"pavlovian" poems
It happened in the dead of night while I was slicing bread for a guilty snack.
My attention was caught by the scuttering of a raccoon outside my window.
That was, I believe, the first time I noticed my strange tendencies as an unusual
human.
I gave the raccoon a piece of bread, my subconscious well aware of the consequences.
Well aware that a raccoon that is fed will always come back for more.
The enticing beauty of my cutting knife was the symptom.
The bread, my hungry curiosity.
The raccoon, an urge.
The moon increments its phase and reflects that much more light off of my cutting
knife.
The very same light that glistens in the eyes of my raccoon friend.
I slice the bread, fresh and soft. The raccoon becomes excited.
or perhaps I'm merely projecting my emotions onto the newly-satisfied animal.
The raccoon has taken to following me.
You could say that we've gotten quite used to each other.
The raccoon becomes hungry more and more frequently, so my bread is always handy.
Every time I brandish my cutting knife the raccoon shows me its excitement.
A rush of blood. Classic Pavlovian conditioning. I slice the bread.
And I feed myself again.
Mar 13, 2019
Mar 13, 2019 at 5:44 PM UTC
This was just published so it is copyright 2015 by Holy Cow Press ~ mce
Poverty is the fence around your life. Poverty wakes you up at 4 AM only to whisper meaningless slogans in your ear. It is the school of Piranha nibbling at the back of your brain. It is two hours waiting in the anteroom of despair for $22 worth of food stamps and being glad to be there. It is changing your phone number frequently because bill collectors are such boring conversationalists. It is the empty space your heels used to fill. It is letting your hair grow long and scraggly and your grizzled beard sprout because you know that although you sleep in rented rooms tonight, the street is not far off, and you want to fit in when you arrive. Poverty scalds the lint from your pockets. It is your private Treblinka within which you rage but are crushed. It is desperate prayers against dental catastrophes, blown tires, surprises of any sort. Poverty is when everything you own is frayed including your nerves from sleepless moments spent trying to solve the equation that will make X number of dollars cover X + ? number of bills, knowing that such math would defeat Newton or Einstein. Poverty is eying the cat's kibble imagining that with a bit of sugar and a splash of milk it might be fine and then eyeballing the cat himself thinking of protein of last resort and trying not to measure him against the microwave door. You ration your cigarettes; whiskey is a fading memory. Passing a diner on the street, you catch a whiff of burgers too expensive to consider and experience a Pavlovian moment. Poverty is trying to keep your head up and then remembering you pawned your neck. Poverty is watching the needle eat your last few gallons of gas. Poverty is the archeology of despair. It portends the death of irony. There is nothing ironic about a car with 217,000 miles and no insurance on it. Facts are facts in the world of poverty. Poverty is the last quarter reclaimed from beneath the cushions. It is too much time and not enough quarters. It is the specious logic of the self-righteous proclaiming that you deserve to be poor because you are, which in Amerika passes for wisdom. Poverty makes each day like the next because nothing does not vary. It is who you are and where you are going, although you won't get far. It is the life you lead inside the fence. It is the sum of what you lack. It just is.
- mce
Apr 6, 2015
Apr 6, 2015 at 7:54 PM UTC
this morning I awoke to find little lettered squares imprinted across the side of my face,
then didst I realize, that cyber space had finally done its number on me
slither slather blither blather slobbering cyber chopper
knee-jerk hackneyed pavlovian dog speak of impetuous heartlessness
stereotyping label blasting categorizing pigeon-holing generalizing
multi tasking bifurcating bloviating palaver, ever clingy maudlin inflamed impassioned souls
trolling the myriad disparate windows looking for some misbegotten stimulus
so invested in their hatred and fear that peace is the most threatening thing they can imagine ------ and me?
the sneering cynical maladroit among the masses of averageness and mediocrity...
