"mannered" poems
Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly
Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.
Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.
Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,
Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,
Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We
Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking
Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!
We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,
Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:
We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.
20.5k
PART II: A GLASS CEILING DRIPPING WITH BLOOD
Mohanad Younis, of Gaza City;
Where the sand is stained with blood
As the world feigns pity.
Broken families, unspoken tragedies –
The order of everyday life.
He was born amidst chaos and strife,
To a divorcing husband and wife.
If life were lived in peace,
This dissolution would’ve been a release.
Not much more, not much less –
A family’s lore, a decision to digress.
In war-ravaged land, however,
One needs every helping hand,
Especially a soul that was so clever.
Such a curious, voracious mind needed to understand;
A furious, rapacious search,
Unexplained conundrums to unravel and unwind.
Why do we exist?
Why do we fight and resist?
Is it worth living with all these scars on my wrists?
Does anybody outside Palestine care?
Will they keep on watching?
Or will they be unable to bear?
Of this and much more Mohanad must’ve thought,
As he sat at the Marna House Hotel,
Smoking cigarettes, freshly bought.
A student at al-Azhar, a mild-mannered pharmacist,
A prudent man who would have gotten far.
An admirer of Bassel al-Araj, another victim of oppression –
An inspirer, a brother who alleviated his depression.
Hunted down and killed by the IDF,
Another pacifist murdered for being an activist.
One figure of many who died;
One of those who did not want to hide.
Mohanad wasn’t a resistance fighter –
He felt that such persistence did not make their burdens lighter.
Instead, he wished to make his mind brighter,
And perhaps have family of his own.
He was in love, and wanted to get married,
But life was rough, and warranted a future far more harried.
The final twist of horror?
Having the intellect to apply for University,
And deserving the respect needed to obtain a reply,
Yet not being allowed to leave the city.
That is the news Mohanad had received,
Hopes and dreams suddenly deceived.
Denied a right to education
Because he was born on the wrong end of a cruel fabrication.
The glass ceiling, dripping with blood,
Swallowed his hopes whole like a flood.
Sep 10, 2018
Sep 10, 2018 at 10:04 AM UTC
Starched Dress Shirts
Shiny Polished Shoes
Manicured
Well mannered
Only one hidden desire
He ate big fat rats
Feb 6, 2016
Feb 6, 2016 at 12:00 AM UTC
ill-mannered impolite uneducated
how many words would describe rude
cheeky uncultured inconsiderate crude
how many words would say rude
they say money can't buy you class
then how much did you buy for your crass
Nov 20, 2012
Nov 20, 2012 at 12:42 AM UTC
Of all vice in the world under discipline
Laziness – a Curse - is like a Saccharin.
Sweet as pipe, sonorous as violin
Wicked as a snake, ill-mannered as Bedouin;
Laziness creeps in secretly body within
And remains there undisturbed and akin.
It is seen when duty or slog does spin
Grinds us till in others found Lenin.
But that is a bad time as made us thin.
Hence precaution must be taken, O Kin!
Laziness, a Bad King, should not reign
Over us from beginning to let out jinn.
Of all vice in the world under discipline
Laziness – a Curse - is like a Saccharin.
Aug 13, 2017
Aug 13, 2017 at 8:40 AM UTC
Swirling morning mist, draws abstract patterns of love
moving sprightly, between golden rays of sun,
prattling breeze and other manifestations winter presents,
green grass on the meadow looks like a dew studded carpet
pussyfooting rabbits, lick dew drops in a hurry and run back
to the warmth of their burrows, to sleep for some more time.
Sun, the nourisher eternal of the world , don't hide anymore
come out, peep above the crowd of sleepy grey old clouds,
looking grumpy, ill mannered and winter arrogant to the core,
don't like their attitude a bit, come out blow your trumpet of warmth
make the drooping wet birds, dry, fly up to the sky with a happy cry
sing songs of joy, warm the hearts,drive the winter gloom out.
Jan 10, 2015
Jan 10, 2015 at 7:47 AM UTC
He's not a man of many graces,
fewer teeth than tongues
but he won't say much with his lips.
He's at his strongest when you push,
but never from a kiss.
See,
he's stubborn in every way that doesn't matter,
in every principle that has no lesson.
I've bent the spines of fragile men
to see how far they'll go
before they break,
before they'll form into a crest
of his back that I can't dig from my head.
I've watched them fall in love with me
because I thought that maybe
one of them would empty me,
but they didn't.
He is an ill-mannered world,
the kind that breads creation.
A manifestation of passion and fear.
With eyes that dug twelve foot tunnels in my veins
and went there to die.
