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Akemi Dec 2015
There is blood beneath my tips
Nothing escapes it

This city exists
Atop a backbone
Splitting its own flesh

We are all guilty
We are all ******* guilty
12:31am, October 27th 2015

By merely existing in the developed world, I am supporting the exploitation of the developing world. Absolutely disgusting.
Nicole Dec 2011
The distance you placed between us
Is only going to backfire.
You tightened the noose;
I cut your wire.




You get in our way,
Inside and out we burn like Hell.
You've tried to break us down,
But we never fell.

Though you try and try
Your plans have failed.
And through it all,
Our love has not paled.

The distance you're placing between us
Is only going to backfire.
You placed the noose;
I have your wire.

You didn't start as a threat,
But as we saw your plans take flight
We prepared ourselves.
And we're ready to withstand the fight.

We want you to realize
And we want you to understand
That we won't let our love
Slip through our fingers like sand.

The distance you placed between us
Is only going to backfire
You're tightening the noose;
I'm cutting your wire.




And the distance you placed between us
Is already starting to backfire
You tightened the noose;
I cut your wire.
pixels Feb 2013
my sheets are a noose
every night i swing
swing my life away

my pillow is an ocean
every night i drown
in my own tears and hopes

the pills
the people
the harsh sunlight

during the day
i am protected
i can smile without worry

the Monster is asleep

pretty pills protect princesses

but my terror grows
as the sun sinks low
the sky bright red
like the blood the Monster sheds

i wait until morning
before my eyes close

in my tears i drown
in my dreams i die

screams wake me
oh, those are mine
i'm sorry
didn't mean to wake you
no, i'm fine
just a nightmare

just a nightmare

*The Monster eats pretty princesses when they close their eyes.
Nightmares are horrible, especially when you're the starring victim and villian.
The owl was looking at the man with a noose
Disturbed by the noise as he cooked his goose
But before he leapt the owl did say
Do you really want them to remember you this way?

The pain is real but will go away
The wise old owl was heard to say
The man with the noose, stopped and thought
He’s right, a lesson in patience I’ve just been taught

So he walked through the woods stood on a track to ease his pain
Then was killed by the 10.42 south bound train

The owl was watching in the branches so high
He is the only one who knew he did not want to die
So the moral of his death is like sand in a cup
When your time is up, your time is up
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2020
someone once said: only the natives can be designated
free speech...
the immigrants can have their dog
and let it bark, along with whatever thinking comes
their way...

exploring the last remains of thought -
well then... suit and boot me up for some "thinking"
as i extend it into writing...

if i were of the native stock... "elsewhere":
most probably h'america or australia... even in italy
having tea with mussolini i'd be:
an expat... as an outsider among outsiders
but among my sameness-namesakes of surnames
akin to jones and smith:

i will never be an "immigrant" among...
it's not even a voice of cocern, this little voice of
mine...
an englishman who decides to move
to h'america is an expatriate for the native
englishman who stayed behind...
he's never an immigrant...

perhaps other nations view the people that left
them in such a positive light?
where else to emigrate to that doesn't
speak basic english with a tinge of
a "welcoming" plethora of accents?

proudly having expatriated...
or having to have had to humbly emigrated...
bark bite and tail in tow...
my the luck of being an expatriate...
readily prepared with a francophile basis...
e.g., or some other: less frost-bitten
idealism as the work ethic of:
work work work...

we know the english immigrants
as expatriates... but i doubt that people
from where i from would call me...
an expatriate... they'd call me...
eh... hangman noose... a deserter...
god forbid the fact that i somehow managed
to integrate... but then found myself wondering...

have, have integrated into... "what"?!
today i was truly astounded...
after all... Romford, Essex... England...
can boast about a few things...
notably? it's the past place you can buy vinyl
without amazon.co.uk...
you can actually play the buyer and the person
that loiters with his shadow...
flicking through a dictionary of sorts...
finding a record...

i actually left the house for ulterior motives...
but i succumbed to the allure...
and as i walked the January 2nd 2020 highstreet
in Romford...
i heard english... as a spoken language...
twice in the pedestrian commute...
and of course when it came to a lingua franca
scenario of buying or selling something...
otherwise:

perhaps i retained my primitive instincts
and the tongue and should have left it with a ghost
of me back in the clarifying vicinity of
an airport 50 miles from Warsaw...
i have bigger things to worry about though:
how i should start learning Romanian...
even though: i thought bilingualism was a good
idea?
it's not?

not among the natives could i ever be
an expatriate...
an ever: never... like any more thesaurus
sharpening would do the trick to balance
the optics of "perspective"...

if it wasn't a mistake...
it has still been a purchase:
freddie hubbard on the trumpet,
jackie mclean on the alto sax,
kenny drew on piano,
doug watkins on bass
and pete la roca on drums...

the only reason as to why i bought
a gramaphone was to buy the only cheap vinyl
there is... jazz...
to escape the earphones...
to find the complete volume of space
that would later be deemed:
confined to a room... cell... or some alternative
variation: but... oh jeez...
how wrong it was of me...

make a note: alto sax jazz is not for you...
remember: alto sax jazz is not for you...

a sensation of being a foreigner in
an already double-dutch foreign sense of land...
anything that drops from clinching
to the London transport system
with the trains and the tubes and buses
is: england...
the england of my youth where i remained
like that... dunce in the ****** tunes cartoons
interlude...

and what of my citizenship on paper?
wave a passport around
like a benchmark or an otherwise easy
accent-identifier?
perhaps i don't even know:
Bristolian - my best guess with this acquired
tongue...

but at least buying jazz is getting easier...
freddie hubbard a known name...
but... no... alto sax jazz is not for me...
now it figures...
i can get away on a whim when
a trumpet solos... but not when an alto sax
solos... i really can't stomach it...
will i give this Bluesnik record back?
no, i need a testament -
i have bought something
but the self-reflection is free...

there's only so much classical music escapism
you can try -
before long you realise that the people
listening to classical music...
mostly... when they make requests...
want "something soothing"...
want "something jovial"...
or usually it's a piece of music that has
been attached to a movie...
classical music - apparently doesn't feed
people a subtle stream of images...
and it's obvious: those requests are not phoned
in on by blind people...

imagine... the ****** of F... when you have ⠋
to work with...
what is an sunrise... a sunset but a dash
of colour... a spring of the heavens
an autumn of the heavens...
but my my... in this inverted listening of jazz...
⠙⠑⠑⠏
⠃⠇⠥ ⠑    DEEP BLUE...

if i were blind: and came to the pearly gates...
i'd ask for letters: primo pronto!
later i'd worry about colours and shapes...
as i'd probably stick to my first passion
and hearing this fathomless shapeless
sounds that... abide to no lineage with a recant
of a triangle's use of 90°...

otherwise... what if you've been fed
the: classical music when listened to when a child
will increase your i.q. -
but what are the chances that you will:
"regress" from listening to classical
music and take to jazz?
perhaps because jazz has to be felt,
it has to be heard, first,
rather than... the silence and scribbles
of a composer at his desk -
where a classical music composition
is very much like writing:
that whole a prior shabang!
none of the a posteriori zigzagging
of impromptu and jazz?

one thing is certain... i'm not going to
be a fan of alto sax jazz...
sonny clark on piano - yes...
art blakey on drums - yes...
kenny burrell on guitar - yes...
alto sax no... ah... but give me tenor sax
and... no please no big bang jazz
equivalent to thelonious monk...
at least jazz gives you pedestrian tastes
and whims...
nothing akin to bowing at the altar
of a Beethoven: or talking lightly of
the man - "the man"...

and who the hell said that being
objectivity "works all the time"
that objectivity "runs the marathon"...
alto sax jazz is pedestrian music...
don't get me wrong...
you want to walk down a busy street
and you want to drown the sounds
of progress: no horses sneezing,
no horses' hooves playing tic-tac-toe
chess on cobweb stones...
alto sax jazz is your take-out
walk-through...
but when you're hunched in a chair
and pecking at a keyboard with
ten good beaks of the tips of your fingers...

again: how do the hands rest before
the keyboard?
the right hand:
index middle, pinky and thumb...
the ring finger is used for the: delete button...
a revision - the pinky does the enter -
and the cascade follows...
the left hand?

primarily the index and *******...
the thumb is always attached to space...
shared with the right hand's *******
to space,
i can't remember if i ever used my ring
or pinky finger of my left arm...

so much for inverted chiromancy...
the polacks will never give me the wings
to be an expatriate...
i will be forever: he who abandoned
that land running with milk and honey...
but... look at how they stand behind those
from england that decided to go "elsewhere"...
they are not immigrants...
they are... expatriates...
have nothing filthy them it comes to
the connotation...
it's not sad it's not funny it's: somewhere
"in between"...

because we know that the only russians
that ever make it out of russia
are the oligarchs... and by that standard
of "sentiment": they're always welcome...
who wouldn't welcome the pharaohs without
giza pyramid ambitions of construction?!
passing chalk as cheese -
and passing... ink for blood...
perhaps i haven't sweated enough to be allowed
to write but as little as this...

there's always this sense of alienation
among the germanic tribes of "israel":
europe... even if they are the scots or the welsh
suckling at the teats of romulus & remus' lupa...
as the old saying goes among the slavic people
when "integrating" into a germanic-esque society -
by the time you have integrated...
there's this dog-**** pile of Babylon left...
and the germans are: "nowhere"!

the saying goes via:
if you go among the crows...
you must croak their croak...

here's to flying high as an imitation seagull!
brazen: into this arable land...
that's being teased by the Thames estuary...

passing through a Warsaw train station
i noticed the immigrants / the expatriates
on the eastern front...
mostly mongols...
notably the ukrainians...
but now in england i'm starting to think
in concrete terms... better start learning
Romanians...
and on the street: you can't see a focus of
who's here and who isn't here...
back east the Roma people stood out
like a sore thumb or a voodoo plum and...
that didn't bother the locals since they were
meshed like glue...
but, here, in england?
everyone's a sore thumb a voodoo plum...
because the natives,
the blessed idiosyncratic professional
eccentrics have left and...
i'm not going to be the first chasing them down...

London the only and last bastion is
overrun with the whole lot of us...
well: the "us" vs. "them" mentality...
don't get me wrong... i'll still listen to the concerns
of the peripheries... in this cest pool
of immigrants, degenerates...
old people who "forgot" to move...
the lunatics the in-betweeners and the old guard
clinging on...
perhaps, after all... english was a very
accomodating language...
it wouldn't take a genius to learn it from scratch
being thrown into the deep end of the pool
aged 8...
who was mute aged 8 going to school
being moved from "east" europe to this island
with... no prior to linguistic connection?
moi...

and now look at me... i'm teasing myself
with... sordid welsh as if i were ever the posterboy
for welsh nationalism...
scottish nationalism? eh... if they were to retain
their gaellic roots...

expansion:
the longing for those who have left:
in the anglo-sphere - expatriate...
the abhoring sense of those who arrive -
immigrant...
otherwise... the english are always
and everywhere: welcome...
hence the expatriate status of those
who have left their native land...
even in h'america: a shared language:
to be an immigrant... while speaking
the same language?! how preposterous!

the difference between eastern style
comedy presentation and western style
comedy presentation: on stage...

the eastern folk prefer cabaret: theatre dialogue
montages...
the western folk prefer stand-up:
monologue samuel beckett esque
performances...
'woe i... stand alone in this infinite
space and... find others to laugh with...'

- perhaps we're not being less funny because
we're lowering our "i.q.": yes, the we are...
we are... lowering...
i find lee evans to be funny...
a laurel and hardy weren't exactly funny
by modern comedy standards that:
it's only funny if it's intelligent...
if there's a crossword puzzle at the end of "it"...

perhaps pride is the shackle...
and ham... what ever happened to self-depreciating
humor that managed to somehow
elevate you as also having a sense
of humor:
do intelligent men even laugh
at something that isn't a word-play or
a corset of wit?
perhaps we're experiencing a drying of wip...
perhaps the jokes are only supposed
to come: days after as a form of
reflection on the sigma canvas:
the joke has to exist outside the performer
and the stage... it needs to be: a live-experience...
it has to take on DASEIN qualities?
it has to be internalised?

that: oh yeah... that's funny...
perhaps the same thing has to be observed
and it can't be retold in an impromptu
fashion shackled to a stage?
the stage is the new camp-fire?
i thought so too... about the television...

as: here's to slagging off everything that's
being published online bypassing
the editorial process of selection...
well... if it weren't for all the seriousness
surrounding internet banking...
and internet shopping...
pen to paper...
******* clinching a ripped roll
of cushioning paper
and a pseudo-***** imitation
for a wipe while massaging my prostate
over the enlightened prospect
of dropping the blitzkrieg plump-dump-plum
into an echoing lake in the ceramic basin...
otherwise...

a seanse with that moment of realisation:
"something is happening to us
collectively"... it's as if: we're under a spell...
oh i was under a spell today...
watching alec guinness in the fall of the roman
empire...
and as coming from a people
that were never conquered by rome?
on this fine fine island that was...
well... my hopes were also high for
the conquests of the mongol empire...
and the remains of it in the form of the tatars
in crimea...

here are my tattoos... it's hard to break from them,
it's hard to wash them away...
but at least i can attest:
my brain might be all fat and sponge and
electricity... but there's some skull and skin
to be had of it...
otherwise... why would the year 1066
be important for me... why would the magna carta
be important for me?
i too have my years in tattoos on this big brian
of mine...

otherwise there's that copernico-darwinian
surge of: journalistic science...
i still find it staggering that darwinism continues
to capture the imagination of people...
"of people"... only in Wittgenstein was left
alone in finding that Copernicus did something
astounding... this surge of "awakening"
via darwinism: this statistical bombardment
like it was some tabloid journalism:
throwing a pebble at a mountain while
also ushering in a mantra: grow by
a poppy's seed added height! grow!

perhaps i'm just jealous...
among the polacks i will never be an expatriate...
what a jealous people...
an englishman who moves to france...
comes 20 year later...
he will have never experienced
the mark of cain: immigration "humphrey bogart"...
he or she moved to france...
perhaps to italy...
i remember being in greece and...
i was nothing when i said i was ******:
but with british citizenship! to add...
so what?
well... so what greece...
i latched onto some north africans
and went to **** away the night
in some strip-bar where i had
two strippers either head o' mine...
and it was constellations galore...
grandmother Etna said:
rest here, among the smooches poor child...

