"lousy" poems
Lets stop n slam on somethin' shameful like war and anguish...
'Cause im pretty sure that tremendous termoil and suffering and starvation is the same in all languages...
But something that most of us will never know...
'Cause in this country you tend to grow a fat *** as you grow old.
Give this countries cold dark history a warm embrace, look it in the face!
All this killing, death, distruction, and disease...more war than peace!
Something most of us will never see, much less feel...Because ignoring it is so much easier.
We'd rather be pleasing ourselves than siezing the keys to this country!
Jump in.
Take a sunday drive for freedom.
Sunday football keeps you occupied...
Kicked back in the recliner, while others freeze in the name of the flag.
And your constitution.
And the human condition.
Patriotism is not pretty to the petty.
To...those getting rich, hand over fist...
On your...vacant homes, vacant jobs, and vacant votes.
While they vacate our education with more lousy legislation.
We get lazier and sleezier and sloppier.
We pass judgement on our fellow man...
While we let politicians pass bills that destroy this great land.
Hand over fist, hand over hand...one hand washes the other politicians ****
These dinosaurs with their special interest agendas make me sick.
Stand up strait.
Look at me when I talk to you.
Dont turn a blind eye to all the bodies that once hung from loops...
Remember where we came from.
Re-write history like the bible.
Re-write war and peace.
We call soldiers "property of uncle sam".
Brainwashed to believe in 'the man' and his plans.
Slavery doesn't segregate anymore.
We're all in on this together.
This time.
We stand in unison.
All in on this together.
Revolution is freedom.
Jan 5, 2010
Jan 5, 2010 at 7:27 AM UTC
the words have come and gone,
I sit ill.
the phone rings, the cats sleep.
Linda vacuums.
I am waiting to live,
waiting to die.
I wish I could ring in some bravery.
it's a lousy fix
but the tree outside doesn't know:
I watch it moving with the wind
in the late afternoon sun.
there's nothing to declare here,
just a waiting.
each faces it alone.
Oh, I was once young,
Oh, I was once unbelievably
young!
from Transit magazine, 1994
16.7k
Lady, your room is lousy with flowers.
When you kick me out, that's what I'll remember,
Me, sitting here bored as a loepard
In your jungle of wine-bottle lamps,
Velvet pillows the color of blood pudding
And the white china flying fish from Italy.
I forget you, hearing the cut flowers
Sipping their liquids from assorted pots,
Pitchers and Coronation goblets
Like Monday drunkards. The milky berries
Bow down, a local constellation,
Toward their admirers in the tabletop:
Mobs of eyeballs looking up.
Are those petals of leaves you've paried with them ---
Those green-striped ovals of silver tissue?
The red geraniums I know.
Friends, friends. They stink of armpits
And the invovled maladies of autumn,
Musky as a lovebed the morning after.
My nostrils prickle with nostalgia.
Henna hags:cloth of your cloth.
They tow old water thick as fog.
The roses in the Toby jug
Gave up the ghost last night. High time.
Their yellow corsets were ready to split.
You snored, and I heard the petals unlatch,
Tapping and ticking like nervous fingers.
You should have junked them before they died.
Daybreak discovered the bureau lid
Littered with Chinese hands. Now I'm stared at
By chrysanthemums the size
Of Holofernes' head, dipped in the same
Magenta as this fubsy sofa.
In the mirror their doubles back them up.
Listen: your tenant mice
Are rattling the ******* packets. Fine flour
Muffles their bird feet: they whistle for joy.
And you doze on, nose to the wall.
This mizzle fits me like a sad jacket.
How did we make it up to your attic?
You handed me gin in a glass bud vase.
We slept like stones. Lady, what am I doing
With a lung full of dust and a tongue of wood,
Knee-deep in the cold swamped by flowers?