Apr 27, 2013
Apr 27, 2013 at 9:34 PM UTC
Religious zeal and explosive prowess make incendiary bedfellows
searing calculating moralism where all fall short and deserve to suffer
self righteous corrupted calumny put forth in a sally of sectarian selectivity
your ilk is heading for Hell and I'm (already there) not
fanatical zealots marginalize intellectuals with their mythical mire of mucked up claptrap and copious lack of a priori specificity
a glorified preposterous plethora of pompous pontificating platitudes
the sins of others they deplore but of themselves they don't keep score
Sunday's best is Sunday's worst
you sanctimonious ******** just can't leave people alone
who elected you to point fingers anyway
Jesus was born in a barn to an unmarried woman
And your mommy got shtuped when you were conceived too
you don't walk on water you insolent impertinent fool
the brain police can't wait for Sunday's
oh the satisfaction of a mutual admiration society
knee-jerk hackneyed pavlovian dog speak
Is anything anymore real if you jump around and shout about it
recipients of adulates get accustomed to sycophants
fawning complacent obsequious kiss ***** and Sunday suck-ups
pass the plate
May 5, 2013
May 5, 2013 at 5:14 PM UTC
Prologue... Voyeurs Notes: Two lovers entwined in the blue black room of the ante meridian (a.m.).
Under a cutting ******* moon
he enters you
You took him in with Pavlovian drooling eyes. He took your innocence and you shrieked in dripping compliance:::
Only that sickle overseer in the night sky bared witness
to the end of my pleasant fiction
***Halogen orb
Halcyon days***
Left only with the abscess of the apparition
that was “us”
and a
Phantom pain for the never was
Perhaps she is
somewhere
quieted by enormity of it all
Life in fast forward, a fallow future, a vertical victim of his ***** ****
Predawn...
Coldness without catharsis on a cobblestone street
**she is again spread before him,
he’s already tired of her**, and again that ******* fading crescent
watches:::
she’s wishing for a flashback, a do over,
a dream of sanity before her teardrop salinity (it could’ve been us)
But here I stand eternal
Butchered by your lunar lunacy::: alone
Against the backdrop of a pockmarked sky
Dec 22, 2018
Dec 22, 2018 at 7:02 PM UTC
it caught the corner
of my eye
Pavlovian neck twist
jarring synapsis
tears followed
was it a ghost
or flickering dust particulate
sent me
crashing into your picture
sitting crisscross
considering memory’s place
longing to touch your finger
soft sunlight played
dog dander and field burn
swirled in the long evening
the radio crackled
long forgotten songs
played on vinyl
once again they fell
Is today your birthday?
Anniversary?
numbers blur
last year’s calendar
still hangs
rectangle wall stain
emotions wipe away
mental images persist
a face through the years
suddenly I stand alone /
Sep 2, 2016
Sep 2, 2016 at 4:59 PM UTC
darting eyes seek recognition
as strange color patterns
give the sky an eerie green glow
what should be cloud bodies
look more like 3rd grade
geometry projects –
noiseless ground squishes underfoot
resembling a velvet trampoline
with crystalline structures jutting up
lacking gravity, they start small
then expand and branch out
looking like manicured Arborvitae’s
flipped upside down,
planted,
and painted with black glitter –
a low meandering whistle
travels near my ear canal
causing a Pavlovian right turn
strained neck muscles bring attention
to the fact I have been motionlessly staring
for what seems an eternity…
in an instant I see something
through the atmosphere;
an oddly familiar object
of the slightest faintest blue –
My eyes snap open
and the clock reads 2:57 a.m.
again
….am I being abducted? –
Jul 1, 2015
Jul 1, 2015 at 1:10 PM UTC
No remorse.
This lack of guilt. This lack of regret.
I’ve seen it before. That same look in her eyes.
She will leave me again and I will ask for more.
I don’t know if I’m a glutton for her punishment
or just pavlovian to the pain,
because I still find comfort in all of her beauty
and even in the ugliness she left when she went away.
But I’ve grown tired of her ghost,
and how it rings in our past with the shake of relentless chains,
haunting the space between who I wish to be and who I am today.
I can’t be with her and for the life of me,
I just can’t seem to push her away,
So I resign, lonely in love and hopeful upon this road
that she’ll relieve me of her ghost somewhere along the way
Jun 21, 2015
Jun 21, 2015 at 11:12 AM UTC
After an uncertain amount of time
He woke. It was bitter realizing
He had died. He knew he had not
Been a particularly good man nor
Bad. He could not appeal his fate
To a higher power but still was it
His fate to be alive imprisoned in a
Coffin?. For who could tell how
Long? -it just did not seem right
Indeed it was unacceptable to
Him personally -to confront it
Head on was insupportable
His mind began to wander
Hither and wither only to
Return to the gravity of
His situation after many short
Dalliances with relatively
Pleasanter thoughts--bit
By bit like a Pavlovian dog
He returned less and less
At some point in his day
Dreaming he drifted off
To sleep thence to a dream
In it He was alive in a far
Land; a stranger it was not
Without its fascination but
He keenly felt weighty
Sense of being alone and
Wondered at the wisdom
Of venturing further
He then came to upon
A cross roads where the
Paths diverged in a wood
Suddenly He remembered
He had died and if he woke
That is where he had left
It was that or choose to go
On living in the dream.
