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Josh Sep 2017
I've got some cheese and onion crisps
Half a packet of strawberry bonbons
And a kitkat that might have got wet on Crinkle Crags

I can't remember
the last time I saw my grandma
Or recall ever towering above her delicate, motherly body telling her I love her.

"It wouldn't have been the same without you"
"No, it wouldn't"
"In many ways"

I wonder what my dad meant by that
He likes to talk
And say nothing at all.

Man on the train furiously widens his eyes
At the piles of suitcases spewing from the rack
And curls his lips

Keith pouts like donald trump
So do I
Maybe it's genetic

I've got my grandma's genes too
She doesn't mind if I pout like donald trump
But she never liked bruce forsyth (who died last week)

Or maybe
The week before
"I've been watching strictly"

My older brother
Pulls out of the suffocating tar pit
Something nonflammable

I wonder what he meant by it
He likes to talk
He likes to say what matters

But what matters to him
And what matters to me
Isn't what matters to him

I've got a quarter of a packet of strawberry bon bons
And a kit kat that might have got wet on Cringle Crags

I carried a lady's suitcase
Over the bridge and
Back when the platform changed

She rewarded me
With information about herself
And I am grateful for that

She helped me
As simply and easily as I helped her
She gave me a smile to keep

What mattered to her,
Funny Welsh stranger,
Mattered to me
We swapped smiles
And walked off in brand new shoes.
More notes from a train
Altruistic August aery angelic alms
applied astounding
     abracadabra affect as Brahms
I liken to a lite lullaby,
     and aye acknowledge calms
financial short comings

     ace action activated across avast
time/space continuum concerning
rental assistance applied
     (for Abby and Matthew)

     my Geiger Counter recorded
     as significant beneficent blast
and such lucky largesse compels me
     (the mister) en compassed

with a sudden lightness of being
and completely, pleasantly, shell shocked
     (figuratively), thence imagining "ding"
****, asper the reality analogous

     to me noggin temporarily transformed,
     transfixed, transferred,
     soundless pinball sized clouds
     delivered sensational fling

when informed by Jacklyn Geiger
     (perhaps related to Johannes
     Wilhelm Geiger (1882-1945)
     invented -in part or wholly - the Geiger counter),

but no matter this irrelevant tidbit
     of inquisitive genealogy
the main purport per this poem
     predicated on pronounced provisions

providing us (the occupants
     of B44 at Highland Manor Apartments,
     Schwenksville, Pennsylvania 19473)
with a whopping reduction
     to the very pleasant tune:

one hundred and seventy dollars a month
     effective circa April first
     two thousand and eighteen,
     and if alive during World War II,

     would (since lineage
     significantly weighted with Semitism)
     envisions his life cut short,
     via burnt offerings re: crematorium,
     or vaporized victims upon a funeral pyre

     and most likely Holocaust genocide  
can Noah way be rectified,
     such a grievous tragedy
to express gratitude

     via literary modus operandi
     rather than see king
     a ghost writer to hire
and hoop fully DO NOT

     cause synapses to snap
(crackle or pop induce explosion
     within gray matter) or thinking cap
     (albeit best to Don a nonflammable brand)
     so as not to cause accidental conflagration

and hmm...and maybe...
     this skeptic can commune
      with long fostered nada greatful dead
     spirits hood suffered at least

     one very restless night,
a Jew (in name only)
     experienced a lucky strike,
which subsequently
     roused this contemplative chap -
- and pap

per Razz Zee to broadcast and commercialize  
     (albeit electronically) utmost appreciation
and additionally to pay forward
     by pursuing as compensation my platelets on tap
for handsome allotment intent to donate blood,
     a much needed needling conscience life restoring agent.
Bob Christian Dec 2019
Estate of Mind

By Bob W Christian

Take a walk down a dark memory lane with me…
A nightmare experiment on social deprivation.
These ends have seen better days; boys from Eton messed up – ******* us over for a profit.

Calling us drunks, criminals, feckless idiots,
Looking down from your nonflammable towers.
We can’t ignore this horror story like you can.
Streets littered with ****** needles; hell-raising
Flames shooting from cars; replacing the broken lamps,
Lighting up the desperate estate of mind we call reality.

“Get a job, save up, better yourself, pull yourself out
Of austerity. Climb that property ladder”,
While living cheque-to-cheque. Can’t deposit on zero hours.
Withdrawing food from banks; it’s no way to live.
We really are in this together, fighting to survive.

(C) Bob W Christian
Iz Feb 2023
Ash
I don’t think I’ll ever forget what it felt like
To be struck like a match
And burn out in your hands
But I’d be a strike anywhere for you anytime
Because your heat was unforgettable
And my heart was left nonflammable

— The End —