuts & money.
It ain't funny.
Noandy Nov 2014
What makes you think
You’re human enough
Visions of light incinerated
And sepulcher demolished
Would never make you
As near as one
Seeing the outlines of
Wax statues
Or the inside of treasure box worn by year
Are just paths to a shallow valley
Of condescending condolence
And folie à deux
Where your madness
Never shares with mine
So my love, never bother trying
Even if you managed to take a flower
From the tree of life
The rest are just poison that force
You to succumb
Limbless
Mindless
Heartless
Shallow
With your guts arranged
In order
Like a marvelous slaughtertastic
Flower arrangement
That I used to adore
Before I perished
Knowing that I never wanted
To lit your soaked thread
With adorned pain
When you called me with names
Improper
When you accused me of
Disdain and betrayal
When you wrote me away
Like words too sad to be told
And when you insulted me
Like the horror you never accepted
Until you ask yourself
What makes me think
That I’m human yet
LD Goodwin May 2014
1.
You can never go home,
not to the home you left.
When you leave, you get bigger.
Not necessarily in girth, but in consciousness.
When you come back,  everything,
even the walls of your parent's house,
seem to have shrunk.

2.
Look.....
Here comes the parade.
With its paper mache floats
and twirling batons.
Cub scouts and boy scouts,
all in a neat blue and drab green row,
followed by a high school marching band
playing "Stars and Stripes Forever".
From bygone wars, limbless surviving soldiers flinch with every cymbal crash.

3.
I watched billows of cottonwood clouds
swirl down a summer hometown avenue,
they met on the street corner for a song........
"Alley Oop", or "I Like Bread And Butter"
These ghostlike voices will live there forever,
innocent, asleep, numb, waiting.
Soon, the postman will bring your future.
Soon, you will be just a number on a lotery ball.
Soon, you will have to dissect luck or fate.

4.
I took my 87 year old Father to gather his tools
from his long time place of work.
The instruments of his livelihood.
He did not need them anymore, he had retired.
Some tools he had used since World War II,
some he made for a specific job.... never to use again.
All neatly placed in toolboxes built in the 30s and 40s,
yet not a trace of rust.
These were the tools of a tradesman,
a (Tool and Die Man).
He once told me, “Son, if I can’t fix it because I don’t have the right tool, I will make the tool”.
I thought him to be Superman.
But there I was, loading up my Father’s history,
to take home, to be sold to the highest bidder.  
I myself have made my living playing music for audiences.
I also have tools.
Guitars, amplifiers, harmonicas, microphones.
There will come a day, in the not too distant future,
when I will have to “retire” the instruments of my livelihood.
Though I will not be as stoic as my World War II Father,
I will go kicking and screaming to the pawn shop,
remembering every song that fed me,
and every chord that made people dance.
Middlesboro, KY May 29, 2014
Riz Mack Jan 2019
a poet who can't write
a dog that won't bite
a hill that can't climb
a clock with no time

an ist with no ism
undead but not risen
an endless schism
of self sedition and indecision

a two headed coin
a completely missed point
a light in the void
a limbless joint

Bo-Peep with no sheep
the shallowest deep
an unsailed sea
of dreamless sleep
while morrissey despairs in the background
Justina Green Nov 2013
Iris’s dance back and forth behind closed eyelids
Chest expanding up and down, steady
Mouth hangs open, inhaling and exhaling midnight air.

Slither between cotton sheets and bare skin,
Against arm hair, weaving between hills of *******
Pave the trail of goose bumps.

Tunnel past saliva soaked taste buds
Slick scales snag on a slippery uvula
Oil coats the esophagus

Where are the lungs?
Hiss down the vocal chords, echo
Limbless body navigates the diaphragm

Weave past ribs
Under, over, under, over
Spot the synchronized lumps of flesh
Dancing in unison to the rhythm of the life beat
Coil around, hug them tight
Constrict the chest until the dancing stops

Locate the heart, file the fangs
Make the ******* beat stop
Release the venom into the bloodstream
Paralyze every nerve, every fiber
But just enough to nurture agony.
Yenson Mar 2019
It's So Simple
It's so simple
yet it all goes over their heads
like the blue skies above
like the unseen winds that lingers

