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Julian Jun 2018
The ******* of embezzled glory staunchly defend their counterfeit stature by defalcating the public trust of industrious societies governed internally by compunction and sabotaged externally by the tempests of acerbic fate met with inclement aleatory convergence. To supply a society with ingenuity without being complaisant or officious with unctuous pleas to the overlords we must fashion a new vogue that taps the bustle of giants and aggrandizes the margins to oversee their own creative destinies with scaffolded arrangements of titanic promise and justifiable fluidity to conquer the blinkered dogmatism of a dissolute chastity to inveterate apocryphal tenets of factitious but unmerited perspectives. Democracy crumbles when the convenience of sensationalism supplants the resolve of those that fossick hidden wealth and promulgate validity instead of undergirding pomp with precarious prevarications of duplicitous omission guarded gingerly by the gatekeepers of a ****** sanity that whitewashes the discussion with invented hobgoblins and purblind catharsis. To defeat simplicity and enshrine byzantine elegance as the paragon for voguish commentary rather than abide by a bowdlerized decorum for appeasing simpletons with divisive balkanization through identity politics we can overcome the impediments to human progress that are engineered to persist because of the inertia of the listless and the stubbornness of doctrinaire politicization and invent vivacity and festivity anew. We need to divorce ourselves from pedestrian quibbles of hero-worship that endanger the vitality of the common discourse because of fastidious pedantic disempowerment that ravages us with debased dreams by underscoring nuisances and tolerable nightmares that emasculate the virulence of the liberated individual and subvert his ambitions to contend with a picaresque world of limitless promise and self-motivated internal wealth.
      The bane of modernity is how chary the world becomes because of fractured histories intersecting with controversial destinies and the antidote to that poisonous self-defeating self-censorship is the audacity of brazen challenges to expurgation through assiduous resourcefulness and delicate diplomacy in wrangling controversies with outspoken courage rather than whispered resentment. Temerity waged in inclement circumstance is justified and curiosity stoked by lambent flames of fulgurant individualism should be fortified to the extent necessary to conquer the feckless spoilsports of unctuous puritanism and institutional obedience. The quacksalvers that blather about inconsequence strand the imagination in a desiccated desert that is ostracized from the palettes of the artistic whim to wield efflorescence rather than squander life in pursuit of perfunctory lucre or tenuous solidarity around banal idealism promised by social justice warriors that forget the biggest war being waged on humanity is on the ingenuity of the common discourse and the liberty to opine about real issues rather than saccharine conventions of emasculation through linguistic imprisonment and epicurean slavery to fashimites who relish the buzzword but never the enlightened audience that scoffs at feeble attempts at cultural commentary like Childish Gambino’s “This is America” music video. This particular artifact is a demonstration of how childishly fickle the plebeian mentality really is, stitching together a bricolage of violence to engineer controversy and serenading it with the most banal music imaginable and exhorting people to herald it as a high artform while inundating the world with unimaginative comic book movies and Star Wars rip-offs because of the lucrative business of formulaic replication. “This is America” should be regarded as a parody of itself because of how hackneyed its design is and how cacophonous it sounds and mocks its audience with lowbrow tactics of adding tinsel to trash and marketing it as the glory of tatterdemalions rather than the refinement of true cinematic achievements that have been relegated because Warhol’s Campbells-Soup-consumerism trumps true belletrist in the public view.
        Cultural watersheds punctuate our history with salient achievements in experimentation, but the formulaic profiteering of buzzword sensationalism and yellow journalism and the ostentatious glorification of promiscuous boasting and fancy cars tantalize the mice to continue playing slot machines rather than penning a novel or doing something promethean. The world scoffs at Trump but ignores the bigger institutional caveats that endanger us much more than a pragmatic albeit unconventional pontificator who is complicit in constructing a false narrative to enslave mindless people to fret about eminence rather than delight themselves in the consequential nuances of established refinement that used to serenade the world with flourish and spectacle. The world kowtows to the crusade against flavor-of-the-week enemies of the liberal-conservative syncretism because it has been conditioned to believe that synthesis is the only logical solution for the polarized worldviews of churlish people that become parvenus not on their merits but on their marketable pitfalls and their public foibles. Peccadillos are more important to people than virtues and this makes society morally bankrupt if we loiter around Astroturf causes that have been infiltrated by corporatism and venal debauchery and acquiesce as disempowered gossip hounds that hunt in packs to find jest in aberration rather than achievement in self-created narratives that defy the stupid purblind boorishness of the mainstream media and its haughty liberalism or the persnickety condemnation of priggish conservative moralities that had an expiration date 50 years ago. Who the **** cares about transgender-touting-gender-fluidity quidnuncs and the snooty obsession with lurid personal endeavors of reputable people that made minor ****** transgressions in a world policed by wide-eyed feminazis that seek to ransack men of their vital virulence to spotlight their unjustifiable oppression. Women are oppressed but the carnal nature of their calumniation and their vindictive powers of persuasion are deployed with such vehement vigilance and such distaste for the majority that the world relegates itself to quibbles of celebrities rather than substantive issues. There is a systemic feminization of society occurring that seeks to demarcate despotic uxorious pleasantries as an incarceration of vocal dissent against supercilious women and their tamed men that slavishly grovel in repudiation of anything prickly.  Men historically have oppressed women but the solution to this quandary isn’t a reverse discrimination where the minority concern is spotlighted as a majoritarian issue that overshadows the disproportionate nature of our society where nominal accreditation is afforded in a non-meritocratic way to absolve people of their carnality and demote the vigorous defense of human liberty as secondary to compromise solutions that appease more people than they offend but simultaneously result in suboptimal conditions that reward arbitrarily coachable people while jettisoning anyone witty enough to be capable of insubordination of a hedonistic epicurean world obsessed with appearance and ravaged by the decadence of formulaic profiteering at the expense of originality and true promethean art that is herculean enough to defy hackneyed tropes and siphon the best elements from a piecemeal world variegated with complexity but stifled by fomented hatred.
The solutions to these problems is to create a watchdog group of artistic critics who become eminent and ubiquitously heard enough to offer creative consultation to the artistic endeavors that we consume and the music that is curated for fastidious ears that crave euphonic originality rather than the banality of easily dovetailed bass-heavy cookie-cutter garbage and the gaudy tactics of talentless rappers whose swagger derives from  the intersection of opportunism and the divestiture of an industry that rewards gloated supercilious epicureanism and meretricious marketability. Am I the only one jaded by second-rate superhero movies that infest the cinemas that borrow from Michael Bay while thrusting pulse-pounding but narratively bankrupt movies down the throats of consumers that might prize the cinematic originality of the heyday of filmmaking? Is it always high art to invent controversy that is witless or half-witted just because it will create buzz? Shouldn’t we condemn the laziness of society in acquiescing to the penury of the modern cultural narrative which belabors the dead horses of racism and sexism ad nauseum? Shouldn’t we fight the war of against inequity through legislation rather than hibernating about scandalous eminence and testy malfeasance?
          Liberty should be championed above all else and we are turning our backs on the future unless we muster the resolve to diminish the sway of the common narrative and aim our spotlight at consequential endeavors rather than the tropes of prosaic and pedestrian bastardization of art and culture. We need to fight artistic laziness which has ravaged our culture and castigate the tactics of wannabee celebrities that use lurid tactics to attract an audience by bedizening themselves with Pyrrhic ostentations and rampant fakery to create more melodrama in a world that needs to be less histrionic. YouTube celebrities swarm us as they get high on ******* and lean-- at our expense-- and vandalize property and convincing nine-year-old’s like Lil Tay to flex her money like it is infinitely renewable in a finite world where all our attention is wasted on artless artifice of less talented people that know how to engineer a ruckus by strutting themselves beyond all decency and selling out to a corporatist nightmare of enslaved convenience. We need to be more vocal about the dissolution of artistic merit and the formulaic repetition of successful formulas that jade us and make us yawn about another retread of a previously successful idea that is milked to the point of cruelty.                                                         ­                       
       Let’s change the narrative and focus on creating true art rather than reacting to the meretricious tinsel of the vogue consensus which is so impotent in its ability to rivet audiences because it has become so notoriously lazy. Fight laziness in art, dismiss your news feeds, be resourceful, seek true happiness rather than find yourself hoodwinked and duped by the idea that Trump is the most important issue or getting caught in thought loops and brooding about sexism and inequality. Let us strive to be egalitarian but within limits that would also appease hominists rather than just the hypertrophy of the leftist narrative that seeks to cage us with the doublespeak of complaisant conformity.  Reject the unctuous charlatans that pretend priggishness when their banausic purpose is barbaric but beguiling to be a lullaby for laggards. We need to fight for the future of civilization rather than hobnob with convenience and loiter around decrying false perpetrators rather than systemic injustices that could otherwise be rectified if enough people fought for it. We can invent a future that is a great festivity serenaded by cultivated artistic refinement and forget about the trifles that divide us. United in ambition and fueled by ingenuity we can defeat artistic laziness and be resourceful with how we decide what is newsworthy. Spurred by the argosy of proactive motivation we can change the world in a substantial way by deciphering the subtext that governs the world. The subtext is everything!
zebra Oct 2017
Here is a primer on the history of poetry