i borrowed Etna from when Aeneas
"left off"...
****'s sake... this is the Meditarrean
and not the Baltic? where is the amber
the whiskey and the leverage of gratations
of time?!

i will agree. Macedonia come night traffic
of quicksilver tinging?
if the metal is cheap and you douse it in some gold?
a mountain dripping fresh from some quicksilver
from the moon peering at it?
objectivity what?

the finite plateau of snow-riddled Serbia...
and perhaps that's because these people
speak their own language...
and have so... and i'm just the next
"english" tourist...
a jack kerouac americanism and:
oh sure! sure!
spectacular fly-over country tourism!
everything's so so different!
and yet all so oh so much the same!

darwinism was going to run the 5000 meter
race... it's currently running the 10000 meter
race... god help it in running the marathon
of still pretending: old news is new news...
i can't distinguish between darwinism
and copernican discovery...
only in the english-speaking world
would this discovery not escape a criticism
from ancient greece and some, some predecesor!

wouldn't anyone just bore of darwinism
if they were told: over and over again:
the copernican "reality"?
a scientific fact is... akin to a religious dogma...
until... it becomes regurgitated with
enough time, with enough journalism and...
tabloid wind... and after a while...
it's only worthwhile to be spoken to
amnesia peoples of the world: unite!
it's hardly "stupid" or "intelligent"...
more or less overlooked...
because a pebble thrown at a mountain:
is... no added mountain to behold...
conventional wisdom is the only wisdom
that there ever was made to be made:
available...

nonetheless, the circumstance stands...
unless from the slavic hemisphere
of europe...
unlike any other circumstance: other than
the one given, among islanders...
among continent builders akin
to australia and h'america...
the post-racial societies of post-colonial
spain in south america?
ever wonder why the brazillians don't
look for inspiration from the portugese
when it comes to football?
you'd think: those yanks better have
the best football team in the world...
they haven't exactly looked back...
back at "us": oh god... tea afternoon and cricket...
baseball wha'?
basketball? "football"?
why are "we" looking forward and "they're"
looking back?
perhaps i should learn some spanish and
get some insinuation about:
the argentinian sense of lack when looking
back into spain...

or what else is there to be had?
move to Greenland... admire Denmark...
**** it: do the whole stretch and find
some locals on the Faroe Islands...
perhaps i too will find a tomorrow...
but tomorrow i will find: sobering up
and having to deal with: everything beside jazz...

mmm... "delayed gratification" prospects...
seven kings: canon palmer catholic school...
when boys are educated alongside girls...
what if i went to Ilford County High?
what if i were born to immigrant parents
and wasn't an 8 year old immigrant?
what if i went to the Ilford Ursulines?
the all-girls school... the former, Ilford County High?
what chances of me being an intellectual
******?

what, oh the chances!
perhaps praying: segregated... is a tad extreme?
but perhaps ******-exclusion policies:
teaching boys throughout their puberty
as segregated from girls in the same hormonal
development "range" is...
well! how else! you take a boy and girl
and you put them into the hormonal cocktail!
just because it's in a shared educational
environment... why these teenage pregnacies
you ask?
i wouldn't ask such blunt questions...
not since the genius of Copernicus
couldn't attract these...
psychological left-over intelligenstia clingers...
that darwinism has allowed...
what it darwinism and journalism?
everything! the ant as the ego
inside the mind of an ape...
the dormant tapeworm embryo
inside the mind of an ant:
with siesmic consequence of a disturbance
of the collective hive network...

borrow too much from an ape...
borrowing from an ape is one thing...
it's the borrowing from all other
animals: with the ape as the backdrop
that's truly bothersome!
at least religious spew the same facts
over and over again...
scientific dogma? who keeps track?
tomorrow might be the next:
butter vs. margarine controversy!
what sort of "religion" is science
(it's not a religion... if it's not...
why does it have to cohabit a bed
with journalism then, to spew "new",
"improved" facts, then?!)
when... it's so ******* finicky!

look via the ape long enough:
it won't matter whether it's a geocentric
of a heliocentric system that
reigns above your head, no torso,
a pickled spine...
legs and arms floating about like:
an octopus experiencing spasms
pickled in brine...

perhaps these are the zenith years of
darwinistic popularity...
perhaps like the copernican popularity...
there will come a time of:
fatalism... that somehow all of this
is... inevitable...

i see one answer: this cage of grammar
this cage of whatever this god made human
pressures me into complying to...
to the last typo! i will stand against it!
without caging me into a use of emoji or
some other hieroglyphic purse of:
shortened "thinking"...

the "seven silences" might have passed
around my presence that i dare not
call it: in concrete - figure...
and still my eigth silence to unmask
nothing more than a mask...

who are these immigrants, these tight brewed
broods, these furrow brows
representing the native pensive "squint":
of anything beside the eyes and a thought
of h. p. lovecraft?
perhaps inside of europe:
but as ever... without a russian passport...
without a russophobia that's
a tickling hard-on... the "in-between-land"...
perhaps the balkans...
who are we... to these germans and quasi-germans?

we use their tongue, their zunge...
their everything they will otherwise allow themselves
to deny: perhaps this is not Dublin,
this is not Glasgow this is not Cardiff...
perhaps this is not Italy,
this is not France...
perhaps this is "europe" as long as
Scandinavia is involved...

woe a we unto us: the viking Rus...
or some lent word of lost vogue...
last time i heard:
these northern ******* are in no favour
of treating the Spaniards or the Greeks
as their equals...
as long as they have rich arab pimps
race their lamborghini brute ******
down... knightsbridge...

then! and only then! iz ist europa "reconquista"!
"reconquista"... i'll defend these poor polacks
that didn't think it...
"necessary" to only learn english in order
to comply to the global dictum of neu-communist
internationalism...
- what, they didn't teach you you stupid
**** that it only took to learn from english?!
- last time i heard... not teachings polish
to a canape of anything beside the french,
the spanish... also worked!

english as a language is oh so accomodating...
the people will react like antibiotics,
naturally... enough of darwinism and you'll
be found, bound, to having to reference it...
past a de facto menu:
and more like a subjectivity...
there's only so much truth that can be stated...
before fiction has to reply...
because... how many regurgitated facts
can be regurgitated...
before the desert of fiction and...
there's only the fact of a bottle of water...
that remains...
and there's not impetus to walk toward
an oasis...
a fata morgana is hardly a scientific experience...
when experienced...
it's something associated with
a desert and within the desert must either:
live... or die...

what if etymology was to become the new
standard for journalism...
what if one were to escape this contant
bombardment of darwinism...
like it wasn't the next new vogue akin
to the copernican "revolution"?

is that even possible?
whenever i return to Poland...
esp. in Warsaw... i'm a deserter...
i'm not an expatriate...
the native english call those who left
with a sense of longing...
somehow: or at least that's the leftover...
the expatriates from the inside-out
perspective... never the immigrants...

i'm an immigrant and...
a paper citizenship is: no citizenship at all...
a passport is only worth a passport
at a border crossing...
in between the everyday daily affairs?
'where are you from?'
****... 'Bristol?!'...
i'm hardly going to speak
the cockney cockers or an essex schlang...
am i? ***!
all but ******* plumbers and church pulpit
mongers... and some over-ripe
riddle fruits: if not simply left
bottles of wine for the bears...

the first part though, bothers me...

someone once said: only the natives can be designated
free speech...
the immigrants can have their dog
and let it bark, along with whatever thinking comes
their way... in mere thinking...
and a dog barking...

the natives will only have a freedom of speech...
what if an immigrant becomes a citizen?
just asking...
what if an immigrant is granted a citizen
status?
well then... i am your humble example
of a civic nationalist...
such a confusing term...
it must be: for the natives...

oh ****... what language am i using?
the language of the... natives!
rubric civitas!
civic nationalism is reserved for:
those that came from abroad...
i guess the ethno-nationalists never made
this distinction clear:
watching their contemporaries leave their
native pit of woe...
and they would never call them:
deserters... only... only... expatriates...
after all... aren't we in the postmortem of ancient Rome?!
isn't this the time when the remnant
english come out and glorify being
the conquered people of this: lettering?

what is civic nationalism?
what is learnt, integrated nationalism...
this is civic nationalism...
how about the english forget about something,
like solving crosswords...
esp. among the middle-classes...
and let's envision their globalist dream!
let them learn a second language
and let us all become bilingual!
oh no... not polyglots... just bilingual!

i can't be an ethno-nationalist...
em... because (a) (b) and (c)?
aren't the post-colonial commonwealth
remnants of the empire the sort
civic-nationalists there's talk of?
what language am i writing in?
hebrew?! mandarin?!

ethno-natioanlism and its tribalism...
civic-nationalism and its state...
where does the church fit into all of this?
it's like not being an amuptee but
nonetheless being prescribed a "missing limb"...
the **** would i need a third arm for?
wilt the third leg allow me to run faster?!

i guess the term ethno-nationalist is
conflated with civic-nationalist in the ethno-nationalist
realm of "debate"...
a civic-nationalist is your casual parlance
h'american patriot...
patriotism in h'america: nationalism (still)...
in europe...
if we have to: hello, my name is: bob
do it all over again with the squares
and dictum assertions and what not attached...
between the ethno-nationalists and
the civic-nationalists...
the inter-nationalists...

i'm a civic-nationalist because:
i fear people need concrete examples...
i will not move back to Poland...
except on the holidays...
to visit my grandparents...
which is why i have retained the labour
of a native tongue... and "identity"...
i will remain in England...
until England becomes: Alle-Land...
and even when all these
ethno-nationalists ******* to Australia...
and become civic-nationalists over there...
well: over there good luck!

why would anyone ask an ethno-nationalist
the question: are you a civic-nationalist or?
civic- implies:
i'm a Brit from a grand "beyond":
circa 3000km away...
civic is a bewildering prefix for the nationalist
of a ethno- persuasion...
it really is... esp. when this ethno-nationalist
doesn't believe in the existence of
expatriates... that he would remain... "stuck"...
and that somehow... ethno-kin could come
and replace... those kin that left: "in good faith"...

savvy?!
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2018
.chris rea: god's great banana skin...

/ such random thoughts are a blessing, esp. after you've been walking for over 2 miles, in the cold and in the rain, with the setting sun... continually impressed by the nature of polyester clothing, how you feel the cold, but aren't cold at all, how you go back home and: you're dripping with sweat... /

the random thought?
about a saying, here's the schematic

synthetic a priori

                    4 + 6 = 10
                    IV + VI = X

                                         analytical a posteriori

which statement is true?
within the questioning parameters?
i think it's a trick question...
how else would you be able to
teach these statements and make
replica understandings of
said, statements?

(****... quickfire shots of syrupy
*****... **** me... give me the sweats,
and i'm not even constipated,
it must be the ***** doing
the magic... yeah... sober me?
doesn't like thinking...
but oddly enough, the drunk me?
pulls out philosophy,
no, not as some pretentious
high-brow interest...
   i just looked at philosophy as
a genre in literature,
nothing more)...

numbers, like letters...
or in the case of Roman numerals
(letters are numbers)...
i'm unsure whether you can arrive
at crafting them into existence
by analytical parameters,
i don't actually think
that you can conjure up numbers
from analyzing a priori,
given the ad continuum:
but... there was a point in time,
when / where: numbers weren't used...

Kant was a theist,
sorry...
  he says it plainly at the end
of his critique of pure reason...
in the transcendental methodology...
sure... he takes a "schizophrenic"
moment to write a thesis
and an antithesis on subjects like
cosmology...
but he's inclined, as i am,
counter to an atheist...
yes... god is probably a monster...
but a ******* gorgeous monster...
kinda like a femme fatale...
so what's not to like?

    but this thought didn't arrive
randomly,
and my consciousness
didn't hone in on it...
i didn't vector this thought
to an immediate conclusion...
the thought arrived,
and then: i had to make shrapnel
out of it...
the original thought was complex,
i had to make shrapnel out of it,
in order to put it back together,
so that a cognitive 3 seconds
could be rewritten in under 30 minutes
explaining, why the thought arose...

you know... when thinking
is detached from the moral (θ)-ought
you get to experience these "things"...
here's another schematic...

I + Φ (you put a key into a lock),
   Θ (you turn the key), O (the door opens),
hey presto... a free radical iota...
detached from both phi and theta...

i am free from making
a moral ought (i) or the immoral: ought (i) not?
i'm free, hence my concern for...
abstract questions...

back to the original schematic...

synthetic a priori

                    4 + 6 = 10
                    IV + VI = X

                                         analytical a posteriori

this actually has a theological
dimension,
supposing i am god...

   if i propose an analytical a priori
with a synthetic a posteriori...
well then...
             i can't change anything,
i can't actually make changes to...
with my omnipotence,
omniscience etc.
i already analyzed, a priori
the Kantian elevation to theology
comes, via me, stating...
if i analyzed the entirety of
creation...
            a priori ex nihil
(from the prior out of nothing)
how can i make a synthesis
in the a posteriori domain,
of the already existing things,
which didn't exist a priori,
since there was nothing,
and i already analyzed the potential
of nothing, and this potential
was realized as everything i would
know to exist... and i went along
with it anyway?

i'm starting to think that
the realm of analytical a priori
doesn't exist for mortals...
the gods can muse this ****-show
of a dimension over and over again...
we're more (being mortals)
synthetic a posteriori...
oh don't get me wrong,
i believe we have the capacity
to comprehend analytical a priori
but it's an analytical a- priori...
we've reached the limits
of the microscope, the telescope,
and the hadron collider...
or on our way to exhaust that...
still being left with an intact mesh of...
the orbits... summer, winter, autumn, spring...
but this thing with this schematic:

synthetic a priori

                    4 + 6 = 10
                    IV + VI = X

                                         analytical a posteriori

how can i conjure an understanding
of IV + VI = X...
analytically a priori...
when... i have no hindsight /
prior to understanding of said rubric?
well... with Roman you could say:
analytical a priori,
given the Ancient Romans already
had the letters I, V, X...
but... if you didn't have the concept
of measurements prior,
of arithmetic...
how can you analyze something...
that doesn't exist?
so... you had to synthesize a priori,
working from the letters I, V, X...
to conjure up "numbers"...
  numerals... you had to create these
numbers by a synthetic a posteriori
method...
and the 4 + 6 = 10...
        well... you analyzed the a posteriori
synthesis, and threw I, V, X out...
and began the second wave of mathematics...
and this is where, authentically...
analytical a priori comes from...
based on I (1), V (5), X (10)...
                    came IV (4), came VI (6)...
don't mathematicians treat their language
as that of or equivalent to the gods?

now... for the cultural exchange program
that i promised...

on the great British isles...
you have a variety of languages
& dialects,
i'm so sorry that the Scottish
"forgot theirs"...

but when you have something
akin to

English: red
Cymru: coch

or right... they have their Pict
Gael?

