"outmoded" poems
∴
A signifying monkey grunted
(keyboard-clever, morals stunted)
from his perch in a digital tree.
And next, did text (quite rapidly):
“Courtship rituals won’t suffice.
Face-to-face can’t break the ice.
Instagram me! Tweet me up . . .
friend me, like me, buttercup.
Sentences are so outmoded—
take too long to get decoded;
primate sexting hits me faster,
steers me towards your hot disaster.
Female monkeys: send an image.
(Ain’t got time for useless verbiage…)
if your snout just might unseat me
tweet me, greet me—don’t delete me.”
Then, unpeeling fresh banana,
searched his screen for Vox Humana. . .
Sep 11, 2015
Sep 11, 2015 at 10:07 PM UTC
i see the words floating on
message boards or perched
upon the lips of jocular hypocrites
double-standards that demand
sensual chastity and virginal sexuality
in endless iterations of irony
the concussive
monosyllabic words
slung like stones
cast like arrows
****
*****
*****
all labels for
women possessed of
the courage to pursue
their own passion
once upon a time a
Nazarene insisted a ********** had
more integrity than a rich
statesman throwing self-serving parties
so tell me why so
many Christian politicians
propagate patriarchal notions of depravity
in blanket attempts to regulate
the bodies of women
if being anti-choice was really
about preventing abortions
why do rich right-wing conservative
Republicans spend all their time
and money picketing free clinics
when the solution lies in comprehensive
****** education universal healthcare
complimentary birth control
and comprehensive child support
don't dare use the reprehensible
rhetoric of pro-life unless you're
at once anti-war
and anti-death penalty
riddle me this
what pray tell is the
difference between a jealous
religious misogynist
and a secular sexist
it's rather simple actually
while the former bases his
slut-shaming on the edicts of
a two thousand year old letter to
the Corinthians inconspicuously
sandwiched between a celebration of
love and a section on speaking in tongues
the latter’s learned behavior is
birthed by a hyper-masculine culture
grounded in dominance
either way we await the day
when wild women raze
these ideologies
with torches before
rising like phoenixes
from the ashes of
decimated passages
dismissed by intellectuals
as archaic and outmoded
deaf blind and dumb to
the vestiges of modernity
that sap unscientific
philosophies of their potency
and render them utterly obsolete
in their wake
these proud women
erase the hate
from words like
****
*****
*****
and reclaim equality
with a far more
comprehensive term
feminist
Sep 27, 2015
Sep 27, 2015 at 11:50 PM UTC
On my way to work,
Whenever I pass through
The Holy Trinity church,
After a brief prayer,
The tombstone of a martyr
My eyes never fail to search
As his eulogies sensitive cords
Are sure to touch!
I admire
The tombstone’s design
A flickering torch,
Whose tongue
Is the martyr ’s statue,
That talks loud his virtue!
“Holy Trinity
Till I crossed the river of death
Allegedly, striped of my health,
Poisoned by evil doers,
Who hanker
By unfair means
To amass wealth,
I had been
A public servant
Adherent to my faith! ”
“Holy Trinity
To abide by
Your commandment-
Don’t steal-
Was my desire
Also to pull out millions
From poverty’s quagmire.
Across the board development
Working better than one's best
Efficient resource utilization
Also drew my attention! "
“Holy Trinity
A generation
To corruption averse
Is all-out
The bad scenario
In my country
To reverse.
A generation for
A developmental ******
That has lust.
I have come to understand
The coming up of
Many a lass and lad,
Whose rights that demand
I need no more reward,
When in front of you
This way I stand
Justice to demand! ”
Children of Oromia,
Ethiopia’s elephantine branch,
You have to detach
Your state, your country
From the impudent
And the corrupt
That still exercise
The outmoded
Colonizers’
Divide and rule
As a fool .
A corruption fighter
Development’s workforce
Is also a hero
Like Ethiopia’s
Valorous and dear sons
Balcha Abanefso
Geresu Duke,Abdisa Aga
And Jagama Kelo.
Children of Oromia
Giving to divisive guys
A deaf ear,
You should hold your
Country Ethiopia,
A cradle of mankind
And civilization, dear
Do not forget
Adding up
Is the current road map
Evil doers
Killing a hero
Could not bring
The change drive
To zero.
As a poet what I can say
“Evil doers
Stop to opt for
Devilish way!