Features of Modernism

To varying extents, writing of the Modernist period exhibits these features:

1. experimentation

belief that previous writing was stereotyped and inadequate
ceaseless technical innovation, sometimes for its own sake
originality: deviation from the norm, or from usual reader expectations
ruthless rejection of the past, even iconoclasm

2. anti-realism

sacralisation of art, which must represent itself, not something beyond preference for allusion (often private) rather than description
world seen through the artist's inner feelings and mental states
themes and vantage points chosen to question the conventional view
use of myth and unconscious forces rather than motivations of conventional plot

3. individualism

promotion of the artist's viewpoint, at the expense of the communal
cultivation of an individual consciousness, which alone is the final arbiter
estrangement from religion, nature, science, economy or social mechanisms
maintenance of a wary intellectual independence
artists and not society should judge the arts: extreme self-consciousness
search for the primary image, devoid of comment: stream of consciousness
exclusiveness, an aristocracy of the avant-garde

4. intellectualism

writing more cerebral than emotional
work is tentative, analytical and fragmentary, more posing questions more than answering them
cool observation: viewpoints and characters detached and depersonalized
open-ended work, not finished, nor aiming at formal perfection
involuted: the subject is often act of writing itself and not the ostensible referent

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Expressionism

Expressionism was a phase of twentieth-century writing that rejected naturalism and romanticism to express important inner truths. The style was generally declamatory or even apocalyptic, endeavoring to awaken the fears and aspirations that belong to all men, and which European civilization had rendered effete or inauthentic. The movement drew on Rimbaud and Nietzsche, and was best represented by German poetry of the 1910-20 period. Benn, Becher, Heym, Lasker-Schüler, Stadler, Stramm, Schnack and Werfel are its characteristic proponents, {1} though Trakl is the best known to English readers. {2} {3}

Like most movements, there was little of a manifesto, or consensus of beliefs and programmes. Many German poets were distrustful of contemporary society — particularly its commercial and capitalist attitudes — though others again saw technology as the escape from a perceived "crisis in the old order". Expressionism was very heterogeneous, touching base with Imagism, Vorticism, Futurism, Dadaism and early Surrealism, many of which crop up in English, French, Russian and Italian poetry of the period. Political attitudes tended to the revolutionary, and technique was overtly experimental. Nonetheless, for all the images of death and destruction, sometimes mixed with messianic utopianism, there was also a tone of resignation, a sadness of "the evening lands" as Spengler called them.

Expressionism also applies to painting, and here the characteristics are more illuminating. The label refers to painting that uses visual gestures to transmit emotions and emotionally charged messages. In the expressive work of Michelangelo and El Greco, for example, the content remains of first importance, but content is overshadowed by technique in such later artists as van Gogh, Ensor and Munch. By the mid twentieth-century even this attenuated content had been replaced by abstract painterly qualities — by the sheer scale and dimensions of the work, by colour and shape, by the verve of the brushwork and other effects.

Expressionism often coincided with rapid social change. Germany, after suffering the horrors of the First World War, and ineffectual governments afterwards, fragmented into violently opposed political movements, each with their antagonistic coteries and milieu. The painting of these groups was very variable, but often showed a mixture of aggression and naivety. Understandably unpopular with the establishment  — denounced as degenerate by the Nazis — the style also met with mixed reactions from the picture-buying public. It seemed to question what the middle classes stood for: convention, decency, professional expertise. A great sobbing child had been let loose in the artist's studio, and the results seemed elementally challenging. Perhaps German painting was returning to its Nordic roots, to small communities, apocalyptic visions, monotone starkness and anguished introspection.

What could poetry achieve in its turn? Could it use some equivalent to visual gestures, i.e. concentrate on aspects of the craft of poetry, and to the exclusion of content? Poetry can never be wholly abstract, a pure poetry bereft of content. But clearly there would be a rejection of naturalism. To represent anything faithfully requires considerable skill, and such skill was what the Expressionists were determined to avoid. That would call on traditions that were not Nordic, and that were not sufficiently opposed to bourgeois values for the writer's individuality to escape subversion. Raw power had to tap something deeper and more universal.

Hence the turn inward to private torments. Poets became the judges of poetry, since only they knew the value of originating emotions. Intensity was essential.  Artists had to believe passionately in their responses, and find ways of purifying and deepening those responses — through working practices, lifestyles, and philosophies. Freud was becoming popular, and his investigations into dreams, hallucinations and paranoia offered a rich field of exploration. Artists would have to glory in their isolation, moreover, and turn their anger and frustration at being overlooked into a belief in their own genius. Finally, there would be a need to pull down and start afresh, even though that contributed to a gradual breakdown in the social fabric and the apocalypse of the Second World War.

Expressionism is still with us. Commerce has invaded bohemia, and created an elaborate body of theory to justify, support and overtake what might otherwise appear infantile and irrational. And if traditional art cannot be pure emotional expression, then a new art would have to be forged. Such poetry would not be an intoxication of life (Nietzsche's phrase) and still less its sanctification.  Great strains on the creative process were inevitable, moreover, as they were in Georg Trakl's case, who committed suicide shortly after writing the haunting and beautiful piece given below

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SYMBOLIST POETS
symbolism in poetry

Symbolism in literature was a complex movement that deliberately extended the evocative power of words to express the feelings, sensations and states of mind that lie beyond everyday awareness. The open-ended symbols created by Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) brought the invisible into being through the visible, and linked the invisible through other sensory perceptions, notably smell and sound. Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-98), the high priest of the French movement, theorized that symbols were of two types. One was created by the projection of inner feelings onto the world outside. The other existed as nascent words that slowly permeated the consciousness and expressed a state of mind initially unknown to their originator.

None of this came about without cultivation, and indeed dedication. Poets focused on the inner life. They explored strange cults and countries. They wrote in allusive, enigmatic, musical and ambiguous styles. Rimbaud deranged his senses and declared "Je est un autre". Von Hofmannstahl created his own language. Valéry retired from the world as a private secretary, before returning to a mastery of traditional French verse. Rilke renounced wife and human society to be attentive to the message when it came.

Not all were great theoreticians or technicians, but the two interests tended to go together, in Mallarmé most of all. He painstakingly developed his art of suggestion, what he called his "fictions". Rare words were introduced, syntactical intricacies, private associations and baffling images. Metonymy replaced metaphor as symbol, and was in turn replaced by single words which opened in imagination to multiple levels of signification. Time was suspended, and the usual supports of plot and narrative removed. Even the implied poet faded away, and there were then only objects, enigmatically introduced but somehow made right and necessary by verse skill. Music indeed was the condition to which poetry aspired, and Verlaine, Jimenez and Valéry were among many who concentrated efforts to that end.

So appeared a dichotomy between the inner and outer lives. In actuality, poets led humdrum existences, but what they described was rich and often illicit: the festering beauties of courtesans and dance-hall entertainers; far away countries and their native peoples; a world-weariness that came with drugs, isolation, alcohol and bought ***. Much was mixed up in this movement — decadence, aestheticism, romanticism, and the occult — but its isms had a rational purpose, which is still pertinent. In what way are these poets different from our own sixties generation? Or from the young today: clubbing, experimenting with relationships and drugs, backpacking to distant parts? And was the mixing of sensory perceptions so very novel or irrational? Synaesthesia was used by the Greek poets, and indeed has a properly documented basis in brain physiology.

What of the intellectual bases, which are not commonly presented as matters that should engage the contemporary mind, still less the writing poet? Symbolism was built on nebulous and somewhat dubious notions: it inspired beautiful and historically important work: it is now dead: that might be the blunt summary. But Symbolist poetry was not empty of content, indeed expressed matters of great interest to continental philosophers, then and now. The contents of consciousness were the concern of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), and he developed a terminology later employed by Heidegger (1889-1976), the Existentialists and hermeneutics. Current theories on metaphor and brain functioning extend these concepts, and offer a rapprochement between impersonal science and irrational literary theory.

So why has the Symbolism legacy dwindled into its current narrow concepts? Denied influence in the everyday world, poets turned inward, to private thoughts, associations and the unconscious. Like good Marxist intellectuals they policed the area they arrogated to themselves, and sought to correct and purify the language that would evoke its powers. Syntax was rearranged by Mallarmé. Rhythm, rhyme and stanza patterning were loosened or rejected. Words were purged of past associations (Modernism), of non-visual associations (Imagism), of histories of usage (Futurism), of social restraint (Dadaism) and of practical purpose (Surrealism). By a sort of belated Romanticism, poetry was returned to the exploration of the inner lands of the irrational. Even Postmodernism, with its bric-a-brac of received media images and current vulgarisms, ensures that gaps are left for the emerging unconscious to engage our interest

......................

.
IMAGIST POETRY
imagist poetry

Even by twentieth-century standards, Imagism was soon over. In 1912 Ezra Pound published the Complete Poetical Works of its founder, T.E. Hulme (five short poems) and by 1917 the movement, then overseen by Amy Lowell, had run its course. {1} {2} {3} {4} {5} The output in all amounted to a few score poems, and none of these captured the public's heart. Why the importance?

