"manufactured" poems
[tongue taking taken prayer]
*come worship in my temple.
your tongue gowned by silence,
thy teasing vibrations disperse my slack,
exchanging it for a rigidity that is even softer, looser,
an improvement possibility impossibly incomprehensible
the noises of freedom from anonymity is thy silenced tongue
unleashed, teasing, speaking tongues unrelenting and unremitting, tongues unforgotten for they never were
learned, and incapable of being self-taught
my pleasure sprouts mushrooms in thy loamy foam,
thy rainfall nourishment, seed plant growing life morning borne,
thy tricked up sonnets played within my hearts harp,
tunes never known but coming from the land of plenty,
my new promised land
teach me where the apostrophe goes, the comma and
why the question mark is curved and dotted like my body,
why we need punctuation to separate the first from the next
trees weep as if every dry rain petal is instantly imbibed,
wanting more for my swollen by thy ministrations,
I cry out
my ice storm, my thunder, embalm me within the
electric spreading in my veins shocking steady constant
thy name thy name I beg to give thee a name
to understand what has befallen me*
you can call me by my favorite of
all my seventy two,^
your first baby squeals and
even now in human manufactured agreed upon symbols
(words),
every utterance a prayer heard and answered
my name is a heated and unbroken
hallelujah,
I am thy god, and you, darling you,
my beloved
Aug 3, 2018
Aug 3, 2018 at 2:58 PM UTC
Driving up the highway
When I saw it in the mist
Like a pure and tender ******
Still waiting to be kissed
A village all forgotten
Somehow time had missed
You could see it from the highway
slightly hazy in the mist
Had time forgotten this poor place
Left in limbo for all days
Was it just a trick of light and sun
Manufactured through the haze
Were the folks here ****** to stay
Out of reach but in our gaze
Or were they truly here by choice
Living old, forgotten ways
Brigadoon did spring to mind
but, in truth I thought this good
Be something better than that curse
This village protected by the wood
I pulled on to the shoulder
And tried to see as best I could
This simple town or vision
That had not aged as it should
I saw no point of entry
No way to get there from my place
It was perfect, untouched, special
A village bathed in grace
Folks kept driving past me
Up the highway at such pace
They would never see this village
In the mist as fine as lace
The village may be magic
It may be something in between
In truth all I can tell you
What I saw, not what I mean
It's a village, plain and simple
in the woods, all shades of green
Un-kissed, and yet so perfect
stuck in stasis, in between
Apr 14, 2015
Apr 14, 2015 at 11:55 PM UTC
Most heavenly of places, this world now
Of endless beauties, a sight that wows
They're statuesque and wax-like, but hey don't fret
No wrinkles to combat, nor ripples of fat
Gazing into their arresting green eyes
That of the rabbit's, resemblance lies
Uncanny it is, this puzzling scene
Manufactured they are, from the same jellyfish gene
And since its time to seek paradise,
My wandering hands caress the prize
To search for weakness, now I must
No amount of fondling, stirs any lust
I've come so far, and this is what perfection costs?
The smoothest of skin, has left all thumbprints lost
Aug 20, 2018
Aug 20, 2018 at 3:58 AM UTC
What if love became so overwhelming, such an inextinguishable force that its true purpose betrayed itself completely?
To the point that even the utterance of those three powerful words, that at a different junction had held such promise, now left a distinct taste of uncertainty on the lips and a ringing of insanity in the ear drum. What else does one say when the most pure form of expression and commitment echo with distain and regret?
Even as I slide into introspection, diving deep to the point of no return, there seems to be no logical path, no penance for the monster I have created. Through my own autonomous actions and neglect I have reached this dark place. Perhaps I indulged beyond a point where thoughts and actions have boundaries. A broken compass , spinning without meaning. All indicators in tact, every cog and point in place, magnetism lost to exaggerated memories, fears and regrets.
Self delusion is a drink that is best served with company. With companionship the mind tends to believe its own meddling. Delusions are mistaken for truth and biased opinions blur with reality.
