"manuals" poems
How can my eyes hunger for tormentors bodies
where in my soul can I find desires for sadists
Eves threw on fitted coats of Marquis de Sade
borrowed his manuals and added even more pages
pierced the heart of a Dove defending his nest with lethal pins
And in joyous indignities with devilment aplomp
they reclined and crackled in wanton doltishness
He thinks of and desires us and wants to make amor with us
How can a heart marinated in love truely sincere
a soul ready to die rather than any harm to Eves
Be mother or sister or perchance even a stranger
alas in utter ********** and grotesque situation dire
Come undone with healthy pristine heart ripped to pieces
hung drawn and quartered and sliced in tiny morsels
Like fish baits for mice and minnows or hens clucking
All at the hands of Sirens who worshipped in Satan's cravens
How can a soul with only the spark of Salvation aglow
where it once housed his heart and enduring humanity
With brimful joy and devotions in fitting measures true
as all Eves where to him nowt but sisters and earth angels
Now his burning blood runs cold like rivelets in the Arctic
their words ring hollow and smiles shows rapiers of snakes
Nothing stirs desires for all Eves now seem and look like wicked corpses
Delilahs' wrecking vengeance on Samsons in wickedness supreme
[email protected] rights reserved
Aug 23, 2018
Aug 23, 2018 at 4:31 AM UTC
nobody likes the full name.
the class is known simply as "Cell."
stephen king is just as lazy with his titles.
that fool fears blood.
i was listening to rain washing out the gutters
when our teacher called on me,
asking me to explain in my own words:
"How is molecular transportation so highly organized?"
i posited that organelles are not organized.
they are only civilized:
self-governed by apoptosis and a blueprint of proximal culture,
their manuals inefficient, but honed for cooperation through trial and error.
"I'm predisposed to disagree," he said with a tangible glee.
knowing we all adore his berating honesty.
his question stuck with me.
perhaps because i was working
for the office of sustainability
becoming regularly incapacitated
by the shame and exhaustion of preaching.
leading an uprising through the power of teaching.
i decided the only organized transportation
is an axial conduit to the electorate's war,
always social and hierarchal
because that's what culture is for.
at 19 i was loaded up with a sticky elixir
to be protected from being called a *****
i will never forget how I spotted lightly for three days
-stopped for one week-
and then for two straight months, it was a downpour.
we are only tearing apart the bitty ants
and there is still blood on our hands.
i believe blood looks best on our hands.
but we were taught to meticulously detach
and to prepare our matching bargains
beneath the atmosphere's volatile dance.
poison is in the body and the air
ready to be bottled and batched.
even when i find my friends
whole and happy in France,
my key stays clotted in the latch.
Mar 3, 2018
Mar 3, 2018 at 5:13 PM UTC
Here, on the flatlands
I was put in my place.
formed and pressed
into their neat and presumably safe little box.
It's all they knew.
It is so hard to think of them as once children themselves,
formed and pressed.
Formed from a different time, with different conformists.
There are no manuals when we are born,
you get leftover instructions from previous pipe fitters.
Agrarian raised, like grain fed beef.
Complete with the fears and habits of bygone generations.
I leave one bite of each item on my plate,
with just enough drink to wash it all down.
I have done that as long as I can remember.
I want the whole candy bar, rather than just a bite.
Pressed and formed my Father saves.
He saves twist ties from bread bags.
He saves old welcome mats, and garage door openers.
He buys in bulk, and has two deep freezers full.
Full of freezer burn, tasteless, barely nutritious,
neatly formed and pressed portions of frozen in time Salisbury steak.
It is as if he himself would like to be frozen in time.
He is a depressionite child.
In the basement there is an old dresser that he found at a yard sale.
He painted it a hideous green,
but it has a formed and pressed neat white little doily on top.
In the top drawer there are various expired drugstore items,
some dating as far back as 35 years ago.
"You never know when you might need something in there."