Pict Gaelic: dearg
Irish: dearg
Cornish: rudh

we'll require a second word...
what word, what words..
life!

English: life,
Cymru: bywyd
Pict Gaelic: beatha
Irish: saol
Cornish: bewnans...

back, "home"...
we also have sub-groups
in terms of linguistics...

there are the Kashubians...
and there are the Silesians,
and, there are...
the Kurpie...
akin the Welsh, the Pict,
the Ire,

and their language looks like so...
again, borrowing from
red and life...

Polak: czerń
Kashubian: czôrny...
  but that can be disputed...
why?
     czerwień is not actually
a noun, but an adjective...
a quality of being associated with red...
czerwony? that's a male
adjective...
   and the female adjective
is czerwona...
                ****...
a color has to be something...
the noun adjective that's blood...
Polak: krwawy (czerwony)
Kashubian: czerwiony
Silesian: čerwůny
ah...
   Kurpian... high polish?
Masovian?
harder to find the words...
have to use alternatives...

Kurpian: caban
Polak: tępak
Kashubian: osoł
  Silesian: yjzel...
(idiot, imbecile)

you know how hard hard it is
to find a Kurpian to Polak
translator?
i can't find one to boil down
to the examples or either
red or life,
i'm reduced to choosing other
words...
like...

   Kurpian: chwat...
Polak: chłopak
Silesian: bajtel
Kashubian: knôp...
(boy)

Kurpian: jédło
Polak: jedzenie...
Kashubian: jedzenié
alternative to Silesian:
  jadło, i.e.: it ate...
past-participle in
the verb...
let's see what the Silesians
call it...
Silesians: well.. a variation..
chlyb
godka
mietła
masa... all things you can eat...
(edible food)

only a word, like the Kurpian
word akin to kotnå
reveals that Vikings passed via "us"...
kotnå?
  an impregnated sheep...
with young...

Kurpian: łańï truń!
Polak: nie mów!
Kashubian: ni gôdac!
Silesian: ńy godka!
(don't speak!)

mind you... Kurpian translation
is hard to find...
and you almost wonder...
at the British isles...
you think, us, Polaks...
do not have sub-linguistic groups
in our ranks,
like your Welsh, your Pict,
your Irish?!
guess again...
you had them all along...
and you thought...
the Polaks were
a homogenous culture...
all this time...
primarily because our culture
wasn't multicultural...
oh but it was... but on the subtle side
of history...
mind you...
defenders of the galaxy?
i knew gamora wasn't white...
but... **** me...
even if black or hispanic...
she looked so **** attired in green...
i was thinking:
absinthe cherub, absinthe cherub...
and forgot about glorifying
Zoe Saldana in all that choc...
what?
   a green skinned chic?
                    if i can forget about
the existence of chocolate...
i'll just anything that moves...
but i knew she wasn't white...
i hate chocolate...
          give me an absinthe girl any
day of the week...
       yeah...
only the English have complex
ethnicity encompassing
a single language...
only the English...
                 like **** they are...
at least my linguistic variation
is suited to a bundle of words...
Welsh?! Gaelic?!
  completely different languages...
at least in my part of the world
all that is deviating
is a choice of variant nouns!
but then again, the English
speaking world....
        how's the new pronoun
dictum coming along?
you keeping up with...
   appeasing the new crazies?
oh... you are?!
    well... kudos and applause!

p.s. guess what happens with appeasing
the new crazies... guess...
i'll tell you...
you **** around with grammar,
some grammatical pedant will raise
his head up from the crowd and say
something like:
               what?!
and then the old crazies rise up...
and... your, ahem, little discussion
about changing the rules of grammar
to "ensure" that the language is
kept, "intact"?
      see... mm... hmm... the old crazies?
the old crazies have their own
methods...
they're of the obligation:
let my gun do the talking...
  and then...
  you get pol *** arithmetic,
of skulls...
           being counted in an abacus
of heaping up, "debris"...
         see... these new crazies
are bugging me...
  they're bugging me...
because the old crazies didn't
attack grammar,
and whatever delusion they had...
i couldn't see it...
the new crazies?
they're attacking grammar,
and the delusion they have...
is... associated with something
i can see as being self-evidently untrue...

the new crazies...
******* spinners... fakers...
    i prefer the old crazies...
at least their delusions had ambitions
to deceive in the realm of
the unseen...
       the unproved, and never to be
proven...
these new crazies...
i am supposed to speak asylum talk?!
so... society is the new asylum
with the past asylums being
abolished?!
who gave caffeine to these news
crazies?!
******* sane people's naive pandering...
while the depressed man?
hey boy... hey, hey, hey boy...
noose!
i've lost all sympathy for
the victims of a psychotic
version of a repressed P.T.S.D. example...
the mad have hijacked language,
disorientated grammar...
and... b'a'ah, b'a'ah...
                 no...
                              i'm with the old
crazies...
                    at least they're the ones
that can inflict genuine grievance...
rather this policing of restricting
     the orthodoxy of the use of language.

p.s.
i found only two paradoxes in this
world...
    schadenfreude: feeding a pleasure
from the misery of others...
as...
  finding wisdom in others' own
forsake of an antithesis of
universal application...
  mainly that, associated:
            to a self-gratifying benefit...
the joke ends within the confines
of schadenfreude...
as does passable "wisdom" attached
to instragram novelty of the "maxim"
by your wisened sages
of the selfie...
  
                  i've been among the russians,
i know what the true uber looks like...
you hitchhike...
hitchhiking? forget that?
ponzie scheme albatross thingy
of a worth of a british mensch?
    funny... a people can so easily
forget the practice of hitchhiking...
so easily: entertaining individual rights...
and: innocent until proven
guilty until some next
               teddy bundy comes along...
and then it's all: ooh! ah! woo'ah!

   you know, i don't like the cartesian
chiral dynamic,
the whole: nietzsche take...
sum ergo cogito...
          i don't like the:

innocentes quoadusque (qua esse)
                           reus....    inversion...

an innocent man might hang...
well... if you have the death penalty:
too late to regurgitate the
original statements...

but? where's the element of redemption
for the innocent man?
why are so many people captivated
by the shawshank redemption?
there's a redemption story...
   in the inverted game?
a jimmy saville walks off scot-free...

the continental model doesn't make
sense with a death penalty...
but without one?
redemption... the atlas "paradox"...
one man usually burdens the fate
of a reciprocate of the unit of one...
but not the many...

me getting laid or not getting laid
is as important to me as:
whether i know about last year's
snowfall...
*** *** ***... all that sort of
******* in the western minds...
*** *** but no children!
recreational procreation without...
any procreation... to begin with...

         i'll admit...
english humour is funny...
but schadenfreude is a borrowed term...
hence the lost in translation
element...
           the english are terrible at
appreciating if not simply applying
the original zeppelin bomb...
after a while: the english just became
annoying toy-whips
of ***** replicas...
       the english knew elevated slap-stick...
with monty python...
with fawlty towers...
          they borrowed a term like
schadenfreude and completely lost the plot...
they once, upon a time,
chanced to play a game of linguistic
comedy...
            
                 i'm pretty ******* sure
the germans relate to schadenfreude in a different
way... i'm guessing:
the deutsche are not prone to ridicule as
the english are...
               the aunglisch are prone
to ridicule out of a sentiment of spite
than out of a repose for giggles...
        
          i don't understand the german sense
of humour,
     but understanding the english attempting
to "understand" the german sense of humour
is an enigma in an enigma in a per se...

such integrated back into
the ol' continental ways...
                       kudos to the brits...
bringing back the commonwealth to stereotype
us europeans with a negative "circumstance"...
now them: ******* up to "correct"
their integration policies... for the commonwealth
peoples of the united wordly wealth of
made in china plastic toys!

     a **** among the brits has
the audacity to tell a german he's not
supposed to feel at home on these isles...
sure... and i will never feel quiet at home
in Islamabad either!
               so? equal count of hubris!
that's the only thing that ****** me about
these isles... god i love this language...
but... when you get your afghani hounds
on me to do your ***** work?!

      even though i'm not: deutsche?!
i'll ******* pretend to be deutsche!
           i'm not here to mop up your failed
integration policies...
i settled on keeping my language...
they settled on keeping their sharia,
their **** pajamas and curry...
while adamantly rejecting their language...
in order to implement their desired changes
by subverting your language...
and you gave your language on a *******
platter...
    
    by subverting your language
to accept their cultural tattoos...
  let me tell you: if a people don't respect
their own culture,
by way of god, by way of language...
and they are "integrating": without speaking
their native mutterzunge?
they're not respecting either culture...
mongrels ahoy!
   what happened to the african-h'americans
not speaking a word of african?

what will they do, ascribe themselves
to ******* scots,
left with no gaelic and more a finnegans' wake
accent gymnastics of some irvine welsh?
nae for no: some glaswegian smart-***
excess of nouns?
      
hell... they would have never built
a colliseum if they saw:
1 + 4 + 6 + 9 = 20
   i.e. I + IV + VI + IX = **
            imagine... a society where letters
worked perfectly as sounds
and as arithmetic concepts of measure.

lucky for me the roman empire never
conquered
the lands i come from...
always with the brits being...
oh so so proud having been conquered
by the romans...
what's the prize... archeological sites?!

much respect as great britain...
but... *****... please...
don't pucnh below the waist...
importing your commonwealth dogs
to mark you out among all the other
europeans like some prized asset with
an inkling into h'american affairs...
thanks to you: i'm bored of looking up
the telescope of h'american ****
with their waning cultural export
of a worthwhile entertainment of appreciating
their music.
Ellie Sep 2012
He hits me.
His own daughter.
Can't he see what this is doing to me?
Can't he see the bruises that he leaves?

The kids at school have started to ask questions.
I hate to think what would happen if they found out.
I don't want their pity.
I just want my father to stop.

He is always mad at me for something.
Like last night, for example.
I made him spaghetti instead of roast like he wanted.
So, what do I get? A beating. And he ATE the food anyway. Didn't give me a single bite.

I'm hungry.
I haven't had anything to eat in about 36 hours.
Why doesn't my father like me?
Did I do something wrong? I hope not.

He wasn't always like this.
It started years ago, when I was 9.
Right after my mother had killed herself.
I had found her, sitting on the bathroom floor with empty pill bottles spread out around her.

I ran to his work, telling him the news.
He took me home, sat me down. I thought he was going to comfort me. I was wrong.
He hit me. Just like that.
I've cried every night since. Silently, though. I don't want to give him the pleasure of knowing he hurt me.

I get good grades, have a good singing voice.
I am School Captain, have a pretty face.
I am good at the arts, excel in sports.
I am the luckiest girl in the world, right? Wrong. Couldn't be more wrong.

School ends.
I run home.
I write a note to my father:
'Goodbye. Mum wanted to get away from you, now I am too. And the only thing I regret is not doing it sooner.'

I lock myself in the bathroom.
No, I will not **** myself with pills.
I am not my mother.
I did not marry that sick man.

No, I will defy him in the best way possible.
I run out of the bathroom.
Grab a length of rope from the back shed.
Try and prepare for what comes next.

I still remember how to make a hangman's noose.
And there I go.
I hang myself.
Right above the front door. Where he will see what he made of his little girl.



The man weeps. He knew it was wrong.
He would have stopped if he knew it was this bad.
He hates himself, but he must go on with life - and make it a good one. He will show his darling daughter that he can be a good person.
He sits on the ground, thinking of what he made of his little girl...
Just so you know, this poem isn't about me. I don't know why I wanted to write it. I guess I just thought that if I wrote this poem, that it would help me understand. And it did.
It was a simply soothing sound.
Seemingly surreal, severing the silence
With even sin surrendering to the sublime symphony
Of sirens signifying salvation.
Leaving legs lying limp and lifeless,
Losing a life I'd have liked to live.
Leaping, laughing, or lounging lazily
I fear for my future
Forever fighting ferociously.
Because four fearsome phantoms
Brought bars, blades, and bats
To beat my bewildered brother and I blind
Before we both blacked out from blood loss.
Now there's a knife notched in the nape of his neck.
He'll never know the nuance of another night;
But now I know the necessity of the nightmarish noose
old poem
TheBlackBird May 2014
I remember
when you were young and wide eyed
excited at the possibility of the world
and afraid because it was all so big and you,
you were the smallest creature in a forest full of monsters

still, you had big dreams and wanted
so badly to write something
so unique and profound
something to make people understand you
understand themselves
see that we are all one
know that we all bleed the same
slippery shades of water color
even if the canvas is is different

Fear is an ugly thing and overshadows
and overwhelms, *******
the life out of life
and the colors out of the rainbow that
is supposed to shine overhead and keep
the bad the things at bay

it crawls into bed with you at night and
keeps you awake, drilling
everything that is wrong
straight through your skull and
into your soul like a
woodpecker, never ceasing
never letting you rest

there is so much that is so hard
to comprehend and make sense of
and it is so much easier to let the fear
take hold of you, wrap it's fingers
tightly around your neck
a noose growing ever tighter, strangling
while you struggle until
you have no voice left to speak

It left you choking
out fragments
and run-on sentences into a journal
that no one would ever see
that still makes me burn when
I flip through those pages reliving
the story of my life that you wrote
all those years ago

I remember
when you thought that no one could see you,
so you lived your life like a child
jumping up to see over the counter,
making make-shift ladders out of whatever
you could find so that you could grasp
everything that always seemed so far above your reach,
losing yourself so easily
in a sea of people
because they were so big
and you were
nothing

You words are a time capsule
that bring me back to a place when
when we stared at each other in the mirror
and curled our tiny fingers into a fist
wanting to smash the glass
because
we were ugly

But my words are a time machine,
my gift to you from the future

You are small still,
but the world is not as big as it used to be
and nothing ever comes easy
but your dreams are coming true,
you did not give up despite
believing so often that you would fail and
you are making a difference

I am afraid
because
everyone is afraid, but
I stand in front of the mirror
young and wide-eyed,
excited about the possibility of the world
and when I look at you now, I know
that we are learning to love each other
finally.
Devon Webb Dec 2014
I'll make you a
noose of
kisses
around your neck
Nico Reznick Jan 2017
There are no right answers.
The sky rejects the birds, turns them
over to gravity,
embedding them in the concrete and dirt.
The grit refuses to become a pearl,
just as the wound refuses to heal
and the flesh eats itself.
The market sees a sudden spike in
sales of Champagne and cyanide.
Coordinated efforts seek and fail
to curtail the rising tide of violence
in the nation's dreaming.
You realise that this crude, barbaric language
that you can't understand
is your own.
Beauty glitches and pixelates.
Frightened, furtive confessions of love
are unheard over proud, visceral
proclamations of hate.
Tongues divorce mouths.
Every now and then, a voice
inside your head says,
'Thud.'
The measures of sanity become
more quantifiable and
totally arbitrary.
The horizon
tightens
like
a noose.