All roads lead to pain. Every so often a spark jumps to the surface of my consciousness. A pin ***** exclaiming hope. It’s a glitch of my own creation. The belief in happy endings and love prevailing. That love is more powerful than any disappointment, mistake or breech in trust. My reality had been resurfaced and augmented by the media. Love stories are just that. Stories. A wave of manufactured hope, washing over the beach of the human psyche. Every grain of sand is washed back to the sea just as it has arrived.
Happiness, a flame burning on a tiny wick. Enjoy the heat while it lasts for it is going to be a cold winter. And the power is out.
Oct 31, 2012
Oct 31, 2012 at 3:19 PM UTC
She's like a drama queen,
Plays the 'blame game' like a loser,
Fair minded as a bigot,
Wages war like drones,
As free as surveillance,
As open as privatized prisons,
As equal as feudalism,
As rich as the beggar masses,
Bankrupt as homeowners,
Socialist as the military,
Truthful, trustful as "NEWS," as propaganda,
Pagan as the manufactured Goddess 'Columbia,'
Christian as the stingy,
Pious as a sinner,
Wicked as securities, exchanges on 'Wall Street,'
Insecure as an empire,
Greedy as a fast food glutton,
As brave as a fool,
Warmongering as a chicken hawk politician,
Machevellian as a coward,
As rigged as the free market,
As selfish as Capitalism,
As tolerant as Islam,
Beautiful as a clear cut forest,
Charming as a strip mall,
Forward thinking as chaos,
Lawless as congress,
United as a belligerent crowd,
Compassionate as a swat team,
Green as any petrochemical company,
Organic as pollution,
Deep as a strip mine . . .
. . .
Sep 28, 2014
Sep 28, 2014 at 7:53 PM UTC
A sea of gasoline's,
Grace of novelties,
Cars and halogen,
Social disease,
Manufactured dreams,
Scream on screens,
They glean from all living things,
Fight,
Take,
Hide,
Such a contumacious existence,
Results in an animistic decline,
All things that once made us strong,
Oblivion has made a meal of them,
I walk around this town,
I see the colors,
I watch the scenes,
Fight,
Take,
Hide,
I live in a world without a heart,
But machines keep it breathing,
And it has many sons,
Crowned with clockworks maturation,
Am I the last one beating?
I don't tick,
Not like them,
I just watch men bite one another necks from the steps of the front door,
They call me the queen of the creaking floorboards,
Fight,
Take,
Hide,
I have matchstick eyes,
I twist fires with my fingertips,
All of these people made of wood,
They are like smoke to me,
I breathe slices into them with teeth that have no number,
I am December,
I fight,
Take,
Hide
May 12, 2013
May 12, 2013 at 1:26 PM UTC
I am in a room made of glass, sorry,
let me clarify,
the walls and doors are glass,
the carpet is woven by a machine where the workers are limited to toilet breaks,
the plants are plastic in pots of gravel
but the walls are glass and everyone can see in and I can see out.
The table is shaped like a kidney, don't ask me why, it just is, manufactured by a factory making furniture shaped like human organs.
That's the shape of the table, I can't change that,
and the chairs are moulded from one piece of plastic, in bright colours and people look in through glass walls.
I look out and I am really not there.