Expired aspirin that has broken down into powder and smells of vinegar.
Vicks Vaporub, in the pretty blue glass jar, that is dried up and orderless.
All brand new and have never been opened.
Formed and pressed neatly in their little containers.
I watch these molders of my life slowly pass away,
becoming neatly formed and packed into their aging corner of the world,
neatly formed and packed into a stereotypical old folks home.
Forgotten, in the way, slow, aching.
Soon all they will have will be memories.
Soon all they will need will be memories.
Neatly formed and packed in their aging minds.
And then, like a comet that has shuttled through space
for thousands of years, millions of years,
they will burn out and fade into dust.
And their whole lives
will be neatly formed and packed
away,
in a trunk
in the attic,
to be opened like a time capsule,
at a later date.
the result of a week with my 94 yr old Parents
May 21, 2013
May 21, 2013 at 4:32 AM UTC
the brain and mind are not the same thing.
a brain floats, suspended,
down to the tips of my toes
and the blue rivers underneath my skin.
it is a box; simple tasks and quiet construction.
the mind has no such manuals.
it sees baboons in filtered skylights,
eyes as red as the blushing dawn,
gushing about over the hilltops of my shoulders.
it sees stop signs in the glass cracks
of my wooden closet door,
where the dark seeps around the green-light-go.
it sees fingertip to lip,
raccoons at rusty roadways,
Remus and Romulus locked in eternal combat;
preserved in the grains in the cherry tree trunk.
the brain is in the head,
but the mind is somewhere a little above;
hiding away in a doomsday bunker,
loud warnings burning the air,
bathed in cobwebs and blue lights.
away from people who haven’t quite learned,
that the brain and mind are not the same thing.
Feb 27, 2019
Feb 27, 2019 at 2:37 AM UTC
Why do mechanics need manuals when they’ve fixed it before?
Answer my question or I’ll walk out the door!
Didn’t they attend trade schools or get O.J.T.?
Why need repair manuals? That what gets me.
I just want a mechanic who won’t refer to a book.
Just fix my car already, don’t give it a second look!
Why do pilots run checklists and reference their charts?
Just push the dang button and hope the plane starts!
Didn’t they go to flight school and pass all the tests?
Pilots fly most days, so who needs all that mess?
I want a pilot who knows without referencing a chart.
Just get on with the flying and prove that you’re smart!
What about the doctors who are practicing still?
Why can’t they get it right? And that includes the bill!
They’re always researching new studies in journals
When time’s better spent attending patients’ internals.
I just want a Marcus Welby, Ben Casey or Kildare
Instead of keeping up to date, I just want them to care.
Why do lawyers review case studies and legal decisions?
Such antics in my book leave them open to derision.
All that studying in law school should have been enough.
After passing the bar they should already know their stuff.
I just want an attorney who’s a know-it-all ace,
Not a book worm mouthpiece to plead my case.
Finally, the poets, being wordsmiths their art
You won’t see them referencing a checklist or chart
But look, in their hands, just what can that be?
A dictionary? Thesaurus? Are those what I see?
A real poet never needs help reading Shakespeare or Keats
Using Webster and Roget would make all of us cheats!
If a poet is real, the words should just flow
I think that all poets should automatically know
The right words to use, and literary crutches forgo
How dare they try better vocabulary to hone
They should come up with good things to say on their own.
I’m looking for poets who’ll just know what to say
Like Lewis Carroll’s poems in his heyday:
“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves, Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogroves, And the mome raths outgrabe.”
Don’t bother looking up his words, for that would be a dumb thing.
Using a dictionary or thesaurus, you might actually learn something!
Oct 26, 2019
Oct 26, 2019 at 10:20 PM UTC
Oh, I see—you liked it when I used that big word, huh?
You want me to use some more?
Mm, let me just grab my pocket Thesaurus.
Yeah, that's right baby, I take it everywhere with me—
I find it quite useful in these… situations.
