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Alex Cassidy Oct 2012
I hate looking at you.
You are so strikingly beautiful
And so viciously ugly
When I see you, you lock your eyes with mine and give me a devilish smile
You tilt your head forward
You’re trying too hard
I want to scream
**** you
Hurt you at the very least
Punch you right in your beautiful ugly face
I laugh to try to make you stop
But inside, I collapse.
Please, please stop looking at me.
You’re piercing right through my ugly, sexless body
Right into my nervous, teenage soul
You are so beyond me
I hate you for that.
I’ll always hate you for that
I know you feel superior to me
I know you use me
I know you take comfort in my cynical, society depreciating, feminist convictions
My mumbling garbage of sadness
I know you think I’m smart
but at the same time pathetic
I know that you want me
Because you think you can have everything
I know you need me
Like you need anyone
Because you can’t stand to be alone.
Yes, I know you can’t stand to be alone.
Your wretched body that you toss around like an object
All in a vain attempt to be wanted
But you still end up alone.
You aren’t what you think you are
What you want to be
So don’t you look down on me like that
With your practiced sultriness
I say all these things in my laugh
But you’re oblivious
You look away smiling
Like you’ve won something
I collapse inside
I want to crumple
I’m too tired for violence
Too sad
So I just sit on your couch
Perturbed by the silence
Even when I hate you most
I’m afraid of what you imagine of me in the silence.
Ken Pepiton Oct 2018
Information Required Order 38582 Moonshine Makin's

I intend to use this order to test
the viability of an herbal extracting service for local gardeners.
If there is interest
and our trials prove commercial, the methods
will be posted publicly, methodic.

The intended customer base is the home canning and preserving enthusiast, ****** societies, 'n'such.

Now, the pod cast, statement of use. Right, of course.
Right use is to be made of all the time we wish, and we wish to share the method we use.
With youse.
Here's my idea, at the moment

nothin,

then I hear this guy who got famous in the seventies,
in such a way that I would have known.
Had I been on the same planet
during the Seventies
and half the eighties.

Terrence McKenna, right. If I had survived 1970,
and things had been well positioned for that to have happened,
had I not...

What did we do, my strange friends, or was I the only one who does remember my last sane thought? Actually,

I don't. And then, I do. Quasar-ic-ish-ly.

An edit or two could change every thing,
imagine this Terrence
McKenna taught "Authentic Being" a sort, or class, of being,
very high and good.

We teach being authentic.

Being a being's been being a while,

upon multiple instants of
a time, best'n'worse, full'n'empty, war'n'peace

(i'sgottabeat)

yet never is hope absensed. Any time I tell a story,
hope springs eternal, soon

soon the old fool will see No one is listening, and wink.

No one and the fool have friended
upon such times as these,
No two, as well, (seedawink)
to a far lesser degree, ye may see.
Secret secret secret knowledge, gnosis, donchaknow,

is same as sacred, yes, yes, it is, sacred made, made sacred, samesame that's the game... secret

I am in me,me ni ma I
Magic Ab-io-alchemical Hermitical Heretic, am I. Spirit. Muse?

Are we lost? No. We are wiser than we were.
By any measure.

A statement of use for that we wish to take, once it is granted. What's the use? We stuck not knowin, right?

Wait, I have a chit
"All things pertaining to life and godliness have been given thee." Got that at VBS, by God.

Really, we are treading on Bunyan's tale? We escape the Giant Despond on a promise of a promise?

Yes,
seems so. So little is different. The road, seen rocky three decades ago, or so, now, it's

bricks, silicon bricks, I recon they been doped, ye ken?
Some ol loswoids crosswise need gold ducts to flow
past the reflective edge, where we saw that Mckenna

outright lie.
He did. Damright. Said Paradise was opened by the door that shut Eden, but he said that

Like it was a bad thing.
Jesus Christ, if he missed the whole reason there is a Bible and a Jesus in it, who is gone gowon his testified
psyc-hellic oppositio cunjunct-ifitis trip?

So, I missed the seventies,
as if I were flying from LA at forty k and I go on by, to land in 1985, after fifteen years enculturated to believe a not-so-complex,
on the surface, lie.

Truth has a strange mercurial 'spect,
all the light that can be reflected is reflected in mercury, see,
the edge twixt yinanyang, dang,

as far as we can see, tho'

we can't really even see HD, but
it seems better.

Reflecting on an idea is blissfull, but that's not the reason.
Reflecting on old age and catching people telling lies regarding what can be learned in a deep examined life. Then, it's harvest time, and afriend called, thinks the podcast is a good tool, how we gone use it?
Russell Douglas Feb 2010
A Verse In Time: A Trickster’s Alchemical Approach to Memory in Three Waves

(Warning: The following collection contains depictions of three waves
of the psychedelic experience—particularly with God’s allies, Los Aliados, the mushrooms—and like the psychedelic experience each wave possesses its own waves within itself.  Ride with discretion.)

.

Wave I: The Allies’ Nursery Rhyme

The Allies
came to visit
and take me
on a trip.
No need for boat
or bus
or plane
or even rocket ship.
The galaxy, as they explained
resides inside your mind,
The portals to the universe
are windows you call eyes.
Instead of always looking out
you should try to look within.
The ending you have always feared
is exactly where you begin.

Yes, all the spans of time and space
exist in you behind your face
and yet you cannot understand
that nothing is a race.

Oh wait, please be careful with that mirror
when we are here and you draw nearer.
Don’t let the face of everyone replace your face with fear.
You are Horus, Mary, Jesus Christ, Cervantes, and Shakespeare,
and all the men from beast to mice, from oceans down to tears.

And so they pried behind my face
and pushed me on through outer space
and soon enough I understood
there never was a race.

It all exists right here, right now—
the past, the future, the grass, the cow,
the vast, the nature, the cash, the house,
the king and the savior
the beast and the mouse
are all your creation,
your relation,
your spouse,
your Path,
your Bible,
your ‘Gita,
your Tao.

It is all
of your moment,
It is all
of your now.