Jan 4, 2013
Jan 4, 2013 at 4:21 AM UTC
some greedy little bitter man has put together a picture-perfect person and out of pure laziness and malignant attempts at control he pays off a psychopath to make it happen but we’re just a little body, flesh and bones come between them and their paychecks so why not make it easier? they made a factory out of our garden and nothing grows in factories it’s manufactured, easy as one two three four five six, we’re all sitting on an assembly line waiting for some alcoholic man to shout at some pimply-faced twenty-something “FASTER! FASTER!” so it begins! press of a button, we’re created, step one: your parents were given the baby books, kids! infants, they’re all the same anyways. they’re not individuals yet, they haven’t been encoded so relax, parents. want them turn out like you? sure, do what your parents did, worked out well, eh? been occupying this factory your whole life, then? well anyways, step two: they spend less time with you because you’ve been in this world for three years so it’s time you get out on your own…. step three: they gotta YELL and scream and children aren’t supposed to touch things or say things or scrape their knees because that’s more work for the adults, and they work all day, just like they were programmed for, good little machines 'cause they forgot what it’s like to be a baby or an animal or a plant or a God but also the resentment, a child wants to live but how ridiculous? there’s no life in industry… all about the money baby step four: you buy your education because it builds your character because money says power but when did meaningless power equal respect? I don't know but they force you into reading the same old instruction pamphlets left in the break room at the plant for the past century or so and five: your turn to work for fourty years in this polluted place because it’s hard to break free from twenty-three years of moulding into a cookie cutter you never did fit, that’s why it hurts so much when they try to push you through, your muffin-top is sliced right off and you’re contorted to fit the view of perfect sugary sweetness but just to make sure you're ready they coat you with vanilla icing to cover up your imperfections, perfect, now step six, and this one is the doozy, and because you’re **** broke: go back to mom and dad’s and grab those baby books and again and again and again the cycle repeats and repeats and repeats….
Dec 12, 2011
Dec 12, 2011 at 9:03 PM UTC
Life can be painless
Provided there is sufficient
Peacefulness
For a dozen or so rituals
To be repeated simply
Endlessly
Your genius does not fail you
It allows you to understand the
Truth of the situation;
Which makes you--at times--
more tragic than ever
And your genius,
like all geniuses
Suffers periodic fits
of monumental
naïveté
Hi-ho
Listen:
Where is Grace
When milk and blood
Are about to be added
To the composition of the
Stinking ping-pong
***** being manufactured
In Grand Rapids?
Schizophrenia
The sound and appearance
Of the word fascinates
It sounds and looks to me
Like a human being
Sneezing in a blizzard of
Soapflakes
This much we know:
You made yourself hideously
Uncomfortable by not narrowing
Your attention to details
Of life that were immediately
Important
And by refusing to believe what
Your neighbors believed
Hi-ho
Let your imagination continue
To be the flywheel on the
Ramshackle machinery of the truth.
But not the ‘awful’ truth
The ‘beauty’ in truth
Because we are a part
Of a system that is very
Restless,
With people tearing around
All the time
Every so often,
somebody stops to put up
A monument
Ours is a country where
Everybody is expected to
Pay his own bills for
Everything,
And one of the most
Expensive things a person
Can do is get sick
Grace:
Because if we stay here
We’ll do one of two things
(or both!)
Build a Commune
Or do like Collin Heise did:
Make the main thing that we
do be this:
Move seventy-eight
Thousand pounds of olives
To Tulsa, Oklahoma
Even if we can’t
Improve the quality of our surroundings
We’ll do our best to make our
Insides beautiful instead
Piebald Roadtrip-writing, baby
Hi-ho
You are the turtle
able to live anywhere
even under water for short periods
With your home on your back
A particular comfort in
Realizing that it so often feels
There is no order in the
World around us
That we must adapt ourselves to
The requirements of
Chaos instead
Remember:
We are healthy
Only to the extent that
Our ideas are
Humane
To you
To me
To ourselves
To We
Jun 17, 2013
Jun 17, 2013 at 9:05 PM UTC
I am an unwanted child of god
I am an unwanted child of god-
He said,
And I, (believing him)
examined his shapes closely.
Simple enough,
Is what would best describe him,
his feet were sheltered by rubbers
manufactured in some distant or exotic country
crafted by machines
in far away factories.
This unwanted child of god, this dark young man, child of father after father infinitum;
Gave me a look of terror and apathy at once, then spoke.