A man of simple needs,
plesantaries and shaky knees.
But he doesn't want to see you quiver,
he only wants to know it.
Nov 28, 2016
Nov 28, 2016 at 11:42 AM UTC
Sometimes I watch
the man in the benign pastel shirt
and the drab khakis
with the receding hairline
and the thick glasses
cross the street
with a package in his arms;
And I think to myself,
"There goes a good dad,
mild mannered, loving -
trying to make his way
in this savage world."
Then, almost instantaneously,
the doubt creeps in:
"Or, he could be a monster,
who beats his kids,
or his wife,
or sets fire to homes,
or has adolescent prisoners in his basement."
From then on I question everyone I see.
That lovable looking old lady
with her sun hat
and disabled parking pass
might shout racist obscenities
from her balcony
at poor black kids
playing in the park across the street.
The clean-cut young man
in the shirt and tie
with the papers in his hands
may spend his weekends
filling envelopes with anthrax spores -
one for each name on his list.
I can no longer see
the father whose arrival from work
is anticipated by a loving family,
or the grandmother who delights in
handing out the most Halloween candy
to every kid in the neighborhood,
or the industrious young professional
striving to make a meaningful contribution
to society.
I wonder if the darkness I see in them
is a magnified reflection
of the darkness I know
that lurks inside of me.
Sep 27, 2012
Sep 27, 2012 at 4:30 AM UTC
There is never nothing new
Just rearrange things
I don’t write poems
I just remove the extra words that are in the way
Hold on to the words like whispers and shadows and wings
Recklessly insert adjectives
Tie it all to your delusions of profundity
Dig down deep for pain
no matter how senseless
Pick at your emotional scabs
Bleed
No one likes poetry
Constantly remind people of that
Tell them that you make it sound good to you and **** them
(Even though their ovation means everything)
Slip, dip and weave
With ambiguous wet dreams
Full lips and thick tongue
Mouthing…
Come
to an understanding
***** is much better than clean
Make it filthy
Soil it
Make it nostalgic
People need to be reassured that you were really ******* up as a kid
and that this poetry **** doesn’t just happen to people overnight
Make it esoteric
That way, when no one knows what the hell you are talking about,
you will have a good word to explain why
Say things that are so ill mannered that they are weighty
I will give you an example
“I’m not looking for a girl that is beautiful
I'm looking for one just barely ugly enough to **** me”
Incite large groups of people to *****
Get so personal that it gives people headaches
Expose yourself until everyone is embarrassed for you
Spew it all over the bar
In a drunken stupor
flaunt it lasciviously with your genitals
Pour yourself into reckless collisions
Drink from your soul until it rots your liver
Write until you want to **** yourself
then write about that
Make it as bitter as a Wal-mart associate
Make it so sweet she will swallow it all
before looking up at you with eyes like tiny puddles
To say, “that was beautiful”
(even though it was disgusting)
It should be raw
It should make you itch
It should be like rubbing up against it spreads it
It should be like VD
Make really long
Like it’s your *****
No,
Make it really, really long
Like its my *****
Make it rhyme
I mean don’t
Don’t
Don’t ever write another ******* poem
because I assure you
if I did not write it
than it must ****
and that is how poetry works
Michael L Sutter
Oct 16, 2011
Oct 16, 2011 at 12:31 PM UTC
A moment sweet
like a strawberry kiss
between the luscious lips
of early sunshine and
damp blades of grass
Goodbye winter,
I whisper to the wind
not a powerful gust
but just a honey sweet breeze;
a gift from upcoming Spring
Pecans falling from my tree
like a rain of fall leaves,
fluttering softly to the ground;
happy to have survived
this years mild mannered winter
So I gather them up
like a squirrel on Christmas Day;
not just the buttery nuts,
but the kiss also
from the luscious lips of sunshine
and the damp blades of grass
Jul 6, 2013
Jul 6, 2013 at 7:56 PM UTC
Chocolate is great
It's really neat
But, to be the color, it's bittersweet
This is the experience of a lifetime that Hersheys must undergo
To read, to be told, to hear
That it's almost good enough
Almost pretty enough, almost smart enough
Too reserved and mannered to be this and that
Tears down almost all confidence that Hershey has
It takes away it's natural state
Like a Hershey left in the heat
It takes a while for that Hershey to find beauty again within itself, to find a true acceptance to who it really is, and the discover it's identity
To understand that it won't always make ends meet
But that Hershey will overcome this phase
That made it's life a living maze
The Hershey will wake up
Look in the mirror and see they are somebody
with a cocked up head
will forget what everyone said
and the microaggression that became so macro will soon be irrelevant
That Hershey will see it's real identity to see a girl named Aliah
Jan 4, 2017
Jan 4, 2017 at 5:12 AM UTC
i am of the light
despite
my shroud
that crowds the villains in the toppled telemetry of my steeds
galloping gallantly from the burning cities of my dreams
i shall gleam from her or he
that which delivers
their truths faithfully to their dreams
open wounds turn invitation
in the pity of hungry thieves
who dared to dream
of peasants king-ed.