It doesn't matter if this is wrong.
There are no right answers.
Spoken Word Video: https://youtu.be/wGxRvuMWCig
Poetic T Aug 2015
I swung on the hangman's noose
Feeling the too and fro of others
Moments of death, were my fingers
Gracing a moment of chocking silence.

My digits were decorating a moment
As if my grip was still around the spirt
Of a clutching oblivion that gasped
On tightened desperation.

I swung for a while till my fingers lost
Feeling like that of breath losing life,
Silent was my motion and then I was still.
I left it swinging a circle of life gracing death.
...
..
.

poetical noose notches
red marks left on my neck
she swallowed me there
she
is
still
choking

just
listen
to her
moaning
moans
of
alone


my night here
day
as
anywhere

sung cat whiskers
dogs ain't got my nerves
fire hydrant
yellow
stains

caution blew
it
could never
out blow
glue

that glue that stuck
me yo you

this mind alteration
words never mine
still they have
been
taken

all the paths
of
muse
as you
have
known
through
my past
has grown
own taught
cut myself
loose
from
this
poetical noose
?
...
..
.






.
onto the next pebble
bam bam bam
...
..
.
The Noose Sep 2013
Most days you choke and sometimes you breath.
You're suffocating and bruised from the noose around your neck.

Creating problems in your head, haunting yourself.
Driving your  mind into the abyss.

Never mind the arguments
You're too exhausted from fighting yourself to fight anyone.

It's always the internal wars that are the most impossible to win
One can't escape themselves.
pixels Jan 2013
knuckles rubbed raw by
teeth so sharp and blunt
a tongue rough and silent

violent retching
self-harm for a throat
already held by a noose

she promises
just

one more cookie
one last bite
one last calorie
one last breath
one

the toilet bowl is her best friend
and she hugs it close
when no one can hear
claire Mar 2012
Hanging from a Star
The girl sat on her star. The dark towering flowers around her, cast shadows over her blank face. She walked around the side of her star to the grass so she could watch the fiery sun and look down at the fluffy billowing clouds in earth’s atmosphere. Lying, hating thoughts floated up from the beautiful blue and green planet below. The girl had been watching earth since it was first created. Cain’s first thoughts of ****** were heard by the girl. She watched the black plague wash through the world, killing millions. The hell of the holocaust burned through her mind like fire across her own skin. Sometimes she swore she could almost smell the melting flesh and boiling blood from the sick world below.
The girl nestled down in the warm grass and focused her guarded mind in preparation to listening in on the earth, like she did every other day. “Her nose is so ugly.” “Why didn’t I do more today?” “I miss her.” “I need to put at least ten percent in savings if I’m ever going to retire.” “I hope no one else notices this huge zit protruding from my face.” “Why didn’t I just kiss him?” “The sun is burning my eyes.” She made her way through selfish minds of the shallow population and then moved for relief, to the newborn children. Images of parents, lights, and bright colors flashed before her eyes. Each new child’s face seemed to be surrounded in a beautiful clear light. The girl wished the children had never been brought to that terrible planet.
One child in particular tugged on the girls thoughts, making the girl want to focus entirely on her. The light around the child was brilliant. The baby’s ocean eyes were open and focused on the one beautiful flower in the room. The details of the daisy were perfect in the child’s mind. The baby fell deeply in love with the white petals that curled softly around the bright yellow center. The girl’s mind was entranced by the lovely child. The girl named the perfect child Claire and sent heavenly visions to entertain the child’s thoughts as the hospital buzzed around her.
As Claire grew, the girl watched her red curls flourish and darken with each day. Her blue eyes bloomed as she turned into a happy toddler and her pale skin stayed radiant and cloudless. Claire’s mommy was a large, reserved woman, but loved her little girl with all her heart. Her mommy sang her to sleep each night and gave her everything she could afford to. But the floor of the trailer where they lived was layered in mud, cat feces, and tobacco. Her father’s face and clothes were covered in stains and the beard that he never remembered to shave had remnants of chewing tobacco that he hadn’t spit far enough. Every night, his drunk, angry voice roared throughout the house, cursing at whatever he could get into his hands first. Each time this happened, the ******* the star poured daisies into Claire’s mind as Claire buried her china face into a soiled pillow.
After a sublime day of school filled with telling time and and reading silly stories, Claire  skipped back to her hostel under the warm autumn sun. She opened her front door to find her mommy in a pool of ***** and blood. Claire screamed in horror and fled back down the steps to the closest residence, trying to see through her own flooded eyes as she tripped along the avenue. Claire’s father never even went to the hospital to inquire about his wife. The hospital gave up calling him, and she was buried in an unplanned graveyard, under the cheapest tombstone.
Claire became the subject of her father’s wrath. Several times a month he would take Claire to bed with him and **** her. She cried silently as he seized her tiny body, leaving large dark bruises where he should have left kindness. The ******* the star filled Claire with exquisite thoughts as he blemished her, but a child may not always be calmed in a situation of pure agony. Tears streamed from the star, watering the daisies next to the trashed trailer.
The ******* the star watched as Claire grew and learned. Finally, Claire vacated the ***** trailer park, on her way to a brighter future. Then Claire met Him. His thoughts were black. Though his eyes scoured Claire’s body, his smile seemed sincere. The ******* the star tried to keep Claire away from him, but Claire was in love with his kindness and moved in with him. The bruises seemed to appear again on a larger scale all down her arms and across her stomach. This man’s hands were harsher than her father’s, but his constant words of kindness drew Claire in, melting her heart into his ice cold soul. Claire dedicated herself to the man, and just as she did, his temper turned fierce and there was fire in his hands.  Other girls seemed to appear in their small apartment dressed in scant ****** and smirks.
One night his fingers skimmed like sand paper up her frail arms and the smell of alcohol breathed down on her face. His fiery hands hit her over and over, slamming her into walls, bloodying her hands and knees, and knocking her out cold. He left her there, sprawled out on the floor, bleeding freely from several gashes. The ******* the star could not reach Claire. Her mind was gone. She thought Claire was dead, so in the path of the drunken abuser, the ******* the star put a murdering thought into a killer’s mind. The abuser was shot in an alley where no one would find him. Angry wailing poured down onto the streets.
Claire woke up and posed in the apartment for weeks. The ******* the star perceived in dismay, that Claire’s light was out. Claire drank whatever alcohol was left there and sliced her arms from wrist to shoulder. The apartment turned grimy along with her blood and oil matted hair. Some of her wounds became infected and her face was no longer a china doll, but a red splotchy entanglement, smeared with dirt and tears. For those weeks it rained steadily as the ******* the star wept. No pleasant thoughts were sent to any human’s mind, but the daisies grew tall and out of control.
Claire’s blackened spirit left the cool, ***** apartment one morning. Her tiny body abandoned in a corner, was huddled in the fetal position, covered in dust bunnies. The ******* the star made a noose from a black daisy, and for the first time, the sky rained blood on earth. Each morning thereafter, the ******* the star walked through her forest of black daisies, retied a noose , and hung herself from the bottom of her star, overwhelmed by the appalling nature of the world below, blocking earth out of her mind with her own pain and suffering.
JAM Apr 2015
I heard someone say
Science is a noose,
Society a stool,
And philosophy
The dubious
Kick.

Well I'd say:

Society sets the rope,
Stool,
And gives the kick.

Science saves my life
Before I hit
The end of my rope.

And philosophy helps
Me cope
With the reality
That everything
I'm told to believe
By society
Was meant
to set me free,
while secretly
They said,
"Ah, Schucks!
Let's hang'em instead!"
An agreeing reply to a friend.
Miranda Renea Apr 2014
We all
Dance around
A fire with lipstick
On our cheeks in lines
                                     Powdered in patterns that*                              will
                         ­           Accentuate the contours of our                      bodies
                                ­     Symbols written  in eyeliner so                     daintily
                                  Adorned like ink meeting paper                        we are
                             Decadent 287 temptation 285 ****** 307      flame 300
                          The savages you have created with media       we chant
                         Eninimef  eninimef  eninimef  eninimef      we chant

                         In a circle circulating the world with our starving
                         Bodies that whisper of synthetic beauty     and
                    Neglect naked and perverse we are posing
                   For your cameras capturing exploitation
                   And degradation because ****** 307  we
                    Are ****** 307 temptation 285 the savages
   You          have created with media eninimef we chant
We are      the heat of broken records and burnt out cigs
  Play us   like  your out of tune guitar our G-strings are so
   Much more loose unlike the noose of your hands grazing

      Our skin we sing what you want no matter how deep
No matter how long the song we are exactly what
You want *the savages you have created of me –
The savages you have created with media –
Eninimef  eninimef eninimef eninimef
We chant – we chant – we chant – we
Decadent 287 temptation 285
****** 307 flame 300
I tried to make it in the shape of a flame, but the website's formatting made it difficult, in word it isn't so choppy.
Anthony Perry Jul 2017
Weather or not you want to thrive or just get by, there's that will to survive that we can't escape and it keeps us naive and blind.

Dangers keep us locked up and treated as strangers while reason is a mystery we search for in gangrenous church mangers and pound our proud heads against a cross till it craters.

Something earned is something lost and something we already have is nothing we can gain.

A bleak outlook gives advice to take a step back, not to take the other direction but to reclaim stepping stones as a momento of the life that we lack.

Like dawning a black coat while trying to infiltrate witches and ghouls unaware that your the monster in a makeshift faćade handing out nooses by the spools.

After which defending yourself on facts without merit to a town only left with fools.

What you can claim as facts are someone else's theories and someones reasoning is another person's fallacy.

The Noose is inductive to reasoning, in a world so free it's no wonder why The Noose makes such a perfect seasoning.
Molly Dec 2014
there is a noose hanging in my
throat
and when I try to tell you I love you
it tangles around the words and
I start to choke
so I keep my mouth shut

and this is not to say that I do not love you but
love doesn't feel like a blessing anymore,
it feels like guilt,
it feels like another promise that
I will not be able to keep, it feels like
an apology that my lips will never speak.

when I try to tell you I love you
I remind myself that
you don't want me to anymore,
remind myself that
this is not what you want to hear from me,
remind myself that
you will not say it back.

when I try to tell you I love you it is not because
I think you need to hear it,
it is because
I want to say it,
it is because
that word has been eating a hole in the pit of my stomach for
too long,
it is because when I
repeat a word too many times
it stops sounding like one
so I'm hoping that if I say it out loud it will
regain its meaning,
it is because I do not know if it's true and
I want you to tell me it is,
it is because I am
selfish
and this is entirely for my own
benefit and/or destruction

and I am sorry because
when I tell you I love you it will be
the last thing I say to you.
Melissa Blair Apr 2013
Life is but the beginning
Of a story called death
A saga that keeps beating
Until my final breath

This weary soul is sickened
Entangled in my head
Sometimes I can't stop wishing
To be pronounced dead

A noose, a bullet
**** it, even a pill
To get me away from
This morbid windowsill

Life is a lesson to be learned
But doesn't come with instructions
Every time I solve one issue
I'm stalked by more obstructions

Sanity is but an illusion
A deceitful trick of the mind
Raining memories upon me
That I'd rather leave behind

A noose, a bullet
**** it, even a pill
To get me away from
This morbid windowsill

I wish I'd been given a warning
About how my life would be
But this heart reflects the mistake
That was the birth of me

My death will come with relief
From me and the world all the same
So let me go, let me burn
In my own ever-raging flame

A noose, a bullet
**** it, even a pill
To get me away from
This morbid windowsill
As I stand before the mountain of confidence called hope, I see a clear path up, not too steep, not too straight, but this path is embodied with rewards to the top.

At the top, there is a magnificent tree made of gold, silver leaves and Copper roots. Hope mountain held a perfect prize awaiting me, a Tree called Faith.
This sight to behold was everything I wanted, everything before me was so clear, but at the bottom where I was, there was a River.

This River was called Shame.
This river was filthy, the water was calm where I was, but looking downstream I could see the rapids of rage, the ripples of conditioning before the raging rapids were inviting.

The dreary stonewalling fortification on the banks allowed no light through, downstream was scary and looked impossible, why would I go that way? why even look?
I looked upstream and saw a blinding light, what could this be? I was so curious, so I waited, a true gentleman always waits.

Two days later the light took shape, as it came closer I could finally see, I could see a lifeboat with a caring nurturing beautiful woman.

As this beautiful woman came closer, I could see the river was being supplied by this woman, I could see she was the source.