First there are the personalities involved — notably Ezra Pound, James Joyce, William Carlos Williams {6} {7} {8} {9} — who became famous later. If ever the (continuing) importance to poets of networking, of being involved in movements from their inception, is attested, it is in these early days of post-Victorian revolt.

Then there are the manifestos of the movement, which became the cornerstones of Modernism, responsible for a much taught in universities until recently, and for the difficulties poets still find themselves in. The Imagists stressed clarity, exactness and concreteness of detail. Their aims, briefly set out, were that:

1. Content should be presented directly, through specific images where possible.
2. Every word should be functional, with nothing included that was not essential to the effect intended.
3. Rhythm should be composed by the musical phrase rather than the metronome.

Also understood — if not spelled out, or perhaps fully recognized at the time — was the hope that poems could intensify a sense of objective reality through the immediacy of images.

Imagism itself gave rise to fairly negligible lines like:

You crash over the trees,
You crack the live branch…  (Storm by H.D.)

Nonetheless, the reliance on images provided poets with these types of freedom:

1. Poems could dispense with classical rhetoric, emotion being generated much more directly through what Eliot called an objective correlate: "The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked." {10}

2. By being shorn of context or supporting argument, images could appear with fresh interest and power.

3. Thoughts could be treated as images, i.e. as non-discursive elements that added emotional colouring without issues of truth or relevance intruding too mu
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PROSE BASED POETRY
prose based poetry

When free verse lacks rhythmic patterning, appearing as a lineated prose stripped of unnecessary ornament and rhetoric, it becomes the staple of much contemporary work. The focus is on what the words are being used to say, and their authenticity. The language is not heightened, and the poem differs from prose only by being more self-aware, innovative and/or cogent in its exposition.

Nonetheless, what looks normal at first becomes challenging on closer reading — thwarting expectations, and turning back on itself to make us think more deeply about the seemingly innocuous words used. And from there we are compelled to look at the world with sharper eyes, unprotected by commonplace phrases or easy assumptions. Often an awkward and fighting poetry, therefore, not indulging in ceremony or outmoded traditions.
What is Prose?

If we say that contemporary free verse is often built from what was once regarded as mere prose, then we shall have to distinguish prose from poetry, which is not so easy now. Prose was once the lesser vehicle, the medium of everyday thought and conversation, what we used to express facts, opinions, humour, arguments, feelings and the like. And while the better writers developed individual styles, and styles varied according to their purpose and social occasion, prose of some sort could be written by anyone. Beauty was not a requirement, and prose articles could be rephrased without great loss in meaning or effectiveness.

Poetry, though, had grander aims. William Lyon Phelps on Thomas Hardy's work: {1}

"The greatest poetry always transports us, and although I read and reread the Wessex poet with never-lagging attention — I find even the drawings in "Wessex Poems" so fascinating that I wish he had illustrated all his books — I am always conscious of the time and the place. I never get the unmistakable spinal chill. He has too thorough a command of his thoughts; they never possess him, and they never soar away with him. Prose may be controlled, but poetry is a possession. Mr. Hardy is too keenly aware of what he is about. In spite of the fact that he has written verse all his life, he seldom writes unwrinkled song. He is, in the last analysis, a master of prose who has learned the technique of verse, and who now chooses to express his thoughts and his observations in rime and rhythm."

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OPEN FORMS IN POETRY
open forms in poetry

Poets who write in open forms usually insist on the form growing out of the writing process, i.e. the poems follow what the words and phrase suggest during the composition
Bryce Jul 2018
And I will make sure that if anything were to happen,
It would do little to affect you.

It's not everyday
You find a goose that lays eggs
With speckled jewels and golden flakes

The world is full of incongruity
And there's no doubt about the certainty
That something bad may happen,
And we don't want that, do we?

So listen carefully.


The world is a giant carboniferous spicule
Hanging in a nest of hydroxic gas and particulae
Spinning within the gaps of a blackened dome
Of limitless space and out of control
There is no telling what way it will go
There is no prediction that has fortold
Any number of moments in this tumbling slumber
Between the darkest hell and the further horizon

I so deftly advise you with all certification
To please place your bets and fly by echolocation
Your eyes will mislead, your ears will displease
And there is no way we can refund divine warranties

This machinery
has a half life of quarks
And energies that vibrate into other orbits
Trajectories
Retaining the spin and informative piece
Of that golden goose let loose amongst the canopy
Of dark,
off into neverland, straight on
Till new morning,
Beyond the stars

So please good sir don't migrate away from me
I have so much to give and such pain I have seen

Those that fatten their goose with **** till it quacks,
Those ravenous souls who ate their gift for a snack,
And when life finally cuts them down to their last,
They will howl and yowl and pray that goose back.

This is a game,
Have a good little laugh
Don't waste your time or your money
On a daffy Aflack

Policy that keeps you policed to the earth,
No way to fly,
Stuck in the dirt.
That is no way to live in the dream,
That is no way to let death trickle in

So please, pretty please, make sure you have coverages
And a couple extra dollars in the pocket of those jeans
Wander freely, you great big atomic bomb, you.
Do catastrophic damages and I'll pay your dues.

Ride the road coast to coast,
Fly a bird 'round the world,
Take a truck till you're home,
Find a love you can trust.
Find a place where your egg
And your legs seek nowhere else
Lay down those roots,
It's Eden or bust.
Aaron LaLux Sep 2016
The ghost of Freddie Gray,
rest in a shallow grave,
they say this is “The Land of The Free”,
so why they still treat us like slaves?

The current policed state of the Police State,
gives serious cause for alarm,
I Can't Breathe Hands Up Don't Shoot!
see it’s the 21st Century there’s cell phones,
so now we have proof That that young black man was unarmed…

See the situation in Ferguson,
it’s far from certain when,
conditions are worsen and,
the people are still hurtin' and,
we don't even have time to mourn,
before the police **** another one,
6 more kids killed since Michael Brown,
the problem didn't start with Ferguson.

Seriously,
it's got me thinking "What's going on?",
but I’m more Queen than Marvin Gaye,
still straight away they shot another one,
BANG,

and another one BANG,
and another one BANG,
and another one bites the dust…
BANG!

Just ask the family of Rumain Brisbon,

shot by an officer,
who mistook a bottle of pills for a gun,
the officer leaves behind two hot Glock shells,
while Brisbon leaves behind a daughter and a son,

then there's Eric Gardner,
who's ****** was caught on tape,
undercover cops strangled him to death with an illegal chokehold,
left the general public in dismay and disarray,
his only crime was selling some cigarettes,
but the cops killed him in a hurry,
this was an obvious homicide,
still no inditement by the **** Grand Jury!

So come really,
if we can't even get a single conviction,
on a single cop,
for a single shot shot without permission,
then what hope is there left to hope in,
it's as if the rope is tied around my neck and I'm chokin',
I thought to provoke a riot instead I decided to make this thought provokin',
if the pen mightier than the sword,
then we need to write a way right away to get these closed cases re-opened!

They say that just to have a driver's license is a privilege not a right,
while They make us feel like it’s a privilege just to survive in this life,
it shouldn't have to feel like a privilege just to survive,
while they're taking everything from us including our rights and our lives,
and the media tries to force us to take sides,
like I am against blacks because I'm white,
yeah cops have killed a lot of Black kids,
but that fact is that cops **** more Whites,
because it's not the color of the skin I’m in,
it's the color of the suit that one’s wearin,’
that really decides who's on who's side,
so who’s gonna live,
and who’s gonna die?

Boys in blue with a badge to **** at will,
anxiety of the All Seeing Eye on me makes me feel ill,
so much stress,
I can't take it,
I'm at home all alone,
laying in bed naked,
thoughts of dying brothers,
and crying mothers,
all done by undercover killers undercover,
they **** like ****,
where's Will.i.am,
"Where's The Love", where's the lovers?

No more Fergie,
just more Ferguson,
no more Taboo,
just more taboo killings when,
will we finally have some peace,
Jesus,
we just,
need to be free but,
they have us caught under an iron fist,
book us in and take our fingerprints,
tap our phones and put us on 'the list',
I thought this was supposed to be,
the land of the free,
but what the fck is this?
Feeling like Eric Garner I can't breathe,
just give me a bit of room please,
can't I at least,
get some groceries without the PDs harassing me?

Jeez.

Meanwhile,
back on the front lines,
it's the 4th quarter,
crunch time,

while we shout out,
“Black Lives Matter!”
they’ve got their clubs out,
like “Swing batter batter!”

while we write rhymes,
and debate the details,
they're gearing up for war,
reading our emails with a pledged allegiance to an empire of evils,

coming in like Stormtroopers,
with automatic weapons and combat boots,
and the whole time we're standing there on the Front Lines,
waiving our arms up high like, ”Hands Up, Don't Shoot!"


