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Mimi Jun 2011
If you can hear this
I don’t know
Been waiting in a cookie cutter hotel
the sheets turned down starched white
scratchy
So you’re not coming today?
that was both rhetorical and sarcastic.
Today or tomorrow
the next day, no
I crossed off your name but
I don’t know
If you can hear this.
tabitha Nov 2015
i am reminded again of why i hate hospitals,
                                        especially when there alone.

maybe it's the scuffed floor or ugly upholstery of the chairs,
             or the doctors half-attention,
             or the way everybody stares,
             or the way i try not to....
             or  the way that one guy just needs to ask me what book i'm reading.
"it's... well, it's a book about these writers who are deceived into isolation
    and they write all  these stories of life and desperation"                              
              (he doesn't actually care)
              i hide in my hair.
              at least we tried to have a conversation....
              and then we just sit there,
              until she calls the next patient.
              i hope i'm next.

i am reminded again of why i hate hospitals,
                                       especially when there alone.

maybe it's the stale air up against the smell of warm blankets,
             or being fully clothed but feeling totally naked,
             or being wheeled around to some other location,
             or that being wheeled around kind of feels like
             a ****** up vacation....
             (you just get to lay there)
             ((and be numb))
but i think it's the way she rubbed that gel **** all over my tummy
                                                                     and that when i say tummy,
                                                                     i don't feel like a woman i feel like
                                                                     a baby
             and the way those plasticky tools let her see right through me
             and the way men just do not know what to do when
             women are bleeding
the nurse named jeff asks me, "oooh, which palahniuk?"
  "it's... well, it's the one about twelve writers who fall into the clutches of
      this crazy guy who locks them all up! this story's about guts n stuff,"
              "nice," he weirdly smirks,
and thankfully gets back to work.
jeff touches my arm a little too much,
and i didn't really want him to have my blood,
and maybe that's just vain stuff
but the conversation was... good enough...

and i am reminded again of why i hate hospitals,
                                            especially­ when there alone.

only got mister palahniuk*
trapped in a purple book,
this paper-bound blood work,
to keep me company.
i lay back with the iv drip next to my bed
as i sweetly surrender to his gory head....
this book, it's called haunted.


*i wish i had chuck's guts ~ literally and figuratively,
he has no ****** and incredible creative bravery.
i was going to call this poem "stuck in a hospital (yuck) with Palahniuk" but then realized that it sounded like a poem about Dr. Suess having to share hospital rooms with Chuck Palahniuk, which is hilarious and something i will save for an entirely different, much more eccentric piece.
Advent Jan 2015
i have plenty of unread books
from Roth
to Palahniuk
supposed have been read
at a good nook

these books I have
are stacked on one shelf
cause time hasn’t given
a minute for myself

these books I have
are my companions
when I’m split into halves
amid destruction
Anthem Dec 2016
I sing of "Beautiful you"
and it makes me want to choke
i avoid the eyes of the angel, lest i be ******
i fill a diary
with all the ways i'm doomed
i want to fight
i want to join a club
i am haunted
by these invisible monsters
while they sing their lullabies
i try to make something up
rendered a pygmy
always ranting, raving
***** out all the candles
the truth is stranger than fiction
i am a survivor
this is nothing but a tell-all
Jodie LindaMae Dec 2013
We writers are insane.
All of us.
We revel in our own sad mess
While picking green grapes
Off the wallpaper,
Smecking away like mad
At the wondrous juices
Of the imaginary, judicial
Forbidden Fruit.

We, like Hemingway,
Take our scotch in the morning
And our gin at night
And try with brutal, lashing effort
To make it through
Everything in-between.

We have put ourselves in shoes
We will never be able to walk in.
We must walk miles as
Linguists, as
Assassins, as
Outsiders, as
victims, as
AIDS sufferers, as
Brutalizers of women.
We must deal with their pain
As if it were housed in our own entity of being.

J.D. Salinger wrote that
His literary son, Holden,
Wore a “people-shooting” hat and
Made it **** clear that he suffered from wild
And erratic fits of overwhelming depression.
Writing from a bunker
Far from his wife, kids and home,
His stories sparked ****** in the hearts
Of already oppressed men
With “people-shooting” hats of their own.
We must toil with language;
Put it in the corner,
Love it, hate it,
Shift it and slave daily with it.
We must lose hours upon hours upon
Days of sleep
Before we find ourselves
Dangerously asleep at the wheel in front of us
In order to make the slightest change in our regular ways.
Even then,
Our handwriting only becomes sloppier
And our words,
Only fiercer.