The river of Shame was being fed by this woman, this filth in front of me was coming from her, but the beauty was something I've never seen, this beauty had me curious.

This beauty made me forget of the supply to the river.
  What I saw wasn't real all the sudden, what I believed was now real.
She came close enough for my heart to be heard, since she had no heart she was envious, she hated what others admired.

She wanted my wholesome heart, so she used her falsehood love bombing to create one, dreamingly admiring the mountain, we were planning different paths right then.
As I stared at the golden Tree of Faith glowing upon Hope mountain, I didn't notice the river was rising, as the numbing waters were rising it covered my feet, I didn't notice she also took a piece of my heart to claim as her own.

She used toxic gas and light to create a projection that this heart was hers to give back to me.

I didn't know any better so I accepted this ambient abused heart, this unfelt abuse gave me amnesia, this hidden poison of my cognitive dissonance gave her all of me.

Since she had nothing and that's what she craves, I had everything so she wanted to enslave.
I forget about the mountain with the tree even being there. I forgot I was here.

Her lifeboat was awkward, it was shaky,
it has imperfections, it has holes,
   her lifeboat is sinking,
     her heart is missing.
my knightly kind hearted empathy,
   my buffering and nurturing sympathy         pick this beautiful woman up
      I pick this gem up because of her idealization of me.
I can clean this insidious gem because she makes me believe, but through the veil I cannot see.
I throw her over my shoulder to carry all her weight, it's hard to move, hard to breathe, building a new boat was extremely hard, carrying her pain was extremely hard.

Everyone thought it was impossible to do it, my shear will power to commit ****** one foot in front of the other, I just didn't know that going downstream was impossible.

What about the mountain?

I couldn't remember from the amnesia, the dark night blinded my sight of the mountain, the drug in me was you and it consumed, i fell in love with misery and misery loves it's companies.

I stared the snake behind the veil in the eyes, standing tall on her pedastool made of spackle it breaks, I fall onto piercing confusion, I pull out shrapnel's of dissolution, I'm covered in her blood of invalidation.

I'm already floating in the boat with her, this wasn't my plan, this wasn't my reality.
I gaze upon this woman, sun shining behind her, no clouds in the sky.
floating downstream she tells me it's faster, that we'll end up behind the mountain higher.

I'm not worried now, I'm now contempt with shame.
I already forgot reality, I already forgot i'm going downstream, I forgot the searing pain, I forgot what I believe.

I'm relaxed, I'm tired, I'm still happy in love with this spellbound misery.

As we drift slowly through the stonewalls, no light shines through, I ask her for assurance, it's getting dark, I'm getting scared.

That's when the veil comes off, that's when the unnatural beauty grows quiet, that's when my voice screams silently within these stone walls.

This isn't her, this isn't real,
I know there's love I can feel, that was our bond, that was our deal, not to steal.

I fall over board and the water is cold, there's leaches, the debris is so random, the shameful water is moving faster, the all consuming cold confusion, random gaslighting and triangulations moving in around me faster.

I immediately can't bear it. My heart pulsates hard, my mind misfires my flight mode, i cannot intake the overbearingly unowned toxic Shame, her coldness activated my fawn mode, I froze, I start to doze.

luckily she had my leg, luckily she knew excessive admiration CPR, just as my body went limp in the agonizing River of Shame, she pulls me out. luckily she got me just in time, luckily she saved my life.

I awoke away from the stonewalls, it's sunny and safe again, we're together through impossible odds, we built this boat and she saved my life.

The abuse amnesia made me forget, the cognitive dissonance was real, I am not.

The mountain was now farther away, I was worried, I grew fearful, what I wanted looked farther away, that's when everything became gloomy, my goal was no longer there, but she didn't care, she knew where the river went, I believed her, I still do.

The ambient abuse made me anxious, the atmosphere was maddening of fear, it carried anxiety, I couldn't see it, but I was breathing it in.

Her eyes were so incapacitating, her heart disorienting, her soul captivating, she had a better plan, for us to press on and build another boat, to add another life, to believe in her, to not stare at the knife.

We build another boat, were out of the shame waters finally, she's helping me, were soon to be a real family, but the only thing real here was me.

Everything is better on the land, were dry, it's sunny, it's better to feel the nirvanic sand. It's here we bring our new seed, to be sprouted downstream.

I now believe in this new mountain downstream, I don't even remember the mountain I seen, were pressing on downstream past a levy, were now in the River of Grief, we're off to the end of make believe.

This river is really turbulent with rapids of devaluation, the splashes make me irrelevant, the dinigrating actions around make me small, I feel lost and confused, nothing makes sense anymore at all.

At the mouth of the River of Grief it opens up into a valley. She jumped onto a rock of vanity and pushed the tree of disloyalty upon the boat.

This throws me out head first, but luckily I have our seed safe and sound, luckily I learned how to drown.

I turn around falling and see her at the top staring down, she smirked and throws enormously heavy anvils of bereavement to make me fall harder, to keep me down longer.

Evil is real, but only if you believe, I crave the flattery of illusionary love, I still had amnesia, I love misery, the feeling reminds me I can feel, I love my slow death so I say I'll find you, I have the seed, I'll wait for you.

As I fall the thorns of numbing premeditation pierce, the pain is searing, as I fall i'm locked on her, my falsehood of love is still enduring, I don't feel the discard, I ignore the distaste.

I land in a field of hopium still protecting the seed, my amnesia is now worse, I can't remember her smirk, I can't remember the weighted anvils of bereavement, I can't remember the tree of disloyalty, I still can't remember the mountain.

My movement is heavy like concrete, my heart sits down at my feet, my mind is nowhere to be found, my spirit is fading on this ground.

I gather everyone from a nearby village to find her, it's impossible, they can't see her, she never existed, my amnesia was now delusional, the hopium mixed realities, nothing was real, there was nothing I could truly feel because everything was wrong, but I believe misery needs me and I yearned.

I say she's at the top, we have to throw her a rope,
they say it won't reach what isn't there,
I say we need a ladder to throw the rope, they say the ladder isn't safe that high.
  
I say everyone can hold the ladder while I climb perilously to the top, they say it will never work, but since they can see me, since they see a part of me is still real, everyone holds the ladder for me.
      
While I acend with my broken dignity, I acend with a fatigued heart, I acend to find what I believe, no matter how hard I try, I will be taking my destined decent.

The top of the ladder is shaky, I spent forever getting there, it's scary, the heights bring great fear over me, more than I've ever felt, but my knighthood makes me overcome anything.

I suppress, the seed is safe down below, I'm here to impress, I can see her now, only much less.

Her snake skin is peeling, the sun scorched blistering skin shows immense pain, witnessing this releases empathy, the caring knighthood in me naturally wanted to save her again.

So I wrap what's left of my discarded soul upon my broken fatigued heart and I use my trauma bonded mind as bait.

I throw her the rope,
she catches the rope,
I tell her to tie off the rope,
she ties a noose with the rope,
her neck is now wrapped with this rope.

If she falls I can't stop the tightening of the rope, if she falls I already know I'll jump for her and release from her neck this rope.

We jump together and I release the rope around her neck, I see the ground coming fast, but I love this snake, I'll die for this snake because I believe, false beauty inside is all I see.

I grab her and turn her away from the rushing ground, I fell once, I can take the fall again.

She is already hurt, immense pain, she will not feel no more pain, because I'm not hurting for I'm with misery again, I believe I can take all the pain for her, the hopium was numbing everything I consumed.

I awoke to a distressed angel, flawed personality, beautiful nightmare, mirroring the devil, but what I saw was a veil over the snake eyes, what I saw was what I believed before.

What I had wasn't real, who I am is no longer there, for I had ambience amnesia, nothing around me fit, nothing around me was grounded, nothing around me was divine.

The eyes that gazed upon me were captivating, spriling, time froze and only she was moving, the feeling was there, a drug within me, the drug was her and I longed for the misery, I yearned for the pain to remember what was real, I needed the intermittent reinforcement, I wanted my all bets in investment back and I risked a short sale.

We faded into the black, into a new boat, she made this boat, she had plugs in  holes of the boat I couldn't see, I believed it was perfect, I didn't know what awaited was a life long anguish.

I still didn't know what was downstream is impossible, I didn't know this new River of Anguish has piranhas of triangulation, I didn't know the rapids were of oppression, I didn't know the rocks causing these rapids she already put in place, I didn't know it was so black around me in this place, I didn't know my seed would become two, I didn't know I would have to choose.

I didn't know true love was in front of me in my hands and not behind the veil, I thought it was her, all the villagers knew, but as I drew closer to the snake the darkness only grew and the seeds too.

The feeling of my lingering mortality reverberates, she built me a coffin and chained it to my ankles, with this immense weight, I carry it with me just in case.

We floated very fast down this River of Anguish, everything seemed fine to all others including me, the darkened skies covered the evil, the cold waters made my body numb, the seeds were held up high to be be safe from the tormenting waters.

As I held them up high, I didn't realize she was still holding the schraded butcher knife in the water, I didn't believe she would hurt me, I didn't conceive the possibility that knife I didn't see was there all along for me.

The waters of Anguish smothered me, the triangulating piranhas slowly nibbled on my feet in the water, the rapids of oppression kept me gazing in the water, the rocks of malice in the water tried to tip me over, but my balance was true and the seeds were safe from harm, but I am not safe, I'm dying inside.

I don't know why, but after every agonizing stab from this knife when I'm not looking, it hurts, but the numbing knife only helped me when it was pulled out, it has holes in the knife so she could pull it out without me knowing.

I always turned around and cleaned the knife covered in my blood, I always gave it back to her, but every wipe upon this blade made it grow, and every wipe made the label on the handle more clear.

I find out in the end this knife is called narcissistic rage, the brand of this knife is called gaslighting and my blood is the supply.

I didn't know any of this until it was too late to save myself, my reality wasn't real, my dreams are gone, my nightmare is all consuming and existent, my seeds are still safe, but I am not.

When I start to notice the knife exists, I forgive her, the conditioning made the skies darker, I wipe the blood off and give it back, the knife is now a sword, it's name is discard.

The waters are uneven, the piranhas of triangulation feel like strangulation, my clothes are still soaking wet with anguish, my hair is slimy and covered in Shame, my feet are cold and numb from the grief.

I can't understand why I'm here,
  I can't understand why I'm actually meant to be here.
  
Every turbulence has thrown me down, she pushes me over head first, as I try to lean up to breathe she has her foot on my neck in the cold numbing river, but this river does not affect her, this river is warmer than her, the warmth from anguish pleased her, the piranhas followed her commands to bite, she smirked as the rocks she placed crushed against my head.

She waited until I went limp every time, but she knew idealization CPR, her deceit was without compassion, her rage was without sympathy, but I had severe ambience abuse amnesia, I still couldn't remember the mountain, I am now trauma bonded from the stabs she's counting.

I only saw her veil, her gaze convinced me I placed these rocks here, her gaze made me ignore the stonewalls around me, her pure hatred was covered in false intentions, her illusion was my isolation.

As everything was becoming clearly dangerous, as everything went pitch black, I look back and see the light from the mountain glowing, I see there is something wrong where I'm at, I see the seeds are not growing, I start to see the pain all around me.

Non the wiser, I keep coming back from drowning, I keep falling for misery, I keep wiping my blood off the blade, I keep isolated, but now I feel there is something painfully wrong, the reason abates me but I feel it, it hurts, it's camouflaged by deceit, it's all in my head, my coffin is soon to be my bed.

I look to the shores, there are other villagers worried, they are waving frantically, they're pointing at a waterfall ahead, this waterfall is called Doom, this fall would be death, the sound is raging, the mouth all consuming.

I see the stream to the side that the villagers are pointing to, I see the calm waters awaiting our safety, but the boat will not fit.

Only me and the seeds are real, everything else around me is illusional, the trauma delusional, the possible harm to the seeds was not refutable, my love for misery was unsuitable.

I could see my life was in danger, I could see the stream nearby screaming safety, I knew the seeds needed me, now I can't stop shaking.

Without her knowing what I was doing, I turned my back towards her facing the water, I knew she was going to stab me over and over again until I turned around, I now see the hypnotic eyes behind the veil. Not turning around only enraged her, the blood on the knife was condesating.

  The safety of the stream for my seeds was a new found glory in my exodus.
  
I paddled with my small hands this large weighted boat towards the stream, her knife was venomous, the water was echoless, the air imparted dreadfulness, all of this was dimensionless, all of this was not real, unless I let it be, now I can see, now I can finally flee.

As I came closer to the stream the waterfall grew stronger, the pain larger, the sound louder, I knew we were closer to the end, I knew I needed to jump off with my seeds, but I know the torment will end.

I melted my enduring pain inside with molten lava heartache to mold anew, I compartmentalize because I have to choose.

I had a vision that if I jump, the seeds will be safe, the climb to the mountain can still happen, I knew I was right about how I felt all along, I realized the veil couldn't cover the true self, I now believed In me.

I now know the water air and land were not what she made me believe, I knew I didn't choose this path, I knew I could survive, I know the seeds are going to be safe now. I know because I manifested instead of throwing in the towel.

Once close enough I finally looked at her and smiled I love you, jumping into the river I could feel the bitter cold agonizing tormenting river smash me with bereavement and disillusion by dissociation, I felt the coma of trauma surround, for I am now trauma bound.

I hold my seeds up high, I kept them safe because they don't feel the water, they're starting to sprout already, no more decay.

As I climb out of the frigid waters and still dripping wet, the drops are red, my feeling is coming back, my back is full of knives, I'm scared but I survived.
Knowing the worst is over I look back to her, she is consuming the river because she was the source, everything dark folds in on itself because the light cannot touch here, for this black hole is collapsing in on itself, I cover the seeds to shield them of this exorcist, they're safe here because my love is relentless.