For you are the mystery
of that which you seek.
You invented the minutes, the hours, the weeks,
the deserts, the rivers, the valleys, and peaks,
your digits, extremities, elbows, and knees.
You created the cure, you invent the disease.
The labyrinth is you and
You defeat it with ease.
To master the Minotaur just follow the string
Discover the dinosaur, discover the king,
discover this grandiose song that you sing,
and uncover the truth of the message you bring
when you ring bells or

Stroke piano keys
and make the doctor sweat.
The pranksters shifting shapes again,
it’s time to make a bet.
With silly laws of threes and fives, this riddle I repeat, replies
that by the time the rhyme is over, the trickster will arrive.
Gliding up in cycles by, the prankster grins and winks his eye.
He fabricates a fluffy fix with fuzzy snow white lies
to bring the doctor to a six then down to four inside
and bring the tempest to a wave
on which the four can ride.

Do we glide?
Do we slide?
Do we fly really high?
Do we bobble and sink
with the rise of the tide?

I remember the brink
the cellular stride, the following leap,
the primitive mind
I remember the dirt, the water, the fire,
the wind and the ether,
the passion, desire.
I remember that art
can never expire.

Do we depart?
Do we retire?

The answer is yes,
The answer is no,
The answer’s the same wherever you go.
It’s never too fast,
it’s never too slow
and you are never the last to not really know.
For the sun always shines,
the moon always glows,
the old always die,
the young always grow,
The seeds that you plant
are the trees that you sow,
from the bees and the ants
to the bulls and
black holes.

It is all
in your stance.
It is all
in your
soul,

When you follow your dance
the bliss
takes control.
Take your place
in the play
and master
your role.
The Aum
is your home
it’s inside
of your dome,
Whatever
you wonder,
Wherever
you roam.

And so it flows behind my face
the universe of time and space
Now I understand that time
is invented as the race

Yes, you are Borges, and Buddha, and Krishna,
and Lorca, and Vishnu, Dickinson, Lennon,
Eliot, Gandhi, Marley, McKenna,
Campbell, Picasso, Alpha, Omega.
You are your enemy,
your stranger,
your neighbor.
You are the peasant,
the king,
and the savior,
the mandala man,
the cosmic *******.
You are the taste
You are the flavor
and you are
the wave
the unwavering
Creator

Even us
as they explained
merely extend from you
A mirror to the macrocosm
for you to gaze into.




So when you get lost
within your lies
and cannot find
your rhyme,
Gather inside with your
Allies
and master
the maze
of
time.


Wave II: Contemplating The Allies’ Advice

Thunderbolts of cackling giggles
shutter through your vitals, shaking shoulders
and squirting tears from squinting eyes.
Exciting when dimensions hidden creep into your line of vision,
morphing mapping iridescence with a fleeting fuzzy phosphorescent
undulating elfin presence following your every contemplation.

Concentrating on a caterpillar crawling up the wall
how curious, this furry beast has fingers not to fall.
He folds into his fuzzy form, a sleeping bag to keep him warm,
a little home as still as lead.  He hibernates and contemplates,
waits and waits and transmutates into a gilded butterfly
that flutters through my head.

Violet translucent landscapes bleed through grass and trees,
focus on a precise place of time and space and witness the birth of the human race.  Projections made in fuzzy fourth dimensions quickly fade
if your gaze should wander.  Positioned to ponder,
you plunge into prepubescent wonder as a shooting star splits the sky wide open revealing heaven and everything under the sun is tune and the sun is eclipsed by the moon.  And once again, the music comments chronologically on your moments, as if all these notes and lyrics were cataloged to sync with the scenes of your epic voyage.

Destroying contemplation again, the sea ***** the wind through the trees
and blows a blue marine breeze through your hair.
Do you dare take the time to recognize the punctuality of the gale?
Should your frail and fragile mind be dangled from a line
to flap and fluff and figure out the nature of the rhyme of our mother?
You are your brother, your keeper, and your lover.

All the lines align and oscillate in cadenced flow,
the more you see with your mind the more your mind will know.  
A ****** brain may strain and throw a fit
if faced with the tricky truth of the third eye
Surprise! Who knew that Jesus Christ could sprout from cow ****?
Can you believe it?  Wow, Bob, wow.
Where do you think we got: ******* and holy cow?
Heaven is the here and now
and every time you try to leave
you lose what you have found.

(* All words in italics come from    
   various songs, films, works of        
   literature, etc. and are not the words    
  of the author.)


Wave III: Los Aliados Wake

An apple carries a story deeper than the tree,
More nourishing than the luscious skin,
More central than the seed.
for the apple gave original sin
and knowledge from within
and fell upon the head, announcing gravity.
Have you ever heard the tale of Johnny Melon seed?
(The apple is global, so I wonder why,
what could be patriotic of pie?
Is it not just a strudel,
a pastry disguised?)

The colors we create
distort. manipulate.
The fools who follow fear
are doomed to find their fate
between their ears
where the colors seem
to blend and stream
and almost disappear.
To wonder why we’re here
all colors must appear
and merge into the blinding light
that obliterates our fear.

All your dreams, your fantasies, your symbols, and beliefs,
all a compass pointing you to endless mystery.
The treasure that you seek
resides inside the Self,
A jewel within the rock,
A book upon the shelf.


I bought the ticket,
I’m taking the ride.
I’m spiraling miles through the bowels of time.
I’m spinning and laughing
and losing my mind
and finding
it always returns
just in time.
It’s right where it left me,
so I’ll leave it behind
and return when
I’m ready
to relish the ride
with a bite
from the apple
of my
holy
third
eye.
softcomponent Dec 2013
JS
caricature fiction like a functioning don't-ask- but- I'll-tell
it was a clover and a daisy's birthday by way of default and
Jesus Christ, this girl likes Terrence McKenna? In all immediate alleyway stores of coke and ketamine is the period at the end of every written sentence,
so the wait is something beyond me. the slate is a cleanliness devoid of practice

but whose really watching, kid.

you? or the television?
dedicated to Jen Sawyer.
mike dm Jun 2015
I've listened to many Mckenna lectures but in this one he is at his most thoughtful

http://youtu.be/_NclGeWlkrY
Sam WG Sep 2014
Through the act of speaking vividly, we enter into a flirtation with the domain of the imagination.
The ability to associate sounds, or the small mouth noises of language, with meaningful internal images, is a synesthetic activity.
I'm reading Food of The Gods and I love this little quote. It is almost poetic.
Gilhooley had ordered a meeting
Everyone had to come round
St. Patricks day will be upon us
And a venue just has to be found