Kaysen, alone in a psych ward
With women who slept around and
Tried to maul each other,
Wrote diligently
To try to release the the demon
Boiling the very blood inside her veins.
But demons do not disappear easily
And unfortunately,
Neither do the tortuous memories.

Even today,
They attempt to label me
With words of the disturbed.
Anxiety
Floods my synapses and neurons.
Depression
Happily urinates on my serotonin levels.
I bring myself to write
The effigy of the ******
Day by day
As my pen scratches paper
And the doctors expect razor to scratch skin
Though it never has
And never will.

Writers are psychos.
We all are.
We remain the mad, psychotic, literate monsters
Who worm our ways
Into your head.
We nestle beside your dreams and fantasies,
Waiting to strike
And tear them apart or,
If you’re lucky,
Build them up.
A woman writer named Sylvia
Once put her head in the oven
Because the writer-demons were driving her to madness
And they wouldn’t leave her be.

Handling us is a torture
Only the most eloquent and experienced reader
Could enjoy.

Love Always,
Salinger and
Plath and
Kesey and
Vonnegut and
Burgess and
King and
Sandburg and
Snicket and
Hemingway and
Palahniuk and
Kaysen and
Gaimen and
Green and
Trumbo and…

Holtry.
B Young Feb 2015
The suburban housewives are all prostitutes.
Cuckoo CUCKOO cuckoo
Sings the cuckolded husband
Bury the demons in the backyard,
Jack.
Decomposing rotting souls
Enriching the soil
Get rich without any toil.

Step
Outside

A glance to heavens
From the floors of a forest
Reveals a distant star.
Symbolizing neither here, near or far
A twinkling image destroys the ego
Although in this here woodland
Anything goes.
I am the king.

The truth only goes as far as the rocks thrown
So I asked the reapers which way to go
Take a trip with me down memory lane
my past has no real pain.
And no thank you I would not like any fame
I really have nothing to gain but catharsis
So please don’t call me an artist.  

I learned how to read from Frodo
Potter got me through puberty
Infinite Jest is too long
They say the strong dont read poetry
Naked Lunch ravings from a ***** gone mad
Anything discussed on Oprah during brunch is just bad
Satre and Camus too absurd
Stephen King too frightening
David Sedaris too homosexual
Chucks Palahniuk and Klosterman too hipster
The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test for van wagon hippies
Lao-Tzu is too Zen
James Paterson and John Grisham are a waste of pen
The Perks of Being a Wallflower is too needy
Just begging to be loved
Like stupid Twilight
Ann Rice already got it right
Political books are for crooks
Self Help too pretentious
God Dillusion and God’s Not Great too scary
Romances are all wrong
Farces are all right
The Torah too infallible
The Gospels too life changing
Fear and Loathing, On the Road drugged tales disguised as art
Truth can be found in A Million Little Pieces
Lies found in the truths of our textbooks
Vonnegut is always too short
Woody Allen plays never long enough
Waiting for Godot left me waiting for an ending
The Big Book didnt work
Tweak is a ****** piece of work
Henry Rollins yells Get In the Van with a vein pulsating out his forehead while,
Nikki Sixx makes millions from a marketed selling of his soul
The Hunger Games are over popular children books
Did not stop me from getting hooked
A Brave New World is a reality
Dune a vision
50 Shades a pandering to public lust
The etchings left on my mind by Supertramp McCandless and Hesse will never rust
Edward Albee is everything you could ask a play-write to be
Harmony Korine just makes me envious
Even grand mom has the collected Carlin
Twain is middle school
Hemingway high school
Coleridge is college
Dostoyevsky too daunting
French books are too ****** french
Joyce too Irish
Kafka too German
The great American novels are comic books and tabloids

I get it life is both entirely ****** and perpetually beautiful.
One needn't to read to see
Trevor Gates Apr 2013
V.


Ticket please?

Ah yes good

You're right on time

Please, through the double doors

Now for the main event.



A boy in his bed was sleeping
he slept throughout the night.

Until the door to his closet crumbled like ash
Exposing the pitch black darkness of his fears

He wished

He prayed
For more than anything for it to not happen again.

This happened too often
And he wanted it to stop

But it wouldn't

The stuff toys on his shelf gaped their mouths open in terror as saliva dripped from the ceiling

The walls inhaled
then exhaled

A woman moaned from the depths of the closet

The boy wouldn't look

He couldn't

The air in the room fell hot and humid

Arms with massive hands crawled from underneath his bed
Trying to take the boy away.

He struggled to fight them off until a loud noise was heard in the closet
The assaulting hands stopped and retreated

From they darkened closet emerged a man covered in black oil.