He chose the less traveled
Path; and that has made
All the difference; and the
Rest is history as they say.
Anyway it was long time
ago but I should say that
John after a long journey
Did find his way back to his old
Home and into the arms
Of his Beloved sweetheart
It was just another instance
Of the strange occurrences
At Owl Creek Bridge But
I do not suppose you remember
It was such a long time ago
Aug 20, 2018
Aug 20, 2018 at 12:13 PM UTC
Whilst we had that pavlova frosting on our lips and noses,
I had a Pavlovian reaction that made me gasp.
I like you.
I fancy this gorgeous, wide-eyed, laughing boy
who has the kind of notes in his laugh that makes me fundamentally
agree
with the very fact,
it is okay to laugh at myself.
This utterly imperfect being looking like he does not give a ****
is
colouring
my soul
yellow.
And my lips could never say more Thank you s onto the Cupid's bow of his lips.
For, he taught me how to be happy by myself, with only my shadow in sunlight.
To colour in the blank edges of soul with something a little gorgeous and a pinch of something rather
different.
May 16, 2014
May 16, 2014 at 9:23 AM UTC
Moon butcher- weaned on courting flesh from safe
viewing, whistling to draw the blinds over fettered
flocks, all whose beaks are wired. Upon his eyes, a
monastic charm, cuffed by all means toward profane
morality, are his deeds and are his perfect misdoings.
And in the most miserable quarters of the mind,
along sad shrines where these supple thoughts are
stowed and ferried as the cattle he should drive;
Bird killer.
How mad you are– crimp hearted figure, without
lament for tattered homes and frayed hulls of a child's
laughter, pulled from heavy sacks. But all are beaten dogs
on morbid eyes, clubbed all with gentle hands and choked
with deft ideals-malformed. How artful though, that no
pinion primed should go clipped, nor aviaries-bold should
hold them here, but only should their minds be tainted–
Made whole in mechanics-belt driven. Just stay and take
my woeful Ode: Tyranny be your maxim; conformity be
our dying ways.
Dark ways; made so dark only in their leaden glare, that all
should turn and close their eyes for night. Monolithic as
mauled humans, ravished as the bark of black Willows and
pawing tides‒ all an empty obelisk of horrors-makeshift.
Pavlovian; cold soup; torn rags on the dashboard‒ and
for miles upon miles, ravaged quill over sunken hills, the
feathers poured here as ink into my ebbing dreams. Though,
to think yet that all had been warm upon a day, now too
distant and criminal. Too nefarious for notion, to hold
wolves for wool, and kooks for feathers stalked to hiding.
Jun 14, 2017
Jun 14, 2017 at 2:20 PM UTC
red pen in hand....
i critique people's thoughts
and dreams
six years at university,
to become a god....
who moulds minds
and delivers future prophecies, ready for unwrapping.
who creates bell curves,
of fail to high distinctions.
that the undergrads,
follow like dancing, pavlovian dogs...
the posts...have slipped
the leash and ...
leave thoughtful piles of...extruded work, in the academic yard.
six years at uni...as a dog
nine years at uni ...as a god.
it is amazing,
how the garnering
of parchments
and strange hats,
can transpose a person's world.
Jun 10, 2014
Jun 10, 2014 at 10:00 AM UTC
Lord, I sure got the blues this morning.
Woke up with nothing beside me, but a pillow and a stain.
The gray clouds crowded around me,
And that drizzle became a pouring rain.
I feel so melancholy -
when I hear your name.
The sibilance of those syllables,
Triggers a recall, Pavlovian pain.
Music's like a wicked woman!
Fickle and sour as a pickle she can be.
Before you go dancing with that damsel,
You better check out the scars on me.
There's a reason or three,
they call me, call me, call me....
Mr. Meloncholy.
Oct 17, 2014
Oct 17, 2014 at 3:43 AM UTC
I cannot help but remember
that things got awfully sad,
the day you began sleeping
around the clock.
