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Alex Apples Aug 2010
He met her at a bar
in San Pellegrino
Yeah, like the water
but there was more wine
than water there

She was flicking a guitar
that she called "Bambino"
Her papa taught her
but she wasn't the kind
so easy to share

They slept inside his car
outside an old casino
The nights were hotter
than he'd ever find
anywhere

He said she'd be a star
but what the hell did he know?
**** gypsy daughter
broke into his mind
then left him there

She could only go so far
on his euros incognito
The polizia caught her
the guitar left behind
she'd tied him to a chair

She'd emptied out his jar
and his last good cigarillo
Shouldn't a brought her
she's serving time
Bambino in his care

He met her in a bar
in San Pellegrino
He said she'd be a star
what the hell did he know?
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2016
~

<>


nearby distant,
the soft thrash of warm waves
lapping interlocking,
happily wet tongue kissing,
sun-oven precision-crisping
the Long Island striped bass
and porgies, at a surreal cooling
77 degrees

Pandora synced to his eyes,
shuffling freely,
by saying
we too see!!
playing for him,
Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin)

poor, poor poet,
strains to brain drain one more time,
conducting an ogling googling word search
for those combinatory storied ones that
sailboat glide
all the while
wildly bursting with Pellegrino effervescence

compromising sounds sights,
to present
properly the balance,
to preserve
properly this moment,
peaceful alive for all times,
as poet has tried,
and failed so many times before...

the caw caw caw of the crow mocks the illiterate human,
for the bird calls it, in single sound perfect and
the human a laughingstock,
for not in his possess,
to capture this perfect moment
of human sabbath.

a Roman Saturn day of rest,
on this day that itself,
is perfection,
perfect for celebrating our common creation,
on a day that our
almost-all-agreed-upon calendar
is marked for us to
forte rest,
from an existence of just laborious

the chubby checkered cheeked squirrels
laughingly pauses,
watching, enjoying a poet's struggle,
mind boggle,
the poet's chubby cheeks
stuffed with discarded words,
all insufficient to capture
the absolution of
absolute beauty

bathing in the noisiest of nature's sounds,
all that contravene the silence of living things,
breathing prayerful thoughts that all
summary end,
with a common gesture of
forefinger upon the lips

a human acknowledgment of
utter obeisance to the forces
calling out by example

listen, see!

silently presenting,
this,
this!!


a day that demanded perfection
Alyssa Starnes Jan 2011
Drinking Pellegrino thinking that if I had nicer sneakers I would run all the way across the state line without stopping and straight into your bed where we could talk about the donuts we were going to get at five the next morning, while I kissed your soft shoulders and you would tell me again that I was endless.
My own thoughts.
Omnis Atrum Mar 2015
I told you that I had no choice but to love you
and you smiled and nodded as if you were giving in to the thought,
but your eyes brightened and your mouth contorted
into the smirk that you give me when you're quite certain
either someone offered me thirty silver to say it
or I'm full of ****.

I lacked a taste for coffee when I was young.
Patience was a commodity in short supply,
and the few times I had tried to drink it
I found nothing but pain and bitterness in the beverage.
Yet, every time you came you brought it with you
and you brewed it with so much care
that I did not have the heart to tell you
how difficult it was for me to drink it.
Did I never tell you how you always forgot
to turn off the machine when you left?
I would follow behind you and switch it off ,
after you departed,
because you were too busy to stay
and drink what you had so effortlessly made.
I think my hands were too rough for the machine you used,
and when I broke the machine,
it continued to trickle slowly.
I knew how much it meant to you
so I did everything that I could to keep it off the floor.
Teacups and coffee mugs and plastic cups were the first to be filled
followed by punch bowls and baking dishes and iron pots.
It still dripped slowly and I started to panic
when the bathtub and the washing machine both started to overflow.

In those years I had become a sprinter
yelling at the masses to keep up during a charity marathon.
How many women delighted
in the seemingly endless supply of coffee that I brought to them?
It was often lukewarm at best,
and tasted nothing like when you had first brewed it,
but few will complain about the taste of a free drink when they thirst.
While they delighted in coffee I drank San Pellegrino in a glass
and the most sanguine sangria when I thought no one was watching.
Who was I to think them less evolved for not knowing the difference?
It is hard to keep sight of a finish line so far away
when the thought never leaves your mind
that if you ever stop sprinting and  you fall behind
you might return home to find it submerged.

I did not stop running until I could no longer breathe.
When I woke up I was sitting in the same house
that you used to brew coffee in while we visited.
I did not know what else to do,
and so I started pouring the coffee out.
I could not slow down once I had started.
Gallon after gallon poured out
and it rushed down the drain so willingly
that I wondered what stake gravity had in the matter.
I took the time to learn how the machine had been broken,
and with effort I repaired it so that it no longer trickled.