You see me
notice me and I freely occupy your mind
I roam in your thoughts
and sometimes I rush in your veins
hot or cold depending your moods

It because, like it or not
I am unique, memorable, outstanding
Quietly Charismatic, now larger than life
A David amongst men
just not like anybody else
because of this, I have made an impression
on you and become an invitee into your selves
a tenant in your minds, a sitting thought edifice
that pillars a saloon in your willing minds

With me though, it's not the same
Why would I see you in my thoughts and mind
there's nothing charismatic or remarkable
edifying, impressionable or admirable here
a bunch of fooled acolytes, some serving staffs
some unengaging neighbourhood trawls
some outsiders grateful for inclusions
some anodyne trolls, some nutcases looking to vent
a mish-mash of brain-washed strangers

All these don't impact my consciousness
I know them not, they know the clone sold to them
They utter *******, it stays *******
they act their dramas, I ain't got a clue
people I give real attention to, don't behave stupid
You sit to watch me leave to bang a door
Good for you, you got the time and a door to bang
thank God I'm not reduced to being you
the trolls write their fantasies, I think Plato, Descartes,
Kant, Nietzsche and a host of others, God stays always

Anchoring my mind to mediocrity is pointless
what gains do I get from immaturity being immaturity
what interest are fooled adult males displaying ignorance
who dances with fools and then complain they are limbless
how can the drivel from scums give me sleepless nights
or be moved by the scripted lies of a double-bluff scripted lies
or play the game of hearts when my heart is not in it
They believe they are playing Checkmate on a King
There is no King, just an ordinary man that THIEVES want
you to harass, intimidate and drive away, so their guilts
and fears stops burning them

If I am fractured mentally, spiritually or physically
I would not be here, I have another home to go to
If I was any of what they say I am or was, I would not stay to
weather a crazy, unjust and unfair storm
If I was a greedy leech, why was I working twelve hour nights
while the Thieves next door where drinking and stealing
If I was some chauvinistic pig why was this only known after
eighteen years of marriage, when my wife was threatened and bullied
How many others have claimed I was this bad tempered Ogre
until I forcefully gave racist and bullying criminals a piece of my mind
If I had done anything wrong I would have gone a long long time ago
Criminals want to drive me OUT to justify their lies and cover their disgraceful crime and shame
I am me, I am here and I stay for I am not afraid of the truth, They are...........
MdAsadullah Aug 2015
Shaped by my tongue,
controlled by my mind;
They were my captives,
limbless and blind.


But one by one my tongue
they all escaped;
Took huge and varied
forms while I gaped.


They stood firmly,
demeanor bold and brave.
Now they were the masters
and I was the slave.

I will ignore all concepts of adherence and maybe, just this once,
be blunt about my fear;

I’m a stuck oriole in a window.
I’m a pedestrian somewhere in VV Soliven underneath the pouring rain
with my parasol jammed, won’t spread out.
The petrichor from the ground rises and like dust,
I settle and cave in, like an unsuspecting dagger making its slow crawl
towards the back of the next face I see in this deadlock.

They say when you stick it to the man,
stick it good, and whatever beating or punishment may follow,
face it like a man.

but what is a man to do to the higher man
when he has his guts spread on the floor like an inkblot
from a shattered glass?
this working classman status isn’t for the weak,
and it sure isn’t for the brave either – what will become of the fools
sitting atop our heads when we have learned to outgrow them?

Sooner than it is later, I will go back to the pit like some soldier
cleaning his Lee-Enfield in the endless snow.
I will be faced by inbreds, imbeciles, rebels,
dilettantes, proletariats who have their necks leashed, their arms
puppeteered and their voices mellowed down by some defunct ventriloquism.
I will crank open the mailbox of my home and see that there
are notices: some from the bank, the loans, and the bills – all of them screaming
pecuniary, all of them bludgeoning soul.