I think, sometimes, of acting out of character-
(his smile surprised me)
I put the gun in my mouth just to taste the cold iron-
I bring men to my hotel room, women too-
(his gap widened)
Who can say I am not the happiest ******* on the ******* planet-
'not me'
I'll drink to that-
Oh hoarse throat, oh smokey breath
Oh sad unwanted child of god
Whose mother did look upon the coat-hanger,
And whose father did look upon the belt;
I'll drink to you everyday,
For who is to say I'm not the happiest ******* on the ******* planet?
Hip and hip
hooray.
Next Sunday he pulled the trigger, and stained the Dull brown wall of his hotel room.
Nov 10, 2011
Nov 10, 2011 at 7:11 PM UTC
Maybe you find your center
On a couch beside a divided highway,
Where asphalt ribbons melt together
In the beautiful mess of the day's last fire,
Where light falls on upholstery
In a manufactured Southwest pattern,
Best suited to drier air but somehow
At home on a Wisconsin shoulder,
Watching the world go by
In metallic paint and autoglass reflections,
Moving too fast to catch all the names
Of almost-forgotten rivers crossed:
Rib River,
Rat River,
Jump River,
And any number of State Name Rivers.
Or maybe you find your center
On the other side of a plume of red granite dust,
Where the asphalt ends and the rivers
Are more than almost-forgotten signs
Beside a divided highway.
Aug 22, 2019
Aug 22, 2019 at 12:05 PM UTC
A timber night in a dark way can't stay for long
plowed down, scorched down - must be torn down
kings of city pipes, dusty concrete heirlooms, read a bible to sleep
Wake in the morning, sun rays shine through dust ridden books
Morals, condoned in heart shaped smoke clouds
Greed's arms will swell rejecting midnights' hiss' "Where will they live?"
'Sirrrrrrrr' 'Homeeee'...... Floating like gas particles, words lost.
A stand alone will die to unknown prosperity
ropes straggle helpless branches
Clenching their last breathes, the weeping skies sit silently
Hateful hateful hunger, feeding the bodies thirst
Our midnight Cowboy song goes: Manufactured green, leaving scorched earth barren, unwritten torch, unseen
For we saw what we wanted to.
Feb 11, 2015
Feb 11, 2015 at 3:00 PM UTC
We are manufactured landscapes,
constructed through naming nouns –
we celebrate difference.
We are compelled into being one or the other,
like a nail or a hammer.
We reference nature through motherhood,
voluptuous in her national pride narrative,
her lips red pucker supple metaphors like her fertile ground,
her belly always pregnant
ready to plant desire in discourse.
We forget her industrial miscarriages,
her toxic tar-sulfur consumption,
her global half-bred garbage in words left unsaid,
her ***** laundry in patriarchal hands.
We forget her midwives,
her toiling underpaid workers
who support generations of waste
who spit up truth in plastic mouthfuls,
who regurgitate material narratives
to celebrate flesh in mythic wholeness.
When will the nation, earth and world step from its subject of motherly pedestal and name its androgynous existence, its forgotten lifelines?
Apr 27, 2011
Apr 27, 2011 at 12:38 PM UTC
Blue pleather bomber jacket,
You are smooth against my skin.
Your surface is cool and inviting
As it wraps around my torso-
Like a protective blanket
You are my security,
Blue pleather bomber jacket.
I pick at your skin and it falls apart.
The zipper, like your bottom teeth,
Are crooked and misaligned.
You shrug over my shoulders,
But leave my chest defenseless.
Blue pleather bomber jacket,
I bet you cost a fortune.
Almost as much as your nonprescription glasses,
Though you break just the same
Like the promises you keep making.
Blue pleather bomber jacket,
You never kept me warm
Just less affected by the
cutting winds of your back lash.
But when I fall asleep at night
I sleep beside the indent of your absence.
Blue pleather bomber jacket,
You are just now brand new,
Though your skin is already worn through
And your lining thinning by the second.
I trusted you,
Blue pleather bomber jacket,
To protect me from the cold.
Though you slump lazily
Over others' shoulders,
Not really caring I've been waiting
With my shoulders bare and frigid.