I was never one for time
but then again, I found
myself sitting alone
in the yellow kitchen,
wondering if you would
find the courage to climb out of bed.
Once it was midnight,
I salivated and began
to dream of railroads
and the places they could take me
if only I could stop counting
and forget the way
you left
the stove, barren.
That was the first time
I knew hunger intimately
and then for years,
I would taste forgiveness,
chewing it over and over
until I finally could take
no more, throwing it up,
in the hope that I would
find answers in my emptiness.
But the clarity never came
in that way and I stopped
looking to others to make me whole.
I ran and ran so far
that I forgot about to think
about you and your weight
yet I know it slept in my spine:
the Pavlovian response
of procuring the void
I so desperately wished to comprehend.
My body took me
to the places I dreamt of
that night when I was a
ravenous girl,
You always told me I was beautiful
but I felt maybe
that I was too much.
I tried to shrink down so that
only my mind remained
but I’m two parts mad,
so at least I know I’m made
of something.
Mar 30, 2014
Mar 30, 2014 at 1:46 PM UTC
with sticks on their back they charge into battle.
the world screaming behind them.
ringing of white noise.
my palms as myself before me and every face looking back already looks dead.
we had no stake in the world. chips of wood broken away to make a fire.
Pavlovian trained, fetching their food, dying before they could eat.
what a retched service they had done.
no option for them or us to turn away.
October 6/ 1941
Aug 15, 2016
Aug 15, 2016 at 6:22 PM UTC
The day a man needs regulation to plant a seed, is when choice is chided for its existence.
Out of existence.
Reduced to two parties - and we believe without doubt.
When schools and factories will burn along with all bossiness and business, perhaps the land can feel hands dig in again.
Metal needs repose, queues deserve to die.
Rules thrive on Pavlovian tinkles to sink the horrid in, endless gauntlets on repeat.
Time to eat, time to work, time to play, time to die.
The matchstick burns bright, a blaze of life, fizzles right before it gathers thought enough to know.
So too, when the coil burns fulsome and beauty carries fitting, bells go silent in dreams.
Jun 4, 2017
Jun 4, 2017 at 2:23 PM UTC
an open mind can see fires yet unlit
befriend those who are readily unfit
stroll pastures moist with dew
break apart and add many to few
cruise on pathways in pure delight
sit quietly as day journeys into night
bump into walls sturdy and tall
seemingly steady but ready to fall
arise in passions so bravely met
win on a loser and lose a sure bet
flounder solemly at loves’ doorway
put loss and revenue off another day
shed light on most pressing of things
place rainbows in stones and cast them on wings
embrace strangers’ sternest of glarings
put things in places, in the most odd pairings
stumble through friendships with utter spite
hug a child tenderly to fend off a fright
cast a pebble to a tidal wave
fall to forgiveness when failing to be brave
shout at a naive then honor a guardian
knowing full well those clothes you have been in
remember how foul ideas can be
herald a compatriot, get ready to flee
for once opened all hell it can fill
eyes, ears and mouth fashion its will
full of fantasies and wildest things to tell
like a Pavlovian pup awaiting the bell
Aug 28, 2016
Aug 28, 2016 at 8:28 AM UTC
your absence is much more distracting
than your presence
and god, do i hate time difference.
i sleep around when you're awake
and i can't stop wondering
if you do the same.
thoughts, thoughts, thoughts irrational
anxi, anxious, anxiously waiting
ple, pleas, please don't leave.
desperation is the color that flushes my cheeks
oh how you must think of me...
my poor, poor mr. darcy.
then, i find myself ***** for ghosts
who will never appear.
o! how silly of me.
to ever even fathom being in your hades
so don't you ever fu-
you text me.
everything fizzles away
sitting.
patiently.
ever so
patiently. my
pavlovian.
response.
i love it
when you tighten
that leash on me
anxi, anxious, anxiously waiting
for another stimulus
what abitch move.
for you to deny me
that
ha!
and god, do i hate time difference.
Mar 4, 2020
Mar 4, 2020 at 3:04 PM UTC
The bell rings,
my eyes widen,
breath sharpens,
heart races.
The phone rings,
my palms sweat,
fingers clasp,
voice cracks.
When our eyes meet,
my mouth dries,
cheeks blush,
legs shake.
When you speak,
my will weakens,
mind falters,
knees bend.
You've made a dog out of me.
May 28, 2022
May 28, 2022 at 4:06 AM UTC