If this is what a man has to deal with when he comes to
learn that life’s no downtown street promenade, then I’m willing
to slit the throat of the next child that’s giddy enough and filled with life
to search meaning through the bleared image in front of him.
I see high-stake rollers and proletariats, bigshots, and darling boys
roll down their car windows and flick the smoke out in the **** freeway

while I am here, watching myself slowly rot in the cubicle mirror next door
wary of my somber entrails. I think of a pub somewhere in Magallanes, and I dream
heavily when I am awake. The beaded body of the Hefeweizen is waiting for me
like a paramour, but I have to clock-punch my way out first before I can reach
some sort of truce: as long as I have myself sign these contracts, as far as my freedom is
concerned, what keeps the ball rolling for me might be something I would
despise as long as I breathe in this disgustingly thick air of deceit and consummation.
There is no life in here. All of us are dead.
Buying things we do not need, doing things we don’t want, fooling ourselves
in the complete process, marry wives and husbands and breed children
who will do the same in this cyclically deadening circus. My god is filled with
cotton and the streets scream ****** ****** against the spring.
There are enough violence in the thoroughfares to cast me back to my
home and coil, fraught with unrelenting demand.

There’s no other way to look at it rather than simplifying the equation.
Some do it for worth, that’s your tonic.
Some do it for fun, that’s your senseless beating.
Some do it because they have no other choice: they are not looking far enough.
As long as you have yourself beaten to slave-bone and driven mad with
downtime, then you have yourself laid down on a silver-platter catching
the swill of such riotous rigor: to be shaken out of sleep and shove
meat down your throat and thank the Gods for a wonderful day when all I see
outside are streets blackened to the teeth with distortion and the automobiles
like limbless children leaving no trace.

Some take the easiest way out, but I am not crazy enough to bring
myself to sanity. I have other caprices to go with.
This is enough a suicide than it is on the other side.
Whenever I look at my superior, I see nothing,
and whenever I gaze at the surrounding scenes I see people
sticking knives at each other when backs are turned.
I see people swallow everything that is given to them without
the slightest inch of askance: to complain is the inability to withstand
the current situation – but I am no fool to close my eyes.
I have still the guts to face everyday like some old friend, death, in my arms,
singing blues from the 1980s. When this is done,
I will go back to where it usually does not hurt: in the silence.

where no faces bid me hello – they do well in their own discomfiture,
and I do not wish to see them any longer.
where no automobiles tear the streets and cleave the moon farewell.
where there are no sparrows outside, where there are no laughing children,
where there are no hollow men and women greeting each other tenderly
and blighting each other safe in the resignation of some dull home.

if I am mad, then what does this make you? better? privileged?
I’ve had other people look deep into me like some deepwell without
water and they tell me, “there’s something about you, something about you.”
and when I turn my back to search for some sameness,
I figure there is nothing else to find but the same trapping fate in this
burning cylinder of a home.

Waking up and filling in shoes and dressing up for nothing,
earning money and throwing it all at our own expense,
buying thrills and wasting away as time lounges like a cat
at the foot of the Victorian. If there’s better enough a fall than this,
I will sign myself to have my bones broken, my ribs opened

to let go of my famished soul while all the others
keep themselves clean, putrefying themselves viscerally.
******* *******.
I don't know any lady
without eyes with zero dreams!

I've found two female legs
walking on the rainbow
At the top of the tree with birds;
I've seen two hands of a damsel
touching blue lotuses
Within thrilling waves of low air!

A pea-green lady soul secreting moonlight
Around orange-sun cracking jokes with clouds.

I've perceived weighty eyes
in the deeper black lake
Swimming with multicolored fishes;
I've seen an off-white body limbless
into an unknown folder
Walking slowly on the water!

I haven't noticed any woman
flying like kites together with a butterfly!



Poem 22
Book 'Beckoning Jade-Dreams' April 2007
Copyright Musharrat Mahjabeen
Mizan Publishers, Dhaka, Bangladesh
ISBN 984-8700-82-X
Another day in the tranches of life, crawling like a limbless animal.
Dragging its limp torso by clenching its teeth on the ground.
Honor roll human centipede.
Butterfly-to-(NEVER)-be.
I am doomed to life's muddy labyrinthine vortex
Bent and helpless.
The more I try to escape it, the more I choke on the dirt.

Acceptance.

Hello, maze of sick souls
Golgotha is thy name.
Everybody's crawling and carrying their wooden cross.
Attached to their spine like a set of broken wings.  
Nailed to the cross -oh, manmade Gods of the tranches!
Half-and-half deities, artificially made in life's hellish laboratory.
Nailed-to-the-cross demigods.