∆aron L∆ Lux ∆
dang
Shaded Lamp Aug 2014
Belonging to no masters
Bowing to no shiny idol
Formed as crashing waves
Tsunami and the tidal

Freeing enslaved minds
Requiring no police
From simplistic limerick
To powerful treatise

Capable to be inclusive
of every type of mind
From hideously critical
To the wise and kind

Between sanity - insanity
The line delightfully blurs
A home for loony writers
Saboteurs and connoisseurs

Ignore at poetry's peril
This most mediocre rhyme
The more that verse is policed
The less that it will chime
We all have a responsibility to appose division how ever hard it seems
Aaron LaLux Jun 2016
Shots Fired

The ghost of Freddie Gray,
rest in a shallow grave,
they say this is “The Land of The Free”,
so why they still treat us like slaves?

The current policed state of the Police State,
gives serious cause for alarm,
I Can't Breathe Hands Up Don't Shoot!
see it’s the 21st Century there’s cell phones,
so now we have proof That that young black man was unarmed…

See the situation in Ferguson,
it’s far from certain when,
conditions are worsen and,
the people are still hurtin' and,
we don't even have time to mourn,
before the police **** another one,
6 more kids killed since Michael Brown,
the problem didn't start with Ferguson.

Seriously,
it's got me thinking "What's going on?",
but I’m more Queen than Marvin Gaye,
still straight away they shot another one,
BANG,

and another one BANG,
and another one BANG,
and another one bites the dust…
BANG!

Just ask the family of Rumain Brisbon,

shot by an officer,
who mistook a bottle of pills for a gun,
the officer leaves behind two hot Glock shells,
while Brisbon leaves behind a daughter and a son,

then there's Eric Gardner,
who's ****** was caught on tape,
undercover cops strangled him to death with an illegal chokehold,
left the general public in dismay and disarray,
his only crime was selling some cigarettes,
but the cops killed him in a hurry,
this was an obvious homicide,
still no inditement by the **** Grand Jury!

So come really,
if we can't even get a single conviction,
on a single cop,
for a single shot shot without permission,
then what hope is there left to hope in,
it's as if the rope is tied around my neck and I'm chokin',
I thought to provoke a riot instead I decided to make this thought provokin',
if the pen mightier than the sword,
then we need to write a way right away to get these closed cases re-opened!

They say that just to have a driver's license is a privilege not a right,
while They make us feel like it’s a privilege just to survive in this life,
it shouldn't have to feel like a privilege just to survive,
while they're taking everything from us including our rights and our lives,
and the media tries to force us to take sides,
like I am against blacks because I'm white,
yeah cops have killed a lot of Black kids,
but that fact is that cops **** more Whites,
because it's not the color of the skin I’m in,
it's the color of the suit that one’s wearin,’
that really decides who's on who's side,
so who’s gonna live,
and who’s gonna die?

Boys in blue with a badge to **** at will,
anxiety of the All Seeing Eye on me makes me feel ill,
so much stress,
I can't take it,
I'm at home all alone,
laying in bed naked,
thoughts of dying brothers,
and crying mothers,
all done by undercover killers undercover,
they **** like ****,
where's Will.i.am,
"Where's The Love", where's the lovers?

No more Fergie,
just more Ferguson,
no more Taboo,
just more taboo killings when,
will we finally have some peace,
Jesus,
we just,
need to be free but,
they have us caught under an iron fist,
book us in and take our fingerprints,
tap our phones and put us on 'the list',
I thought this was supposed to be,
the land of the free,
but what the fck is this?
Feeling like Eric Garner I can't breathe,
just give me a bit of room please,
can't I at least,
get some groceries without the PDs harassing me?

Jeez.

Meanwhile,
back on the front lines,
it's the 4th quarter,
crunch time,

while we shout out,
“Black Lives Matter!”
they’ve got their clubs out,
like “Swing batter batter!”

while we write rhymes,
and debate the details,
they're gearing up for war,
reading our emails with a pledged allegiance to an empire of evils,

coming in like Stormtroopers,
with automatic weapons and combat boots,
and the whole time we're standing there on the Front Lines,
waiving our arms up high like, ”Hands Up, Don't Shoot!"

∆ Aaron LA Lux ∆

The H Trilogy
Volume 1
7/7/16

Still No Justice No Peace...
S Smoothie Oct 2018
People just don’t  get it do they?

PolitiX -

There are no good:
-politics
-politicians
-politicos
-policy
-polices

There is only DISTRACT and TAKE!

If it is bad, fake It good
if its fake, fake it real

if it’s obvious make it someone else’s fault
manipulate details and statistics too
lead the questions,
get the right answers for you
Mass Programmng Media
secret Not Saying Anything service
hide behind our own goods

Freedom these days is all about -

Policing

And the illusion you are in

Control

Politics by its very nature can only exist by divide
the greater the divide
the easier to fraction
easier to fraction
eaier to incite aggression and violence
the resulting fear makes us seek peace
we legislate our freedom away putting hope in lies
the greater the distraction,
the easier the take

Peace is an illusion,
a God-like ideal
A frightened little bird hiding in the bough of a tree
barely out for a second
starving to death
confused
and lonely
because the fear of fear is so great

Political Peace is submission and oppression while convincing you
that its in your best interests not to resist or persist.

You are then provided with a guilded cage
distracted by how different the cage is next to you
or the fence that divides you but you are safe?

All policed by consent
the unmerry road to oppression
begins and ends with distraction and take
all selling illusions of peace and happiness
while selling you out

And YOU are too distracted to notice
YOU are killing your family and neighbors
One fear
One prejudice
One judgement
at a time...
Who polices the politix machine?
Who polices you?
Why gave them your unalienable right under *God
to legislate your freedom faith and happiness out of your life,
for you without your consent? Is that why they want to **** God?

Peace has nothing to do with governments
Sunny Devo Aug 2013
A blast in the distance, so great it's felt before it's heard
A long line of weary walkers--the death march

We don't stare down into the eyes of our smart phones anymore
OH NO
We don't obsess over silly things like that anymore
Not since our world was taken over

They said it would happen.
How many times did we hear about threats
How many times did we see the signs
How many times did we ignore blatant messages, distracted by scandalous media

I don't need a love like that
From individuals, to a single organism
We move onward with bald heads and heavy hearts, stripped of individuality and dignity, struggling to carry our guilt and ignorance.
The pain of hunger consumes all thought as we're lead by our new shepherds into this mysterious room.
This room containing vents, and drains in the middle of tiled floors, and hooks hanging like decorations from the ceiling and walls, and a smell of burnt fumigated flesh.

There is no 12-step program to recovery where we're going
OH NO
Where we're going there is no journey back home
There is no path to redemption
Or forgiveness
OH NO
Where our final destination lies, we feel
Only the licking of Lucifer's flames on our skin
Only the welcoming mouths of alligators lurking in the depths below
Only mind-wrenching pain of our guts being torn from our bodies while we're still very wide awake and very much alive.

But we were never free.
Not really.
Not when my privacy is being ***** by my fathers.
Not when my speech is being stolen from my throat
Not when my state is policed and quoted.
Not when I cannot marry my own *** without life or death consequences.
Not when i cannot make decision regarding my body without being reprimanded or condemned to hell.

And especially not since i look like you.
But I have a secret.
I am metal on the inside.
Devoid of your human emotions and crippling urges.
You never would have known, if I hadn't told you.

But let's face it--gullible is written on the ceiling. And you have been my sheep for longer than you will ever realize.

Survival of the fittest.
You thought you were still free because the only thing separating us was a vast amount of beautiful blue void?
Distance is only the amount of time separating two points.
What made you think we wouldn't make our way to you?
You'll never survive us.
As dark droplets fall from the sky, the taste of copper on your lips--
You'll die how you lived--unidentifiable sheep in a herd led by corrupted robotic suits, forever following the bread trail of an empty promise.
Serenus Raymone Oct 2012
The devil’s in the details,
Selfish souls for retail
God doesn’t answer prayers
He only answers emails

A demonic description
Of a self destructive demolition
Concentration controlled
By a conspiracy driven coalition

Cowards by the hour
Sending soldiers on dummy missions
While the eyes of desperate housewives
Are glued to their televisions
Poisoned....
Impoverished....
Imprisoned....
Policed.­...
Outcasts of society with no chance of release
Who’s the real thief?

The dead are pretending to be alive
A slim line between Sainthood and Satan
The New World Order
Disorder has arrived
Thanks for being patient…
It’s February, 2015, a Saturday and here I ‘yam.
Back in sunny California again:
The sun shining brightly again
On My Old Hemetucky Home,
Another mutant Stephen Foster tune.
Hemet: Riverside County,
Southern California,
The so-called Inland Empire,
According to the hyperbolic parlance,
Of sharkskin-suited land speculators,
Truly, the last of the
Patent medicine, liniments &
Snake oil hucksters.
Hemet: little oversight & lax policing
Yield a thriving, local
Medical-marijuana industry.
You are comfortably tucked . . .  
TUCKS® Medicated Pads | TUCKS®
www.tucksbrand.com/medicated-pads‎ Witch Hazel soothes and protects irritated areas. Medicated Cooling Pads are...