We have to find somewhere authentic
Our normal old pub just won't do
We can't celebrate with the punters
Where the beer isn't green, it's dyed blue

Gilhooley awaited suggestions
It had to be somewhere close by
There were all sorts of names on the table
So they decided to give them a try

It needed to be "somewhat old Irish"
with no dee jay, and a folky type band
they had to have red headed women
And a barman, with drinks poured and at hand

The first place they went was McKenna's
It seemed like a great place at first
but the service was slower than treacle
and a man would just die here of thirst

They found one that looked rather Irish
It was known as the new *** of gold
it had a rainbow outside on the awning
this should have been a warning fortold

the next one they tried was a classic
The green and gold tavern....a hit
but, it was booked on the day for a party
and this didn't please them one bit

they finally found one to their liking
full of guineess and pretty colleens
a punjabi bar by the  name of  ben doury's
where everything was curried and green

it was a party that no one remembered
that meant that it must have been good
nobody went to the jailhouse
even though three or four of them should

The beer and the curry were epic
the singing was like nothing we'd heard
a sitar and cymbal based trio
played so loud that nothing was heard

Gilhooley said next year we have to
come back here and do it again
It was the best St. Patty's ever
most of them passed out by ten

The next time you go out to party
call Ben Doury, the place is  spot on
the food and the beer are one colour
with a Punjabi Mumbai Leprachaun
I'm seeking to amass a Collection
of the World's spiritual, mythic and philosophical codices.
I want to collect them out of veneration
for those who came before who have tried to illuminate the Paths:

The following is my library of such books of yet.
Entries in bold are my recommendations;
entries italicized are strongly recommended.

-Old Works:

Egyptian Book of the Dead
Tibetan Book of the Dead
The Bhagavad Gita
Euclid's Elements

Tao te Ching (I have 3 translations)
I Ching (2 translations and a workbook)
The Qur'an
The Bible

-Newer Works:

Plato and a Platypus walk into a Bar: Philosophy explained through Jokes
Quadrivium: Number, Geometry, Music, & Cosmology
The Pulse of Wisdom - College Eastern Philosophy Book
Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna
The Elements of Reason - College Logic Book
1001 Perls of Buddhist Wisdom
Net of Being by Alex Grey
Art Psalms by Alex Grey
The Portable Nietzsche
The Red Book of Jung
The Portable Jung

The Subtle Body - Encyclopedia of chakras, auras and other personal energy systems.
Who are you? - 101 Ways of Seeing Yourself
--

I seek to compile this Collection
not to have a nice looking bookshelf;
nor do I seek to find which one is right.

I seek to learn from each of these
the lessons that are intrinsic in our Lives;
they're all matters of perspectives.

I want to compile the aspects of each philosophy with which I resonate
and integrate them into my own,
forging a dynamic and holistic individual philosophy.

All of these books are Mystical masterpieces.
All of these books provide insights to the nature of our Holy Reality.
All of these books ultimately attempt to express the same ineffability.
All of these books are interpreted then translated and interpreted again.
The way I see it,
I may as well do it for myself; draw my own conclusions:
Think for myself.
If anyone seeks further information
such as publishers or Authors not mentioned, please let me know.
If anyone has suggestions for additions to my collection, please let me know. :)

Quadrivium is simply and unequivocally badass.
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2016
allowing for a two part volume
of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu...
is unforgiving... it's asking a meat-head
to read such a body like exploring a woman's...
a gay-man's psyche is pretty much a woman...
or what a woman thinks in secret,
gay men merely vocalise what a woman does
not say... and yes, that a with a diacritical
mark... that grave above the a? the à?
it works like a comma... à! a surprise kindred
an eureka that's not really original,
an: ah! and then you say the rest of the title...
iconic pause: in search of lost time...
          it took me about five minutes to figure
that one out... lost time, but occupied a space...
  and so much political vanity is consecrated
upon the reverse.. ineffective space:
thus gained time... for all that protests are worth.