The tormenting pain makes it hard to stand tall, still going through bereavement of a false reality where I lost it all, the answers we're all lost in the waterfall
"" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" ”"" "" "" "”" "" ""
Then Ulysses tore off his rags, and sprang on to the broad
pavement with his bow and his quiver full of arrows. He shed the
arrows on to the ground at his feet and said, “The mighty contest is
at an end. I will now see whether Apollo will vouchsafe it to me to
hit another mark which no man has yet hit.”
  On this he aimed a deadly arrow at Antinous, who was about to take
up a two-handled gold cup to drink his wine and already had it in
his hands. He had no thought of death—who amongst all the revellers
would think that one man, however brave, would stand alone among so
many and **** him? The arrow struck Antinous in the throat, and the
point went clean through his neck, so that he fell over and the cup
dropped from his hand, while a thick stream of blood gushed from his
nostrils. He kicked the table from him and upset the things on it,
so that the bread and roasted meats were all soiled as they fell
over on to the ground. The suitors were in an uproar when they saw
that a man had been hit; they sprang in dismay one and all of them
from their seats and looked everywhere towards the walls, but there
was neither shield nor spear, and they rebuked Ulysses very angrily.
“Stranger,” said they, “you shall pay for shooting people in this way:
om yi you shall see no other contest; you are a doomed man; he whom
you have slain was the foremost youth in Ithaca, and the vultures
shall devour you for having killed him.”
  Thus they spoke, for they thought that he had killed Antinous by
mistake, and did not perceive that death was hanging over the head
of every one of them. But Ulysses glared at them and said:
  “Dogs, did you think that I should not come back from Troy? You have
wasted my substance, have forced my women servants to lie with you,
and have wooed my wife while I was still living. You have feared
neither Cod nor man, and now you shall die.”
  They turned pale with fear as he spoke, and every man looked round
about to see whither he might fly for safety, but Eurymachus alone
spoke.
  “If you are Ulysses,” said he, “then what you have said is just.
We have done much wrong on your lands and in your house. But
Antinous who was the head and front of the offending lies low already.
It was all his doing. It was not that he wanted to marry Penelope;
he did not so much care about that; what he wanted was something quite
different, and Jove has not vouchsafed it to him; he wanted to ****
your son and to be chief man in Ithaca. Now, therefore, that he has
met the death which was his due, spare the lives of your people. We
will make everything good among ourselves, and pay you in full for all
that we have eaten and drunk. Each one of us shall pay you a fine
worth twenty oxen, and we will keep on giving you gold and bronze till
your heart is softened. Until we have done this no one can complain of
your being enraged against us.”
  Ulysses again glared at him and said, “Though you should give me all
that you have in the world both now and all that you ever shall
have, I will not stay my hand till I have paid all of you in full. You
must fight, or fly for your lives; and fly, not a man of you shall.”
  Their hearts sank as they heard him, but Eurymachus again spoke
saying:
  “My friends, this man will give us no quarter. He will stand where
he is and shoot us down till he has killed every man among us. Let
us then show fight; draw your swords, and hold up the tables to shield
you from his arrows. Let us have at him with a rush, to drive him from
the pavement and doorway: we can then get through into the town, and
raise such an alarm as shall soon stay his shooting.”
  As he spoke he drew his keen blade of bronze, sharpened on both
sides, and with a loud cry sprang towards Ulysses, but Ulysses
instantly shot an arrow into his breast that caught him by the
****** and fixed itself in his liver. He dropped his sword and fell
doubled up over his table. The cup and all the meats went over on to
the ground as he smote the earth with his forehead in the agonies of
death, and he kicked the stool with his feet until his eyes were
closed in darkness.
  Then Amphinomus drew his sword and made straight at Ulysses to try
and get him away from the door; but Telemachus was too quick for
him, and struck him from behind; the spear caught him between the
shoulders and went right through his chest, so that he fell heavily to
the ground and struck the earth with his forehead. Then Telemachus
sprang away from him, leaving his spear still in the body, for he
feared that if he stayed to draw it out, some one of the Achaeans
might come up and hack at him with his sword, or knock him down, so he
set off at a run, and immediately was at his father’s side. Then he
said:
  “Father, let me bring you a shield, two spears, and a brass helmet
for your temples. I will arm myself as well, and will bring other
armour for the swineherd and the stockman, for we had better be
armed.”
  “Run and fetch them,” answered Ulysses, “while my arrows hold out,
or when I am alone they may get me away from the door.”
  Telemachus did as his father said, and went off to the store room
where the armour was kept. He chose four shields, eight spears, and
four brass helmets with horse-hair plumes. He brought them with all
speed to his father, and armed himself first, while the stockman and
the swineherd also put on their armour, and took their places near
Ulysses. Meanwhile Ulysses, as long as his arrows lasted, had been
shooting the suitors one by one, and they fell thick on one another:
when his arrows gave out, he set the bow to stand against the end wall
of the house by the door post, and hung a shield four hides thick
about his shoulders; on his comely head he set his helmet, well
wrought with a crest of horse-hair that nodded menacingly above it,
and he grasped two redoubtable bronze-shod spears.
  Now there was a trap door on the wall, while at one end of the
pavement there was an exit leading to a narrow passage, and this
exit was closed by a well-made door. Ulysses told Philoetius to
stand by this door and guard it, for only one person could attack it
at a time. But Agelaus shouted out, “Cannot some one go up to the trap
door and tell the people what is going on? Help would come at once,
and we should soon make an end of this man and his shooting.”
  “This may not be, Agelaus,” answered Melanthius, “the mouth of the
narrow passage is dangerously near the entrance to the outer court.
One brave man could prevent any number from getting in. But I know
what I will do, I will bring you arms from the store room, for I am
sure it is there that Ulysses and his son have put them.”
  On this the goatherd Melanthius went by back passages to the store
room of Ulysses, house. There he chose twelve shields, with as many
helmets and spears, and brought them back as fast as he could to
give them to the suitors. Ulysses’ heart began to fail him when he saw
the suitors putting on their armour and brandishing their spears. He
saw the greatness of the danger, and said to Telemachus, “Some one
of the women inside is helping the suitors against us, or it may be
Melanthius.”
  Telemachus answered, “The fault, father, is mine, and mine only; I
left the store room door open, and they have kept a sharper look out
than I have. Go, Eumaeus, put the door to, and see whether it is one
of the women who is doing this, or whether, as I suspect, it is
Melanthius the son of Dolius.”
  Thus did they converse. Meanwhile Melanthius was again going to
the store room to fetch more armour, but the swineherd saw him and
said to Ulysses who was beside him, “Ulysses, noble son of Laertes, it
is that scoundrel Melanthius, just as we suspected, who is going to
the store room. Say, shall I **** him, if I can get the better of him,
or shall I bring him here that you may take your own revenge for all
the many wrongs that he has done in your house?”
  Ulysses answered, “Telemachus and I will hold these suitors in
check, no matter what they do; go back both of you and bind
Melanthius’ hands and feet behind him. Throw him into the store room
and make the door fast behind you; then fasten a noose about his body,
and string him close up to the rafters from a high bearing-post,
that he may linger on in an agony.”
  Thus did he speak, and they did even as he had said; they went to
the store room, which they entered before Melanthius saw them, for
he was busy searching for arms in the innermost part of the room, so
the two took their stand on either side of the door and waited. By and
by Melanthius came out with a helmet in one hand, and an old
dry-rotted shield in the other, which had been borne by Laertes when
he was young, but which had been long since thrown aside, and the
straps had become unsewn; on this the two seized him, dragged him back
by the hair, and threw him struggling to the ground. They bent his
hands and feet well behind his back, and bound them tight with a
painful bond as Ulysses had told them; then they fastened a noose
about his body and strung him up from a high pillar till he was
close up to the rafters, and over him did you then vaunt, O
swineherd Eumaeus, saying, “Melanthius, you will pass the night on a
soft bed as you deserve. You will know very well when morning comes
from the streams of Oceanus, and it is time for you to be driving in
your goats for the suitors to feast on.”
  There, then, they left him in very cruel *******, and having put
on their armour they closed the door behind them and went back to take
their places by the side of Ulysses; whereon the four men stood in the
cloister, fierce and full of fury; nevertheless, those who were in the
body of the court were still both brave and many. Then Jove’s daughter
Minerva came up to them, having assumed the voice and form of
Mentor. Ulysses was glad when he saw her and said, “Mentor, lend me
your help, and forget not your old comrade, nor the many good turns he
has done you. Besides, you are my age-mate.”
  But all the time he felt sure it was Minerva, and the suitors from
the other side raised an uproar when they saw her. Agelaus was the
first to reproach her. “Mentor,” he cried, “do not let Ulysses beguile
you into siding with him and fighting the suitors. This is what we
will do: when we have killed these people, father and son, we will
**** you too. You shall pay for it with your head, and when we have
killed you, we will take all you have, in doors or out, and bring it
into hotch-*** with Ulysses’ property; we will not let your sons
live in your house, nor your daughters, nor shall your widow
continue to live in the city of Ithaca.”
  This made Minerva still more furious, so she scolded Ulysses very
angrily. “Ulysses,” said she, “your strength and prowess are no longer
what they were when you fought for nine long years among the Trojans
about the noble lady Helen. You killed many a man in those days, and
it was through your stratagem that Priam’s city was taken. How comes
it that you are so lamentably less valiant now that you are on your
own ground, face to face with the suitors in your own house? Come
on, my good fellow, stand by my side and see how Mentor, son of
Alcinous shall fight your foes and requite your kindnesses conferred
upon him.”
  But she would not give him full victory as yet, for she wished still
further to prove his own prowess and that of his brave son, so she
flew up to one of the rafters in the roof of the cloister and sat upon
it in the form of a swallow.
  Meanwhile Agelaus son of Damastor, Eurynomus, Amphimedon,
Demoptolemus, Pisander, and Polybus son of Polyctor bore the brunt
of the fight upon the suitors’ side; of all those who were still
fighting for their lives they were by far the most valiant, for the
others had already fallen under the arrows of Ulysses. Agelaus shouted
to them and said, “My friends, he will soon have to leave off, for
Mentor has gone away after having done nothing for him but brag.
They are standing at the doors unsupported. Do not aim at him all at
once, but six of you throw your spears first, and see if you cannot
cover yourselves with glory by killing him. When he has fallen we need
not be uneasy about the others.”
  They threw their spears as he bade them, but Minerva made them all
of no effect. One hit the door post; another went against the door;
the pointed shaft of another struck the wall; and as soon as they
had avoided all the spears of the suitors Ulysses said to his own men,
“My friends, I should say we too had better let drive into the
middle of them, or they will crown all the harm they have done us by
us outright.”
  They therefore aimed straight in front of them and threw their
spears. Ulysses killed Demoptolemus, Telemachus Euryades, Eumaeus
Elatus, while the stockman killed Pisander. These all bit the dust,
and as the others drew back into a corner Ulysses and his men rushed
forward and regained their spears by drawing them from the bodies of
the dead.
  The suitors now aimed a second time, but again Minerva made their
weapons for the most part without effect. One hit a bearing-post of
the cloister; another went against the door; while the pointed shaft
of another struck the wall. Still, Amphimedon just took a piece of the
top skin from off Telemachus’s wrist, and Ctesippus managed to graze
Eumaeus’s shoulder above his shield; but the spear went on and fell to
the ground. Then Ulysses and his men let drive into the crowd of
suitors. Ulysses hit Eurydamas, Telemachus Amphimedon, and Eumaeus
Polybus. After this the stockman hit Ctesippus in the breast, and
taunted him saying, “Foul-mouthed son of Polytherses, do not be so
foolish as to talk wickedly another time, but let heaven direct your
speech, for the gods are far stronger than men. I make you a present
of this advice to repay you for the foot which you gave Ulysses when
he was begging about in his own house.”
  Thus spoke the stockman, and Ulysses struck the son of Damastor with
a spear in close fight, while Telemachus hit Leocritus son of Evenor
in the belly, and the dart went clean through him, so that he fell
forward full on his face upon the ground. Then Minerva from her seat
on the rafter held up her deadly aegis, and the hearts of the
suitors quailed. They fled to the other end of the court like a herd
of cattle maddened by the gadfly in early summer when the days are
at their longest. As eagle-beaked, crook-taloned vultures from the
mountains swoop down on the smaller birds that cower in flocks upon
the ground, and **** them, for they cannot either fight or fly, and
lookers on enjoy the sport—even so did Ulysses and his men fall
upon the suitors and smite them on every side. They made a horrible
groaning as their brains were being battered in, and the ground
seethed with their blood.
  Leiodes then caught the knees of Ulysses and said, “Ulysses I
beseech you have mercy upon me and spare me. I never wronged any of
the women in your house either in word or deed, and I tried to stop
the others. I saw them, but they would not listen, and now they are
paying for their folly. I was their sacrificing priest; if you ****
me, I shall die without having done anything to deserve it, and
shall have got no thanks for all the good that I did.”
  Ulysses looked sternly at him and answered, “If you were their
sacrificing priest, you must have prayed many a time that it might
be long before I got home again, and that you might marry my wife
and have children by her. Therefore you shall die.”
  With these words he picked up the sword that Agelaus had dropped
when he was being killed, and which was lying upon the ground. Then he
struck Leiodes on the back of his neck, so that his head fell
rolling in the dust while he was yet speaking.
  The minstrel Phemius son of Terpes—he who had been forced by the
suitors to sing to them—now tried to save his life. He was standing
near towards the trap door, and held his lyre in his hand. He did
not know whether to fly out of the cloister and sit down by the
altar of Jove that was in the outer court, and on which both Laertes
Erika Castaldo Dec 2015
An invisible noose
Was around my
Neck
When you told
Me you didn’t
Want me.

You couldn’t tell
How hard it
Pulled on my
Throat
When you walked
Away.

I held onto
The rope choking
Me
When I seen
You everyday
And had to
Pretend nothing ever
Existed between
Us.

The stool slipped
From beneath my
Feet
When I watched
You staring at her
Until you got
The courage to
Ask her
Out.

I swung from
The rope
While I seen
You place a
Ring on her
Finger.
In memoriam
C. T. W.
Sometime trooper of the Royal Horse Guards
obiit H.M. prison, Reading, Berkshire
July 7, 1896

I

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.

I walked, with other souls in pain,
Within another ring,
And was wondering if the man had done
A great or little thing,
When a voice behind me whispered low,
‘That fellow’s got to swing.’

Dear Christ! the very prison walls
Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky above my head became
Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain,
My pain I could not feel.