Deceit or beliefs do not exist here,
In this church of mud.
At least there is some comforting easiness in doom, in this acceptance phase.
Faithless, tortured, honest souls, calling this maze home.

Home, sweet home.
vircapio gale Oct 2015
perfect sunny day--
insects  sing   so    loud!
as i surf the web

pond water--
my hair dries as i click,
getting hot again

One summer years ago, at my childhood home, in a nudist colony whose so-called 'co-founding' is my family's only legacy--perhaps right before my grandmother had passed, or when my father's prostate was scheduled to be removed and he thought it best to hire someone for a last-minute memory (despite his ***-negative crutch-christianity, just in case the operation cost him his jive)--i googled, '*******,' while looking for ****, and the atrocity i found took all of a second to challenge my complacent illusion that i could remain separate or disconnected from the global oppression of women and girls while i consumed the products (i.e., fantasized about having *** with and/or 'making love' to simulacra-women; masturbated to pictures of them) of an industry whose widespread lack of any substantial commitment to fairness, safety, legal recourse and work-place equality has contributed to a new generational acceptance of the ancient memes that perpetuate bigotry:

dismembered girl
on an open body-bag--
why does this exist??

the insects clacking,
droning in the grass--
summer can't hide death

her hip bones' marrow showing,
young *******'s corpse--
limbless

her legs gone--
the image chokes me
from speaking

my sisters, too young to tell--
who do i tell?
why should i tell?

i read she'd run from her ****--
they put her in the river.

young girl,
her blood still--
i can't feel my heartbeat

young woman,
her torso bare--
unfeeling stumps

young woman,
her legs gone,
skin gray from the river

young woman,
your legs gone--
i choke  on words








.
please don't infer any absolute moral judgments here; or absolute relativism; i am questioning harmfulness and interconnectedness.

this experience is from an article i glanced long ago, long enough to leave an indelible pain beyond the mercilessly visceral impact of the image; there is a continuous undercurrent of suffering, accessible each time "feminism" is sneered at or when one wave over another is dismissed outright.

i could never share the article... i felt shame for finding it while searching for **** (which is a sharp irony not lost to me or the puritan in the room); i felt a fear of ruining someone's day, someone's image of me, or the cliche ignorance that seems so essential to happiness; inducing yet additional needless fear in young minds already inflicted with an unfair burden of anxieties seemed pointless if not harmful as well, as if sharing such 'hateful' realities could empower the very organizations that employ these techniques to punish recalcitrance and spread fear (which some may say i'm doing here, though my intention is to overcome fear-induced silence... although i can't imagine sharing the image itself) ... i hadn't realized until recently that i'd also been succumbing to my own fear by projecting it onto others.

these problems are systemic and solutions are manifesting everywhere. future pain is avoidable in the context of education, courageous dialogue, and the kind of love that inspires, liberates and goes to any lengths to understand and empathize.
Joseph Valle Feb 2013
Pick a length
and focus on it.
It could be somewhere
or on something,
key word here is "on,"
"is," is also poignant,
but focus long enough
and it'll surely blur.
What I mean to seem
is that attention
dissolves and lens
blends retention.

Distance exists more
within hypothetical thought
than in the connection itself.
Contemplate stepping into
a dirt-stirred puddle with
hidden depth and shape
on your daily sidewalk walk.
Never step in it, never;
it'll up past ankle.
Wet shoes and squish,
you're looked at. Rush past
another walker, cold feet, another walker.
It, they, them, out: be limbless.