i know i go on about this a lot, surprise surprise,
i'm actually engaging in systematisation...
once you enjoy writing as much as walking
you get to reach a systematisation,
     it's a painful process, i'd never do the editing process
of a Hemingway... write something: shoot some
camels and reindeer and go back and revise a piece
of writing: drink a *death in the afternoon
-
a shot of absinthe inside a champagne glug
or the modern: shot of Jägermeister inside a glass
of red bull... (yay-gay-mr.) -
                       or how do you make snakebite?
half a láger half a çíder - and a head of blackcurrant
squash... scoot meine good look.
  but diacritical marks are what punctuation marks
are... it's only that they've become elevated,
and unlike punctuation marks governing paragraphs
and sentences... they govern the words,
         they are syllable incision indicators...
  i mean: i don't revise something i've already written,
unless it's a spelling mistake... i just write
something new... it's sadistic in my mind's eye to
revise and revise a single effort of writing...
                i'd rather centralise a theme of the paradox
of re-, in the year 2018 i will still experience
the tetratempus - containing four seasons -
         and i will never return toward making a piece
of writing become a morbidly corrected statue...
     what's done is done, let us move toward another
circumstance of being able to acquire a new kind
of observation... i can't be a sadist in terms of also
being a perfectionist... i break a leg, i break a leg...
if i write a ****** poem, i'll write a ****** poem...
but i won't be bothered like human history has been
by preoccupying itself in forwarding the drama
on Golgotha Street...
    the newest addition to the vogue scene is a corset
paired with a waistcoat...
   the snooker championships are taking place,
and i says to my father: 'a bit like chess, ain't it?'
   'sure is', he replies, 'you have to think 3 moves ahead.'
and it is... a smart sport, actually the most intelligent
sport there is... ****** boring obviously,
unless you fake the boredom and think about angles
and triangles and Newton...
   and cover the game with such congestions of
pretending to hallucinate it all...
                or take to thinking about rebellious
Saturn spinning out of orbit and doing a Mike Tyson
to Jupiter...
          but it's very much like chess...
                   it's sporty chess... snooker is chess...
  and it definitely ain't pool...
         you could actually have a ******* on a snooker table...
while either doggy or missionary positioning on
the snooker table... so what are the odds?!
         but i'll tell you one thing... snooker beats golf...
i don't know why... but once colour televisions came into
existence: it made much more sense for both
spectator and commentator... and how dare you
not cling to the 20th century if you were born in it
to translate to the 21st androids how we experienced
an evolution of technology, that made much more sense
after what i just heard...
      so there's this woman in the U.S., and this is before
president-elect and whatnot...
  and she's 22, and it's all over vice news,
and she's scared, and she's a mother of a 1 year old...
    and then this picture emerges
(don't worry, it's not anything like playing the Sims
   and moving your Sim to play computer games
and seeing a wormhole, or the infinity mirror effect)...
and there's a scene when she's talking Donald Duck
to the child... there are no meaningful words being
said... merely sounds... onomatopoeias...
and yes... this makes perfectly good sense when
stressed as a cut-off capsule...
because Darwinism doesn't really provide much
history... Darwinism is a historical erasure:
the past 2000 years could have happened,
but not really...
  but it just fascinated me...
         when did we learn or who did we learn it from
given we were placed at so many different
plots of the globe and became convergent -
anyway - the woman is teaching the child
words via the onomatopoeia of a hoarse quacking
of a duck! i probably will not find an answer
(primarily because i'm not supposed to,
if i am to perpetuate what Aristotle taught, i.e.:
be wrong and continually circumstance being in awe,
given the mundanity that nonetheless
everything keeps repeating itself over and over again,
for sustenance, and you are not sustenance bound
as corrected by your language deficiency to
ever merge into an unconsciously organised module
that might also argue an ego) -
    but i wonder how difficult it must have been
to extract something beyond the minimalism of animals
that identifies a duck with a quack, a cow with a moo,
an serpent with a sss... a cat with a meow, a dog with a bark...
    i cannot conceive how difficult this explanation
will be... but given the timeframe, i'm more awe-stricken
by this than merely being awe-bound by the time-scale...
which becomes the least affordable option of being
struck by awe, because one becomes merely awe-bound
by it, and therefore apathetic towards such a time-scale.
       how did we suddenly extract an understanding
of an onomatopoeia to distinguish our own ontological
basis for making a sound by infusing a sound that
doesn't resemble us? when did the first ape bark like
a dog? but then again, looking at the canvas already
apparent to us... what was the point of such an adventure?
hippy culture says: monkey accidently ate a mushroom,
monkey suddenly was blown away and reasoned of
a higher purpose other than a tree and a coconut...
     mudvayne quotes the guy on l.d. 50...
what's the guys name... uggh! not Timothy Leary...
ah ****! Terence McKenna! that's it!
        am i high? nope... my respectability of argument
comes from the mystical properties of... whiskey.
hmm...      that rarely happens to people.
                   it's what's called being earthbound, or gravity
prone... sink like a skipping pebble across the lake...
          and like a tonne of lard.
             tomorrow i'll wake once more and still
think about how we encouraged the discovery of
onomatopoeia to teach our children the multiplicity of
sounds, and later deconstruct such a multiplicity to
create meaningful words that go beyond knock knock! jokes
and grunts and barking...
                     but i will never know the man who
created the fermentation process from potatoes to make
*****...
                or the guy who brewed the first pint...
or the guy that smoked the first marijuana bush ensemble
while clearing the land for a place to harvest wheat...
   all the fame that exists is simply scholastic...
  schoolboy fame... which is why so much attention
goes into becoming famous in school...
                        but still that woman teaching her child how
to speak by going down into the blobby-gurgling
  tongue of the toddler, stiffening it,
      and tightening the **** and bladder too...
  by talking Donald Duck to it...
                        i probably could have had a family myself...
but can you imagine someone writing this load of
******* and having a family? there wouldn't be any time!
           still (god, what a need to repeat!)
         how did we progress from saying ape-****?
surely if we started to imitate other animals they'd join us
in our need to usurp those ******* lions!
  lo and behold... we managed to pet dogs (so they were
in on it all along)... and cats (who came from Japan,
if **** sapiens came from Africa... cats came from Japan...
bonsai frocked and all) -
                            but you have to admit...
from what is written history, to what is history and
a gap in history going back to a similitude of form -
      you can write as much historical fiction as you want...
    and you'll never have to write a bestseller about
some centurion in the Roman Empire...
   or a quo vadis by Sienkiewicz (nobel prize winner)
for the depiction of emperor Nero...
                               ******* Sesame St. giggles...
still, the question beckons... if animals can behave in
an ultra-intuitive way as if fashioned by a telepathy...
then telepathy can only exist upon a very simple,
atomic, terse vocalisation of an identity...
   a dog barks... a man can bark too...
                                but we have completely lost our
intuitive talent (if it can be called that)...
          to have sacrificed intuition is to have created
cults or counter-intuitive hierarchies...
  so a 1000 blah blahs later i still prefer to write what
i like... than write what people "might" understand
and talk to a girl about...
                                     a bit like a woman discovering
you faked writing a poem 20 years into a marriage...
                  obviously the setbacks to boot...
                            dyslexia is an optical dimension...
no one dyslexic says a word they don't understand
a meaning of... dyslexia seemingly came from
finally having enshrined the "secret" to the monopoly
of writing sounds...
                          nonetheless... at the end of the day...
it's just too much history... there's too much of it...
            there was never going to be a world
where carpe diem ruled it...
                               it was a question how we clung to
certain things, within a framework of
                                             salmon dye omni:
sure sure... piglet pink and innocent for the rest
of our lives... once Darwinism pointed at the ape,
and once physicists dropped the bomb and the bang...
no day has had any significance at all...
   + the 24h news channels...           snuggle up to a hog
             and say: fog over Heathrow... all flights are grounded.
Broken Condom Mar 2014
i saw lil wayne in a dream
he told me i wasn't a human being either

i saw kurt cobain on an acid trip
it really was suicide

i saw terence mckenna when i smoked dmt
he said "nevermind, the self transforming machine elves were never real."
b e mccomb Apr 2018
the day starts with shirley
who comes in just after eight
for her 20oz chai
"what kind of milk?"
"doesn't matter"
punches her own coffee card
tells me about her puppy
kayla is next her hair and
makeup always perfect
about as nice a landlady as
one can have in a town like this

from there it's a constant
stream of people
who i watch out for and
who don't know i'm doing it

janice lives alone and thinks
people are stealing her money
doesn't understand
the tests her doctors want
she can't remember
what she always orders
it's a turkey club sandwich no bacon
on toasted oatmeal regular chips no pickle
a to go box for the leftovers
and some kind of chocolate treat in a bag
because she only eats when
she comes in here