(THAT’S RIGHT, *******: A ******* COMMERCIAL RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ******* POEM!  GIUSEPPI MARTINO BUONAIUTO--SURELY NOBODY”S FOOL—FINALLY FIGURING OUT HOW TO MAKE POETRY PAY, THEREFORE AVOIDING THE DIED-IN-THE-GUTTER BIT.)
You are safely tucked behind the impenetrable
(www.tucks.com)
Wackenhut G4S Security-
(www.wackenhut.com)
Policed & Patrolled walls,
Of your typical over-55 gated lunatic asylum.
“For Active Adults,” reads the sign,
Whatever that means.
I’ve been thinking about the adventurous young.
What is it these bright,
Wander-lusting whippersnappers
Fixate and obsess about.
Like dropping out & coasting for a while.
Dropping out & coasting:
Not as easy to pull off for 20-somethings these days,
As it was in the late sixties/early seventies,
Flush times for Guns & Butter.
Where is it cheap to live?
Where on . . .
“This blessed plot, this earth,
This realm, this England . . .”
Where on this ozone-depleted,
Global fondue fungus ***,
Can I go to just sit still?
To think:  to make sense of it all?
It’s leisure, Kemosabe.
Leisure cultivates philosophy.
LEISURE:
The very stuff of curiosity and
REACH—
As in: “One’s grasp should exceed one’s reach”—
Idleness leads us,
Gifts us with understanding &
Self-awareness.
You are 21 again, and restless.
You are unwilling to just settle in.
So, where do you go?
Where can you live on savings?
To not work,
But not go hungry?
To just sit still,
Contemplating the state of the wicket,
Be it wicked or sticky.
Today it’s Prague and Berlin—
Or, for the truly decadent: Bangkok.
For us it was Florence or Paris—
Or, for the truly frugal,
Driving our cars to Mecca: Montreal,
"La Métropole du Québec"
Sanctified are the places we’ve chilled.
Shrines & vortexes; each holy latitude,
As Han Solo drolly reminds us:
“It’s not the years; it’s the miles.”
The amount of ground covered,
A blessing devoutly to be wished in Old Age:
But I digress.
Just the thought of hanging out
Some place really cool,
Yet relatively inexpensive--
In a parlance acquired
Over the years and the miles,
Tactfulness learned,
Manipulating the language
For fun & profit.
Common sense is aged in the barrel
And the bottle, rephrased.
Vernacular Viniculture.
Which proves my point:
If you live long enough &
Read enough of the right stuff,
Eventually you’ll discover
A precise, more exact vocabulary,
Appropriate for Old Age inner monolog.
Would Old Age be tedious?
Boring, for those who
Never went anywhere?
Both physically & spiritually speaking.
Are memories our only revenge on Old Age?
And for those hiding behind the barriers,
Safe. Ignorant. Jolly. Dull.
A fast track toward senility &
Evanescence.
Does Alzheimer’s seek out & destroy the
Most cloistered among us?
While those bold & beautiful,
Experienced, still spinning,
Still weaving a tapestry in 3-D Technicolor.
Remembrances of things past . . .
(Get back in your hole, Marcel . . .)
And as the AARP crowd knows so well:
We Baby Boomers really had it pretty soft.
Boom economics,
Conspicuous consumption,
Coonskin hats, Betsy Wetsies & Hula Hoops!
By and large:
FUN TIMES!
No Great Depression,
No chocolate rationing.
A jungle war pretty much optional,
For most of us of the
American bourgeoisie.
We’ve got a lot to remember.
We’ve much to be grateful for.
Electronic media changed everything for us.
Television and movie theaters gave us
Alternative dimensions,
Parallel lives,
Multiple identities.
Experience so real that
To see it on the screen
Was to live it, oneself.
Perhaps those video downloads
Might prove useful one day.
Comforts out on Golden Pond.
Will you still need me?
Will you still feed me?
When I'm sixty-four?
Grazie, Sir Paulie.
neth jones Apr 2022
His :

i make my travel
reseeding you
                my dear heart
                      into a compact unit of storage

i relieve from our nesting comfort
dismiss our established downey base of cooperation
                                   cleave from our snared compromise

instead to bed and thieve an unshared atmosphere
guilty joy followed by joyful normality
no stale thing

unravelling light
  lifted
(secure
  that I've a capsule world
  when i turn
  toward our lap again)

goodbye of you i am mended
made completely free
                    on the first turn of a corner


& Hers :

you leave me
      on your travels (you-were-my-travels)
you leave me susceptible
my heart alters to become
       a weak permeable tissue of easy tamper
       membership structure is dissolved
         returned to the vital spill
           welcome fluent contamination
               villainess and godless vibration
                  of the goddess confession

dress hooked up past my waist
i'll power-**** away my morality on day one
each day following shall be made easy
  ushered along in brutalities slip steam
                        and the prom of eddies

back in time i've been working on something..
       i'll call it The ****** List
criminal joys and tasks of double self daring
committed
     (not folded over
       or veloped in the knicker drawer)
           it operates as a basking lurk
                               tucked discreetly
                                 correct behind the eye
                      a charm feature of the unconscious
when released
   it's something melkish and larking with energy
   tacking harm to my activated mischief
      kinetic value and uncontrollable spur

in your absence
     i am permissionless
abyssless
i account for nothing

nooks of the apartment
the memory of us quickly forms a ***** coral
i've stopped washing to suit this mode
my body, a journal of stains and earned bruises
i holla and bay at mementoes of our brace
and then stop at the near point of the neighbours tolerance

time has crushed in on its own thesis
become gummy and tenseless
skipping about in haphazard spasms
  backstep, bow and reversal
     now
          observably organic in motion
           and proud of its many personalities

Oh, You're Back Again !
    no, it is your ghost
is it a spy ? ... i doubt you knew you even had it
it threads in and out of my company
seeming baffled and far from its comfort zone
did i put you there ?
i don't call you
the physical you
because you said 'no phones'
              and 'only in emergencies' (is-this-urgent ?)
Is This Urgent ?!
i restrict where i live in here
     keep the windows widowed and veiled
it makes for an unreal canvas
i'm weeding for a correction
sensual precarious highs
violate
in a spate
with this time alone
i'll make our home a vile space
a defication
and i can make no sense assessment of it any
i fight against digestion within these premises
i stay still long enough i am softened and palped
            by a dense atmosphere and salivations of contact
and outside..

the streets are exhausted
and i've quite the nasty reputation
violence, baiting and thievery
inebriation and toxic language
i shall soon be policed
no doubt i've lost my job
for now our place is a dare for vandals
             when i am an insensible heap
                 and perspiring over you in delirium
                    they devalue the exterior

unearthing
i'll find my creative sprite
that is good
i had missed it
now this is urgent (this-is-mine-was-always)
i take up a notebook and puke it full
i take sticks in my mitt and scrawl my charcoal visions
the blood visions
   the primal mud
  on all our walls

can i piece back our home by your return ?
can I sufficiently correct the blurring history I've smutted ?
do i care to ?
no more fading into 'partner'
lease is up
you'll not find me here destroyed
or waiting
    naked but an apron with my hands cupped and mouth open
i'll have ravelled myself up tight
- having stoked my inhuman malady -
     i'll mate my own travels

                                                        ­             - aborted
Ciarra Reneé Jul 2014
I'm finding myself with writers block because all I seem to find inspiration in is the color of my skin
Or being black to be  exact
Or what it's like to be young and African American and in this great country
I become frustrated that this is what I write about it
this is what I feel the need to speak on
that this is what my soul is finding refuge to release
Sometimes I think I'm getting repetitive but I'm realizing if young unjust black deaths didn't happen so often maybe I wouldn't have to write about them
maybe if my young unarmed black brothers weren't murdered in vain
maybe if I heard black praise more than blacks blazed
maybe if less mothers didn't have to to bury their sons
Then and only maybe then would I be able to write about something different, maybe then would I sleep at night, but probably not
Because whether racism is forward or passive it's still closer than you think
the amount of melanin in my skin is slim but it still runs deep
and because I'm mixed people like to think I'm being over dramatic or I'm making it up because
"I'm only half black so why would I get any back lash"
but it's not about that
full or half
To white people I'm still black
And to some people it's alarming that I have a dad
Yellow or brown
African blood still runs through my veins, I feel my queens weep
when the white girl in the suburban locks her doors when I cross the street
when black men say they would never date a black woman because she is loud and indiscreet
when four black boys in a Cobalt going the speed limit are pulled over and policed
one time I overheard someone say "it's time to get over slavery I mean I would own one too for what it's worth"  
This **** is the reason why I lose sleep
like every night this week
sometimes I feel my queens' tears down my cheek
she screams
as she is being penetrated by the patrol as her husband and children see
"just so you know whose in charge" he whispers as she weeps
and we should "get over it"
whipped and *****, beaten and dehumanized
3 centuries and they act like it was 3 days
And they like to say that so much has changed
just because we're not in chains
Yet we're restricted or ridiculed politically, socially and economically
we are
Emmet Till still
On our road to progression
A brown president and we are still considered an infection
We are still the threat
And they have disregarded their debt
This is the blissful ignorance I live with
And the growing terror my words attempt to change
Martin Narrod Jun 2014
this society of ours is so gargantuan,
policed by the daylight we hold at night for ransom,
Like a Jesus or a black Aphrodites,
I'll be your daddy if you let me call you my mommy,
give me your milk, the nectar that forms at your eyelids
We can go out in public on a weeknight Ireland,
I won't drink, but I'll wrestle every penny you
throw into each fountain, unless each wish
you make puts us together in California. At 55º it's as
cold as it seems your heart is, you whisper the omissions
of lies over mute. Every silver trinket on this charmers'
bracelet abused. Be the freeway and I'll be the car, drive around my circles, and we can drive the map of the Hollywood Stars. This circus- paddy-wagon, sewer stardom, I've always been the over-roasted beans from your local Starbucks. I grew up to grow up, I got up to throw up, I sought you to show up, and give you this leigh garland. Egyptian or pitiful, critical mister 'are not.' My words were worthless and wounded by such ardor of this perfervid martyr. Enveloped by threading the eye of this tempestuous hourglass, just another sign of being extremely intolerable to the minutia, the worried, and nervous curse of being so human and the fear of being, quite heart broke.
Esther Feb 2017
In animal death, a breath of relief
Tunnelling through the airways for one last
Sigh of non-defeat, of exaltation and release
Not to be, or better, to be free of mortality
Made immortal with passing life
Taking strife by the neck and repeating