But if you
Keeping going astray
You will go
To the grave in
Ignominious way!”//
Jul 26, 2018
Jul 26, 2018 at 7:09 AM UTC
Dolly, Dolly, Dolly
you made the headlines again
Dolly, Dolly, Dolly
what would we do
without you?
Dolly, Dolly, Dolly
the paragon of generations
the backbone of industry
Dolly, Dolly, Dolly
you paved the way
and let us build so much
trapped as we were
in the cycle of birth and death
as life begets life
but now we’ve got you
Dolly, Dolly, Dolly
progress no longer bound by life
Dolly, Dolly, Dolly
that’s the name we gave you
the mother of multitudes
Dolly, Dolly, Dolly
praise to you who killed death!
and you who outmoded birth!
Dolly, Dolly, Dolly
never able to comprehend
what we gained from your life
oh, all the familiar faces!
of all the cows in the fields
of all the pigs in their pens
of all the people on the street
the solidarity is striking!
and it’s all thanks to you
Dolly, Dolly, Dolly
Aug 12, 2015
Aug 12, 2015 at 5:13 AM UTC
Maiden, maiden, maiden, a depilidate mobious minaret –
Holical, Eris begs an atlatl defection, the
Genuis-from-Mars technique – an erathicus lecanopteris.
Suffretex, past-perfection in pastel gloxinia,
Glowingly acidic and shiftingly glossidic, it’s cosmaltry mariala;
Ungual outmoded, holonym singing Aquilar rapax as demiurge.
Demos and Phobos weep, coruscating terrathos, killing riva.
Swell quickly, optic ophidia, lest the ira florena rise –
Rise, maiden, rise optic ophidia, ignore Irredelphine!
Strut the hematacolpa and pace-willow, but fail flow:
Deciduous telechir beckons, demanding autobogotic-hajra.
Piss-venom and picea hovea, eche verri naught echo –
Beta-decay and COBOL error, fandango with teeth
And sing praise for Eucladanic soignè solaris
Sprint quick, maiden-solidago gesparisè, to Misra pourum!
Majerns and hapax, death-knell aloud and encelia,
Enfloranè, haste! Enatic haste tichodrome, flee, anise!
Apios, harken: tryst-sans-thermobic sweeping of thresher-thrown,
Little-low else yet achroma, de-jubilance:
Fall fairly, ayah! So to be so, blanking systemic,
A thousand steps for one death.
Jul 4, 2010
Jul 4, 2010 at 12:25 PM UTC
In West Virginia they dig tunnels or a great big hole,
to extricate from Mother Earth the substance known as coal.
For centuries the coal was burned and smoke would fill the air,
but coal became outmoded and demand's no longer there.
So many miners were laid off as mines did stall or close,
and in Coal Country incomes dropped and unemployment rose.
But Donald Trump made promises to fix the miners' strife,
by saying he'd bring Old King Coal a-roaring back to life.
So Trump reduced the regulations that bring jail or fines
for harm to the environment from power plants or mines.
But all this is irrelevant - Trump has no magic spell
to make the world want coal again. To whom will these mines sell?
Trump may as well have promised to bring back the horse and cart;
for tinkers, whalers, schooner sailors, a rich and brand new start.
For Trump will promise anything and sell his very soul.
Next Christmas his reward should be... a big old lump of coal.