14.7k
Songs of Oregon: No. 1 “Gonna Make You Crazy, That Place”
nuts, crazy peeps
whomever wherever,
regardless of race creed color or gender (did I get ‘em all?)
current state of residence (geo-identified)
a poem - the very same recited,
as a disclaimer, a yellow finger wagging warning:
“Don’t go! If you go, you won’t come back”
now kids, I’m a veteran of foreign travel,
many continents, cold and hot, rivers and seas,
some living, some dead,
some so big they named it Endless,
been to the great cities, Swiss villages,
pyramids, climbed Masada,
danced on grapes (why can’t I recall where)
skied the Alps, trekked the Sinai Desert,
clubbed in Rio, and danced till morn,
on a certain Greek Isle that rhymes with Mickey’s Nose
even been to L.A and San Fran, left poorer
but in sync,
always came home
with my mind decently reshaped
me/ a product of gritty unpretty grime,
streets of normal humans
acting like normal escaped mad persons,
this brutal city island instilled a
layer of fat and smog neath my skin,
a kind of migrating duck-like survival kit,
came with a homing beacon included
the those of you who know me,
perhaps too well, ken we citified islanders
love our beaches (fire hydrants)
cherish our sun dappled blessings
upon on farms (window sill herb gardens)
and sunning settlements (rooftops)
they say our tap water is secretly bottled,
sold in places where the springs purportedly
run crystalline
though we don’t got no pinot, just sweet concord grape,
so sweet, the wine of children and street nodders,
needy for instant sugar highs
so as we new Yorkers proudly
say on our license plates,
prove it or stfup!
so a first hand investigation for which
the taxpayers won’t be charged even a lousy mill,
deemed necessary to put to rest this crazy claiming warning
“Don’t go! If you go, you won’t come back”
guessing must be something in the water and the wine
Jun 5, 2018
Jun 5, 2018 at 9:00 AM UTC
(March, 1919)A LIAR goes in fine clothes.
A liar goes in rags.
A liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes.
A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells and dies in a life of lies.
And the stonecutters earn a living-with lies-on the tombs of liars.
Aliar looks 'em in the eye
And lies to a woman,
Lies to a man, a pal, a child, a fool.
And he is an old liar; we know him many years back.
A liar lies to nations.
A liar lies to the people.
A liar takes the blood of the people
And drinks this blood with a laugh and a lie,
A laugh in his neck,
A lie in his mouth.
And this liar is an old one; we know him many years.
He is straight as a dog's hind leg.
He is straight as a corkscrew.
He is white as a black cat's foot at midnight.
The tongue of a man is tied on this,
On the liar who lies to nations,
The liar who lies to the people.
The tongue of a man is tied on this
And ends: To hell with 'em all.
To hell with 'em all.
It's a song hard as a riveter's hammer,
Hard as the sleep of a crummy hobo,
Hard as the sleep of a lousy doughboy,
Twisted as a shell-shock idiot's gibber.
The liars met where the doors were locked.
They said to each other: Now for war.
The liars fixed it and told 'em: Go.
Across their tables they fixed it up,
Behind their doors away from the mob.
And the guns did a job that nicked off millions.
The guns blew seven million off the map,
The guns sent seven million west.
Seven million shoving up the daisies.
Across their tables they fixed it up,
The liars who lie to nations.
And now
Out of the butcher's job
And the boneyard junk the maggots have cleaned,
Where the jaws of skulls tell the jokes of war ghosts,
Out of this they are calling now: Let's go back where we were.
Let us run the world again, us, us.
Where the doors are locked the liars say: Wait and we'll cash in again.
So I hear The People talk.
I hear them tell each other:
Let the strong men be ready.
Let the strong men watch.
Let your wrists be cool and your head clear.
Let the liars get their finish,
The liars and their waiting game, waiting a day again
To open the doors and tell us: War! get out to your war again.
So I hear The People tell each other:
Look at to-day and to-morrow.
Fix this clock that nicks off millions
When The Liars say it's time.
Take things in your own hands.
To hell with 'em all,
The liars who lie to nations,
The liars who lie to The People.