Right now, I could give you seven variations
of the word ****
Seductive
Arousing
Provocative
Sensuous
Mmhm, you liked that one, didn't you?
Libidinous
Suggestive
Titillating…
You'd like more, I can tell,
but I need you to want it.
Let's go somewhere quiet
and thumb through
my college style manuals for a few hours.
We could talk about sentence variety,
the Oxford comma, some syntax,
and mm, if you're feeling real good,
maybe even discuss the proper usage of a semi-colon.
Just know, I've been saving semi-colons
for, you know, that special someone.
If things get a little steamy, we can go down to the basement
and I'll show you my Scrabble board.
I'll set you up for a triple-word score,
and you can put together some of those high-scoring,
two-letter words that really get me going.
Oh yeah, I think I'd be into your strategy.
When the game is over, I'll lean you back,
come in real close, and whisper some Neruda,
some Cummings,
some Dickinson
softly into your ear.
Afterward, I’ll trace lines of Hughes and Whitman
down your naked spine with my fingers.
I'm sure you know it's only polite
to return the favor.
It's just an idea.
I know it sounds good.
Trust me, I'll be gentle—
But baby, believe me—
I could punctuate you in all the right places.
Mar 28, 2014
Mar 28, 2014 at 12:58 PM UTC
Sometimes it doesn't feel like me
What I'm living in is foreign
What I want versus what I need
In a way it feels distorted
I was use to deprivation
In a way it was my pride
I didn't need or wanted as much
Even now I still don't mind
Overwhelmed with newfound freedom
I am free. Still, I am lost
I'm no longer trapped or controlled
But that was all I was ever taught
I was raised by maps and manuals
Now you give me a pen to write my own
Opening various paths around me
Paralyzed in anxiety to take even one alone
If recovery meant burning all of my maps
And rewriting all of my manuals
Letting go of strict rules and superior words
To be mortal than something mechanical
Mar 12, 2019
Mar 12, 2019 at 12:28 PM UTC
Should I be prepackaged in rolls of bubble wrap
Placed nicely in a box labeled FRAGILE
wrapped in layers of caution tape?
Should I come with an instruction manuals and tagged "HANDLE WITH CAUTION"
To others I'm easily broken
But to me I'm incredibly durable
Maybe the only sign I should have is
WORK IN PROGRESS
May 19, 2015
May 19, 2015 at 7:04 AM UTC
You weren't sure when you knew it. You weren't sure where it came from. But sooner than later it enveloped you. It was your calling. No words, nothing written. Just a sense, a feeling that permeated your being. And finally you knew. No ambiguities, no uncertainties, no ambivalences. Just truth. It was intuition. No manuals, no table of contents. No advanced degrees required. It was your life, the rest of your life. It was the reason you were born. It was the reason you were on Earth. It was your destiny. There is nothing more to say except to follow it, your calling.
TOD HOWARD HAWKS
Aug 25, 2020
Aug 25, 2020 at 11:48 AM UTC
i spent my teenagedom
checking on a book, in a deep deep vault in the basement of a library
yellow lights, with 1900s girl scout manuals
it is immortal. i am responsible for it
Oct 25, 2016
Oct 25, 2016 at 7:54 PM UTC
We all have a place
that we keep
(just in case)
our hord
or our stash
our clutter.
Things that had purpose
or by some chance
may be used again.
Oddities and nic nacks
Old candles and keys
obsolete rechargers and batteries
cables and thimbles,
coins of foreign currencies
manuals and letters and lint.
And they are stored
in shoeboxes,
beer crates
bottom drawers
wardrobes,
on garage shelves
or in hearts.
Jun 4, 2016
Jun 4, 2016 at 12:00 PM UTC
We’re running out of time, wasting it
On *** and money and food and sleep.
And we sometimes forget to be happy.
We forget about important things
Like crowns made out of dandelions and kissing in the rain.
But I think I have figured it out.