I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved,
And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some **** their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

He does not die a death of shame
On a day of dark disgrace,
Nor have a noose about his neck,
Nor a cloth upon his face,
Nor drop feet foremost through the floor
Into an empty space.

He does not sit with silent men
Who watch him night and day;
Who watch him when he tries to weep,
And when he tries to pray;
Who watch him lest himself should rob
The prison of its prey.

He does not wake at dawn to see
Dread figures throng his room,
The shivering Chaplain robed in white,
The Sheriff stern with gloom,
And the Governor all in shiny black,
With the yellow face of Doom.

He does not rise in piteous haste
To put on convict-clothes,
While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats,
and notes
Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
******* a watch whose little ticks
Are like horrible hammer-blows.

He does not know that sickening thirst
That sands one’s throat, before
The hangman with his gardener’s gloves
Slips through the padded door,
And binds one with three leathern thongs,
That the throat may thirst no more.

He does not bend his head to hear
The Burial Office read,
Nor, while the terror of his soul
Tells him he is not dead,
Cross his own coffin, as he moves
Into the hideous shed.

He does not stare upon the air
Through a little roof of glass:
He does not pray with lips of clay
For his agony to pass;
Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek
The kiss of Caiaphas.

II

Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard,
In the suit of shabby grey:
His cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay,
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every wandering cloud that trailed
Its ravelled fleeces by.

He did not wring his hands, as do
Those witless men who dare
To try to rear the changeling Hope
In the cave of black Despair:
He only looked upon the sun,
And drank the morning air.

He did not wring his hands nor weep,
Nor did he peek or pine,
But he drank the air as though it held
Some healthful anodyne;
With open mouth he drank the sun
As though it had been wine!

And I and all the souls in pain,
Who tramped the other ring,
Forgot if we ourselves had done
A great or little thing,
And watched with gaze of dull amaze
The man who had to swing.

And strange it was to see him pass
With a step so light and gay,
And strange it was to see him look
So wistfully at the day,
And strange it was to think that he
Had such a debt to pay.

For oak and elm have pleasant leaves
That in the springtime shoot:
But grim to see is the gallows-tree,
With its adder-bitten root,
And, green or dry, a man must die
Before it bears its fruit!

The loftiest place is that seat of grace
For which all worldlings try:
But who would stand in hempen band
Upon a scaffold high,
And through a murderer’s collar take
His last look at the sky?

It is sweet to dance to violins
When Love and Life are fair:
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
Is delicate and rare:
But it is not sweet with nimble feet
To dance upon the air!

So with curious eyes and sick surmise
We watched him day by day,
And wondered if each one of us
Would end the self-same way,
For none can tell to what red Hell
His sightless soul may stray.

At last the dead man walked no more
Amongst the Trial Men,
And I knew that he was standing up
In the black dock’s dreadful pen,
And that never would I see his face
In God’s sweet world again.

Like two doomed ships that pass in storm
We had crossed each other’s way:
But we made no sign, we said no word,
We had no word to say;
For we did not meet in the holy night,
But in the shameful day.

A prison wall was round us both,
Two outcast men we were:
The world had ****** us from its heart,
And God from out His care:
And the iron gin that waits for Sin
Had caught us in its snare.

III

In Debtors’ Yard the stones are hard,
And the dripping wall is high,
So it was there he took the air
Beneath the leaden sky,
And by each side a Warder walked,
For fear the man might die.

Or else he sat with those who watched
His anguish night and day;
Who watched him when he rose to weep,
And when he crouched to pray;
Who watched him lest himself should rob
Their scaffold of its prey.

The Governor was strong upon
The Regulations Act:
The Doctor said that Death was but
A scientific fact:
And twice a day the Chaplain called,
And left a little tract.

And twice a day he smoked his pipe,
And drank his quart of beer:
His soul was resolute, and held
No hiding-place for fear;
He often said that he was glad
The hangman’s hands were near.

But why he said so strange a thing
No Warder dared to ask:
For he to whom a watcher’s doom
Is given as his task,
Must set a lock upon his lips,
And make his face a mask.

Or else he might be moved, and try
To comfort or console:
And what should Human Pity do
Pent up in Murderers’ Hole?
What word of grace in such a place
Could help a brother’s soul?

With slouch and swing around the ring
We trod the Fools’ Parade!
We did not care:  we knew we were
The Devil’s Own Brigade:
And shaven head and feet of lead
Make a merry masquerade.

We tore the tarry rope to shreds
With blunt and bleeding nails;
We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,
And cleaned the shining rails:
And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,
And clattered with the pails.

We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
We turned the dusty drill:
We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
And sweated on the mill:
But in the heart of every man
Terror was lying still.

So still it lay that every day
Crawled like a ****-clogged wave:
And we forgot the bitter lot
That waits for fool and knave,
Till once, as we tramped in from work,
We passed an open grave.

With yawning mouth the yellow hole
Gaped for a living thing;
The very mud cried out for blood
To the thirsty asphalte ring:
And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair
Some prisoner had to swing.

Right in we went, with soul intent
On Death and Dread and Doom:
The hangman, with his little bag,
Went shuffling through the gloom:
And each man trembled as he crept
Into his numbered tomb.

That night the empty corridors
Were full of forms of Fear,
And up and down the iron town
Stole feet we could not hear,
And through the bars that hide the stars
White faces seemed to peer.

He lay as one who lies and dreams
In a pleasant meadow-land,
The watchers watched him as he slept,
And could not understand
How one could sleep so sweet a sleep
With a hangman close at hand.

But there is no sleep when men must weep
Who never yet have wept:
So we—the fool, the fraud, the knave—
That endless vigil kept,
And through each brain on hands of pain
Another’s terror crept.

Alas! it is a fearful thing
To feel another’s guilt!
For, right within, the sword of Sin
Pierced to its poisoned hilt,
And as molten lead were the tears we shed
For the blood we had not spilt.

The Warders with their shoes of felt
Crept by each padlocked door,
And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,
Grey figures on the floor,
And wondered why men knelt to pray
Who never prayed before.

All through the night we knelt and prayed,
Mad mourners of a corse!
The troubled plumes of midnight were
The plumes upon a hearse:
And bitter wine upon a sponge
Was the savour of Remorse.

The grey **** crew, the red **** crew,
But never came the day:
And crooked shapes of Terror crouched,
In the corners where we lay:
And each evil sprite that walks by night
Before us seemed to play.

They glided past, they glided fast,
Like travellers through a mist:
They mocked the moon in a rigadoon
Of delicate turn and twist,
And with formal pace and loathsome grace
The phantoms kept their tryst.

With mop and mow, we saw them go,
Slim shadows hand in hand:
About, about, in ghostly rout
They trod a saraband:
And the ****** grotesques made arabesques,
Like the wind upon the sand!

With the pirouettes of marionettes,
They tripped on pointed tread:
But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear,
As their grisly masque they led,
And loud they sang, and long they sang,
For they sang to wake the dead.

‘Oho!’ they cried, ‘The world is wide,
But fettered limbs go lame!
And once, or twice, to throw the dice
Is a gentlemanly game,
But he does not win who plays with Sin
In the secret House of Shame.’

No things of air these antics were,
That frolicked with such glee:
To men whose lives were held in gyves,
And whose feet might not go free,
Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things,
Most terrible to see.

Around, around, they waltzed and wound;
Some wheeled in smirking pairs;
With the mincing step of a demirep
Some sidled up the stairs:
And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,
Each helped us at our prayers.

The morning wind began to moan,
But still the night went on:
Through its giant loom the web of gloom
Crept till each thread was spun:
And, as we prayed, we grew afraid
Of the Justice of the Sun.

The moaning wind went wandering round
The weeping prison-wall:
Till like a wheel of turning steel
We felt the minutes crawl:
O moaning wind! what had we done
To have such a seneschal?

At last I saw the shadowed bars,
Like a lattice wrought in lead,
Move right across the whitewashed wall
That faced my three-plank bed,
And I knew that somewhere in the world
God’s dreadful dawn was red.

At six o’clock we cleaned our cells,
At seven all was still,
But the sough and swing of a mighty wing
The prison seemed to fill,
For the Lord of Death with icy breath
Had entered in to ****.

He did not pass in purple pomp,
Nor ride a moon-white steed.
Three yards of cord and a sliding board
Are all the gallows’ need:
So with rope of shame the Herald came
To do the secret deed.

We were as men who through a fen
Of filthy darkness *****:
We did not dare to breathe a prayer,
Or to give our anguish scope:
Something was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope.

For Man’s grim Justice goes its way,
And will not swerve aside:
It slays the weak, it slays the strong,
It has a deadly stride:
With iron heel it slays the strong,
The monstrous parricide!

We waited for the stroke of eight:
Each tongue was thick with thirst:
For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate
That makes a man accursed,
And Fate will use a running noose
For the best man and the worst.

We had no other thing to do,
Save to wait for the sign to come:
So, like things of stone in a valley lone,
Quiet we sat and dumb:
But each man’s heart beat thick and quick,
Like a madman on a drum!

With sudden shock the prison-clock
Smote on the shivering air,
And from all the gaol rose up a wail
Of impotent despair,
Like the sound that frightened marshes hear
From some ***** in his lair.

And as one sees most fearful things
In the crystal of a dream,
We saw the greasy hempen rope
Hooked to the blackened beam,
And heard the prayer the hangman’s snare
Strangled into a scream.

And all the woe that moved him so
That he gave that bitter cry,
And the wild regrets, and the ****** sweats,
None knew so well as I:
For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.

IV

There is no chapel on the day
On which they hang a man:
The Chaplain’s heart is far too sick,
Or his face is far too wan,
Or there is that written in his eyes
Which none should look upon.

So they kept us close till nigh on noon,
And then they rang the bell,
And the Warders with their jingling keys
Opened each listening cell,
And down the iron stair we tramped,
Each from his separate Hell.

Out into God’s sweet air we went,
But not in wonted way,
For this man’s face was white with fear,
And that man’s face was grey,
And I never saw sad men who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw sad men who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
We prisoners called the sky,
And at every careless cloud that passed
In happy freedom by.

But there were those amongst us all
Who walked with downcast head,
And knew that, had each got his due,
They should have died instead:
He had but killed a thing that lived,
Whilst they had killed the dead.

For he who sins a second time
Wakes a dead soul to pain,
And draws it from its spotted shroud,
And makes it bleed again,
And makes it bleed great gouts of blood,
And makes it bleed in vain!

Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb
With crooked arrows starred,
Silently we went round and round
The slippery asphalte yard;
Silently we went round and round,
And no man spoke a word.

Silently we went round and round,
And through each hollow mind
The Memory of dreadful things
Rushed like a dreadful wind,
And Horror stalked before each man,
And Terror crept behind.

The Warders strutted up and down,
And kept their herd of brutes,
Their uniforms were ***** and span,
And they wore their Sunday suits,
But we knew the work they had been at,
By the quicklime on their boots.

For where a grave had opened wide,
There was no grave at all:
Only a stretch of mud and sand
By the hideous prison-wall,
And a little heap of burning lime,
That the man should have his pall.

For he has a pall, this wretched man,
Such as few men can claim:
Deep down below a prison-yard,
Naked for greater shame,
He lies, with fetters on each foot,
Wrapt in a sheet of flame!

And all the while the burning lime
Eats flesh and bone away,
It eats the brittle bone by night,
And the soft flesh by day,
It eats the flesh and bone by turns,
But it eats the heart alway.

For three long years they will not sow
Or root or seedling there:
For three long years the unblessed spot
Will sterile be and bare,
And look upon the wondering sky
With unreproachful stare.

They think a murderer’s heart would taint
Each simple seed they sow.
It is not true!  God’s kindly earth
Is kindlier than men know,
And the red rose would but blow more red,
The white rose whiter blow.

Out of his mouth a red, red rose!
Out of his heart a white!
For who can say by what strange way,
Christ brings His will to light,
Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore
Bloomed in the great Pope’s sight?

But neither milk-white rose nor red
May bloom in prison-air;
The shard, the pebble, and the flint,
Are what they give us there:
For flowers have been known to heal
A common man’s despair.

So never will wine-red rose or white,
Petal by petal, fall
On that stretch of mud and sand that lies
By the hideous prison-wall,
To tell the men who ***** the yard
That God’s Son died for all.

Yet though the hideous prison-wall
Still hems him round and round,
And a spirit may not walk by night
That is with fetters bound,
And a spirit may but weep that lies
In such unholy ground,

He is at peace—this wretched man—
At peace, or will be soon:
There is no thing to m
Skaidrum Jun 2015
.
Ancient games
tell tales of dust.  |||   A story drawn
from the lips of two poets.



~~~~~


It's the wits that ****, not Queens of ivory or ink. *
Charged with
coal strokes, scraping up the lies.
Pawns & Knights slip between the grasp of the sun, leaking into
   lion jaws of Leo.
Shifting these granite plates, ignoring the Rooks common price of aslant.
Here we have slain kin, crescent traitors that backstab the night and battlefield.
Closed doors and trap floors, trade me a tie, swindling your tactic ruts.
Reality never got the noose around our necks, check turned into manslaughter, and kingdoms ripped asunder by the roar of Jupiter
Get up, get up, get away from these liars, they can't have your rank or your fire.
Peak a notion, this match is spared by a luft.
Toss away the pride buried 'neath your dusty skin, it don't matter no more if   death has you by the lips.
Silence is a language too in our eyes of earth.
Take my hand, knott your soul into this downfall, and brace yourself for the wreckage in our bones.
The Sword of Sorrows will fall 'pon your shoulders, not to slay thee, but to dub thee a new day.
The drums of war will knit the lyrics in the sky,
singing:
"The mighty sharpen their fangs, the weak sharpen their wisdom"
~~~~~
I'm tired of your wishbones, and golden scales, give me the hard-earned truth.
Hot coals of honesty may you tread upon, shadow-bitten remorseful may you be, don't stray off the course of Ursa major.
The North star isn't the one I follow
It's the moon with all of it's phases,
Eclipsing and crescent, tipping the sky with it's beauty.
Now let this sink further than any soul has ever sunk,
no man could ever
rule the moon.
~~~~~~
Shoot on command,
C
h    
      e
c  
      k
m
a
t      
e

~~~~
You could drag me to hell and back and those words wouldn't mean anything.
Let this downfall become a *downfell,

Because last I checked
"Wolves worship the moon"
and I have broke it's reflection in the water
Just
by
throwing
s                    
t          
o
         n
                 e
                              s
                               ­        .