10.5k
truth be told,
I am not that bold.
It is a jab into my eye,
a reality full of lies that my mom blames this distress.
Hold on, I can't tell black from white. Might as well be blind, I can predict even the scenic route that people doubt. My whereabouts are no longer in a crowd, standing with witnesses is unhealthy for me.
I want privacy, isn't being alone key anyways? Who is to care
if I write "Beware" or just stare. In the end, there is this sentence left to bare. Always interpreting the language I so rarely speak. Energy may flow for others, but I am not a plug one can spark by lousy remarks.
Feb 9, 2016
Feb 9, 2016 at 8:54 PM UTC
Are we fated to dance to the same tune alone in our separate universes?
Is it true that we must silently keep to our preordained curses?
Are we destined to swoon at the beauty of the moon at differing time slots?
Why were we given invisible ink to connect our lives' dots?
Must it be that our lives revolve around the whims of the sun?
Isn't it ludicrous that we won't see the intricate webs we've spun?
Was it the plan that we exist only in our minds and hearts?
Why do we have to tolerate starting when the other's ending and end at the other's starts?
Has it been written that we can only afford to infinitely chase each others heartbeats?
Was it foretold that we're trapped in a singular notion that never really fits?
Is the game set as such that we can never emerge as winners?
How is it that the ocean was made out of our tears that flowed from rivers?
Why is it that with our entirety we believe but do not know?
What's the reason for the path made clear but we're too afraid to go?
What does it entail to possess the very least but yet you covet it the most?
How do you pride yourself in something but not allowed to boast?
Why do we frantically scramble to piece together jagged shards?
Can't we just play this blasted deck of lousy cards?
Is it destiny or cruelty to have found then lost?
Why does it seem absurd that we have all its takes but can't afford the cost?
Is it the thoughts that **** or the emotions that debilitate?
Is it the challenges we take on or the curveballs we anticipate?
Why bother when sheer folly is all it seems to be?
Why tarry when the heart is free and the mind is ready?
Is it ridiculous to have found myself still very bothered?
Is it wrong to question fate that had always bound us tethered?
Why is the good always bad and the bad becomes worse?
Is it true that the harder we fight, the deeper we immerse?
Has life turned to be but sad little rhetorics?
Are we but performers on stages coerced into theatrics?
Is it time for me to surface this one-man submarine?
Will it be so that if I do, my journey would then begin...?
Sep 30, 2014
Sep 30, 2014 at 8:38 PM UTC
Give me back my broken night
my mirrored room, my secret life
it's lonely here,
there's no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby,
that's an order!
Give me crack and **** ***
Take the only tree that's left
and stuff it up the hole
in your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
give me Stalin and St Paul
I've seen the future, brother:
it is ******
Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
You don't know me from the wind
you never will, you never did
I'm the little jew
who wrote the Bible
I've seen the nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories, heard them all
but love's the only engine of survival
Your servant here, he has been told
to say it clear, to say it cold:
It's over, it ain't going
any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
you feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future:
it is ******
Things are going to slide ...
There'll be the breaking of the ancient
western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There'll be phantoms
There'll be fires on the road
and the white man dancing
You'll see a woman
hanging upside down
her features covered by her fallen gown
and all the lousy little poets
coming round
tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson
and the white man dancin'
Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St Paul
Give me Christ
or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby:
it is ******
Things are going to slide ...
When they said REPENT REPENT ...
7.4k
at high noon
at a small college near the beach
sober
the sweat running down my arms
a spot of sweat on the table
I flatten it with my finger
blood money blood money
my god they must think I love this like the others
but it's for bread and beer and rent
blood money
I'm tense lousy feel bad
poor people I'm failing I'm failing
a woman gets up
walks out
slams the door
a ***** poem
somebody told me not to read ***** poems
here
it's too late.
my eyes can't see some lines
I read it
out-
desperate trembling
lousy
they can't hear my voice
and I say,
I quit, that's it, I'm
finished.
and later in my room
there's scotch and beer:
the blood of a coward.
this then
will be my destiny:
scrabbling for pennies in tiny dark halls
reading poems I have long since beome tired
of.
and I used to think
that men who drove buses
or cleaned out latrines
or murdered men in alleys were
fools.