I had to retrace my steps, start from the beginning
“When I was a kid I used to cut my wrists”
and if that’s not bad enough
I finally grasped that everyone else did too
And I can’t even remember why I wanted to die
But when YOUR daughter is found dead
pumped full of pills
and hate
How do you tell your wife?
do you even remember to cry?
Light up a cigarette
Pour yourself a drink
you try so hard to feel something so you won’t have to think
about the mortgage, the baby, the unemployment checks that stopped
coming last month.
And you’re bored.
But LIFE is not something that you watch.
I get confused when I hear complaints
about the kid next door
because he’s playing his guitar too loud
But his neighbors
never sit and enjoy the music.
There was a dark Friday
When eighteen thousand people were buried or never found in Japan,
and I heard people safe in America saying,
“well, the earth was really overpopulated.”
While I shed a tear for every single soul that would never get to go home again.
And it still didn’t feel like enough.
I’m still trying to figure it out but I know that
We’re just complex connections
of molecules and nerve endings
and blood cells, protons, neutrons.
And we’re NOT going to live forever.
And it’s not our fault that we can’t understand that there is no time to be worried
There is only feeling.
Scared feelings and blue feelings and numb feelings
and the blending of these things,
FEElings
finally create this thing we call love
and no, we don’t understand it.
all we know are
*** and money and food and sleep
and sometimes love gets lost in the days
and no, we don’t always remember that it’s there
I am forced to watch Hate being passed around the circle like a bottle of cheap wine
and everyone takes a sip, because it’s what you do.
And that’s when I plug my ears
contemplating why God didn’t give us instruction manuals
but I’ll try my best to figure it out
Jun 1, 2011
Jun 1, 2011 at 6:30 PM UTC
One must take charge of his or her own life
Someone once wrote that
Life, like marbles block is given to all,
However, everybody doesn’t know how to layered such blocks
Even if they read the manuals on life and survival skills
With careful observation, it seem that the local
women spirit cracks so easily on the small Island of Bim
as the men moves on to other women’s
Leaving many on suicidal watch
I visited my old friends, on the island as time permits
And nothing seem to change, they older folks
Weakness still shows:
they lives seem to be on a standstill,
The little island girl in me Grieves within for them
Over the years, I have grown into a stronger woman
I demand respect from my friends,
especially the men
Its more women and not enough men to fulfill
Their ****** appetites, so life on the island become a *** war,
Infidelity is higher than ever,
where the flying fish is plentiful
whereas, some of the women seem so pitiful.
Older men with younger women
The middle-aged women either have to join a church
Or unfortunately,
lined the walls of the dance hall,
or pubs
While looking for love in all the wrong places,
The nights slowly moves into the wean hours of the morning
while the Barskeepers promotes the beer three for ten dollars
Snip snaps sounds is heard throughout their establishments
It seems more like humiliation than enjoyment
In the meantime broken hearts merges all over the place
The only patronage that seem to be having a time of
their lives was the tourists from abroad, who show
signs of unsteady gaits; but were having a wonderful time
On the Island of Bim
The barbecues grills filterers golden spark,
the music
Entices the air
the salted breeze, balm our lips even
Merging with the taste of the Bank beers,
and it was all well
on the island for that short period.
However, with all my finding and frustration, nothing
Can beat cold, cold coconut water
or a refreshing Bank Beer
May 25, 2014
May 25, 2014 at 1:14 PM UTC
After Seven,
She stands at her stall,
Glass Case.
Scarlet strobe.
******** clad, she practices
The oldest profession,
Scant consolation.
A Smile, A Tap, A wink.
“Come in, I’ll show you
A Good Time.”
After dawn,
No leading lights,
Lying alone,
She watches television.
No good news in Libya.
An assortement of literature on
Her coffee table;
Cooking manuals, How-To guides,
No Austen, No Wolfe, No Bronte,
Just an illusion.