He walked out

He had no eyes

No hair

No ears

He walked up to the boy

He grabbed the boy and dragged him through the closet
The boy was scared

He didn't want to go

He was forced

In the darkness he felt the return of the hands

They touched him

All over

He didn't want them too
But they did

The boy cried and screamed
But the hands covered his mouth

The boy's mind retreated to a place of relief and comfort.
He laid on a wide grassy meadow atop of rolling hills

His lovely, caring mother laid next to him
It was the way he remembered her before she passed.

She laid next to him

His favorite teddy bear, Johann nestled between them

The valley below sang to them the echoed phrases of Schubert's Ave Maria
Played on the mother's record player

The twilight of the scene eased the boy.

But the nightmares would return

The snakes and spiders
The worms and roaches

The clown with three faces: laughing, crying, screaming
Unison

The boy recalled all of this, all of these terrors
in the midst of adulthood

Where the boy becomes a man

The nights are the same
But
Even more
Nefarious
And ominous

The halls of his mind stretch to ceiling-less masses.

Portraits of noir faces looking into his dark, encircled eyes
Blood oozing from underneath the frames

The eight foot tall man in a body suite of leather with no face
The woman crawling on the ground with eight legs and
Hands where her eyes should be

The pile of decapitated dolls rapidly performing an **** of devilish coitus
The limb less girl with maggots crawling out of her exposed ***.  

The sleepless nights
The screaming nights
The tears shed
The blood drawn

The boy that became a man
But
A man who is still a boy
From his deepest fears
The boy that was touched and taken
The man that was touched and brought back
The evil that was endured
The evil that was served

No song is sung
No music is played
No painting is painted
No paradise is found

Lost is he and so are you
Less so than him
But more free are you
Than the boy
Who claims to be a man

The man who was once a boy
For all men were once boys  
All plants were once seeds

All death was once life

All that were forgotten
Say be remembered

Here

There

Then

Now.


Thank you.
Please dispose of your 3D glasses in the bins outside.  We'd like to take this opportunity to personally thank all who made this possible:  Masks, ether, cough syrup, Chuck Palahniuk, The Koran, the Iliad, Virgil, Freud, Dante, John Milton, Stephen King, Mp3 players, chain stud belts, eye liner, food stamps, Russian women, electronic cigarettes,  Uncle Tom's Cabin, Wolverine, wiener dogs, Anthony Hopkins, Roger Waters, Emma Stone, Olive oil and all that I should mention but won't (they know why).
This is a free-form writing exercise. Comment if, aroused, annoyed, disturbed, offended, *****, inspired, discouraged, enticed, flattered, impressed, depressed or simply curious
Danny Adams Oct 2013
I let an object take control of my life
as palahniuk would put it
my possessions have possessed me
but this thing is not my possession
this thing is everyone's
the internet has completely swallowed and devoured me
and now my existence has become a faceless identity in the vast majority
a sea of people who merely live
day by day
what do I do?
do I create?
why does it matter?
it matters to me
and no one else
i am alone
and in my loneliness I find
that my mind
is incredibly
empty
Mari Gee Oct 2011
“To be or not to be, that is the question”
The answer, still unclear
Cans’t we be and not be at the same time?
That way we can choose how to be when life gets in the way
Would be easier on everyone

“I’m afraid I’m turning into a cliché”
My entire existence is a cliché
I’ve thought it up before
And here I go repeating
Preaching my so-called life
To those I thought had it different
I was wrong

“What Am I Missing?”
Besides you of course?
Besides your smile?
Not much I think

“Willing to tolerate less frequent service”
From the people in charge
Apparently we have free will
Who knew?  

“Licks his lips , turns my hands”
I am a clock
Only time will tell
When my hands will show
Quarter to midnight
He cannot turn time
Before it turns him

“I am one half of him
You will see
Cut me in half to reveal his trickery”
You will see
Where he tried to turn the hands of time
And failed
Cut him in half
You will find
The bind of time he almost left behind
That he almost broke and shattered
“The trauma cut both ways”

“Juliet’s the word they use for anyone that’s done it with pills or poision”
It’s also our word for a fool
Who was in so much pain
She caused more pain to herself
Who chose to halt the hands of time
Before it was time to
You cannot meddle with these kinds of things
Time cannot stand it



“The wall I was knocking down”
The one that kept me from you
The one that cheated time
“All of it was simply not the real thing”

“Maybe the supreme self-confidence I envied, was nothing more than masked insecurity”
Maybe the whole world is a façade
Just waiting to be uncovered
Waiting for the right person to come along
And reveal the secrets of time and space
There is no use in envy
It causes unnecessary guilt
Towards a cause you yourself did not create