You still brew coffee every time that you come to visit,
but you brew it with so much care
that I have learned the patience to drink it slowly.
What choice did I ever have but to learn to drink it?
Did I never tell you how you always forget
to turn the machine off when you leave?
The 1st night: delirium...
just a spaz-o-me I made so many
faux pas impromptus
in the group's WhatsApp
that the owner, curiously only
sent the following reply: ???
the other days he would
just inquire without judging
my lingo quirky (my lingo quirky?
depends how you want
to express the same finite)...
2nd night was just a gearing up
for a plateau, third night
broke me... co wisi, nie utonie:
what hangs will not drown...
fatalistic and I think that's how
you can start to remedy
Nietzsche's angst...
if modernity is to be saved from
a lack of religious coherency
that works for the benefit of society
and society being an organism
and a city being a microcosm
of where the organic meets
the transformed inorganic...
truly... but wait... let me just get
my secular bible put and double check
the meaning of fatalism...
fatalism: hmm... I don't agree with
the premise that fatalism
is a stance of submissiveness -
in the vein of "argument"
it would be self-evident that Islam
is a variation on fatalism:
but submission is not in my focus
when I think about fatalism...
I'm thinking on the covert lines:
with coercive lineage to give...
to imbue the word with a new meaning
dissociated from the perceived-meaning
of submissiveness...
I implore fatalism as an attitude
to nihilism by giving it a meaning
best associated with the quality
of subversiveness... multiple tasks st
hand... the autistic 15 colt
lounging on the perimeter of
the premises I'm watching over:
where Hades becomes Cerberus:
Celt and the team Celtic:
no quits to **** a kaleigh without kilts:
garçon: ah the autocorrect spewed
a diacritical mark like a vowel
in Hebrew... I pity the English for
their love of classical music...
so far Friday is the best night of the week
to listen to Classic.fm
and I won't be a BBC RADIO 3 snob...
Jonathan Woss up to 9pm
then Sue Spencer on her own sort of
idiosyncratic wacky to Anractica
via Slovenia? The nuns did this to her...
I love the inverted voyeurism
the parodying the intact psychologism
of the radio that the t.v. just
cannot replicate...
given that the radio is audible
and not audio and visual...
you cannot forsake two senses...
next thing you know a t.v. will
not only provide a visual distraction
with the audible one
but also a scented ******* culinary trip...
but the radio is not a distraction
but a compliment, an accompiment
to a lo g shift (n)...

tonight I also discovered the potency
of Jamaican tonic wine... Magnum...
one label on the 200ml 16.5% read:
the name "tonic wine" does not imply
health giving or medicinal properties...
another label lists the following:
caffeine 12.0mg
iron 4.80mg
niacinamide 6.30mg
vitamin B2 1.20mg
vitamin B6 0.10mg
vitamin B12 0.48mcg...

hey, it's coming to 12am, I finish
this shift at 7am... then I'll refresh
my self, wash my ******* brush
my teeth, shave to preserve my beard's
shape...
solve the stale stink of armpits
put on a white shirt and a tie
and head to Wembley for another 12h
until 1am for the boxing match
between Joshua and Dubois...
duck's sake... I was initially booked
as a supervisor ringside with about
30 people under me...
instead I was rebooked as an external
quadrant manager...

mineral waters
bottling
Cisiowanka
Muszynianka
how many times of mineral waters
are sold in Poland?
Well in England
you have still and sparkling...
in Poland you have half-sparkling
mineral water...
Muszynianka is rich
and so different
with a magnesium-calcium complex...
water indeed has taste
when certain minerals are
either combined or there
was that trip to Bath with well...
**** water, high in sulphates,
volcanic remnants...
but bottling... the Magnum Tonic
wine is too sickly sweet to be drank
undiluted with sparkling mineral water...
and no it's not a conventional
wine, sour, so creating a kalimotxo
is a bad idea...

so say san pellegrino
is superior to a perrier...
subjective observation
based off of the label: no truth to it...
just a bias...
but... perrier is still sold
in glass bottles... while san pellegrino
is sold in plastic bottles...
milk used to be sold
in glass pint bottles
and I remember staying up at night
to get a whiff of the job
that was... being a milkman
driving an electric car before
this current supposed revolution
*******...
just like 40 years ago people
we're more green, more environmentally
conscious... glass like metal?
♾️ recycling potential: **** me d'uh!

just scrolling through the photographs
of all the classic.fm presenters
while contemplating the genius
of the English people
yet that forlorning of:
my my... no musical genius among them!
Elgar was not a musical genius,
Handel was not English
nor was Holst
and Vaughan Williams... well...
but for a people so appreciative of classical
music, it cries, the situation...
and with that vacuum came
all the pop sensibilities of the 20th century.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2018
oops...
  there's really an oops,
with a follow up sentence?!

****....

  sam cooke,
              roy orbison...
   when did
frank zappa not become
    the next
roberto, Dylan,
and half the Disneyland?
tommy pet the zoo...

gone with the ****...
petty grievances
of the worthlessness
  of ego, in concet;
i hasten to abhor mineral
water that's not
                 fizzy enough...
Perrier, carbonated water?
      anything else?
san pellegrino...
  anything else?
like a prog rock record
                               bonanza....
                          i.e.
have a
of an hour to spare me,
to become the next
Richie Branson?!

              let#'s face it...
what was and what wasn't
Tubular Bells,
    by mike oldfield to
the enterprise?!

    zilch.... nothing...
                 i scratch my beard
and start thinking
about freshly baked bread...
and then i return to
the fetish of shaving off
the stubble.

came the Canterbury scene...
   with the, plethora of acts...
            and...

it's the same question,
rather, less the rolling stones
"vs." the beatles...
             given the song
solitude" by black sabbath...
  and led zeppelin's
                   *living loving maid
...

hmm...
frank zappa...
   i hate myself for having attempted
to source the oeuvre
of bob dylan...
                   ****!
****!
                ****!
it should have always been
about frank zappa!
and never about bob dylan!

             oh well... by now
it's simply:
  
      yeah, all that, and... whatever.
The bipolar is my burden
I bear it the best I can
Senyorita bonita
I want to be your man

Little coffee shop
My son in the parade
Pellegrino water
Mixed with lemonade

Election on Tuesday
American despair
Prepared for the worst
Highwater Everywhere

— The End —