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Faith Inesso May 2014
how terribly dull
what pitiful fools
who can't think for themselves
and abide all the rules

how wonderfully clever
and unequal in measure
are those brave few who dissever
themselves, from platitudinous notions, and live free, forever.
MicMag Aug 2018
What's it take
These days

To write a poem

That makes the world go mad
That brings the crowds to their feet
That spreads like wildfire
Through a dry winter forest

Is it those excessively long words?
The ostentatiously loquacious
Platitudinous ramblings
Of an insecure mind aspiring
To authentic intellect?

Is it perhaps...
     the "creativity"
               of      varied      spacing
  or...    could it be..... the lack
                              of capitalization
               the loathsome little letters
               screaming out
                         hey, look at us!
         ... or maybe it's
               the punctuation marks,
     littered, haphazardly
          through the text
                    (whether used correctly)
               or, theyre not?!
     despite worrds mispeled
          and a grammar might is broken
   can these gimmicks increase interest
        though miswritten or misspoken?

Is the trick alliteration
Whose bite brightly bids us
To center on the snappy sounds?
Although all along
     unvoiced underneath
Ideas idle in the isles
   (or perhaps the aisles)
Of the mind
To meld and craft and bind
Our thorough thoughts
And worthy words
Into lines
Which
Heard by herds
Raise the
                  Praise for which we
                  Privately, desperately
                  Pray

Maybe it's a magical mix
Of splendid in-your-head rhythm
Marvelous meter that perfectly clicks
Flowing smoothly without schism

Well-spaced stanzas
Well-used time
Well-crafted phrases
Well-thought-out rhymes

Well, maybe not...
     those gems are often ignored
     cast-aside, unread, even abhorred

Why?

Because the modern world
doesn't need your rules
your restrictions
your regulations
your misguided boundaries
your oppression
your antiquated ideas
   of "the right way"
   to write
   to speak
   to act
   to live
   to (fill in the blank)

No, what the modern world needs
is
Negation!
Contradiction!
Resistance!
Revolt!

And poetry whose words
Say the same thing
Repeat the same meaning
Echo the same lyrics
Rephrase the same thoughts
But in an ever-so-slightly
Different
Varied
Altered
Adjusted
Changed up way

Line
After line
Of synonyms
          over
               and
                    over
                         and
                              over
                                   again

-----

What's it take
These days

To not give in
To narcissism's spiral?

But more importantly:
What's it take

To make my poem go viral?
Only halfway cynically written, I swear!
Pickled on quixotic tonics
he strives for a polyglot's poise,
balancing plaster peas
at the end of his tippler's tongue.

But the rough-surfaced pearls prickle
his too-ticklish bed of pink,
and gulped down, he administers
only a lessoned indigestion.

Flipping the flop, he prevaricates
himself into the tight-fit corners
of a parallelogram traced
by unsolemn processionals

bedecked in platitudinous finery.
Their porous smirks drip sticky
reminders of a plethora
of previously pernicious exercises

and dampen his fluffy ambition,
prodding procrastinations until
his drunken promise dries out
to become a posthumous wish.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Filmore Townsend Feb 2014
“but you are too old for apprehension.” her
voice had sounded so, and of this one’s voice,
‘you are never too old for wariness of
an unknown.’ responded astute, drunk
on logic. returned was breathless thought
to the void, filling emptiness with irony.
(oxymoron) and weened the way thru,
concision turned derision with repetitious
definitions that found no actual meaning.
all thought without justification and no
thought with classification. words,
actions, wailing:
          empty, empty, empty
then existed less and less from want
of purpose. less and less from interest of
the known; this once forged fear of life. and
with impressive derangement, grabbing at the
only sober keychain. they, with twitching vesper eyes,
their hands jit’ for a false-meeting fix. to nix
the nihilism. and:
      ‘People can go **** themselves.’
words of this one’s voice. of her’s, “thank
god you’re alive.” from those days, when rains
ranted down, and the trains tripped us out.
those days of our wood’s reclaimed trailer. and
each syllable was never thought to be anything
until aged eyes ached for review those epochs
of breath. but:
      ‘People can go **** themselves.’
voiced in response to a romanticized thought. and
all epochs lingered upon are no more than a
journal of the winds that blew while we were present.
some diary of listless lust left undated. of the woods, of
a reiterate span in once anonymized transience. and falling
back, thumbing pages for proof of experiences passed into
skewered memory. left are three lines, ill-verbed, to represent
an entirety of past lives. of time once present in yellow-lit
motel room, of apocalyphic musings, and veering prophets
of doom. they, turned sincere apocalyphites. their prayers
writ boldfaced, platitudinous, in concern of endless words
restating – in constant rephrasing:
      ‘People can go **** themselves.’
but they just kept goin’ on without concern for the dawn.
Daisy King Sep 2013
Excuse my drifting-
I didn't mean to kiss you like that,
I was just trying to swallow the space between us somehow
because I think tonight the moon was stillborn.
All the tides seem broken.