“Adjusting or adapting a scheme”
Time is a pattern we must adapt to
We cannot be radical and say,
‘***** you time, I won’t conform!’
You must.
Being radical isn’t necessary
When you are given one of the most precious things
You will ever receive
Cherish it
It’s what you must do
“Now I understand”

I may have love
I may lose love
But I will never regret a single thing
For I know that I had not cheated time
I had lived a full life
Embraced every moment
“Splendid if I overcome my earthly passion, but if I succeed, still I have known happiness”





  Hamlet by William Shakespeare
2 Midway by David Homel
3 Pretty Little Liars by Sara Shepard
4 Economic Naturalist by Robert H. Frank
5 Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
6 “His Ace of Spades” by Noelle Havens, a poem from Cellar Roots Literary Magazine, p.69
7 Militainment, Inc. by Roger Stahl
8 Kneller’s Happy Campers by Etgar Keret
9 “An Exclusive” from The ******* the Fridge by Etgar Keret
10 Death of Ivan Illyich by Leo Tolstoy
11Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty
12 World of Children textbook by Greg Cook
13Set Me Free by Miranda Beverely-Whitmore
14 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Nabi Jul 2021
Within the purple walls
of my dorm room
a quiet heart began to flutter.
Perhaps it started when you wrote:
"Artemis, happy not valentines day"
on the day after fourteenth
and made it much more special
with an overused brown paper bag
and a Chuck Palahniuk.

Now at home, even within the white walls
of my own room--
I'm missing you.
my quiet heart has just been silenced
but you're there
in every The Flash episode I watch
in every taro drink I get
and in every text message I receive
hoping
for the slightest chance
of you being there.
Because, after all, you are
the Orion I could only ache for from afar.
Indigo Morrison Feb 2014
"I want to taste the literature
Within you
Let me show you how to be free...
Your mind is the most beautiful combination of
McEwan sprinkled with a little Palahniuk, throw in some James
It is **** to me the way your feet stay on the ground,
No matter how high they lift you up.
Sometimes I watch you while you read
And I wonder what could possibly be
Slayed across that page so wondrously
As to grant the room with the parting
Of your lips..."
Meghan Marie Mar 2011
I am not who I am,
Just the same as everyone else.
I have dreams and nightmares, alike,
But I hide them so well, you can't tell.

Sometimes in my room
I'm myself for a while,
But the moment I'm not alone
I put on my mask and smile.

I stand straight, hold my head high
And am confidant no one will know
Who you think I am, is just pretend.
My personality is an elaborate show,

A children's masquerade dance
Filled with twists and turns, climbs and dives.
A roller-coaster ride designed to deceive,
Like Palahniuk wrote the script for my life.

I am not who I am,
But you'll probably never know.
I'm not even sure who I am myself,
Although I keep hoping I'll know tomorrow.

You can try to get inside
and look around my mind,
But you won't find me there.
If you want the real me, try my heart,
Somewhere inside the lonely dark,
You can find me hiding, if you dare.
Brooklynn Nights Aug 2015
not one word is mine
there's nothing left to say
that hasn't already been said a thousand ways
if someone were to crack open my skull,
quotes of Palahniuk, Salinger, and Plath
would be spinning in a metaphorical blender,
mixing and morphing into a multitude
of depression and life lessons,
wisdom and just plain nonsense
all of which has already been said
i'm exhausted
Ryan Bowdish Aug 2010
It gets faster and faster every day. Every second in fact (notice the square).

I feel so sad for our generation.

Such a variety of brilliant minds spinning recklessly out of control, day by day by day. Things just get worse and worse and no one can stop it.

I feel sad because this collision course will end in one big cataclysmic crash, sending each of our young geniuses flying in all kinds of directions before they could ever discover the meaning of true, TRUE love.

The feeling one encounters when raising a child, an automobile, a house, a life...a goal. The emotion trapped within the nature of justice, the unbreakable cure for any disease of morality. This will never be revealed to us. It's all being drained away slowly, and every day new faces come round, and slowly those faces contort until they get more hateful, and with each passing day I see all the faces I used to love fading into cliques of twos and threes, starting to draw lines, burning bridges, ...falling down.

Divided.

I decided to devote my time to finding the most grotesque and morbid things that happen to ordinary people in the life I live in the town I live in. I have decided to devote my time to the macabre. A sort of Chuck Palahniuk outlook, if one pleases. The generally "ordinary" people around here have some secrets, and maybe it's time to spill them. Maybe it's time for people to get sickened, and frightened, and disgusted, and revolted, and angry. Maybe it will make them do something.