two weeks ago
i accidentally switched
barb's 12oz soy chai
with someone else's
12oz whole milk chai
it wasn't enough dairy
to give her a problem
in fact she didn't seem
to remember it
but i made her another for free

nic stopped for his afternoon coffee
didn't laugh at anything just stared
blankly into space and said he
thought he was getting sick
had too many things to finish
the day before when i was waving
to him from the parking lot
so i took my dog to the
back door of his office and
we barked until he came out
patted us both on the head
and said he felt better

we're all creatures of habit
like mckenna who arrives
like clockwork
between one thirty and two
tuesday through saturday
leans on my bake case while
i count my tips and add random
ingredients to different drinks
in a reckless attempt
to break up the monotony
and he drinks them all
like clockwork
no matter how bad they are

rita doesn't smile since she broke her hip
in fact i haven't seen her since
walt got sick and he and joan
moved upstate to be closer to their son
i worry about something happening to ray
who will take care of rita?
whose laugh used to echo off the walls
and fill the place up
pat's smoking again and it turns out
he has congenital heart failure
gail had a fall, a stroke and
suddenly died

i make the same dumb jokes
only a few people smile at
i sing to myself
and people point it out

karen sits in her motorized wheelchair
ice and snow dripping from the wheels
onto the scratched, muddy floor
and tells me i'm pretty and funny
and have a beautiful voice and
i look at karen, her head tilted to
the side and spit hanging from her
buck teeth and wonder why such a
wonderful funny girl with a heart of gold
had to have the body she's stuck in

why life is ****
and why i'm trying
i swear i'm trying
fighting
for something
i don't know what

why we fight
why we try
to make the world
a better place
when nothing can really change
any of these dismal facts
copyright 4/6/18 b. e. mccomb
Waited seventeen years
For a life changing moment
Until i realized i was
Meant to change the world
And the world was never meant to change me
Rohan P Apr 2018
i saw your note: “the
summation of your tears
infinitely converges”—
then breathlessness as you
paused

—and upon
the water, a heron stirred,
pensive;
the reeds bowed to the northern sky—

“converging, converging”: the mad,
scrawled words, the scribbled midnight
lament; you hid your heart in a pocketbook, pages
folded and layered.

did you feel the reeds yield to
that northern horizon? did you feel that pensive,
infinite heron? she stirred, scattering your
words in the early summer breeze.
mckenna: you told me once that you forgot how to feel—
i've forgotten too. we've all forgotten, a long, long time ago. to write is to hear echoes of an era long past; to write is to swim in the currents of forgetting.  

so write, mckenna. scatter those words to the horizons.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2016
i was serious about the Anglo Renaissance -
                     it has peaked -
            it's forever in a state of groundhog
day repeat... which isn't a necessarily bad thing...
              the internet has changed
   or rather restricted how we get fed culture,
an odd statement... but the internet doesn't
actually prescribe you cultural dietitians -
          i'm talking about people, getting paid
to sift through music, or other works of art:
not the critics, but the cultural dietitians...
     John Peel owned the radio back when
it was still prog rock and punk and what
became punk: grunge, and what became grunge:
indie...
                     oddly enough there is still one
cultural dietitian out there: Jools Holland...
                   cultural critics are dialectical shrapnel,
or should i say: agitators
                            that rarely enter dialogue -
           but Jools is the kind of cultural entity that
showcases new acts you might otherwise omit -
and probably will, given that it's sometimes to
forage the algorithmic trends and berry bushes of
search engines...
                                to me that's the worthwhile
side of television...
                                      but you have to sacrifice
a Friday night and watch the program...
                  my latest discovery?
                   Declan McKenna and a decent song:
Brazil...
                       obviously the band Slaves are
not knew to me: what is new to me is the fact
that the drummer is using a stand-up minimalist
drum kit (never seen them live) -
                i still lament that fact that the music
magazine Mojo disappeared from shop shelves...
      it didn't adapt as an electronic magazine -
                  but people need this sort of outlet,
where someone is professional adapted to having
enough dosh to spend his celibacy in music shops...
             and to later showcase it
for your eager palette to lick up a fancy of a band
or two...
                     but boy oh boy: to be constantly plugged
in like that?
                                  so many people have so many
interesting things to say multiplied by the variation
of presenting those said things -
                           no wonder menial tasks seem
debilitating, everyone dreams about never using
a hammer...
                        at least in political systems akin
to authoritarian communist states: only one person
is allowed to say anything remotely interesting...
             and that never distracts you to dream -
in all sincerity, the western motto is: be polite...
         because there are so many sad examples
of how people should have been taught to be content
with very little...
                                  to be the shadows of society
that are better protected from what i find to
be despotic in democracy: art.
                                             simply because it has
to be there... not physical health... art...
                art governs everything in democracy,
many people dream, too many...
                                   if i didn't have that ******
brain haemorrhage i'd be content as my father is,
day-to-day: on the roof, simple task
        perfected over time till it's like spreading
butter on hot toast than tar on concrete...
                        with the motto - zrdowie na budowie
                 (health on a building site) -
  of that i am jealous as ****-knows-what -
                    i wasn't born an entertainer - so these
poems are not intended to be performed,
   hence shying away from poetical conventions -
                 i always wanted to be in the mass of
social shadows, the people behind the curtains doing
the necessary things to oil up society...
                                this is a practical joke given my
background in chemistry...
                                           next best thing?
the Faustian myth.
                                               but still: the ivory tower.
            but we are in dire need of cultural
dietitians: the people who prescribe us art...
  oh forget the radio... the radio is not the radio
of the 1970s...   video killed the radio star...
   (famous song)... but this one slot on television
with Jools is what every aspiring contestant
  for the X-factor should watch... to simply sober up...
otherwise my prediction about how Axis powers
   allowed post World War II celebrations to
take place over 5 decades... but have started to wane
and karaoke is the standard norm -
if ever someone could have said: only Japan,
i'd gladly like to listen to Celtic folk in pups -
but no... autocue...
                                   so i guess i'm right with that respect,
           we don't have the necessary cultural
dietitians in the major forms of art...
                         the needle drop guy doesn't
compare to Jools Holland... not the same league...
            not enough music... and this is the reason
why certain aspects of the internet will not catch on:
needless to say: the internet has become a fixation
for cat videos and poems...
                                                static - static - static -
  we need cultural dietitians more than
people telling us to loose 4lb and take more vitamin B12...
                    in literary terms
television is crap...
                                             but in terms of music
the internet is just as crap...
                                the radio is just another excuse
for billboards and advertisement posters...
                    i'm telling you... Friday night,
BBC1, later... with Jools Holland...
                                        did anyone notice how ****
Norah Jones has become? a full bodied woman,
a ripe peach and pear and all the things that
woman are: fruits...                     the skinny girls
       deluded by flowers...
                           but the real fleshy girls
        by fruits. bombshell, that Ms. Jones.
1st of october... and i'm thinking whether i should
stop going to the shops at night wearing only a
t-shirt and pyjama bottoms (like your typical
English girl) -                        
                                             but then this exquisite
numbing of not thinking, slightly cryogenic in a sense
of massaging nerves and veins...
                         i'll give it a week's worth of
debate in my head, before i'll put on a hoodie.
b e mccomb Feb 2017
i hate aretha franklin
(except for her hat)
and i hate old ladies
who leave lipstick stains
on otherwise perfectly
clean used coffee mugs
(i'm looking at you joan
because i know al, bob and ray
don't wear lipstick and kayla
drinks ***** chai so it's not her)