The space is dragging with plaintive collectibles=
complacency in yellow-teeth cliffsides, and all the empty shells
in which we'd listened for the corners of our ocean
and heard it ebbing, relenting, reaching.
It rippled on our skins and made us twinkle then.

Now I'm missing you, the grating bottle-glass shards
are what my headaches are made of
and are what fill up my shoes.

When our spines unravelled, I heard rain-
letter-writing weather, bathtub weather,
knitwear-perhaps-on-the-beach weather-
but the puddles were coming from the sun.
I don't know quite when summer blew in.

We would have found canvas chairs in the park.
You would be taking pictures of yellow daffodils
in black and white with your big heavy camera,
and laughing at each sneeze because I'm allergic.

There's really no need now to listen in shells
for the clutter leftover in elegy-
platitudinous phrases, photographs, plenty more fish in the sea.
Words couldn't ever weigh the depths of it.
Only abrade and erode it.

Yours is a world that, for immeasurable gaps
and for whirlpools and whale sounds,
I am not a part of anymore.
But please excuse my drifting.
I will always love the echoes
and walk along the beach in search of shells.
written a long time ago after heartbreak.
sobroquet Jul 2015
posturing plentitude of platitudinous petulance
the sulking face of the pride of disgrace
pretentiousness replete, retorts repeated
a compensatory litany of honesty forlorn
what is your objective, your ultimate intent to be
a divisive monster of truthfulness, to be some sight to see
with all your money and ill gotten gain
you can not  buy love, you can only by fame
American politics

22. – The histrionic weaponises their storytelling talent on the slightest whim, for blackmail is how they obtain and chaos is how they indulge. Be wary the histrionic, for they take root and disrupt venomously like a toxin.

23. – Should you see the trifecta of: confrontation, dismissiveness and attention seeking – you have yourself a histrionic. Tread on their egg shells and succumb to aggressive sensitivity, or reject them by refusing to deign acknowledgement.
Niccolo Machiavelli
Seán Mac Falls Dec 2013
Slight words and mumbles
Mount, quiet walks together,
Arriving places unwelcomed,
Cooking for one in a kitchen
Together, over filling glasses
Of wine and wordless smiles,
Leftover stories, stale company
Endless invites for new friends,
Road trips without bend, song,
The black comedy of dull, plain,
Platitudinous days.
sobroquet Jan 2017
posturing plentitude of platitudinous petulance
the sulking face of the pride of disgrace
pretentiousness replete, retorts repeated
a compensatory litany of honesty forlorn
what is your objective, your ultimate intent to be
a divisive destroyer of truthfulness,
to be some sight to see
with all your money and ill gotten gain
you can’t buy love, you can only by fame
We have been beset upon by professional liars.

A lie is a statement that the stating party believes to be false and that is made with the intention to deceive. The practice of communicating lies is called lying, and a person who communicates a lie may be termed a liar. Lies may be employed to serve a variety of instrumental, interpersonal, or psychological functions for the individuals who use them. Generally, the term "lie" carries a negative connotation, and depending on the context a person who communicates a lie may be subject to social, legal, religious, or criminal sanctions. In certain situations, however, lying is permitted, expected, or even encouraged. Believing and acting on false information can have serious consequences. Therefore, scientists and others have attempted to develop reliable methods for distinguishing lies from true statements.
Seán Mac Falls Jul 2015
.
Slight words and mumbles
Mount, quiet walks together,
Arriving places unwelcomed,
Cooking for one in a kitchen
Together, over filling glasses
Of wine and wordless smiles,
Leftover stories, stale company
Endless invites for new friends,
Road trips without bend, song,
The black comedy of dull, plain,
Platitudinous days.
Seán Mac Falls Oct 2016
.
Slight words and mumbles
Mount, quiet walks together,
Arriving places unwelcomed,
Cooking for one in a kitchen
Together, over filling glasses
Of wine and wordless smiles,
Leftover stories, stale company
Endless invites for new friends,
Road trips without bend, song,
The black comedy of dull, plain,
Platitudinous days.
Brent Kincaid Nov 2017
Platitudinous, pusillanimous,
Pulchritudinous, posterior
Poseur, postulating pus bag
Posing as plenipotentatious
President POTUS, posturesome
Proudly putting paws on *******
Publicly preposterous woosie
Pretending propriety: a putz.