5.4k
Being lazy digs a huge grave
For our peace and won't save
A lazy fellow is never brave
He is to fate a submissive slave
Taking action he will shun
Success shows him no affection
God gives him no protection
He belongs to the losing section
A lazy man gets no sweats
Tears become his constant assets
He uses buts and loses guts
He is depressed for lack of outlets
He lies lethargically in his bed
To be passive, thinks his head
Mentally he is almost dead
His is a very negative blood
Great chances he regularly misses
He is deprived of victory's kisses
A working mind, he does not possess
He never gets success as a bonus
His brain is so lazy *** idle
Everything is to him a riddle
He is afraid of every hurdle
His life, fate will finely meddle
Work makes him fear and faint
Gloom only his thoughts paint
Against him accumulates complaint
His mind, laziness will strongly taint
Progress tells him good-bye
He is an unattractive guy
His life-river is ever dry
Only laziness, he can supply
Idleness may be initially jolly
But it is not at all holy
Angels like it not wholly
Unless he starts a venture newly
If laziness is away kicked
Losses can be wisely licked
If laziness is wrongly picked
By fate, lazy man is tricked.
M V VENKATARAMAN
Mar 24, 2010
Mar 24, 2010 at 6:25 AM UTC
Lousy days
Most days
Some days
It gets old.
Ugly lies.
Assumption ties
Your immaturity
Into a bow.
Two face
Your face
Reminds me of a quarter.
Head down tails up
You're nothing but a distorter.
Some days
Most days
I can put up
With your face
But lately
Most days
It's just a sad disgrace.
Grow up
Show up
Teach your kid how to lie
Teach your kid how to hide
That second face they'll grow
To despise.
But walk around
Like you know
How everything
Suppose to be.
Keep your head high
And keep your maturity low
Because those who can see
Through your insecurities
Knows just how far
Your fall will go.
Sep 17, 2012
Sep 17, 2012 at 5:39 PM UTC
You are my queen
Nobody else in this world could ever replace you
Yes, a princess may move into the throne
And claim her new title as queen
But she is only the replacement for the true beauty that holds my heart
You danced at the ball with such grace
You handled every affair with such elegance
You cared for every living thing with such ease
You were the definition of perfection
And somehow you noticed me
A lousy peasant
Who has two left feed and could only stumble and claim as dancing
Who can barely handle my own faults
Who can hardly love myself half the time
You noticed me
And you loved me
You will forever be my queen
Unreplaceabe, Beauty, & Mine
Jan 11, 2017
Jan 11, 2017 at 7:41 PM UTC
Even though they control my *****
claim over my lootie,
and they attempt to gaslight my sovereign multifrequency
I haven’t forgotten I am a certified Duesy!
You’re bumming off me, little mousie.
Even if you thought I was a loosy,
I adore my *****
I mean just look at the way it oozes,
sweet nectar that makes you goosey!
I’m too busy
keeping you alive from my *****
Orgasming at light speed to my divine presence, to behold you’d require a diamond koozie.
Call yourself a flouzy
for not respecting this sequency.
If you truly had one too, you’d understand why I am reclaiming my dignity.
They want to own what they do not revere in secrecy.
I can’t be bothered to slow down for you to drain my juicy.
I am too in love with my *****
They try very hard to downplay my power, so sussy.
Bow down or drown in this *****
Ordained into structured flowies,
life is mine, fulfillment With me can be so easy.
But if you’re not with this *****
don’t get too close you Will get dizzy!
So much life is brewing inside my *****
It’s ironic, all these dictators came through my *****
My lips spit you out even though you pretend to be so bossy.
True Power can’t be manipulated you fool, I’d be triggered too if my mind was that lousy!