and i hate sunshine and
i hate rain and i hate people
but i also hate being alone
and i hate how loose these
jeans are but i hate how big
they make me feel

i hate dishes and potatoes and
***** floors and daily specials
(except the jambalaya but i'll
make exceptions for mckenna)

and i hate being tired and i
hate feeling down and i don't
hate myself more than usual i
just hate being in a funk
(why does caryl have to go and
leave me with only one coffee cake
i'd like to throw a long handled
spoon like a harpoon through the
biggest window available or just
the one with pedestrians outside)
Copyright 2/24/17 by B. E. McComb
wordvango Sep 2017
dabnagit  Travel back to before the nation began
and see Crispus Attucks killed — the
first American to die for American freedom, a freedom denied to his African and Native American forebears. Take a knee to honor his sacrifice and the other four dead.

Take a knee in grief that he who would become president minimized these first martyrs as "a motley rabble of saucy boys, negros and molattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish Jack Tarrs.”

Stand at Morris Island, South Carolina, where American soldiers fought to keep a young nation whole, a field of blue with 35 stars, not 22. Take a knee for the 54th Massachusetts Voluntary Infantry and its score killed at Fort Wagner, a hundred more presumed dead.

Take a knee in grief that the U.S. Army rescinded its promise of equality and paid the 54th little more than half a white soldier's monthly pay. Take a knee in awe at those who refused any pay that was less, yet died with "Massachusetts and Seven Dollars a Month!" on their lips, defending their white comrsdes' retreat.

Take a knee for Sgt. Medgar Evers, who defeated fascists at Normandy only to be killed by them once he was back home.

Take a knee from the suckerpunch by a U.S. senator from Mississippi in 1917, who said the return of black veterans would “inevitably lead to disaster.” Once you “impress the ***** with the fact that he is defending the flag” and “inflate his untutored soul with military airs,” it would be easy for him to conclude “his political rights must be respected.” Take a knee to honor those who died defending freedom. Take a knee to weep for the sharp rise in lynchings after both world wars — following the return of those impressed, untutored ***** souls inflated with military airs for having served.

Look at the lists, look at the videos, look at the witness testimony, look at the double standard: Amadou Diallo. Manuel Loggins Jr. Ronald Madison. Kendra James. Sean Bell. Eric Garner. Michael Brown. Alton Sterling. Philando Castile. (Take a knee; this could take awhile.) Akiel Denkins. Gregory Gunn. Samuel DuBose. Brendon Glenn. Freddie Gray. Natasha McKenna. Walter Scott. Christian Taylor. Ezell Ford. Akai Gurley. Laquan McDonald. (Take a breath.) Tamir Rice. Yvette Smith. Jamar Clark. Rekia Boyd. Shereese Francis. Ramarley Graham. LaTanya Haggerty. Margaret LaVerne Mitchell. And on and on. And on.

Take a knee for the unarmed, or subdued, or even fleeing men and women killed by officers pledged to protect and serve. Take a knee too for the officers killed by gun-toting gangsters…or by homeowners fearing a home invasion. While you're at it, take a knee for the more than 50 people killed every year by toddlers exercising their Second Amendment rights.

And take a knee for the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who died so that a football player can take a knee as long as some people are shot by police in the back, or even when down, or even after they're on their knees…while others for some reason are far less likely to be shot in the same circumstances. Take a knee, Rodin-like, and ponder why.

Take a knee and join those who are taking a knee out of respect not only for the flag, but for the republic for which it stands, one nation…

(Striving to be a more perfect union)

…under God…

(Who "created all men equal"; "male and female he created them.")

…indivisible…

("Build that wall!" "Lock her up!" "Fire the sons of ******* if they won't stand for this flag but run them over if they protest a rebel flag!")

…with liberty and justice for all lives can't matter unless black lives matter.

So for these all, and many more, take a knee. Take your time, but take some heart. Then lift each other up and lock your arms. Play ball.
Seriously, I have never seen comments on a poem on HP be more better thought out or literally more prescient or more in need of reposting!
b e mccomb Jan 2019
“you having a bad week bri?”
hilary peers over the glass partition
between me and reality
“me? a bad week?
how can it be a bad week
when it’s only monday?”