Eternal egregious eccentricity,
Endless empathy-less publicity,
Effectively inbalming ethnicity
Eviscerates any essential nobility
Excluding even existential energies
Of expectations of excellence
Instead enacting evolution-free
Economical inimical extortion.

Hourly horror holler hate,
Both houses holding hotheads
And hundreds of houris
Honoring honor-free hopes
Hesitation-free horrible haste
Hosing hope and helpmeets
Who have inherited helplessness
From heartless halfwit hoydens.

Boisterous ***** and boors
Beat beauty and belief badly
But beg and bawl for bounty
Bathing in bastardy and blood
But beyond bowing to betters
Banquets and bowers of berks
Badly bent beyond blessing,
They’re best boxed for burying.
Seán Mac Falls Aug 2012
Slight words and mumbles
Mount, quiet walks together,
Arriving places unwelcomed,
Cooking for one in a kitchen
Together, over filling glasses
Of wine and wordless smiles, 
Leftover stories, stale company
Endless invites for new friends,
Road trips without bend, song,
The black comedy of dull, plain,
Platitudinous days.
Seán Mac Falls Aug 2014
Slight words and mumbles
Mount, quiet walks together,
Arriving places unwelcomed,
Cooking for one in a kitchen
Together, over filling glasses
Of wine and wordless smiles,
Leftover stories, stale company
Endless invites for new friends,
Road trips without bend, song,
The black comedy of dull, plain,
Platitudinous days.
Jonathan Finch Jul 2016
I begin with some well-wrought clichés:
a face full of flowers
by a window,
a humming hearth where
the in-folding flames
hold a thousand roses by trestles of soot
while outside the leaves of the autumn trees,
by the iron-root and crocus-foot,
not yet undone of their crimson-chrome,
bypass all platitudinous theories
and reiterate a passionate
reasonless reason for making known
the incredible odour
of sunken hours
when snow had its own
impeccable bleach of flowers
and loaves had no need of wheat.

Drawn under, again and again
I have blundered upon innumerable halved hearths,
suddenly crestfallen,
downcast.
About beauty even in well-worn phrases, about memory, sadness and loss.
Seán Mac Falls Jun 2013
Slight words and mumbles
Mount, quiet walks together,
Arriving places unwelcomed,
Cooking for one in a kitchen
Together, over filling glasses
Of wine and wordless smiles,
Leftover stories, stale company
Endless invites for new friends,
Road trips without bend, song,
The black comedy of dull, plain,
Platitudinous days.
Seán Mac Falls Nov 2012
Slight words and mumbles
Mount, quiet walks together,
Arriving places unwelcomed,
Cooking for one in a kitchen
Together, over filling glasses
Of wine and wordless smiles,
Leftover stories, stale company
Endless invites for new friends,
Road trips without bend, song,
The black comedy of dull, plain,
Platitudinous days.
AshJ Apr 2018
None arise just like when in need,
I scrutinize every possible one
Till its pulp oozes out infront of me.

Why can i not find it?
Do i blame my thoughts that are so obscure
Or the dubious heart that rejects everything
Or this mind that demands to know more than i possibly could.

I fear this might sound platitudinous;
Like every novice trying to be like those from whose hands words just flow
But these are my thoughts certainly. Sewed together in esoteric verses
Wait, I think a title has occurred to me!

"Puzzling" it shall be.
And my thoughts rewards me with satisfaction
Until the next time i try thinking of one
That moment, puzzling it shall be.
Arlene Corwin Sep 2020
Only As Old As You Feel, True, Untrue?

Platitudinous and overused,
Imposing truths on types
Receptive to the cliche myths
Of age and youth.

I look inside myself,
That self intrinsic to the child I was
Since my first  powers of recall.
The same as when i was a child:
Tendencies, reactions,
Sensitivities and inclinations.

Though I’ve learned,
Values waxed and deepened,
Body aged unhurriedly, steeped  
Continually in time.
This is sage:
Do not think in age,
Absorbing adages!
It is not sage.
Life’s stage consists of phases.

You are quantity
Exposed to change
You are quality:
A gene unvarying, enduring;
Altogether darling.

You are you life through.
Not young, not old,
But gold which stays as is
Forever.

Only As Old As You Feel, True, Untrue? 9.21.2020 Circling Round Ageing; Birth, Death & In Between III; Circling Round Wrnkes; Arlene Nover Corwin

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