I am no longer your victim

In animal death, a universal strength
Where no obstacles lay before happiness
And instincts are not policed
Your fanciful dreams of green treats, fulfilled
And failing kidneys can rot as they please
Please, shed only a handful of tears
On the graves of decomposing beasts
Released from the shackle of domestication,
For the ones that suffer are surely the living.
svdgrl Apr 2017
I know when I've reached my speaking cap,
because you pull faces, sometimes shush me,
complain that I over-explain.
I tell you about how little I speak to everyone else,
in hopes that you'd cherish the words I share
with you alone, but it's futile.
So I silence myself in efforts to quell your disdain,
and refrain from speaking again.
"That's too dramatic," you say.
"It's one extreme to another, learn balance," you say.
My speech is policed, but you "only teach."
Brevity is the soul, you say.
Training me to avoid embarrassment,
obtain eloquence,
I should be thankful
that you, who know not to express your feelings
without another's pre-existence,
are patient enough with my chatter
to suggest that I truncate and omit better.
Reduce the noise and volume on this amplifier.
If I were a ****, you'd fine tune me
until you heard nothing at all.
Craig Steele Feb 2017
Would life to some be for others deceased
The greed of man is the Devil in awe
Open and eager to satiate the beast

Allied; redundant rebels fast become feast
A thriving surmise from a snarling abhor
Would life to some be for others deceased

Stiff media outlets quietly policed
Less of a *****, more of a *****
Open and eager to satiate the beast

Dynamic complex entity, undefined common thread in the East
Internal displacement clashes with border decor
Would life to some be for others deceased

Bray Lampwick; Bray! Add volume to the doom release
Crooked anticipation of the determinate straw
Open and eager to satiate the beast

If the potent and equipped old grip is continually greased
Our trades will deduce the national core
Would life to some be for others deceased
Open and eager to satiate the beast

Craig Steele
One nation under assault,
one nation under pressure,
one nation claiming greatness against
an outdated measure.
With liberty and justice stockpiled commodities
and legions of disgruntled youth
left to deal with the atrocities.
One nation under-loved
One nation over-policed
One nation claiming Jesus
wearing the tell-tale mark of the beast.
With hate in the left hand, and hate in the right,
and both hands balled up like we're dying to fight.
A New Day, they call this perpetual night
This suffocating darkness that chokes out the light
And EVERYBODY THINKS THAT THEIR SIDE IS RIGHT.

One nation underwhelmed by the policies they chose
One hypocrisy of a democracy, calling their own stink a rose
One thing after another, no wonder the kids are cynics now,
thinking "You CAN'T make it better, WE don't know how."
Love is lost in the struggle between apathy and hate
America, the beautiful.  America, the great.
America, the fractured paragon,
We cling to ghosts of a changing time
We've fallen for the distractions, and
our pedestal is too high to climb.

Oh brothers, oh sisters, what else can we do?
If you'll look out for me, and I look out for you,
just a ripple in this pool of ****
may clear the waters, just a bit.
But as long as there are white votes
black votes
Latino votes
left votes
right votes
there'll be no vote of confidence
in the future of these divided states.
We'll rip ourselves apart,
tear out our own heart
waving our flags the whole time
and claiming no blame for the divide.
God Bless America,
and do it quick.
All sides of this society
are dying or sick.
I love this country.  It's my home.  I love its people, my fellow Americans. But I'm not in love with how everybody is behaving.  I don't love the rage, directed at people that can do little to change things.  We're like a pack of dogs, fighting one another over scraps of the ****, while the hunter grows fat on our efforts.  And as long as we're divided, we are CONTROLLED.
James Floss Oct 2018
Dark days just got darker
The future now bleaker
Our rights soon weaker

Temperatures up
Sea levels rise with
Judicial surprises:

Rights curtailed
Guns for sale
Executive privilege
Press repressed
Marches now riots
Meaner tweets
Free speech costs
Groups targeted
Families disbanded
Profiling preferred
Embryos policed

Emigration in order?
There is a hit and run in my mind
And the police are too preoccupied with their phalluses
To even notice.

A lonely man, befuddled by the blunt object that hit him from behind, fades away into nothing while his crimson blood mixes with the juice of blueberries he had just bought. The pavement turns purple, and for just a split second the scene turns from tragic to comic.

The State of Mind is policed by the principles of democracy. The system is simple: The Cerebellum is the parliament, all my cognitive skills are the representatives, and the body of voters is constituted by whichever arbitrary thoughts that enter my head that day. But in reality my mind is goverened, only by the singularity of chaos. The voters don't know, but the Cerebellum knows. The representatives will never know for sure, but there is a slight tint of discontent, gnawing away, every day, at their thoughts, while they drink their coffee and type endlessly on typewriters, even though computers have been around for a quarter of a century.

You see, chaos is regressive and progressive simoultaneously. Chaos is when time unleashes logic. The future reprecussions of a chaotic event may be necessary, inevitable and perhaps even for the good of humakind and the larger universe, but the passage between vain violence, anarchy, destruction; and the ultimate moral redemption of the event; the moment where we comprehend the possible benevolence of past horrors. Chaos is logic when time is suspended.
Edgar E Tobias Aug 2015
Hidden in the shadows of the trees
The crickets soft consistent swoon
It's gentle and floats with the breeze
It's only the moon and me

The humid July air
Adds yet another "X" in your mind
How many more days of sweat dripped hair?
How long 'til my sordid winter's love affair?

Until I am released from the guilt
Of being inside "wasting" my day
A policed perception's tilt
When it's cold you all feel this way

Never wanting to see light
Dreading weather's daily plight
The only difference you from I
Is the cold I feel in mid-July
Aalim Justice Mar 2021
An x-ray view of what was before while looking for the after now
Like a resurrection and afterlife on some biblical prophecy
Be aware on the conscious for its under attack by malware
soon to fully develop into a spyware
Your mental is like your software
Operating system needs an upgrade
This virus just gave it a reboot
With simple task manager for putting on a mask
Betterment of the self is a daily update              
Because the past is what you have lived and it all crashed
But we need to understand that our attention on affection is being hacked
Being scanned everyday as we usher into the era of the cyborg
Some lifestyles we need to abort
Social interaction is digitalized
friends are stranger on social media
Here was the birth of social distancing
industrialization sign in globalization to confinement
Can’t we see the danger!?, people have become invisible
Let put aside propaganda its not in this piece’s agenda
In an atmosphere filled with uncertainty
dwells fear of change with a wave of intolerance
A dominant experience at the moment is sense of grief
notion of sadness, despair, helplessness, powerlessness and anger
Fragment of blame, echo chambers of many
Negative escalation of human degradation
Issue is on face mask as the color of the skin
Being policed by leaders with empty promises
It feels like the pandemic took a 360 degrees turn
to make it a worldwide web
In some ways it has come full circle
back to localization, national budget and personal introspect
Everyone is loading their data
refresh the mind on the page
what does history show
Before the hand shakes, people kissed to greet
Here we tap our feet
Gathering set the tone of joy
Togetherness was a remedy now in a memory
We just have to stick as family
unfamiliar at a point of acceptance becomes familiar
One nation under assault,
one nation under pressure,
one nation claiming greatness against 
an outdated measure.
With liberty and justice stockpiled commodities
and legions of disgruntled youth
left to deal with the atrocities.
One nation under-loved
One nation over-policed
One nation claiming Jesus
wearing the tell-tale mark of the beast.
With hate in the left hand, and hate in the right,
and both hands balled up like we're dying to fight.
A New Day, they call this perpetual night
This suffocating darkness that chokes out the light
And EVERYBODY THINKS THAT THEIR SIDE IS RIGHT.

One nation underwhelmed by the policies they chose
One hypocrisy of a democracy, calling their own stink a rose
One thing after another, no wonder the kids are cynics now,
thinking "You CAN'T make it better, WE don't know how."
Love is lost in the struggle between apathy and hate
America, the beautiful. America, the great.
America, the fractured paragon, 
We cling to ghosts of a changing time
We've fallen for the distractions, and
our pedestal is too high to climb.