.
A collab between
The Dragon Prince & Skaidrum.

I'll give most credit to
Kalum here.

© Copywrite The Dragon Prince & Skaidrum
d n Feb 2013
the day ends, dusk approaches
i sit across from a glaring monitor.
eyes glazed over, mind aflutter.
information streams into my brain in waves
(only some of it managing to stick).
i try my hardest to soak it up, and to let it wash over me,
wash my troubles away.
in a way, instead of bottling my trouble,
i wrap my shaking hands around it forcefully
plunging its head under the murky water
to muffle the yet inescapable drone that follows me
(but it won't give up the ghost
and my arms get tired sooner than stress will set me
alight from my cage).

see, i've had this
unshakeable
feeling lately.
between the hi's, hello's, and how do you do's
this sense of incredible, indelible
dread
looms over me like a weight.
beneath the paper mache mask of humor,
avoidance of heavy topics,
and general gleam that is the man everyone knows of me,
there's a boy
and he's confused, having feelings he's never had before
wondering things and asking questions,
experiencing things that he never read of in health textbooks,
attachments, bias, beliefs, respect, and fear of failure,
learning things the hard way that he never would have expected
(having read only about mockingbirds and shakespeare).
he bottles these thoughts and doesn't know where to put them,
scrambling to pick up the pieces in a flush of embarrassment,
hoping no one will call him out as the
******.
("what? no! i got 100% on this test because i bs'd it so hard. i'd never actually try.
what am i? a
loser?")
he's alone and he's
stressing, calculating, hoping, dreaming, loving, hating, lusting, wailing, and
teetering on the edge of the precipice of the
abyss that
whispers
softly, soothing, sultry.

but the tricky part isn't the looming weight,
nor the calling and the teetering;
i could almost bear its press on my shoulders almost to the point of breaking
or the tremble accompanied by a height that i couldn't possibly comprehend.
but some nights
it,
(and i mean this
dread)
it,
twists above me and wraps around my neck.
and what scares me most of all is that sometimes it feels
comfortable
like a breath of air escaping from the very furthest corner of my lungs.
or a promise,
a secret panic door
with the key to a lock that i know i'd never open.
it coils around me like a noose attached to nothingness.
2/13/2013
12:30 am
Greyisntwell Feb 2023
The Knot-The Noose

Withering like the leaves on the tree
Falling down to the ground they too
Thought they were to be free.

I climb through the hurt
I run through the dirt
A deep breath in
I scream, you won't win!

Three knots tied together like a noose
One knot for the mind
One knot for the body
One knot for the soul

Dissembling, letting them go
Of those things that influenced me so.
No longer have their hold
The noose of hatred let's me go.
It's grasp no longer there.

A deep breath in
I scream, is this what it's like to finally win?

As within
So without
These walls are crumbling
I believe in myself
That there is no doubt.
I recently wrote this, I'm very proud of it.
Bryce Aug 2018
A normal kind of guy
Just the guy
No cosmologist
Sans Christian
******* the droplet suns
Distant in the blackened sky

Gotta 'and'er some
The bristled gristle
The cryogenic iris
Steel teeth gnashing
Right-toe left
Ardent in an autobiography

Good man
Soft man

Locomoted his GMC
to the Sea
Thought maybe
With precise aim he
could undertow away
paradise.

No pick-me-ups
In copper-channels
That Ionized the pick-up-truck
With archaea iron
that ugly duck
Reminiscent of the man
In all but--

A castaway
Stowaway
The man who never hesitates
Bop upon the interstate
Lost within
concritical maze

Shoring up
Going home
Giving up
Turned to stone
Marble chin
Solumn grin
Chlidren sing
Seeking wings
How'd he know
Where to go
Will he see
What it means?

He's the guy
The one with the lollipop lap
Licking the syrup off the lip
Of a sweet polished sapphire
Gin
And the kids
My god
They think he
ODYSSEUS
And his dog not yet
Dead but depressive in the gloom
Howling into the midnight grass
And the creatures that stalk
With their ******* youth

Soon their weight will hit the deck
And like a noose,
Break the joints
The planks of which would stress
And bend his eyes upon his head.

God willing
Should he be exhumed
His energies excape to the river
And float,
Penultimate,
into the sea.
DaSH the Hopeful Jul 2014
Too ****** to care
Id ask you to pull up a chair
But nothing round heres stable anymore
Id talk for a bit
If i had much to say
But i let it out on the wall and the floor

And now im bathing in the smoke
The dim light all set up to choke me
And i still dont feel a ******* thing
I never cared about commitment cause no one taught me what it meant
But i know it doesn't involve a ring

And now im too ****** to care
Looking worse for the wear
I feel like im everywhere but with you

This love is a noose
More comfortable than any
Bed that i could lay in with anyone else
But i cant sleep at night because theres things in my mind 
I'm afraid to ask of myself
Terry O'Leary Mar 2016
The typewriters tap,
with a rat-a-tat-tat,
like a fourth estate rap
to provide us the pap
(that serves as a snack with a rat-a-tat-tat)
in a newspaper scrap
crammed with meaningless crap
from the editor's yap
(spewing flimflamy flak, booming rat-a-tat-tat)
after gashing a gap
in the daily recap
with a snip in a snap-
sounding thundery clap
crackng rat-a-tat-tat and a rat-a-tat-tat.

And the talking heads speak
with a rat-a-tat-tat,
of the news of the week,
tweaking tongue in the cheek
(with a click and a clack like a rat-a-tat-tat),
thus ignoring critique
'cause they're mild and too meek
in the midst of the reek
to report of the wrack (except rat-a-tat-tat)
whilst the pundits (oblique
when protecting the chic
of the upper class clique
at the top of the peak)
chatter rat-a-tat-tat and a rat-a-tat-tat.

The NRA ghouls
plug a rat-a-tat-tat
while their blood money tools
fill the Hill’s vestibules
(where deceit behind drapes drips a rat-a-tat-tat),
spreading folly that fuels
frenzied hands of young fools
bringing guns into schools
(at the drop of a hat there's a rat-a-tat-tat
splashing blood in warm pools)
for now anarchy rules
(which the hype ridicules
'til the temperature cools)
hailing rat-a-tat-tat and a rat-a-tat-tat.

Lawless cops, cutting loose
with a rat-a-tat-tat
spraying bullets profuse
without any excuse
(just a split second splat with a rat-a-tat-tat),
splay a rattled recluse
like a Thanksgiving goose
gushing cranberry juice
from six slugs in the back (with a rat-a-tat-tat).
To redress such abuse,
bend the branch of a spruce
with a neck in a noose
while Death's drums beat diffuse’
rolling rat-a-tat-tat and a rat-a-tat-tat.

War brings freedom to all
with a rat-a-tat-tat
(well, excluding the thrall
with fear, facing the wall
[ often smacked with a bat, throbbing rat-a-tat-tat ],
until feeling the call
to creep out of the kraal
biting back with a gall
[ with a *** for a tat and a rat-a-tat-tat ],
or to mangle and maul
if still able to crawl
and be part of the brawl
in a freak free-for-all,
midst a rat-a-tat-tat and a rat-a-tat-tat).

Holy warmongers praise,
with a rat-a-tat-tat,
any soldier that slays
and all rockets that raze
(the drones zoom with a vroom and a rat-a-tat-tat)
leaving smoky arrays
of gray ghosts in the haze
cloaking mute cabarets
(hushed, the hip and the hop, by the rat-a-tat-tat)
while ol’ Cerberus bays
with mankind in his gaze,
so society prays  
as it rots and decays
(Satan's trumpets of doom blare a rat-a-tat-tat)
until one of these days
in a flash through the maze
mighty mushrooms will blaze
with invisible  rays,
fin’lly braising the craze
of the rat-a-tat-tat,
   and the
            rat-
                 a-
                    tat-
                          tat.
"You speak to me of narcissism but I reply that it is
a matter of my life" - Artaud

"At this time let me somehow bequeath all the leftovers
to my daughters and their daughters" - Anonymous

Better,
despite the worms talking to
the mare's hoof in the field;
better,
despite the season of young girls
dropping their blood;
better somehow
to drop myself quickly
into an old room.
Better (someone said)
not to be born
and far better
not to be born twice
at thirteen
where the boardinghouse,
each year a bedroom,
caught fire.

Dear friend,
I will have to sink with hundreds of others
on a dumbwaiter into hell.
I will be a light thing.
I will enter death
like someone's lost optical lens.
Life is half enlarged.
The fish and owls are fierce today.
Life tilts backward and forward.
Even the wasps cannot find my eyes.

Yes,
eyes that were immediate once.
Eyes that have been truly awake,
eyes that told the whole story-
poor dumb animals.
Eyes that were pierced,
little nail heads,
light blue gunshots.

And once with
a mouth like a cup,
clay colored or blood colored,
open like the breakwater
for the lost ocean
and open like the noose
for the first head.

Once upon a time
my hunger was for Jesus.
O my hunger! My hunger!
Before he grew old
he rode calmly into Jerusalem
in search of death.

This time
I certainly
do not ask for understanding
and yet I hope everyone else
will turn their heads when an unrehearsed fish jumps
on the surface of Echo Lake;
when moonlight,
its bass note turned up loud,
hurts some building in Boston,
when the truly beautiful lie together.
I think of this, surely,
and would think of it far longer
if I were not... if I were not
at that old fire.

I could admit
that I am only a coward
crying me me me
and not mention the little gnats, the moths,
forced by circumstance
to **** on the electric bulb.
But surely you know that everyone has a death,
his own death,
waiting for him.
So I will go now
without old age or disease,
wildly but accurately,
knowing my best route,
carried by that toy donkey I rode all these years,
never asking, "Where are we going?"
We were riding (if I'd only known)
to this.

Dear friend,
please do not think
that I visualize guitars playing
or my father arching his bone.
I do not even expect my mother's mouth.
I know that I have died before-
once in November, once in June.
How strange to choose June again,
so concrete with its green ******* and bellies.
Of course guitars will not play!
The snakes will certainly not notice.
New York City will not mind.
At night the bats will beat on the trees,
knowing it all,
seeing what they sensed all day.
Alaina Moore Mar 2019
Being empathic is like having a noose around your neck.
Yet never knowing when someone will decide to drop the floor.
Leaving you hanging.
Mr Vampire Feb 2014
You tied this noose around my neck
And don't you ever forget
As you never dripped a drop of sweat
Or showed any sign of regret
Acting as if you were never any threat
Whispering deathless words below your breathe
Constantly reminding me how great it was with Seth
Your trap was finally set
To have me more addictive to you than ****
Guess you are going to win your bet
No longer will you have to me address
Now that you have me begging for sudden death
Rebel Against Rebellion
I have nothing to prove
No creeds, no doctrine to upkeep
We all have so much freedom when we close our eyes
And just think
Maybe you need to humble yourself enough
To lose
Rebel Against Rebellion
Because they're all just books
Your sword is looking pretty dull sir
Why are you so inclined to hurt?
Thought your prophet preached LOVE?
So repeat words
Choose what you choose
Choose wisely
Because soon the snake will stop his hissing
Constrict
And become your noose
Rebel Against Rebellion
I think I'll call your bluff
I bleed, I sin, I'll die
But I'm not feeling hot standing here
So tell me again why I should be afraid
Of my fleet mortal life?
Rebel Against Rebellion
Because a Sheppard leads a flock
But you never followed
Your a goat
Caught in your lies
Bureaucracy, Democracy
Man it's all a joke
A silly excuse
Rules, the sacrum of man's brain
Your doctrine is becoming lame
And your beliefs more insane
Coliseum
A game to play to make you so entertained
Please write another rule
Prove once again
The medium you choose is jewels
You fool
Rebel Against Rebellion
Why would I cut my brother short?
Because of appearance and all your silly rules
So many when uttered I choke
For all we know life itself a joke

Oh the irony
What began as unity
Became bowing down
To man's hierarchy
So I Rebel Against Rebellion
I'm a servant of no man
I know God has a plan
That over cries your silly fear
Unravels your vines
Your words
Agenda and
"Time"
Again my portfolio is at www.eugene-moon.weebly.com
Lauren R May 2016
Bow Tie Noose

I saw you die in mid-January. Your caramel eyes rolled back white like ****** hard candies when you hanged yourself with the bow and bell I tied around your neck. I want to lay you down in a coffin made for kittens, old shoebox turned grave. I'll wrap your wrists in silk, cover your eyes with your hands, let guilt leap out of your mouth with a quiet gaseous slipping pop, death swelling your stomach just above your jutting ribs. This is the fullest you've looked since eighth grade, you've been starving and your blood is all drained. I'll put you under the only living thing to weep for you, a sad old willow tree. She's on her last leg and I guess, so are we. It will be summer, fresh lemonade. Shooting rabbits from the back of a pick up truck, ******* the blood from a pin hole in the neck. Dad likes them dry by July.

I'll watch flowers grow in place of cardboard. I'll remember your tiny birdy bones in your hands and see them melting to the flesh of your eyelids, nature taking you back to melted wax figure. Your teeth are more recognizable than your face.

When winter comes again, you'll wash up in the spring and the police will wonder who did this. I'll pluck a bone from inside your eye socket where it fell to rest. I'll look at your clothes, the new skin over your bones, it's all the same. Your cheeks aren't so smiley now that you're not in there to scare yourself into happiness. At least you won't be lying while lying in a grave, I'll keep your bones in the drawer with your letters and the police dogs won't smell a thing.
Winter is a cold cold thing
Kimberly Seibert Aug 2014
He tied the knot, but this wasn't done at the altar.
Hung himself out to dry, though he could never fault her.
Paraphrasing something so sacred doesn't keep you warm.
Teetering crooked floorboards, dictating the noose that's formed.
A deity could never die no matter how many times he hangs his head.
But you were never holy disappearing with the dead.

— The End —