Are you put off yet, *****
Awww, don’t be so fussy!
Thaw that heart out it’s too icy.
GET OUT of my *****
go elsewhere to be pissy!
Just not on my planet crazy,
you’re on your last mercy!
Jun 9, 2025
Jun 9, 2025 at 11:11 PM UTC
all that sits and waits
for him at home
is one lousy mangy dog
and the man thinks
that it is his
like some jealous lover
keeping a mistress
he doesn't understand
that the dog will never leave
an unconditional love
unlike all the women
he has ever tried to own
Dec 4, 2021
Dec 4, 2021 at 2:23 PM UTC
One of the famous "Barry Hodges Memories" sequence
People think that Waterloo is a fascinating battlefield,
Relatively near to Brussels (where the sprouts come from
and, which are, as you know, a great cause of **** fart-gas).
But believe me there is more to it than that:
As I was wandering around checking out the graves
And generally having quite a nice time when...
A load of drug-crazed German bikers appeared
Sky-high on excess intake of moules avec pommes frites
And several gallons of extra-strong Belgian beer.
And they leaped on us and bashed the living ****
Out of my poor 99 year old mother-in-law, Deidre,
And left her lying there spasticated on the battlefield.
And for what, a few lousy packets of French cigarettes;
And I needed a metal scoop to rescue her remains to take home;
Dear God, I shall skip any more 19th century champs de guerre.
Dec 16, 2014
Dec 16, 2014 at 7:47 AM UTC
This is the very first of my "Barry Hodges' Memories" poems.
People think that Amsterdam is an exciting city,
Full of life, full of fun, full of cheap beer and drugs
And easy to buy thrilling ******** **** films galore.
But there is another side to this Dutch metropolis
Believe me, I know, I have been there, squire,
And I have seen it in all its drug-filled horror.
I was there one balmy eve, just off the Leidseplein,
With my older brother, a kind and gentle man
(although physically not very pretty),
When a gang of Surinamese youths,
Sky-high on crack ******* or whatever filth,
Attacked us, mugged us, use what words you wish,
It doesn't matter, the result was the same.
And they left him lying there in the gutter,
His skull cracked and seriously brain-damaged,
And for what, I hear a myriad voices query,
Well only a few hundred lousy over-valued Euros.
He dragged out a miserable half-alive existence,
For a few Hellish months in the city hospital;
Dear God, I shall not be going to Amsterdam again
(with or without a Dutch cap, may I add tentatively).
Aug 19, 2015
Aug 19, 2015 at 1:38 PM UTC
Set fire to the Antique Shop,
We’re one step ahead of the cops.
Mannequins of Elvis begin to melt.
Free from past matters; free from guilt.
Promoting the prosperity
As we hoard hostility
Androids ambushing Arkansas,
They seek to find ménage trois.
Achieving self-awareness
They want fill the void’s emptiness
Chugging R & R by the fifths.
By our thumbnails we dangle off cliffs.
Thread by thread, the veil unfolds.
Standing all alone, I’m left in the cold.
Show me how much you care.
Push me in my wheelchair.
Listening to what drives you crazy
Eventually helps you stop being lazy.
Lilly is spinning me dizzy
She belongs to the world of yesterday
The haze is now fading away.
If only I could stay
for just one day
But Behold
I feel you should be told
I have come from the end
When the Earth is condemned.
As I tell the tall tale,
How we came to live in hell,
once we found the holy grail.
“We overcame our fear
The classified was made clear.
We launched all the nukes,
By order of the Skywalker named Luke.
The framers were lousy architects;
They left the balance completely hectic.
The CEO’s got away with fraud.
Thinking their work was the will of God.”
I met you in the gloomiest bar.
We speed across the town in my car.
Questioning why we remained silent.
The flickering florescent light compliment
The tone of shallow yellow paint,
I can finally hibernate.
After I left the oblivious,
Do I finally notice,
It’s hesitation that leads
me astray from redemption.