Apr 1, 2017
Apr 1, 2017 at 7:14 PM UTC
the invisible hand is in my pocket
pilfering everything
and there's nothing i can do
to stop it from robbing me blind
it does not guide it only destroys
personal expression under the
whims of an outmoded model of economics
capitalism
a philosophy that subscribes
to the metaphysical conclusion
that a spiritual malady
plagues every human heart
a harsh chorus that rings like a melody
of triumph in the multi-million dollar
mansions of the 1%
convinced we're born selfish
it seeks to reward us for our own malpractice
an edict predicated on social darwinism
that forestalls the possibility of future charity
as it drowns in the throes
of misanthropy and butchers any hope
of philanthropic community or basic humanity
to vanquish our more maleficent impulses
relegated to paying taxes
to ensure the illusion of security
while our money finances endless
war and police brutality rather than
healthcare or education
they know if they keep us sick and dumb
they can get away with ******
if the population shirks in horror
from the looming specter of terrorism
they can justify ubiquitous surveillance
that robs us of our right to
self-determination but
people should not be afraid of their governments
governments should be afraid of their people
they say we can't be trusted
that this is for our own good
but i'll call their bluff that
bull on Wall St. is full of ****
and like a matador i'll entice it to
lower its horns and charge
when itsjust a hairsbreadth away
i'll turn to one side and let it skewer
the slave-driver raising his whip behind me
that same skulking shadow that turns
veterans into homeless wanderers begging
for loose change in Central Park
a pale horse haunting the aspirations
of college students it
leaves the poor and
oppressed shivering after dark and
overburdens broken backs
god doesn't hold up the world
like Atlas we shoulder the globe
now watch us shift the weight
brought down by the people you tried to suppress
this is not some petty expression of vengeance
but the rallying cry of a dream deferred
exploding out to meet your injustice
mark my words
we're taking over the world
Sep 7, 2015
Sep 7, 2015 at 10:22 AM UTC
its not filthy
its just unappealing
its just the grooves
the places between the melody
that desperately need a cleaning
the tune no longer resonates
the tone dull
and crackly
its has nothing to do with
amplification
or projection
its the source material that fails me
im no good at this
at a loss for tools
which could make completely clear
the soaring voice that is love
impassioned and dedicated
but they are contained
within the outmoded technology
wax or vinyl
it could be
though
that my table is just on the fritz
Mar 23, 2013
Mar 23, 2013 at 5:57 PM UTC
There is in sadness a sense of Fall, of spacious leprosy where crippled thought like the outmoded nymph dies behind each tree, and childlike peeks out to let at least childhood disbelieve in its unhappy end.
There is in sadness, a branch that holds the once-upons, the happily-evers, and the destined-to-bes, a sweet find for all in grief. Each stem lends momentum to their pluckings.
There is in sadness, a young man who cherishes dead leaves. He lately held waxen happiness and knew this as his permanence.
Feb 14, 2022
Feb 14, 2022 at 7:20 PM UTC
Sometimes I imagine that you could use a flat blade knife and separate parts of my body.
Like an anatomical model, an arm in half, a wrist entirely off.
An outmoded coloured wax model. Perhaps, a very old one. A decorated one with human or horse hair, closed eyelids and uncomfortable lips, and like those ancient roman ones, thinning sheens of paint on top.
The blade would slip through neatly, perhaps catching friction as it passes the block of soap texture, and leaves grimy residue on the knife.
You can see the vessels.
They are not clean.
Like my soul there are very nearly translucent scrapes and patches of liquid. Some days the liquid spills out.
Some days I just want to clean out. I want to purge, but I know I will just melt and the mistakes will be just as visible. You will see the marks that look like mouse's claws or pincers where I have pulled apart the skin trying to work out what went wrong. Doing some kind of surgery. Inside tying double sided sticky tape and chips of plastic, driving them in deep and forgetting about them.
When you say those things I can't be big anymore. If I'm tired you make me cry. Salt crisps up my intestines.
You make me imagine what it would be like to plunge a knife into my stomach.
I bet it would be satisfying like the braking of chocolate. Cracking of value bars.
But I have to remember that you are the organs thrown out at the end of the day, sloshing around in the bucket and I deserve to be preserved and anything that had been cried over or crafted is better than a remote controlled car. Stop telling me that it's not.
It's not as if I'm trying to be a petal or a fragment of netting fallen off a ballerina's skirt.
I've chosen to hover above the blades. I am nothing so frivolous. Feeling at home in a web of metal coated in paisley oven gloves. I am safe here. In fact I'm glad that thick haze separates us. You will never be able to find somewhere so tranquil. It makes me happy that there is no possibility that we can meet in the middle. It just makes it easier to keep the space, without the concern of some congealing platelets tethering to a surface which was never there.
Aug 8, 2013
Aug 8, 2013 at 8:56 AM UTC
There are some coins in my pocket
Market asserts that ‘these are outdated’!
There are some pictures in my home
Viewer affirms these are antiquated!
There are some books in my library
Visitors avow these are passé!
There are some thought
Carrying with me,
Like, ‘world without edge for politics,
human out of religion,
people in matching pace and spirit,
to craft the globe to a village’!
But, everyone asserts these are archaic!
There some fruits in my store
But , people confirmed
These are perish and putrid!
Comprehend now only
My period is run out
I am outmoded in the freshness of the world!
Jun 25, 2014
Jun 25, 2014 at 12:58 AM UTC
...and noises, noises -
they are many;
they swarm around the head,
attack;
yes - noises, noises -
the ears are straining,
the sixth sense's straining,
old patterns crack.
old - all - outmoded,
yearning freshness:
behaviours, schemes,
poetic means.
ah - noises! noises!..
in the abyss -
still sitting, fishing;
fishing out - still.