as we sing
sing
of desperation
in passionate confessions
of jaded wisdom
passed on through every failure
never to falter
in the betrayals of Walters
lost
in loss-less flac files
i have miles to go
smiles to grow
daggers projectiles
from mild mannered children
freshly ridden
of maniacal miracles
spiritual
but not stupid
we are troopin
this lucid movement
grooving
to the repetition of the drum
the gas blow back of a gun
the bursting bubbles of bubble gum
having fun
i learnt goodly on the run
learned nothing in victory
learned nothing in simplicity
complacently
snickering it all away
bullet by bullet
case by case
and eventually the blade
in my compassionate displays
we shall congregate
and hate ourselves
**** the donks to hell
dwelling on the cellar doors
that darkos teacher adored
in verbal massacre
of the written literature
of cracked brain fixtures
seeping the lines
in cold tingles
down the spines of maniacs
just relax
mix it down on a track
spit the thesis into pieces
through the creases of cracked sneakers, and out the speakers
of trouble seekers.
mistakes make us
deliberate chaos
tossed
upon the fakers
who cry to think
the dream
became a reality
mistake us
for serrated blades that rip the hearts from beasts
sometimes i stop to think
while having a drink
conclusive brinks
of sanity creaks
of my humility
secreting
frivolously
the disposing of my jealousy
of your feelings
hellaciously
i rip a felony
from a face
in appealing agony
antagonizing me
in the frenzied forensics
of my oblique
outlooks
none of us
were ever crooks
speaking to self
while being booked
in hell
Sep 5, 2012
Sep 5, 2012 at 1:36 AM UTC
The plums tasted
sweet to the unlettered desert-tribe girl-
but what manners! To chew into each! She was ungainly,
low-caste, ill mannered and *****
but the god took the
fruit she'd been *******
Why? She'd knew how to love.
She might not distinguish
splendor from filth
but she'd tasted the nectar of passion.
Might not know any Veda,
but a chariot swept her away-
now she frolics in heaven, ecstatically bound
to her god.
The Lord of Fallen Fools, says Mira,
will save anyone
who can practice rapture like that-
I myself in a previous birth
was a cowherding girl
at Gokul.
2.9k
***Fell heal over heads
in love with a poet,
he's mostly a rhyme schemer
likes Poe and his dark Raven,
in actuality, I'd fancy him more if
he were like Pablo Neruda, but I digress
I'm much accurately fashioned after Emily Dickinson
chasing heaven's June bugs toing and froing,
we'd meet at a perfectly superfluous coffee shop
he'll be murmuring elegiac pentameter
I'm simply looking to devour precious words,
we'd argue about abstract destinations,
straight forward persuasions and
premonitions of wayward ink allusions,
some days I want to claw mine own eyes out
amid all that nonsensical alliteration
others, I want to rip out embellishments
of his black heart's magnification,
he mutters tumult under his breath,
states he's abundantly sickly tired of all my
fanatical froufroutant flourished fantasies,
albeit, we're mild mannered artistes
of overstatement and simplification
thus, we continue laying it on thickly
I, with my hyperbolic cuppa tea and honey,
he's all brass tacks, no nonsense black coffee
ultimately, we reservedly seek gratification,
envisioning who functionally makes it first
to a finished line of manifestations's publication,
in eternity's poetic intentions and beyond***
Jun 20, 2015
Jun 20, 2015 at 9:14 AM UTC
A single day,
*for the whole life
you loved me,
made me who I am today.
Things that you left behind
and the struggle you went through
to give me better future .
A single day to express my gratitude
and to apologise for my ill mannered attitude
is not enough*.
May 13, 2017
May 13, 2017 at 3:35 PM UTC
My mind roams through a wilderness
Of imagination,
Only to reach a wrought-iron wall
At my lips.
The filters of polite society won't let me
Speak,
Won't let me scream ********
To their soft-mannered prejudices
That gather in the bottom of glasses of
Expensive champagne.