On the wall, pick a spot.
See a wall be not.
See it tall.
Can you see it?
Is it there?
Make sure it's there,
because it is it is
it is a wall.
Focus. Spot.
Now see you.
"See," is the question.
Can you see you?
See you at me stare.
Let it bend blue
and walk ******* the
ice-covered sidewalks.
Step hard and step fast.
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2016
it's so middle-class it almost deceives the idea
of a functioning economic model,
if this woman gets to write this for
rent and grocery money, i'd rather stick
it out on bread-and-butter puddings in india
mid the squalor, as honest as there is
or there isn't a god -
she's basically trapped with a hamster ontology
of the treadmill -
she's discussing "emoji" (ditto regarding
correct pronunciation), i.e.
emo- -gee                              or
                        the emotional Jinn -
or the emotive genie - Aladdin somewhere -
i mean emoji and jive? **** don't pair up!
the journalist is clever in dismembering feminism,
girls get *****, X to patriarchy,
but we need to sort out...
this emo jive **** is worse than caveman material...
i'll take an oath on it: i can't run 100 metres in
under 10 seconds...
my bone density is lighter than what the general
practitioner prescribed the africans
at the paraolympic games -
**** swam like the partially limbless -
the medal ceremony was taking place
but still the ivory and sclera at midnight visible
swam, and swam...
throw a ******* rhino or a horse in there
and it'll beat the cheetah... moor boor! moor boor!
b'oh! if this is the prime concern of
feminism i'd be abhorred by the excuse of
expression per se... come on! emotional jive
instead emotional gee? what's this, an Oliver Twist
sub-plot revision?
i'm surprised women are buying into
feminism at this stage,
she's a womb and she's a house,
he's a vector and he's the return -
take her from nesting and he does not care
for being nested, he's out in the open,
when all these girls turn to what Darwinism taught them,
after all Darwinism is feminism's only compatriot,
take the spider nursery on the back of the mother,
the polar bear single mother abandoned by
the male raising her dues,
the politicised Islamic harem of monkeys
serving as argument for both origin and no origins
(you can't be as noble as the swans
overnight caring for the practice of
widowing, unless it be as quick
as black widow's or mantis' -
after all Darwinism taught us to not thieve
but to borrow, and look where borrowing left us) -
feminism only emerged because of Darwinism
being popularised, it was perfect because of its
overt use of images and a lack of salon literature of
aristocratic ladies listening eagerly while
Balzac farted into a page and the supper was made
and served by the house-staff -
never mind the sheikhs and their Lamborghini collections;
i'm careful of the spine and the half-horse-power
of my legs than the shiny wheelchairs.
Derrek Estrella Feb 2020
Saffron, the pretender
Come to me in debauchery
Let me know not of this
But instead, vain camaraderie
Swiftly down the road
Forgive that violent tenderness
Of brass things
And parsimonious goodness
What teeth, critical states
Yellow signs coalesce
In this blood-drenched hour
I have lost my mind
And the light is dimmer
For this pious sinner
Listen to that gust
Two hundred and one stallions
Criticize my crystal eyes
I, the foreigner
A mistaken warrior
Dandelion child
Riding a ceaseless fountain
Holding a vase so ragged
And a sun so mild
Michael Tobias Aug 2013
Sit, sneak a look at what’s left of nothing,
a tree alone, a blur of nimbus and fire above no one,
a diminished frequency of fury.

Sketch my black coat.
Two bucks at the Goodwill, it confides in the dead,
celebrates mother with a seance.

Ah, do you hear that?
The coffeemaker is the Atlantic. It wants to wear hues,
to be a limbless body in someone’s dream,

gestures with white light,
and never sleeps as it studies the moon.
Let’s not talk about that anymore.

It feels like spiders in my ear canal,
yesterday does.
Stay a little longer. But don’t look at me.

Look at yourself in the mirror,
and I will grin back at you—ah, feel that?
That’s what it’s like to wake up as Mark Landis.
Alysha L Scott Sep 2012
Of feet:
Talon dancing,
claws of deadlight whimpers
what fierce, nocturnal

we, flat feet, barefoot in the snowy dust.

Of fools:
Rampant, rampage
of madlight weakness
soft fowl, moon-eyed

we, black jesters, makers of dreams.

Of children:
Wiley charm,
naked of sadlight gestures
limbless folly, red cheeked

we, coiled by birth, the sack of infant sighs.

Of voices:
Time would swallow silence,
by the tongue, by meek silhouettes,
by shadows of the throat, of man

as he enters the cave, black body, old in
stalactite teeth, snowy dust
through curiosity in the black dream,
and birth the birth of folly one hundred times
and sigh the first whimper, at the end

I was here.
Who is the Artist and who is the Man, What differences lay therein?
Who is it that struggles more or less, is it a monopoly one over the other?
It is in the minds of all men to seek serenity and peace, to stand and hope for this is common to all.

