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Victoria Apr 2014
Some are jealous of my life
because it is the single strife

   No kids to  to clean up after    
No roles for the actor

    No husband to answer to
No nightly deja vu

   No cooking and cleaning that must be done
No filled minivans, on the run

   No soccer practice, no paintings to hang
No afternoon quarrels of who should pick up the 'tang'

   The grass is always greener
I always say
For my nights and days are filled with gray

   I cook and clean for myself
For these are the cards I've been dealt

   No one to answer to
No quarrels or games

This life alone is such a shame

   The pictures I hang are of my travels
But all I want are crayonned marvels

   A family of which to call my own
More than a dog to fill my home

   I pray on my knees
to give me all of these
That which is greener over sees
Jay Jimenez May 2013
the smoke it pours slowly out
my shadow seems to be following a little further behind
I'm loosing my grip on this steering wheel
Swivin in and out of traffic
I see Minivans and 18 wheelers
honking and blazing thier horns
I'm struggling to stay awake
but only 2 more hours and I'll be home
I dig in my glove compartment and pull out
a pre rolled cigarete and my Oney Box
I spark the cig and pack me a little one hitter
puff them both down fast
and drink my 3 hour old coffe I got at some rumie gas station
its cold as ****
but it'll do the trick
I scratch my eyes and my *****
and turn up the radio The Current is a little to Indie for this night ride
So I put on 93.6 The Blaze and listen to some As I Lay Dieing
Ironic I have'nt died yet....
I listen and tune in
and then I tune out as the white dotted line
directs me towards home
where my dog awaits
to greet me
it's been a long trip
yes it has
Cary Fosback Dec 2011
I know a man who smokes to die
With cobalt smog on his breath
Breaks his back to live a lie
Sweats himself to faster death

His dreams replaced with picket fences
His life replaced with a wife
Her needs placed in his defenses
Her heart that causes all his strife

He traded it in for minivans
He placed his hope between her arms
In the end his body stands
In his mind his ego breaks

I know a man who smokes to die
Who died too young, he’s in his prime
He gave up the spirit without a fight
And saw the light without a sign

At the end of the road, an end foreseen
At the end of the day, a bed to rest
A white wedding with his best dressed friend
A man smokes away his domestic best

Just like his dad, his cigar is lit
Just like his dad, his party’s done
It arrived today, his bridle and bit
It happened this way: he’s daddy’s son

I know a man who smokes to die
He became something he detests
The pearly life suburbanite
His last cigars were laid to rest
The last of his adventure died
With his smokes now in his chest
Cyril Blythe Nov 2012
(n) Ebenezer

1. Summer-Fall
The hands on the pews beaded in Summer sweat. The whiskey
whispers fall off the praising tongues of the Presbyterian choir
filling the sanctuary and beating at the stain glass windows
that a bird hit last week leaving a crack and when the congregation
saw it’s blooded feathers we said oh, dear and poor soul and then
climbed into our pickups and minivans and forgot and left to eat
a Sunday feast of Mexican food and rest, Sabbath naps are Biblical.

2. Winter-Spring
The robin rotted by November but the frost killed the ground too
soon for the bird to be laid to rest back beneath the protestant grass
and stones that the pastor claims are as powerful and rich of a blessing
as the stones the Jews of old inscribed with scripts wrought deep with
pleas for rescue and wails for salvation and scripted too with reminders
of trials and tribulations because trials end and Christ will reign so we drive
over the bones of robins and grass, tires kicking up our own Ebenezers.
C S Cizek Mar 2015
For Téa Page

That was Téa’s window—third floor,
the one with the burnt-
sienna box of skeletal moss-
roses dangling over the side,
a cloth curtain tacked open,
and a padded chair—royal
blue against the white drywall.
She said she used to watch
Coudersport traffic tumble dry
on low past Charles Cole,
quickly sketching sedans
and minivans as they left the frame.

She told me all this at a high-school
basketball game, beneath a cork
board plastered with black-and-white
portraits of track girls with crochet
hooks for collarbones.

She showed me the healing scars
where she dug Swingline staples
into her ankle, like mismatched
thread in a worn blanket.
Téa was the thread.
Her parents wove her in
and out of psych wards, therapists’
notes, and Prozac prescription carbon
copies. Over: Dad snapping peanut necks in a bar somewhere.
    Under: Mom Keystone-soaked on the couch.
                    Over back to that third-floor window:
the only place Téa felt at home,
though I’ve never seen it—
I never even gave her my name.
Everyday I wake up
I glance at the sky
To get a natural high
From spiritual sighs
Ha got me head now
Filled with sun energy
Felt like I was
Listen to a clergy
Man can you innerstand
My wisdom that
Sits in my hand
Palms never wet
An ultimate threat
To higher grounds
That's why I chill
Deep unda the ground
(underground) sounds is digital
No humpty dumpty
Just keep my techs
On me they wanna push me
Near the wall
But I can't
Since I got *****
Sweat drippin' soakin' draws
Cuz the pressure
Made me an outlaw
Had no choice to but to
Bruise and cruise through
Enemies I
Put a slug and leave em plugged
Electric shock from the glock
I'm aimmin at head
over the hill's forreals
This ain't no shill so just chill
As I  **** like bill alley oop
A Dunk so you can feel
Led in yo head now ya dead bleed
Out
So that'll give ya something
To think about
No screams and shouts so