Aug 21, 2012
Aug 21, 2012 at 7:05 AM UTC
There are so many things I want to know
And most of the time my unanswerable questions awaken themselves early in the morning
Like a young child vying for attention way past his bed time
Or asking around like he’s gotten lost in Ikea
“Have you seen my mum?”
“Why am I still suicidal?”
“Why doesn’t he love me back?”
“How the **** do you put this chair together?”
It will never be strong enough to hold what’s in my head.
No offence to the shop - it’s not their fault I’m unstable.
I keep wondering whether this is normal,
This constant existential crisis I suffer from
I ask the doctor,
My therapist,
My best friend,
The boy who invites me with a wink to his empty house over facebook,
As if any of them could help me understand why I’m uncomfortable in my own body
As if God made my skin in a size too tight
Less material is cheaper
So why am I still having to pay for anti-depressants
I tend to sway towards the clichés
Picture this
An overcast joyride
Staring out of the window
Glum expression
Absorbed in depression
You’ve got me in the rule of thirds
First: I’m a time bomb of sweet nothings and childhood anecdotes and picture reels of melancholy summers spent in back gardens and dim rooms.
Second: I don’t know whether I’m going to make it out of this. You can have my scraps of journals and make of it what you want. Make a suicide note out of manuals I never threw away.
Third: I’m a teenage tragedy,
Drowning in questions that even the sea cannot answer anymore.
Dec 18, 2013
Dec 18, 2013 at 10:24 PM UTC
"People are so hard to understand.
They are like earpieces casually stuffed
in the pockets of their private lives.
And when they step out of their stuffy
homes, they demand to have others
locate their origins, their mid-points and
their ends where you stuff your ears in.
Demand that from cords in infinite loop.
Demand that without an instruction manual."
I wanted to interject, but your sentences ran
into each other and morphed into these
pseudo-words, pseudo-rants without ends
to stuff into your ears and listen.
I would have said that people were fine
without beginnings or destinations or
instruction manuals. That behind the
metal prisons of these speakers lay
sounds, to be played into ears and
listened to. Told to.
Dec 5, 2012
Dec 5, 2012 at 8:23 AM UTC
I have finally come to see that no matter what I do...or what I become my mom will still say its not good enough and im just some worthless ***
She makes me feel like im worthless and a waste of human skin.....she keeps the depression inside of me churning and to regain my sanity for it will never ever win.
She doesn't even remember things as they have taken place....and when u explain your reasons why...she looks at you as if she may say.... "really?" with that look on her face.
She doesn't try to understand you or take into consideration how u may feel.....its always just some brush it under the carpet and pretend were all happy and make it seem real.
But in the meantime its only doing more bad then any good.....parenting should automatically come with manuals so you know that what ur doing is what you should.
Ive been crying for hours tonight...cus the way I am treated by them~it just aint right....you don't treat one child different then the others.....like one set of rules for each ....its just absurd and if it was u being treated uncool ...youd want them to practice as they were to preach.
But not in this house ....they have different rules for each kid...which is complete shit....I never should have moved here like I did.
Being here has made me think a lot about suicide....its really bad if a persons worth had been\
suppressed by all the tears they they've cried.
I wish I could turn back the clock so I wasn't infact here....then maybe just maybe I could be given a little repair...since love in my heart from them .....hasn't ever really been there....
Dec 4, 2013
Dec 4, 2013 at 6:27 AM UTC
Where was I before my Birth
Who brought me? In this life
Some say My Parents
Gave me my Life
I think they only Ate
The Forbidden Apple
They just performed their basic Karma
And received me as a gifted Product
I was shipped without any User Manual
And without any Standard Operating Procedure
My parents worked round the clock
Gone through all the other manuals
At last they applied their mind
And prepared their own Manual
They also defined their own
Standard Operating Procedure
And I was handled and serviced
As per their Manual and SOP
Now I think, I am grown up now
But the question still remains as it was
Are we all only Products?