Oh brothers, oh sisters, what else can we do?
If you'll look out for me, and I look out for you,
just a ripple in this pool of ****
may clear the waters, just a bit.
But as long as there are white votes
black votes
Latino votes
left votes
right votes
there'll be no vote of confidence 
in the future of these divided states.
We'll rip ourselves apart,
tear out our own heart
waving our flags the whole time
and claiming no blame for the divide.
God Bless America,
and do it quick.
All sides of this society
are dying or sick.
The Jolteon Mar 2015
Maybe if families
Policed each
Other
All of the stupid ****
That happens
Would happen
Less

Friends and family that I love
Twisted and prodded
Pulled
In every direction
By fools with reproductive organs
TheUnseenPoet Mar 2021
We all deserve to walk in the dark if we wish.
We all deserve to get home safe.
We all deserve to be policed by kind hearts.
We are all Sarah.
In memory of Sarah.
One nation under assault,
one nation under pressure,
one nation claiming greatness against
an outdated measure.
With liberty and justice stockpiled commodities
and legions of disgruntled youth
left to deal with the atrocities.
One nation under-loved
One nation over-policed
One nation claiming Jesus
wearing the tell-tale mark of the beast.
With hate in the left hand, and hate in the right,
and both hands balled up like we're dying to fight.
A New Day, they call this perpetual night
This suffocating darkness that chokes out the light
And EVERYBODY THINKS THAT THEIR SIDE IS RIGHT.

One nation underwhelmed by the policies they chose
One hypocrisy of a democracy, calling their own stink a rose
One thing after another, no wonder the kids are cynics now,
thinking "You CAN'T make it better, WE don't know how."
Love is lost in the struggle between apathy and hate
America, the beautiful. America, the great.
America, the fractured paragon,
We cling to ghosts of a changing time
We've fallen for the distractions, and
our pedestal is too high to climb.

Oh brothers, oh sisters, what else can we do?
If you'll look out for me, and I look out for you,
just a ripple in this pool of ****
may clear the waters, just a bit.
But as long as there are white votes
black votes
Latino votes
left votes
right votes
there'll be no vote of confidence
in the future of these divided states.
We'll rip ourselves apart,
tear out our own heart
waving our flags the whole time
and claiming no blame for the divide.
God Bless America,
and do it quick.
All sides of this society
are dying or sick.
Divided we fall.
Dale Williams Dec 2010
We are the Black Plague
Let us infect you!
We are what you made
The blame rests on you

We are an Atom Bomb
Watch us explode!
We are the bullets in your gun
Watch us unload

We are everything, we are everywhere
We feel this life set for us is unfair
We want comfort, we want release
We do not want to be policed
Cedric McClester Jul 2015
By: Cedric McClester

Islam is
The religion of peace
If you don’t believe me
Ask Abdul-Aziz
Or those down with ISIS
In the Middle East
Who chop off heads
Like savage beasts

Islam is
The religion of peace
So why is jihad
On the increase
All over the globe
North south west and east
Can someone explain it
In the very least

Islam is
The religion of peace
But the irony is
The violence
Doesn’t cease
In the places it’s practiced
It seems to increase
Maybe they need to be better policed

Islam is
The religion of peace
That’s what they tell us
I’m not adding yeast
But it’s hard to believe
The way they seem to feast
On violence and bloodshed
Which hasn’t decreased




Copyright © 2015, Cedric McClester. All rights reserved.
Michael W Noland Mar 2013
I once dreamed of a blue sun that shone upon muddy streets, as drones policed the abandoned buildings of a fallen society.

Today, i saw a drone in the rain, while a blind man begged for change, and this strange feeling from the way the light shone.

I don't know what the future holds, but know that the people are cold, and getting colder, and i'm getting older, so i'm folding, and buying another gun.
this cautious man (bobby jean) born in the u.s.a.
grownin’ up in the badlands of atlantic city
bonded with blood brothers
felt born to run along backstreets
in brilliant disguise that did cover me
frequently blinded by the light
of the full moon

casting silhouettes against darkness on the edge of town
which lunar shafts pierced candy’s room
while immersed in book of dreams
describing better days on a Cadillac ranch

where devils & dust - visible dancing in the dark
celebrating like calendar showered 4th of july
or other glory days in darlington county
even though I ain’t got you.

livin’ in the future
mine hungry heart hankered and felt like I’m on fire
for you, this fire in me craved human touch
desire - roaring into the ole factory fire because I wanna marry you
because the night populated with girls in their summer clothes

each dazzling like 57 channels (and nothin’ on)
in imagination of my american skin
descended from when adam raised a cain
before last to die forecasting kingdom of days
now dwelling in celestial mansion on the hill.

now rightfully claim status of I’m a rocker/
local hero and I’m goin’ down
meeting across the river
if I should fall behind
on the downbound train as living proof
within light of day magic jungleland

policed by highway patrolman i.e. johnny 99
alias johnny bye bye – held up without a gun
defending this lucky town established on Matamoras banks
from an incident on 57th street

thus celebrated as local hero every independence day
when with ****** incorporated firing point blank out in the street
that staccato new york city serenade from no surrender outlaw pete
originally from nebraska.

it’s hard to be a saint in the city open all night
within my hometown
once my father’s house, now my city of ruins
where tis moot to ask does this bus stop at 82nd street?

one step up
into the pink Cadillac
hops the ramrod queen of the supermarket
teasing audio dials sans radio nowhere
a red headed woman

racing in the street toward secret garden
to save my love – with thee angel rosalita (come out tonight)
offering reason to believe roll of the dice real world
and to prove it all night

from spare parts – shards of roulette wheel
housing souls of the departed
please save my love and stolen car
for sherry darling – that spirit in the night

she’s the one among souls of the departed
no longer stopped by state trooper
precinct based along streets of philadelphia
some crackling like streets of fire
straight time mandate for those armed to the teeth
along tenth avenue freeze-out.

requiem per terry’s song – what love can do
accompanied by e street shuffle
performed in somber tones
rumbling down thunder road
for souls of used cars
two hearts crushed

along this hard land
for: the ghost of tom joad
the last carnival homage to wild billy’s circus story
the price you pay when you’re alone
working on a dream
now wreck on the highway.

we take care of our own from youngstown
when heading of to the promised land
the rising distant mystical eden
where you can look (but you’d better not touch)
espying the river of salvation

joining eternally the ties that bind
a tunnel of love
or like the wrestler
pinning opponent tougher than the rest
like laborers working on the highway
chiseled like this hard land!
JC Lucas Apr 2016
Sunday afternoon under sleepy film of cloudcover
in this, the most well-policed
(safe, they say)
town in these Unitedly Individuist States of
Solitude-
cry out for something to do,
give me something to DO,
i say
but even the bars and singular coffee shop are closed on the lord's day
here
and so a lazy afternoon on the back porch with the weekend wine leftovers in glass, in hand
watching the cats dream,
themselves even too lazy to chase the busy squirrels
who alone are energized
and chat their politics of nut-gathering
to the bluejays who nod kindly,
(nobility obliges)
but silently know all the tricks
'cause they're expert buriers of peanuts
themselves and have got nothin' to learn,
but nothing to do either,
'cept listen.

I hear the music of their conversation
and assure you, friends,
that this poem is garbage
by comparison.
Mystic Poet May 2021
"GENESIS — 3:10"

The certainty of human survival that's
over-policed and under-secured in a
clime housing the most populous
black skin inhabitants is a threat
to the fine beauty of human
progress & civilization.

Under the roof of this calamity
her young, elderly, children &
women are at the foot of negligence
that speaks boldly with essence
to share and divide behind
ethno-religious lines

That is the origin of her suffering
deeply rooted in her soul. Because
since ages past her pretty-perfect
has been sunk deeply into the
coven of many men who batters
and **** her with guns & pen.

Oh yes, she cries and bleeds of pain.
Oh yes she laments of watery words
told to her at season when these men
are "*****" and desires a night
in between her legs stretched
opened — where the North &
South war against one another
to see who conquers her for
another time, moment

Find your gaze into her eyes
you will understand the pain
she endures. . .rest your
ears upon her heart you will
hear the untold story of her
abuses that she covers with
fake smile and stolen laughter

But the time of her healing is
crawling silently yet in the hands
of these men who thinks of
ownership and slaveship
of her beauty as birth right

Hey, look out of the window
of your ignorance; walk out
of the gates of self-illusion;
see her Young rising from
the slumber we put them to.