Yes, we all have this in common, but the Artist has the tools with which to utter man’s dissent. This dissent to the injustices and violence’s waged upon the world and upon ourselves.

However, if the Artist believes that he is inculpable of these same injustices; his beliefs are that of indolence. For the Artist is no different in terms of the flesh and bone we speak of; this cage is inherent to all.

Struggle is also inherent. Who is it that has not done so? In this day and age as in most ages past, we have witnessed the violent upheaval of country against country, neighbor against neighbor. Americans and the world have watched towers and airplanes fall from the sky. And while this is agreeably horrific, we enlist and unleash a nationally based reprisal against our fellow human beings.

Yes, justice must be served, but it must be served by calm and learned hands. Some nine years later we find ourselves wallowed deep in the decay of war. And to what end has it been justified. The soldier will say that it is to bestow honor upon his fallen comrades and that is why the fight must go on. The politician will say it is to ensure stability in the affected region. The businessman will say it is to regain stability in the markets.

But the Man, the Woman and child only ask when will this end? The laid off workers, the new lower class of America, the grieving Mothers and Fathers, the limbless young men and woman. What is it that they see? The world’s future lies wounded upon an uncaring street.

And yet, what is it that an artist can do that a man cannot? The artist is a part of the melee, part of this violent soup. He may sit outside the bowl separate from the rest, but he cannot deny his complicity with this.

We must come to terms with our humanity as artists. For the artist to deny this would surely be the greatest lie. It is the twenty first century and we are the Writer’s, the artists of this age. What is it that we are prepared to tell the future? What is it that will be said of us and our work?

Let us not lie to them, let us not squander our opportunity to convey our perceived truths in the most laudable of lights. However we must all confess that we are first and foremost,
Man, simple men and women who struggle, who live, and die, who at times celebrate injustices, who embrace blind thought and bias’s, who breathe and bleed just as they, just as we… We are heartbeat and pulse of these times. But let us not hold that above our brothers and sisters, Let our combined works embrace the common man. For if not for him, Art is meaningless.
c quirino Apr 2013
when the child tugs at my apron strings,
what is my name but satan.
mistress river acid,
strip my legs of their skin with each step,
down to tendon, bone, and marrow.
i’ll wash up, limbless and parched.

we’ll stand, nubile and resplendent
beneath you while you sleep,
lobbing pebbles at your window,
while you’ll believe it to be rain,
commuting furtively into the pile of dead leaves
and crumpled tissues in the drain pipe.

you’ll ask us if we were there,
not believing voices beyond cave shadows.

we’ll lie, aged and eyelid heavy,
in sweet-earth-cupped-hands.

*~life's about to get real weird in the next ten seconds~
Noah Oct 2015
a thousand eyes follow you from newly waxed floors
and trail after me with form-filled labels, white on gold
take as needed; do not operate machinery; relax.
the shadows follow our steps, ***** and blood next to God’s poster love.
pin it to the bathroom wall: peccavi, peccavi

two years, fifteen minutes, miles of scars.
we sleep through the days, and whisper
of nights before the hurricane

("what happened to those two?")
                                                     ("Deus misereatur, the storm took them.")

I daydream of sinking my teeth into the flesh of redemption,
to rip muscle from immaculate bone.
can we not move on?
copper denial drips from our jaws.

and Deo gratias, they say, you survived.
limbless and naked on tiled floors.
Deo gratias et Deus mortuus est.
survival is in our veins.

I watch you waiting in LCD purgatory
as you see my fingers bleed into the vinyl shielded couches of the 12am ER

perception through observation — I let you reveal who I am.
what am I feeling? how do I act?
breathing through each other with liquor in our lungs.
I know how the bile tastes in your throat,
and you know the burn of the whiskey on my tongue

why do we still reach for walls
where cicada-shell notices cling with scotch tape?
take a number and restore the riches;
leave the room and tear them down.

who but God can build over the ruins of fallen cities, fallen worlds?
and ora pro nobis, He is yet unwelcome here.


we are holy, in our own names we pray, and Hallelujah, we are saved
pretentious **** based on the experiences my close friend Xander and i went through idk. here's to 2+ years up from rock bottom, man. we've got this.

— The End —