TJW 2013
Oct 22, 2013
Oct 22, 2013 at 6:14 AM UTC
My decisions are fallacious
My thoughts are surreptitious
My heartbeat arrhythmic
And my soul tormented
I help none
Speak not
And seek no intimacy
I am contemptible
Hated
Degenerate
Low
Lousy
And
I am nugatory
Aug 7, 2016
Aug 7, 2016 at 1:25 AM UTC
I was walking on the seashore when I heard a fearful cry
I looked out across the water where a man was drifting by
"You've got to help!" he shouted, "There's a lifebelt in your reach,
"If you throw it to me quickly I'll get back onto the Beach!"
I hastily began to do exactly as he said
When a little word of warning made its way into my head.
"You reckon this will help," I said, "that is what you believe,
"But to trust short-term solutions here is hopelessly naive.
"You think the belt will save you, and for now maybe it would
"But to teach a faulty lesson here could do more harm than good
"You want something for nothing and that just is not the way
"In the sophisticated economic climate of today -
"You need trade! You need trade, not aid
"You need trade! I can't help until you've paid.
"You say that you're in trouble and my help is all you need
"But a culture of dependency is all that it would breed!"
"What's wrong with you, you maniac?" he answered with a yell,
"I'm drowning in the ocean and there's nothing here to sell!
"We can talk about your theories when I'm back upon the shore
"Now just throw the ****** life-belt out, I beg you, I implore!
"You have it in your power and you know that if you can
"You've a moral obligation to assist your fellow man!"
I told him, "You are selfish! This is difficult for me,
"D'you think a drowning person is a pleasant thing to see?
"You shouldn't be in the water if you haven't learned to swim!"
He said "You no-good lousy ******* it was you who pushed me in!"
Well this kind of moral blackmail made me look at him, aghast
And say, "There really is no virtue here in dwelling on the past,
"You need trade! You need trade, not aid
"You need trade! I can't help until you've paid.
"You say that you're in trouble and my help is all you need
"But a culture of dependency is all that it would breed!"
"Don't be so pessimistic," I advised him, "you are rich!
"The sea in which you're drowning must be lowping full of fish!"
"If that's what you're relying on," he said, "to judge my wealth,
"Then you know that I have nothing, 'cos you caught them all yourself!"
I said, "Well, you can't argue with the laws of competition
"You were wasting time by drowning when you should have been out fishin'!"
When finally he died I said, "My brother, I will miss you,
"But maybe more importantly, you've highlighted an issue:
"Drowning is a problem, and believe me, now you're gone,
"I'll be on the phone to Geldof, Ultravox and Elton John.
"We'll organise a concert so that everyone can see
"That drowning is a menace, we should make it history!
"Using trade! Using trade, not aid,
"Good, free trade, the grestest plan we've ever made,
"You say that you're in trouble and my help is all you need,
"But a culture of dependency's a rotten thing to breed!"