See...they are waking up to
come for her rescue; to ******
her off our hands: are we going
to sit back and watch this "lazy
Youth" take our pride and honor?
Influenced by the shootings of peaceful protesters standing on their righteous ground.
theorizes, surmises, realizes, outlandish notions
   manifesting gibberish inside frangible egghead,
especially when attempting tip ply words struggling
   to describe abstract whims fed
by fancy, groovy, heady indefinable
   mind boggling ideas they weigh like a led
zeppelin inside gray matter squeezed

   to the max like a sponge dark red
when saturated with near incomprehensible
   thought processes that attempt to shed
light on cosmic principles, yet lack
   mathematical familiarization wed
did with advanced studies in astrophysics (trace
sing pinball erratic mental reverberations
   leaves me stupefied) about mysteries of space
time continuum, quantum mechanics,

   and even how my existence came about
   since the presence of human race
whereat random
   evolutionary circumstances took place
on planet (un) fit Earth analogous
   to skien woven of sateen lace

via some invisible hand weaving
   world wide webbed warp and sub woof
   fur wrought primordial miracles
   ranked (within schema by human primates)
   as zen amazingly grace
full promenade,
   per multivarious species, now one Janus face
sing self destruction duet hoo

   weapons of mass destruction can erase
entire range comprising terresrial biota
   unable to escape original weeknd update
   with Jane Curtain, and Chevy Chase,
and according to Stephen Hawking the base
sic global web spun via **** Sapiens
   will lose role as topdog
   ousted from twittering, spotifying reddit queue
   over stayed plenti potentiary pinnacle,
   oracle outlook netzero for mankind as ace

forced to relinguish role,
   sans self anointed supreme beast
(what a beauty this bipedal hominid),
   whose surging population didst increased
the process toward total vaporous xfinity zapped –
   frankly tubby sub letted and leased
to another organism
   not needing tubby policed.
this cautious man (bobby jean) born in the u.s.a.

grownin’ up in the badlands of atlantic city

bonded with blood brothers

felt born to run along backstreets

in brilliant disguise that did cover me

frequently blinded by the light

of the full moon



casting silhouettes against darkness on the edge of town

which lunar shafts pierced candy’s room

while immersed in book of dreams

describing better days on a Cadillac ranch


where devils & dust - visible dancing in the dark

celebrating like calendar showered 4th of july

or other glory days in darlington county

even though I ain’t got you.



livin’ in the future

mine hungry heart hankered and felt like I’m on fire

for you, this fire in me craved human touch

desire - roaring into the ole factory fire

because I wanna marry you

because the night populated



with girls in their summer clothes

each dazzling like 57 channels (and nothin’ on)

in imagination of my american skin

descended from when adam raised a cain

before last to die forecasting kingdom of days

now dwelling in celestial mansion on the hill.



now rightfully claim status of I’m a rocker/

local hero and I’m goin’ down

meeting across the river

if I should fall behind



on the downbound train as living proof

within light of day magic jungleland

policed by highway patrolman i.e. johnny 99

alias johnny bye bye – held up without a gun

defending this lucky town



established on Matamoras banks

from an incident on 57th street

thus celebrated as local hero every independence day

when with ****** incorporated



firing point blank out in the street

that staccato new york city serenade

from no surrender outlaw pete

originally from nebraska.



it’s hard to be a saint in the city open all night

within my hometown

once my father’s house, now my city of ruins

where tis moot to ask does this bus stop at 82nd street?



one step up

into the pink Cadillac

hops the ramrod queen of the supermarket

teasing audio dials sans radio nowhere

a red headed woman



racing in the street toward secret garden

to save my love – with thee

angel rosalita (come out tonight)

offering reason to believe

roll of the dice real world



and to prove it all night

from spare parts – shards of roulette wheel

housing souls of the departed

please save my love and stolen car

for sherry darling – that spirit in the night



she’s the one among souls of the departed

no longer stopped by state trooper

precinct based along streets of philadelphia

some crackling like streets of fire

straight time mandate for those armed to the teeth

along tenth avenue freeze-out.



requiem per terry’s song – what love can do

accompanied by e street shuffle

performed in somber tones

rumbling down thunder road

for souls of used cars



two hearts crushed

along this hard land

for: the ghost of tom joad

the last carnival homage


to wild billy’s circus story

the price you pay when you’re alone

working on a dream

now wreck on the highway.



we take care of our own from youngstown

when heading of to the promised land

the rising distant mystical eden

where you can look (but you’d better not touch)

espying the river of salvation



joining eternally the ties that bind

a tunnel of love

or like the wrestler

pinning opponent tougher than the rest

like laborers working on the highway

chiseled like this hard land!
v Jan 2019
My love,
this is no promise of forever.

This is only hope
and trial.
policed from earned trust
and bitter tongues,
and concrete
eskimo kisses.

Here lays I,
so I lie quietly,
No need for whiskey on a cold night,
no holy
honeysuckle hammock.
No snow princess.

I promise my paper,
I promise her forever.
And for you,
I promise now.
A partner in killing rose buds,
wilting petals that sing:
“No, look at me
please,
harbor me.”
clear as day,
with no envy.
Mateuš Conrad May 2018
from experience,
Alzheimer's in males is
more bearable
than in females,
given the example of
my grandfather,
there are always
dasein coordinates
of memory laying
siege to the inanimate
present...
under a veil and curtain
of solipsism
and schizophrenia
(respectively)...
"i" play truant...
      not that there is
a gender neutrality of
pronouns, there is also
a neutrality of pluralism...
thesaurus subtleties;
bull riddling *******!
males deflect
memory and coordination
of the present,
hence the "presumptive"
"thought"...
       that,
even if Elijah is to return:
a son's heart will turn
to his father's...
we both share a nostalgia,
me and Joseph...
   how we used to ride bicycles
and went fishing...
now he sleeps, and
I'm bound to drinking
till sunrise I wish will
never come...
irony... the anomaly of
premature "Alzheimer's",
namely the calculative
mind, a Macchievelian
"syndrome":
  Venetian contra
Milanese familiar...
    what? talk! talk!
"he" sure as **** will not
climb down off a cross and
give his Judas due
to another iconoclasm project
akin to: Metallica's
before it sleeps...
      a game of chess
between a schizophrenic
and an Alzheimer's project
uno...
      guess who's bluffing
toying with solipsism...
mind you, both are jacked up
on pharma placebos,
which are, so short of the true
psychedelic escapades...
     then they throw IN
a ******* in a wheelchair to
balance the books,
get a medium,
    churn out a no man's land...
get all body-realistic
and shove the brain
from basic piston dynamics
into artificial intelligence
webbing custard,
which later becomes
dog food, cartilage for
prosthetics,
         and a canvas for
medical students...
     since the blood never gushes
out of grey... mint...  
not even if I tried,
given that certain mental illnesses
are pure pilitoco...
there's market on easily accessible
terminology,
  again, borrowed from the medical
profession...
   the reason they are taboo,
is because they are too politically
useful, unless of course,
the "surprising" happens,
akin to a Texans shootout...
    straight away, gobs into the trough,
eyes into the precursor *******'
worth of **** stipends at
the Vatican...
                   if only...
       **** could run the world...
you ******* donning a bow-tie
to talk such plain-policed-talk?
apparently there's a tomorrow...
to be honest,
to me that only means
a yesterday that just happened
today...
   memory,
outside the schooldays living
plasticine...
   head in a churner,
and the sick vogue of
peacocking psychopathy,
before, the glued eyes to the void
starts swerving his
multifaceted scream of ideas...
see em, dull eyes...
toad eyes... eaten by amphibian
apathy...
    saliva on the oculus...
     and twice the venom
akin to an immovable statue...
like a copper statue of Montgomery,
so too, the one pence,
two pence in the pavement...
copper herald: the screeching
shaman of the collective death...
while tomorrow,
the dead night in sloth's *****
awaiting suckling for a dream...
a kite was flown,
an ice cream was turned into
a fancy quasi-arctic inverted
dollop...
               empire strikes back:
the Rolling Stones / the Beatles
SCHIZOPHRENIA
         was debated by the titilated
public...
         unless you're not
bilingual...
imagine...
       Pacquiau vs. Klitschko...
honey... your depression
narrative isn't going to be some
David contra Goliath anomaly...
    like that *****-whiff of a man
'aving a pint,
sliding into tango...
   while me 'aving a 50cl of *****,
doing an hour's worth of
Buckingham duck-snap
       salutations in:
                         'eet up! 'ed do'n!
sorry...
    there are too many exceptions
at the zenith that are a
turkey-feeding antithesis of
bulimia made believable...
as ever... too few exceptions at
the nadir, that are somehow
precursors to
a grief upon the plateau,
communal...
    altogether worrying...
slyly, rather than shyly,
within e.g., trying to...
      do you know that Rasputin
gave me an old Tsar rüble banknote
from the grave,  via
a Jew, that earned a Monte Casino
cross for bravery?
    the Poles still think
the Mongols are coming...
   like the Arabs...
who still think water is
       a...
                  whatever happens
in Las Vegas...
              doesn't leave Las Vegas?
about time "they" figured
out how to water the plants
with dog ****...
mind you, with a back
to the future hindsight 100 years on...
it wasn't so much that
we were ignorant,
but rather that we were:
                       misinformed...
catch you next time,
experiencing a barage of
information,
and interacting with
a self-modified
          censor-***-filter...
"thing".
B H H Burns Jun 2017
We established our empire
in a land of subsiding lies;
Buried its foundations
in a slurry of false memories.

Our temples were carved
from crumbling bricks,
And our trains ran on tracks
made of broken sticks.

Our government was run
through a democracy –
That was elected by you
and decided for me.

So we should have seen
the end coming;
We should have know
our empire was falling, but…

Instead we pretended
our empire was fine,
And policed our streets
with blind watchmen.
Inspired by #lionsighs prompt Brick By Crumbling Brick

— The End —