Kudos, 2012.
Jodie LindaMae Jul 2014
I let you step all over me.
And I let you **** on my authority,
But I guess it's just my place.
What ever happened to earning the key?
Now I'll never escape this insanity
But I deserve it.
Because I ***** about the politics
And fight harder even though I've got the world licked
But I'm a street fighter in an arcade game
Playing the same jukebox melody
That annoys you the the point of suicidal tendencies.
I'm the chick in the corner shooting down advances
Because the boys have never read Palahniuk.
I'm a ******* waste.
And what's with all the haste
If I'm going nowhere?
It's such a shame.
I was on top of my whole world.
Now I'm throwing drinks in the face of life
But ignorant moves like that won't end the strife I feel.
But I tell you, I'm just like you.
Trying again and again though I **** up each time
And it's true
That I don't know where I'm going but
At least I'm on my way.
And I'm gonna stay
In the hell I've built inside this bed tonight.
weinburglar Sep 2016
I can write like Don DeLillo in Americana.

I'll show you your personal Patrick Bateman. How childish Palahniuk is. I'll show you advertising matters. Brands. My brands. Shinola. Dire Straights. Colour TVs. Refrigerators. Blisters on your thumb.

I'll show you my shoes, this shirt. These pants. My hair.

Fist over knife. Forks over food. Jerking off into a wishing well with next month's bonus.

I'll show you when enough is enough. I'll show you what it means to be hungry. Thirst. Blood. Sweat.

I'll give you an idea and take it out of reach.

I'll find your consumer segment. I'll find your scalpel too. I'll show you who you should really be.
Kagey Sage Sep 2
I didn’t go out last night, like I was supposed to. Sunday during Labor day weekend, and it’s a return to the long grind on Tuesday for my field. So many unknowns will collapse into certainty in one day, which will impact the rest of my year and beyond. So it goes.

I was supposed to go drink at the bar, an old friend is back off the wagon it seems. Yet, my buddy didn’t let me know it was going down until they were already at the bar. I spent most the day at my parents’ in the countryside and just got home. I was already on my second drink alone, and I sensed they were already farther along than me. Do I really want to drive 15 minutes to nurse 3 beers for 3 hours so I can drive back home? My stomach felt upset, so that was the deciding factor for me.

I let down Chuck Palahniuk in that quote where he says writers need to get out into the world, because nothing happens at home. Yet, I felt like I let myself down all summer by not hunkering down and completing all the esoteric music projects I envisioned. I was too tired to mess with my cables, mics, and computers, so I just picked up my acoustic and played. Sweet ethereal major 7th inversion chords and long forgotten riffs. A couple hours went by.  I played the blues riff from “The Last Time” by the Rolling Stones better than I remember. I hit those chords so rhythmically and started to sing. I always thought I did good with **** Jagger’s vocals. I even remembered the second verse. I was right in the middle of it, when I hear my screen door open and some quick slaps on the door. My little dog comes barreling down from upstairs, barking. I look at the clock on the stove. It’s 9:36. I guess some people still need to work on Labor Day. Nevertheless, the city noise ordinance protects me ‘till 10.

I go to my front door and it’s a black abyss, save for a street light showing no one across the street in its feeble glow. I go to my side door, and my driveway and neighbor’s house is equally forlorn. I check the door on the other side of my house, off the bathroom. ****, I left it open to just the screen door. Surely nobody came into my backyard to mess with this door, but maybe it did let too much noise out. Was it the agoraphobic old lady on this side that came to my door? I never even spoke to her before.

Whoever it was, why didn’t they stay to talk to me? I would give you my phone number to make it easier on you if it ever happens again. I checked in the morning again. No note, no nothing. My mind is spinning with unknowns. Was it someone thinking this was the coke dealer’s house next door? Was it kids, checking if my car was unlocked, but then decided on an impromptu prank when they heard my song? Paranoid, I carried my Shillelagh with me the rest of the night.

I caved in, and got quieter. Switched to a tiny guitar tuned in open D, and stopped singing. I still hope they heard me faintly in defiance. I came up with a cool riff and recorded it in my loop pedal. There was a bit of feedback getting it all set up, and I hope they heard that too.



I’m too dense to take hints. Talk to me like a human being, and maybe next time I’ll know it’s you and what you are looking for.
Cana May 2018
To get lost on a shelf.
A journey, couch potato tourist,
Book upon book, fantastical and fact
An expergefactor for the literary senses.

A sofa that swallows you whole
with an old fashioned friend,
stirring bourbon thoughts and
swirling orange twists

A wall of books,
novels and tomes.
Hemingway nestled next to Palahniuk.
Generational angst and
Alphabetical Chaos!
Dreams

— The End —