but the truth is
it’s usually not
a great week
here for me
when my life is how it is
their lives are how they are

kayla had her baby
before christmas
haven’t seen sam
in forever
jennifer still doesn’t like
dressings or sauces
but she doesn’t call in her
usual every day anymore

still getting calls every morning
what’s the soup special?
barb drinks the same
cappuccinos as always
still can’t see properly but
she’s still trying
jim and dorothy like it when
i make their sandwich
because they say i’m the only
one who gets the chips right
nicadamus just didn’t
show up one day and
nobody quite knows
where he went

now mckenna walks
around the counter and
puts his arms around me
because i’m his girl
and him?
he’s my whole world

i bring mint brownies to the
brewery for the older couple
i smile when children smear
their grubby fingers across
the bake case that was just
cleaned and pretend it doesn’t
bother me to fish uneaten
coleslaw shards out of the drain

ray passed away
in july and nobody
told me because they
thought i knew
last week i find out rita
has gone on too
and the feeling in my
stomach sinks
into relief that she’s not
without him anymore

susan stops by sometimes
for lunch on her way to
see janice who is now
in the nursing home for good
and it’s better for her
but she doesn’t understand

the same faces come through
but a little tickle in the back
of my brain tells me some
of them haven’t been in
i can’t help myself from hoping
they’re all okay

new faces appear
i tell myself not to get
attached to them but after
weeks of making the same
items over and over just
the way they want
it gets hard not to see others
as an extension of my routine

the world is spinning
at an alarming rate
my heart is still running
at a declined pace

“well, breezer
between me and you”
maureen says
(she calls me breezer
and i call her a salve
to my cold 7am soul)
“i don’t blame you
you can’t stay here forever
and it’s a hard job
i couldn’t do it”

my mother tells me i’m not
going anywhere
maureen tells me there are
better things out there for me

and i tell myself i can
steep fulfillment into
complete strangers’
cups of tea

what i was saying to hilary
was that past a certain age
nobody tells you you’re
doing a good job
“we do in my office”
she says with a
who-hurt-you
expression

maybe in offices it works that way
but maybe i couldn’t force myself
into a plate glass cage where
telephones never stop
ringing and “coffee”
comes out of a k-cup

indecision
grinds its teeth
and i find myself clapping my
hands over the register and saying

“you’re doing your best!
you got this, c’mon
let’s get some espresso in you
and you’ll feel better
you can do anything
even get through today”

when i look in the mirror
i hear myself screaming
that all i have to do
is get through today
words echo through my
brain that i will get
through this
that i am smart
and beautiful and change
begins by knowing i am
worthy of better things

but i also realize it’s easier
to drown out the doubt
when you hear it from
someone else
so whoever and
wherever you are
if you need this affirmation, take it
pass it on, even

keep grinding, girl
you’re doing a great job
copyright 1/28/19 by b. e. mccomb
"The story of Eden is the story of histories first drug bust"
David Bojay Oct 2016
MUUUUst write

because the moment has letters that I can turn into delight  

I have 18 tabs open right now
But sometimes I want to get out and take 18 tabs

then say Hi to Terence Mckenna
Travis Green Jun 2020
Let’s pay homage to many innocent black lives that were taken by
the corrupt system:  Martin Luther King Jr.  Malcom X.  Emmett Till.  George Stinney.  Will Brown.  Sandra Bland.  Trayvon Martin.  Ahmaud Arbery.  Breonna Taylor. George Floyd.  David McAtee.  Natosha “Tony” McDade.  Yassin Mohamed.  Finan H. Berhe.  Sean Reed.  Steven Demarco Taylor.  Ariane McCree.  Terrance Franklin.  Miles Hall.  Darius Tarver.  William Green.  Samuel David Mallard.  Kwame “KK” Jones.  De’von Bailey.  Christopher Whitfield.  Anthony Hill.  Eric Logan.  Jamarion Robinson.  Gregory Hill Jr.  JaQuavion Slaton.  Ryan Twyman.  Brandon Webber.  Jimmy Atchison.  Willie McCoy.  Emantic “Ej” Fitzgerald Bradford Jr.  D’ettrick Griffin.  Jemel Roberson.  DeAndre Ballard.  Botham Shem Jean.  Robert Lawrence White.  Anthony Lamar Smith.  Ramarley Graham.  Manuel Loggins Jr.  Wendell Allen.  Kendrec McDade.  Larry Jackson Jr.  Jonathan Ferrell.  Jordan Baker.  Victor White III.  Dontre Hamilton.  Eric Garner.  John Crawford III.  Michael Brown.  Ezell Ford.  Dante Parker.  Kajieme Powell.  Laquan McDonald.  Akai Gurley.  Tamir Rice.  Rumain Brisbon.  Tony Robinson.  Mario Woods.  Quintonio LeGrier.  Gregory Gunn.  Akiel Denkins.  Alton Sterling.  Philando Castile.  Terrance Sterling.  Terrence Crutcher.  Keith Lamont Scott.  Alfred Olango.  Jordan Edwards.  Stephon Clark.  Danny Ray Thomas.  Dejuan Guillory.  Patrick Harmon.  Jonathan Hart.  Maurice Granton.  Julius Johnson.  Jamee Johnson.  Michael Dean.  Keith Childress.  Bettie Jones.  Kevin Matthews.  Michael Noel.  Leroy Browning.  Leroy Nelson.  Miguel Espinal.  Nathaniel Pickett.  Tiara Thomas.  Cornelius Brown.  Jamal Clark.  Richard Perkins.  Michael Lee Marshall.  Alonzo Smith.  Anthony Ashford.  Dominic Hutchinson.  Lamontez Jones.  Rayshaun Cole.  Paterson Brown.  Christopher Kimble.  Junior Prosper.  Keith McLeod.  Wayne Wheeler.  Lavante Biggs.  India Kager.  Tyree Crawford.  James Carney.  Felix Kumi.  Asshams Manley.  Christian Taylor.  Troy Robinson.  Brian Day.  Michael Sabbie.  Billy Ray Davis.  Samuel Dubose.  Darrius Stewart.  Albert Davis.  Salvado Ellswood.  George Mann.  Jonathan Sanders.  Freddie Blue.  Victo Larosa.  Spencer McCain.  Kevin Bajoie.  Zamiel Crawford.  Jermaine Benjamin.  Kris Jackson.  Kevin Higgenbotham.  Ross Anthony.  Richard Gregory Davis.  Curtis Jordan.  Markus Clark.  Lorenzo Hayes.  De’Angelo Stallsworth.  Dajuan Graham.  Brandon Glenn.  Reginald Moore.  Nuwnah Laroche.  Jason Champion.  Bryan Overstreet.  David Felix.  Terry Lee Chatman.  William Chapman.  Samuel Harrell.  Freddie Gray.  Norman Cooper.  Brian Acton.  Darrell Brown.  Frank Shephard III.  Walter Scott.  Donald “Dontay” Ivy.  Eric Harris.  Phillip White.  Dominick Wise.  Jason Moland.  Bobby Gross.  Denzel Brown.  Brandon Jones.  Askari Roberts.  Terrance Moxley.  Anthony Hill.  Bernard Moore.  Naeschylus Vinzant.  Tony Robinson.  Charly Leundeu “Africa” Keunang.  Darrell Gatewood.  Deontre Dorsey.  Thomas Allen Jr.  Lavall Hall.  Calvon Reid.  Gerdie Moise.  Terry Price.  Natasha McKenna.  Jeremy Lett.  Kevin Garrett.  Alvin Haynes.  Artago Damon Howard.  Tiano Meton.  Andre Larone Murphy Sr.  Leslie Sapp.  Brian Pickett.  Frank Smart.  Matthew Ajibade.