Jul 19, 2010
Jul 19, 2010 at 10:52 AM UTC
He has the face of an outmoded brick wall.
She never wears her heart on her sleeve.
He watches the world through
The eyes of a sailor
Anticipating for the storm
And always remaining anxious in the calm waters waiting for the waves.
She listens to what you say
Like the critic to your own novel.
Holding onto each word
And waiting for the slight chance
That you might go back on what you once believed.
He tastes what's around him in small portions.
Because if he ever got the opportunity to taste something so beautiful and unforgettable, his heart would be like pieces of sand on the floor in its absence.
She holds her nose in the smell of trouble as if hypocritical presnece is toxic.
Her lungs will fill up with the lies and ***** secrets of the world and turn them into tar.
She knows once she get that one sniff, she won't ever breathe the same again.
These are the Stone Poets.
The ones who have their eyes on everything.
From the way we blink to the techniques we use to tie our shoelaces, they have got our words and actions down to a personal science.
The Stone Poets are the poets that have to most heart in the words that they say, but you would never guess it was them if you somehow got the enchanting opportunity to look them in the eye.
Oct 11, 2014
Oct 11, 2014 at 3:42 PM UTC
A Winter Ship
At this wharf there are no grand landings to speak of.
Red and orange barges list and blister
Shackled to the dock, outmoded, gaudy,
And apparently indestructible.
The sea pulses under a skin of oil.
A gull holds his pose on a shanty ridgepole,
Riding the tide of the wind, steady
As wood and formal, in a jacket of ashes,
The whole flat harbor anchored in
The round of his yellow eye-button.
A blimp swims up like a day-moon or tin
Cigar over his rink of fishes.
The prospect is dull as an old etching.
They are unloading three barrels of little *****
The pier pilings seem about to collapse
And with them that rickety edifice
Of warehouses, derricks, smokestacks and bridges
In the distance. All around us the water slips
And gossips in its loose vernacular,
Ferrying the smells of cod and tar.
Farther out, the waves will be mouthing icecakes —-
A poor month for park-sleepers and lovers.
Even our shadows are blue with cold.
We wanted to see the sun come up
And are met, instead, by this iceribbed ship,
Bearded and blown, an albatross of frost,
Relic of tough weather, every winch and stay
Encased in a glassy pellicle.
The sun will diminish it soon enough:
Each wave-tip glitters like a knife.
Feb 16, 2015
Feb 16, 2015 at 10:52 PM UTC
We live in times of innovation.
Winds of change affront the nation;
wind most welcome – by a few
(the masses know not what to do
with engineered progressive change,
their morals slow to rearrange).
And thus, in ornithology
we find an apt analogy…
Phoenix-like the vulture rose
in rainbow raiment, from repose
Its plumage all askew – a freak:
a mutant with a painted beak
borne of winds but lately blown.
This strange new hybrid (yet unflown)
did twitter forth an avian boon.
It preened its plumes and croaked a tune:
“I represent that rarest fowl,
far wiser than outmoded owl…
A dazzling swan of change am I
brought forth to liberate the sky!”
(Yet more appeared a fractured emu;
fair is fowl post-op… they tried to
cross said emu with an ostrich!
(What the hell – the surgeon got rich
changing apples into – mangos;
altering the twos to tangos…)
Fresh from gender suicide
he moulted into she. Beside
herself (itself?) with grief, regarded
previous selves as false: discarded
Sir for Madam overnight;
fixed it, mixed it, made it right.
Since God was wrong the first time ‘round,
Man (or something) thus is bound
hormonally to tweak and mutate,
hastening rebirth’s freakish due-date.
A manly bass – and yet the face
was poorly paired in his/her case
Soprano ought to have resounded –
yet the voice left one confounded.
Rainbow bracelets notwithstanding
this was clearly modern branding
(on the forehead – like a beast?)
well, Jesus said the truth at least:
that angels are of neither gender
(hence no need to check the member.)
Lest we offend endangered species
I commend transgendered theses –
paired with warning and a fable
as they turn the feathered table:
We may nurture fair to foul
while nature shrieks a hideous howl
but foul to fair cannot return;
thus trapped, both Eve and Adam burn.
Sep 9, 2015
Sep 9, 2015 at 9:12 PM UTC
Do you feel better now? Lying in bed alone?
Saying
*"I miss you, please answer the phone."
"It's been awhile." "Maybe we can work this out."*
No.
I find myself crawling back to you.
We were friends,we had it good.