Apr 18, 2014
Apr 18, 2014 at 8:06 PM UTC
Moon, blow your light
my way, but don't cut my time
Let me dream just a little longer
while my eyelids shine
in the dark starlight
Let the ceremony end slow
back in my old home,
not in a cold forest near the sea
I want to see again
those three rivers that flow
together and listen to a woman
singing to a child
in her mild mannered way
But in spite of the night
and my wishes
something keeps creeping
past me in my sleep
like numbers of smoke
It was you, dark woman,
walking across the room bare
footed turning on the air conditioner
in the winter, a pair of scissors
in the folds of your robe.
Dec 12, 2017
Dec 12, 2017 at 4:14 PM UTC
This is not to say I pulley you down
And spread your Level to consort with my Ague
Your Bones, better than mine, to my Nerves frown
This Season as a Misbegotten Plague
A Blessing ideal is; Though disappoint
That Everyday Recorder plays again
Of Busy Trough's Effort spares to anoint
The very Oil you inspired since then
Come to think - Oil - its property slips by
And hard it is to keep the Dirt in-check
Though by Creed to be Faithful still - then lie,
As a Well-Mannered Specimen in-wreck.
All-in-all, we only wish for your Youth
To one day Understand the Better Truth.
Mar 15, 2013
Mar 15, 2013 at 3:24 AM UTC
countless generations of bards and preachers
and poets and sages
and honorable and revered members
of our respectable societies
countless such generations
have spoken and declaimed
have sung and serenaded
on goodness and cruelty and avarice -
and yet put them in power,
and scrutinize their lives
and their words
become thin
and their lives shallow
and their songs are cherubic lies;
a long line of saints and philosophers
and prophets
and mild-mannered selfless carers
ah such holy stewards
a long line indeed
has nurtured humanity, its sick and downtrodden
and radiates love in all directions
but oh scrutinize their actions and
their motives
their lives are but comic contradictions
pathetic self-delusion;
ah, let me not seek to change the world
but see to myself first
rather than jump into
hot-air sermons and vain exhibitions
Oct 22, 2010
Oct 22, 2010 at 2:14 AM UTC
Who’s to say how
He might come back for a second
inhumanely heaped-up helping,
if we grant that immensity
of our assumption He did come
kingly first into this inside-
out size from a do-you-miss-me-
yet’s mirthfully mythical realm
I have seen Him
lurking in a particle-board fine
finish on the thin outer membranes
of our estranged and better faces;
He’s Higgs-boson omnipresent,
but far too theoretical
for our broadly practical, turned-
away gazes to rediscover
There He is now
rising in the favela’s gap-
toothed grins with fabulously naughty
corners this glee-pawed grandpa twists
using cur jests his ***** charges
imagine as flightless quarrels
grey-hooded pigeons would gaggle
were they over-stuffed on golden grain
And there again
on a Calcutta mound’s cluttered
conic end, smog-like He slowly lifts
with the crust-gnawed, razor-wire crimps
of a soup-can’s unconsummated lid
as dainty fingers crawl in toward
a gelatinous glob still clinging
to the powerful pretense it’s meat
And there once more,
conceding oms, He restless flickers
at the margins of blocky beige
Beijing screens as crisply clicked clacks
circumnavigate the darkling
smooth patches and spit-spark a few
conscious drips to squiggle out from
the babble of noxious red seas
Emerged, this welp
won’t toddle off to dribble-stain
the dressy linens of a made-up
nanny’s well-mannered and ornate
evil; it will curl up instead,
a swaddled yawn with no yearn to
suckle under His real mother’s
gaping wide and grungy bloused best
Oct 20, 2010
Oct 20, 2010 at 11:04 AM UTC
Keep time and good company,
Stay laissez-faire,
Of your diet, be mindful:
Of your body; take care.
With intention and tact,
Choose well what you wear,
Downtown or in the garden,
Be seen without glare.
When you're mannered and prim;
You're fit to a pair,
Politely, be you,
Though be a you they can bear.
Mar 11, 2016
Mar 11, 2016 at 5:39 AM UTC
Verbiage
Sagacious humans would concur
Salacious verbiage is trenchant
Verdant language withers a guileless soul
Hubristic linguists deem limpid oratory irksome
A Didactic, petulant, boorish, garrulous, nefarious, obtuse, and insolent
Overtone is not my intent
Puckish, risible, mannered, jocular, antic, and adroit
Reverberations I am manifesting
TRANSLATION
Words
Smart people would agree
Healthy words are sharp
Unripe words die naive spirits
Self-confident word users find simple language annoying
Moral instruction, rude, insensitivity, wordy, wicked, blunt, and contemptuous
Feelings are not my purpose
Impish (silly), laughable, artificial, playful, clownish, and clever
Reactions I'm hoping to create
Jan 6, 2013
Jan 6, 2013 at 12:15 PM UTC