Blue pleather bomber jacket,
I thought you were one of kind.
But I see your manufactured gaze
Walking down the street,
Sitting across from me on the bus.
Go on, blue pleather bomber jacket,
Temporarily dangling over person after person.
Soon I will see you dangling
On the rotting hanger in a thrift shop,
Years from now looking preserved in your waning beauty.
Blue pleather bomber jacket,
Your trend is dying and your color fading.
I have been snagged by your imperfections for the last time.
May 4, 2017
May 4, 2017 at 11:24 AM UTC
Is tamed wildness
And manufactured wilderness-
A plastic world
All my young son will know?
I have known gritty gravel roads
And sunburnt savanah veldt.
Swam and splashed
in muddy dams and reservoirs.
I have sat high above,
in mountain peaks studying clustered clouds
close enough to reach out and run my fingers through by day,
and I have counted the dancing stars above
in vast dark nights.
I have discovered treasures in the misty valleys on early mornings
And seen sun streak through
heavy storm clouds
to colour a grey sky with radiant rainbows.
I have seen surreal snow fall
And slowly erase the world around us.
I have seen majestic beasts truly free-
Wildebeests, various buck and cautious rhinos,
Zebras that danced and played
Around an elephant that loomed high above them,
And elegant wings that whispered
upon westerly winds.
And it has all left me marked,
these magical moments tattooed in
my south african soul-
And I am more for it - filled.
what will feed their sould now?
Sep 9, 2015
Sep 9, 2015 at 3:34 PM UTC
In department store foyers, free samples sprayed,
A collision of cosmetics muddle the air.
The olfactory overpowered by such obvious odours,
Why do natural notes disconcert you?
Not the gym heavy sodden or overworked,
Recognition of an individual, whilst eyes remain shut.
Faint trace of the familiar or frenzied pheromones,
A headiness misplaced by the cologne wearing clones
Preference for the perfumed, the artificial sweetener.
Marketed meticulously
Musk manufactured yet not made by man
Of flowers dear, of oils and compounds.
Fresh, fruity, citrus or spiced
Artificial aromas keep your own scent disguised
Society simulates this sophistication of the senses,
Masking yourself from me as you are wooed,
Accustomed to this attraction, till you let down your defences
How shall I know you when you are ****
Oct 30, 2012
Oct 30, 2012 at 6:10 PM UTC
~
*The disruptor,
whether digital or analog,
strikes the bell,
bioengineered automaton
—a manufactured life form
given little agency or dimension,
mnemonic to the finitude of life,
and subtle muddling of humankind's
supposed moral transcendence.*
~
May 2, 2021
May 2, 2021 at 10:59 PM UTC
right now
sacrifice is fueling opportunity
an opportunity to breathe
with an uninterrupted purpose
the corruption of our native soul
stop nourishing it
by constructing whiteness
sacrificing ethnicity
for the temporal indulgence
adrenaline *****
torturing
intensity of dissociation
hallucinating whiteness
the worst drug ever manufactured
forced upon our children
intricate delicate
vulnerable violence
tripping
stumbling
dissociating from an eternity
of survival of the most cooperative
deterring
forgetting
intoxicating
for a moment
momentum of ******
Sep 8, 2018
Sep 8, 2018 at 5:37 PM UTC
The insane live forever,
lust lawlessly over all things conceived fascinating
to the validity and gluttony of the mind.
Brain feasters we live to strive,
exist to be,
all things so mundane to our gluttony,
we hunger for something on border lines,
the limits of human mumbling over morality.
Cease your everest squirming,
your infantile homage bearing,
you find so viscous an evil,
so vile a fiend in us the broken chains.
Godless we sing the marching banter of forlorn free will,
we have no conscience to bear,
no after thought found alive anywhere.
The psychopath lurches out about child like smiles,
lives a second agenda basis before any infant experiments sin upon innocence.