But, you broke your promises.
I drop the phone and cry outmoded tears
on you.
On us.
But all this time, you've forgotten.
That I was the one who lost
everything.
And it only hurts when I breathe.
Heartbreaking goodbyes, over and over again.
It only hurts when I breathe.
Six flights back to where we started.
To prove to you this isn't over.
To find out that I'm the other one.
I thought I deserved better than being a choice.
I guess not.
Sep 18, 2014
Sep 18, 2014 at 10:05 PM UTC
Flickering like a tentative alpenglow corraded from profaned time
A whisper jostles through a crowded rumpus prescient of teleology and design
Jolting with pangs of panic a screech emanates from the brontides of tomorrow
A chagrin outpaces the gingerly apprehension of a peevish sorrow
Among the ruffled plumes quaffed from pedigree and put to disuse
A banausic electricity galvanizes the ****** of the amalgamated acuity pinched from the sordid, the obtuse
Refracted like off a darkened moon that clenches the darkness in an abstruse tomb
Combs through sentience of Saturn presiding over ineluctable doom
A silence louder than a plangent ****** of phantasmagoria debased
A looming victor erodes with the putrefaction of sworn and utter distaste
How to obtrude on the evening with triaged fulmination
Is an affront to the rudders of a piecemeal civilization in tatters with exacting doddering calculation
Graveyards bustle with the eidolons of scurrilous spite
Congregating around a blackened epitaph on an alabaster palace gilded in the swanky pinnacle of light
Scuttling the outmoded flanks of an abortive war
Against a henchman of state too ostentatious to hardly ever ignore
We clamber with insistence hoping on fortuitous deliverance
Yet we are deranged of the clasped distance between the crevasse of the clerisy and the satisdiction of futures passed with meticulous diligence
Absconding with furtive furrows on a wizened guild an entrusted world we helped build
We witness the silence creep over us like a trepidation contained as lethal killers of the cartel willed
That which frightens a self-fulfillment is a fatalism gone awry
Someday soon omens excavated from immolated tombs will beseech a more universal backlash, an alienated sorrow that will one day cry
But until that fetched disaster occurs
Let us meditate only on the process of emanation among wayward words
That dance with a destiny that the hegemony of momentary circumstance much prefers
Feb 16, 2018
Feb 16, 2018 at 2:19 AM UTC
we haunt outmoded roach motels
tacky hermit-drab shells
ready to burst
in all the random, lonely corners of the universe
and coroners
wander stodgy corridors
and remote old waysides
as we rot,
filling the ground's vacancies
tangled up and diaphanous
flaring up in the wind and burning
the godhead ached
and his stomach growled
and time had ran its course
as we wandered next door
left to idle, awkwardly
to savor the flowing ennui
in dirtied decorum
fearful, molten paradoxes
waxing ecstatically
at the moment
our distance dangled in spacetime
it was plastered on the front window
of the dusty, remote, old dollar store
on crabgrass he fell
Charlie horses galloped, tenants of seashells cried out
as it was always much easier to recite
dull, signifying nothing
while determining everything
we're wandering, bleary-eyed individuals
in the loneliest location in existence
relinquished in internal fisticuffs
crumpling the paperthin walls, as the
****** of a moving tire whines outside
and the living backdrop blurs, falls away
and the universe hastily reroutes itself
Jul 13, 2015
Jul 13, 2015 at 12:30 AM UTC
Love, the eternal underprized God-word
has become today
mostly outmoded.
Alteration stains its disguised state, for
love, absurdly changed to shadows,
is merely pretence
and smells corroded.
Masquerading as depth with no worth
love lies weakened and is nothing
special, seen by some
as almost inept.
Left un-nurtured, this gift called love
withers when carnal lust invades
and fades its force to
rating mere second.
Desecration of words begets usurpers,
and non-use deteriorates power
when love is viewed
as fervor demeaned.
Once confessed love needs constancy,
otherwise as with any mistook
God-word, compromised
love becomes surreal.
Sep 20, 2018
Sep 20, 2018 at 11:50 AM UTC
what is a (has been) doing here
writing outmoded poems
which never of others
will entirely endear
heck there's but one thing to do
get off the poetry site
and let talented penners
entertain you
since it's a dud at the art
of poetry creation
it'll be taking a no hoper's
extended vacation
the fossilized matter must
bore no more in ho-hum fashion
tis time to exhibit departing
compassion
Oct 3, 2017
Oct 3, 2017 at 10:27 PM UTC