If Yes, Who Manufactured Us?
Where are the Original User Manuals?
Where are the Technical Manuals?
Where is the Standard Operating Procedure?
Why I was shipped to this mother Earth?
Some of my friends suggested a simple answer
'God made us and You too. But you are moron'
This answer posed other questions to me
Who made God? God Made God?
Or the Humans made God for their own purpose?
Where are the temples of God made by Insects?
Suppose If God made us? Why he is so greedy?
Like the capitalists of proprietary companies
Why we are a strict proprietary Products?
Even proprietary products are supplied with Manuals
If God can't make us Open Source, At least he should
Supply the Manuals, Supply the Standard Operating Procedure
Or He is also too much selfish like each one of us
Mar 9, 2019
Mar 9, 2019 at 9:46 AM UTC
There are instances of my brain exploding into millions of rubbery blobs of mush.
Sometimes my mind leaks through miniscule cracks in my skull
caused by incredulousness, or intensity,
or a milisecond of thought that traveled far too close to the realm of insanity.
Blessed be he who can not think, for he can not feel frustrated.
He will not try, or object to the rules of laws of that which is taken for granted,
claimed to be known as fact
even though we all can see it's bull ****
Once, I even died a little bit, seeing a bird floating in the sky,
because it was just too magnificent and startling a phenomenon to be handled lightly:
these miracles of nature that don't require formal lessons or user manuals printed in multiple languages.
Blow my mind, **** it real good and share a cig afterwards.
My cranium can handle enough
but not all
and it prefers the experience
of profound enlightenment.
May 14, 2012
May 14, 2012 at 8:57 PM UTC
no matter how often you fornicate
or all the positions that you create
he'll never be able to assimilate
the way that I used to stimulate
no matter the manuals he reads
he never plows when he sows his seeds
he'll never complete those ***** deeds
that your body so desperately needs
no matter all the skills you process
he'll always fail to impress
every time you two try to undress
it will be my name that you profess
Feb 4, 2011
Feb 4, 2011 at 5:14 AM UTC
I had known you in the womb
telepathically - or possibly a ghost
a lost twin or lost soul
(maybe not, you were four)
or maybe
all of existence and time -
as cosmic brothers
and my neighboring universe
or a shared galaxy
because when you walked in
my legs were crawling back to me
after a long hike through the seven summits
and my arms have paddled through the seven seas
to joyfully return to land
twisted and contoured
so painfully blissful to see the shore
and the meteors about shouted
from the sky in their tapered bleeding orange gowns
of eldritch scripts and manuals
rejoice rejoice rejoice rejoice rejoice
yet I cannot say your name correctly
(like an ancient hieroglyph yet to be understood by scholars)
I'm sorry that I cannot
hopefully you will whisper it to me
as I sleep
so it will never be forgotten again
Jun 15, 2014
Jun 15, 2014 at 4:25 PM UTC
There is a storm setting in and the current shifts from ceiling to ground
We run with scattered brains, with our mouths stitched shut, running without a sound. Fear lives in the hearts of men and fear isn’t the best company to keep. So I hold my shield grip my sword ready to face what hits me. Battles come and go some remain in history teaching generations to come the failures and the victories. Misery loves company but I rather weep and wallow on my own, darkness is my only friend and in the infinite silence we merge as one. I embrace the wicked deep inside of me, the soul is meant to be explored and non of us come with manuals or warning signs, so i dive into the abyss of my reality exhuming blood and bone, exploring realms unknown. We are black and white with tiny shades of grey but if we dig deeper we might find something else, something out of sight, out of mind. As dual beings we are made with sin and integrity but it matters not what we are constructed by what matters is our choices and who we choose to be. When our time runs out and the tide swallows us whole it matters not the vessel but the soul. We are children of day and children of night, we are duality darkness and light.
Dec 18, 2014
Dec 18, 2014 at 5:25 AM UTC