There are so many more that have died at the hands of the prejudice system.  All of you will never be forgotten.  Your legacy will forever live on.  Rest in Paradise to the fallen angels.
Johnnie Woods Nov 2019
Terence McKenna claimed
both psychedelics and travels
to be very affective and similiar
tools that help expand the mind.
Connecting these claims
with the observations of Aldous Huxley,
who proposed the mind and the
physical Earth(terrains, continents, landscapes)
to be conjoined with a shockingly strong bond
We can see Terence's idea
making Huxley's words fuller, more clear,
and more credible.

You can see, one's mind is in a great part shaped by
his everyday environment & actions. Repetitions lead
to the creation of bonds. Revisiting these paths
without a doubt creates a map of some kind.
Let's think about this for a minute,
people all over the world are heartbroken
That is a
       Terrible
                  Tragedy

mckenna downey
***
William Ackerman Mar 2019
To show you what it is like to deal with this I'm putting you in my shoes for an entire day. It's 6:15 when your Papa wakes you up. You know it's time to get up, but your mind is telling you to stay in bed where it's comfortable and before you know it it's already 6:30. You're still in bed; the only thing you've managed to do is mess up your duvet, your Papa comes back and tells you to get a move on. After another minute or two of fighting yourself, you finally managed to get out of bed.  As you groggily walk downstairs its quiet; too quiet. As soon as you get dressed and have finished up anxiety decides its time to come around and say hi. Anxiety glares you up and down looking for any minimal problems just to yank it.

Right now there is none. It lets you slip past his grasps for now. depression is still sound asleep in its bed; leaving you alone for the moment. You take your medications and walk out the door; praying that anxiety and depression find something else to do, the medicine acts like toys for the children at play. You do your double check to see if you're missing anything, luckily today you aren't. You throw your bag over your shoulder and walk out the door, on the way to war. As you enter the battlefields of the hall your head is spinning, it seems like anxiety has simmered down, and depression is still at bay.

You see your peers everywhere, and inside your head, you're thinking "Oh please nobody talk to me, I don't have time for a stutter now."

Someone comes up to you and says "Goodmorning McKenna, how are you?"

Your mind screams, "Crap! they caught me off guard, what do I do, What do I do!"
"Morning, How are you, good!"
"Crap! I stuttered. Now I'm gonna remember that all day."
You know what, ***** it. I'm done describing school Y'all should get the point by now. I'm skipping ahead.
Anywho, Anxiety doesn't let you forget your ***** up, and it was on your mind all day.

You get home, and depression has finally creeped out of bed and into your mainframe. You walk in the door, and you crash.
You scream and throw something across the room almost hitting something. Depression laughs at your face, and at how weak you are. You're bawling as it cackles at you. Calling you weak, unwanted, and how much of a mistake you are.

Luckily,

that doesn't happen every day.

Sometimes, you step in those doors; and you collapse out of emotional tiredness. You barely manage to drag your body to the flight of stairs that leads to your bedroom. You lay on your bed; drifting off into sleep; sometimes depression does that. It makes you so exhausted that you black out as soon as your head hits the pillows, making you sleep until 9 in the afternoon.

Other times depression gives you thoughts that could put you in the hospital for weeks if you let it.

Honestly, depression and anxiety aren't always easy to deal with.
Sometimes they're as simple to deal with.
Others they make me want to do things I shouldn't.

Honestly, I could walk the corridors of this school, and no one would notice that I'm dying inside, it's actually better that way. I don't want to drag someone else into my own fight, have them deal with my demons.

It's already hard enough fighting them on my own, the medicine does help, but most of the time it's up to me, and me alone.

So, everyone.

Welcome to my life.

Where each day is another fight.

Of a neverending war.
Anonymous Freak Dec 2019
I know the sound of your breathing
When you’re about to have a panic attack.
And that’s the breathing I heard
The last time I will ever step foot
In the house.

Jordan came with me,
Because I didn’t want to do it alone,
And he
Just knows how to take things in stride...
I don’t.

I didn’t want to lose our friendship,
But I also did.

When I moved out,
A lot of things happened.
I started sleeping through the night again.
I stopped having secret panic attacks.
I stopped talking to Rob.
I started praying again.
I stopped reading tarot cards.
I started to just
Enjoy things
Like I hadn’t in months.
And I slept,
I practically slept for three days.

I wanted you to hold me
In the way I used to hold you
When you cut,
Or you threatened to **** your self
When I actually
Tried
To **** myself.
Suddenly I was naked
Without your pinky
Holding mine.

But something else happened
When I let you go,
Suddenly my thoughts
Didn’t revolve
Around keeping you safe,
Keeping you sane,
Keeping you calm.
I just existed.

No mother to quiet,
No friend to babysit.
My god,
I could breathe.
I could just ******* breathe.

Maybe that’s why I was so angry.
His actions weren’t your fault after all...
But I was still so angry with you.

Because our friendship was only about
What you wanted.
What you needed.
Sure,
You listened to me rant and rave,
But it was never about me
Even then.
It was about you.

And McKenna?
He’s what you dreamed of
Since forever.
Do you think I don’t know
That he always came before me?
How could we
Possibly
Be friends with him at your side?

I would never make you choose
Between him and me.
Which is why I chose me
Instead of you.

I’m sorry it’s this way.
I’m sorry I can’t save you anymore.

But now we’re both free.
Qualyxian Quest Apr 2021
A beautiful sunlit day
Michael and I do meet

Basketball to play
No one to defeat

I give Father Greeley's book
He shares Horace McKenna

Chicago and Georgetown look
St. Stephansdom, Vienna

                 Jesuits!

— The End —