Born divine this mutant knows free will without restriction,
closer to a limitless ever enveloping power than any mortal.
Breed me a man slewing monster,
a shape shifting skeleton reaper,
those that fear this untouchable being,
this godless singularity,
fear the very will we wish to contort,
constrain,
control,
but a demon answers only to that of it’s own greed,
no man may quiet its roaring,
its heartless contortioning.
It’s an angel without a heart beat,
a cadaver with a taste for its own flesh,
make me a monster manufactured under every roof,
we’ve got too much human to feel.
Aug 28, 2011
Aug 28, 2011 at 12:29 AM UTC
White cotton kisses
I pretend you occupy the space of this pillow
I remember your navy sheets
I think they kindly absorbed the blood
it was there, somewhere.
beating or gliding within walls of muscle.
This type of loving has become liquid and electrical.
It is certainly electrical.
spiky pains edging fingertips
Strands of copper threaded into the grooves of your fingerprints
It has a real colour. I don't know what that is.
It's weight fits inside your body.
It is manufactured.
Maybe the ***** triggered it.
Or the serotonin shots when I see your face.
All I have with me now is bone dry fabric and wadding
Jul 20, 2014
Jul 20, 2014 at 3:47 PM UTC
my throat aches for food
my stomach and mind shout
naysayers
heavy with
the clock, she won't stop chattering
nervous tic
aching shoulder, from laying on my side
staring
waiting for
one new message
crooning songs echo
in my shallow veins
beard of dunedin
oh to stand in manufactured rain
cleanse together
hot steam breath collide with
(well)
****** scenes dance heavily
salty
sweet soapy soft silky
soaked..
i feel so alone.
what life would crawl over my skin?
what lips caress these dead eyelids?
what fingers traces these cold curves
like tree limbs next to the curb
i am living trash
but I still want to make you
wet
May 18, 2014
May 18, 2014 at 5:37 AM UTC
The clock struck midnight
With an informative pang
I couldn't face it's music
So I turned counterclockwise
But time kept moving forward
As my wisdom dissipated
Bad times I anticipated
As I wandered through life
Burdens grew
Weight added with each step
My feet started to sink into the ground
So I got in my car
And drove
And kept driving
The more I traveled
The more I witnessed
The less I talked
As I grappled with the futility and necessity of communication
The clock warned of night's approach
I decided to continue driving
Luminous fireflies pelted my vessel
Their lamps exploding upon impact against my vehicle
The ability to destroy light
Exhilarated me
And I became addicted
To extinguishing that which shines
Until darkness flooded my engine
And an abysmal order was made by my abyssal odor
I had to exit my vehicle
And consult a mechanic
He explained my engine wouldn't work
Unless my windows were down
Which solved my darkness problem
But those ****** pests pervaded my car
Their locust glow disoriented me
The slight variations of their unique displays
Manufactured chaos within the light
My eyes grew accustomed to entropy
My brain grew accustomed to impairment
Commuters noticed my erratic driving
And offered to assist me
By attempting to ram me off the road
But the impenetrable light created a force field
Impalas couldn't run through
For my light bugs too much
Buffering me from others
And driving others from me
Leaving me alone
As a giant pulsating light that never stops moving
Is this how a star is born?
Jul 4, 2017
Jul 4, 2017 at 3:13 AM UTC
I often imagine that the moon, the owls and the darkness of the night might be my closest friends, they are my trusted companions through the few highs and the many lows. They comfort me when it's 3am and the rest of the world seems like they are sleeping soundly.
They’ve been witness to my tears and plees for this to all stop and comforted me when the four walls of this bedroom felt like a cage. The moon seems so distant yet its warmth kisses my cheek. Someday I might be able to force my body to ignore the protection of the darkness and live in the light of the sun. But I am manufactured to die slowly to the darkness and this body is like an incomplete metaphor for the disease that lives in my head without paying rent eating up all the light.
Oct 5, 2022
Oct 5, 2022 at 10:47 AM UTC