Hold on be strong hold on Be Strong
Hold on be strong Hold on be strong
I ain't gone never led you wrong
So hold on Be Strong
Cuz I ain't gone never led you wrong
So christen that **** yeah

Now that the raindrops stop
But the reign  didn't stop
Thought I was dead
But I rise like early sunshine
Roosters cluckin'
Got these demons tryna **** in
Me in my sleep
I shake the shells
Going crazy naw
Its just my mind get lazy
Or they purp that hazed me
Got keep it
True to Screws legacy hive
Bump out the jive
All the way live
In your stereo
Can't break me or make me
Into a mold
Hard to get a hold
Of something you
Can't touch can't clutch
I plot rhymes like
****** from Dutch
Shultz my lyrical occult
Shakin' fools at the wake
Stay baked takin' estates
Keep to body
Frosted as flakes no undertakes
We take
Everything from the hand
Never took a reprimand
Dodge minivans
Stacked with multiple
Ski mask quick to blast
Yo *** in the past
Now you in cask-et
Racked like bread in a bask-et
Led turn em into ac-id
tryna hold on
But ya soul long gone so

Hold on be strong hold on Be Strong
Hold on be strong Hold on be strong
I ain't gone never led you wrong
So hold on Be Strong
Cuz I ain't gone never led you wrong
So christen that **** yeah
Diesel Dec 2021
Burger King and minivans
U.S. flags with gasoline
Tiny products of capital grand
Yes I live the American Dream:

Fill your gas, choose the which
Buy your lives and burn the roads
Buy our flag, come second hand
Take their house and take it proud:
Kick the crazy, tent the downed
Skyscrapers prove the money-load:
Hate the other, I'm better than
No place is greater than on American soil:
Yes I live the American Dream

Yes I live the American Dream
Written Apr 22/21
Great men have drowned in a sea of
hope and faith, not me,
I dwell beneath the bridge where
industrialization emits,
where the cars pull the plump white
pigs that we seem to mistake for people,
These big white pigs in their
white suits and their white
Minivans are gobbled up by their ego
White seems to be a popular color
here, it’s conveniently the
color of the fog that adorns
itself above the river each day,
I inhale it, I take it all in,
like ******* on a cigarette,
this cigarette of such
sadness and despair,
It burns my throat, the fog grabs
my lungs with forceful wrath
and shakes me to my absolute core
Why, must you hurt me? what must you take
from me that hasn't been taken?
all the pigs seem to be fine while I am
suffocated  by this thick smog
it’s not fog, it’s the smoke
coming out of the cars, no the pig’s
chariots and the factories of this
god-forsaken town, hugged by the river
Yes, this is where I dwell, in the town ******
up the *** with the gigantic **** of capitalism,
The city, like me, struggles to avoid the suffocation of the
fumes, the smog, the smoke,
I  look into this smoke and see true terror
I  see this HOPE, HOPE, HOPE,
Yes, the great dictator of positivity, with it’s
letters branded on my heart from out of the womb,
HOPE jumps into my soul and FAITH holds me down
telling me that the man who just died will
go fly into the sky, to infinity and beyond,
The smoke seems to be infinite when I stare at it,
an endless cloud of cloudy thinking
that washed out reality,
Like how the moon is washed out of the sky
each morning, when I go down by the river
to wash my sorrows away
down by the trees
taken by the breeze.
Micaela Jan 2023
I am from libraries,

from shiny hardcovers and worn paperbacks.

I am from the neighbor’s squeaky swingset,

Green seats, rusted chains,

The setting of a thousand shared stories and kingdoms.

I am from the cottonwoods,

The soft seeds soaring in the Kansas wind to tickle our noses.

I’m from mega-churches and minivans,

From Celinda’s small town and David’s many neighborhoods.

I’m from private-school indoctrination that kept me “in”

And a hidden identity that kept me “out,”

From bubble-wrapped protective prejudice and a distrust of progress and change.

I’m from the grief of spiritual deconstruction

And the joy of rebirth and new knowing.

I’m from suburban Wichita and lush Ohio valleys and downtown Oklahoma City,

From spicy, hearty chili and soft, sweet cinnamon rolls.

I am from the love and relief in my husband’s embrace,

From the choice to be who I needed when I was younger.

I am the new generation in my family — the safe space in the organized chaos.

I am from the hurt of conformity and the honesty of rebellion.

I flip through the leaves of my literature,

I listen to the leaves of the cottonwoods,

And I reflect and I learn and I accept

That where I’m from is nowhere near as lovely as where I’ll go to next.
kfaye Apr 2022
The best laid plans of motorcycles and minivans
Fall to pieces in between the  long yellow lines

We zip like skeletons down the well
At sunrise
Returning to old versions of ourselves
And playing catch with bad intentions



By dry riverbed I bury future aliases
As offerings
Rivers will stay dry in my time
But someday
Rains will come down from mountains
And wipe the town away

Creature feature
In a Double sleeper
We wag our tails at weeping branches
Dragging feathered knuckles against the softened earth


Inside this house.
Beside me,
Head-like
And thoughtless ,

We
Dine.
Up in the night
Difficulty sleeping
Politics is the Abyss
Everybody's weeping

A little Irish green
Come out ye black and tans!
A little Things Not Seen
Chicago minivans

         un pequito hope

— The End —