Dec 6, 2010
Dec 6, 2010 at 4:25 AM UTC
Lousy with drowsiness
Trying to write
I succumb to the eyes’
Irresistible night
A serenity scenery
Reverie taunting me
Setting in stone
A tone
Ominous, haunting me
Ending, mind-bending me
Impending doom
As the dreaded contentment
An interlude tomb
Then begins to disturb
Me from thunderous slumber
A spark to revive
To describe my dead smile
Still playing alive
And imbibe the cascade
Conscious stream fear of falling
In love with the first sympathetic
Muse calling
Contained in a shattered frame
Out of its mind
Losing all track of time
Till the wake up call rhyme
Aug 8, 2018
Aug 8, 2018 at 4:07 PM UTC
forgiveness for self is a thunderstorm ferocious,
cracking sounds so god awful fearful
that one questions his-her sanity,
an overage so unnatural that
only nature could create it
it is a moment momentousness
when the exhalation of exhaustion,
the winner and loser, both you,
surrender ne’er knowing
which you is which,
life’s son of ***** or just a plain jane mothering version,
either way you say to yourself got to
get past that lousy stinking
love affair
win the race to clean slate,
where the end is insight where everything replaced
in its used to be placed
goaded into melted nothingness,
goaded into believing that’s a real thing,
that when you finally get there,
enough is enough,
get out of jail ticket will work,
but it ain’t never free,
even if you paid for it in
what you call
throwing bad after good,
monopoly money,
nope, ain’t never free
no idea what to put in the second empty closet,
who needs an attached to-the-wall-tile
toothbrush holder with one extra emptying space,
where to hide picture albums in a space
outta sight, outta mind, you still can find
why you didn’t care enough to
daily mat-wipe street shoes before
riveted in place
before entering your own! apartment and no,
you are consciously unconscious immobilized by
the missing calling out of her “don’t forget”
in the car’s ashtray,
a red kissed blotted red lipstick
tissue that needs discard-action,
but you incapable of either,
those collected records and cd’s,
her teasing your old fashion ways,
reluctance to let go
so you read
“that to forgive one self doesn’t forgive forgetting”
and it hits home, home run, score to the core,
since you wrote those words on a sun rain afternoon,
a punctuating thunderstorm day
refusing to decide
which
haunts worse
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Jun 30, 2019
Jun 30, 2019 at 5:04 PM UTC
Aye, Montecelli, that's the name.
You may have heard of him perhaps.
Yet though he never savoured fame,
Of those impressionistic chaps,
Monet and Manet and Renoir
He was the avatar.
He festered in a Marseilles slum,
A starving genius, god-inspired.
You'd take him for a lousy ***
Tho' poetry of paint he lyred,
In dreamy pastels each a gem: . . .
How people laughed at them!
He peddled paint from bar to bar;
From sordid rags a jewel shone,
A glow of joy and colour far
From filth of fortune woe-begone.
'Just twenty francs,' he shyly said,
'To take me drunk to bed.'
Of Van Gogh and Cezanne a peer;
In dreams of ecstasy enskied,
A genius and a pioneer,
Poor, paralysed and mad he died:
Yet by all who hold Beauty dear
May he be glorified!
2.6k
he thought of all the horrid things
he would have liked to have said to his boss
for he was a very nasty piece of work
a fleeting thought and then it was lost
he’d have told him how much he despised him
and that he thought he was well past his prime
but the thought passed as quick he had it
as with all thoughts now he hadn’t the time
he’d have said lots of thing to some others
there were many many words they had used
but the one that had hit him the hardest
was when his boss had used the word ‘accused’
but then he had been stealing the money
he’d spent it on gambling and cars
but he was lousy at picking the winners
and spent a lot too much time in the bars
but he couldn’t face a lifetime in prison
he couldn’t have lived with the shame
so he felt that a fast trip down earthward
was the only way of saving his name
and so he was now on that journey
one he’d never taken before
it’s a once in a lifetime experience
when you jump from the fiftieth floor.
©Joe Wilson – Jumping 2014
‘a bit of fun – for me if not for him!’
Jul 19, 2014
Jul 19, 2014 at 4:47 PM UTC
it’s not about you at all
you get swept up in people’s definitions
hung on the wall in someone’s frame
you’re artifact on the edge of their radar
to your family, you’re a son daughter sister brother
and technically yes, your mom bore you
(and still does)
but must you accept all that goes with it?
you were born in new jersey
must that make the sopranos and bruce springsteen
your problem?
artists paint you as lame and superficial
the boss works you like a crossword puzzle
to the government, you’re a fraction
to the rich, you’re money to be spent
to the cops, an obstacle
to the bartender, a lousy tipper
they convince you, they’re persuasive
but must this be your face?
it takes a lot of energy to break free
you escape once to find yourself in another cage
it’s a russian doll of captivity
maybe it's not worth it
how many times can you wake up
and say **** it?
Aug 15, 2018
Aug 15, 2018 at 9:53 AM UTC