Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
barnoahMike Dec 2010
Glad to see you,  the ORANGE hatted man said to the YELLOW shirted Person seated in the FULL Reclining Chair,  WHICH By the *way,  was *ONLY in the Half Back Position.   Being in the Half-Back Position allowed the YELLOW  shirted Person to respond in Just a Slightly UPLIFTED EYE ANGLE !!    And,  the ORANGE Hatted man, Peering Down,  with Head *****,  Gave EACH of them an EQUAL Opposition Eye Angle of 22 Degrees EXACT ! !    Now,  to Verify the fact of Equal Opposition, the PROTRACTOR MAN arrived promptly on the scene to Evaluate the Situation..    He (protractor-man) Had , for the Very FIRST-TIME,  been especially Called for this HISTORIC Moment .   YES,,YES,,  For the very "FIRST-TIME"  Equal Opposition between an ORANGE hatted man and a YELLOW  shirted person,  USING the Measurement of "ALL-MEANING",  THAT IS::   "The Protractor of Life"...  This Historic moment would forever be Relished by Another Member of THE SOCIETY ,  BUT it was up to the Assigned Protractor Man to Assure all Interested Parties,  That the ANGLE of Exactness was * C O R R E C T ! !    OR....it wouldn't COUNT !   OH DEAR GOD,,"THOUGHT"  the assigned Protractor man,  Let my Measurements be CORRECT ! !   The ORANGE  Hatted man continued to Patiently Peer at the YELLOW shirted person seated in the :HALF-BACK  * Position in the Full Reclining Chair..  A Trumpet Blast form a BRONZE  Bassoon,, announced the arrival of  a  SPECIAL LADY ;Fully Gowned in STARTLING PINK  AND Glimmering WHITE PEARLS , adorning Her Neck and SUN-KISSED" DIAMONDS flashed from her Fingers.    In her Right hand  she firmly grasped an envelope.  She Careful in her opening  ,as if  it were a SEVEN-SEALED SCROLL *  Pulled out the  PURPLE with GOLD INLAY INSCRIPTION  ,"CERTIFICATE  OF APPROVAL "  FOR THE   Magnificent  level of ACHIEVEMENT  by the  ORANGE hatted  and YELLOW shirted man ,VERIFIED   BY AN  "UN-COLORED " PROTRACTOR-MAN"   "HEAVENLY" PRAISES AND ACCOLADES  FILLED THE AIR**          AND A "BOOMING-THUNDERING VOICED"  "NOT-EVERYTHING WILL BE IN......."B L A C K & W H I T E " ! !
copyright 2010    barnoahMike           Mike Ham
Samantha Fox
Was  a panther
In a previous life
As well as an ox.

Not to mention
The wife of a
17th century cobbler
On the outskirts
Of Gillingham.

Which is unusual
As those who remember
Past incarnations
Are usually the wives
Of Heads of Nations
Or helped build pyramids.

Actually said Samantha
I forgot to mention
I was also the transistor
In Euclid's protractor.

Can you get anachronisticer?

Oh reincarnation
The rebirthing
Mother of invention.
Michael DeVoe Jul 2013

The thing about fingerprints is not that, right now, there are seven billion different unique fingerprints on seven billion different people.
It is not that in all of human history no one finger print has been repeated, making, if my math is right, which it's not, twenty trillion individual fingerprints.
Nor is it even that none of the quadrillions of people that will come after me will have my exact finger print.
No, the thing about fingerprints is that they are utterly useless
Which is to say they serve no practical purpose in the survival of the **** Sapien.
That's a lot of effort to put into something that is pointless

2.
If we were created in God's image, then God was a man and
I imagine he took Sunday off and came back to work on Monday like the rest of us.
So maybe fingerprints haven't been forever.
Like with snowflakes maybe God's just doing some interior decorating lately.

Or maybe Saint Peter was kicking it with God in the break room at heaven and was like, "Dude...we need a new system, too many people are dying and I can't keep looking up everyone's deeds by hand; it's taking too long."
And in a moment of genius He was all, "I got this bro" and invented the fingerprint
Then went down to Best Buy and got one of those scanner things for the pearly gates and now when you die you just scan your finger and it auto-populates your deeds and if you get in it's all awmmmm and the gates open,
And if you don't get in it's all whup whum and you fall through a hole in a cloud in the sky and land in a fiery pit of hell.

(My parents stopped making me go to church in 2nd grade so my visions of heaven and hell are colored in crayon.)

3.
I wonder if the image of God sitting at a desk with a protractor, compass, drafting pencils, and tracing paper designing each individual finger print all day long comforts you?

4.
Maybe we're some Alien sociology major's thesis and our fingerprints are our unique identifiers for tracking and data collection purposes

5.
When I started this poem I thought maybe fingerprints are keys.
As in someone out there has the fingerprint that unlocks me.
But I've loved more than once
Hurt more than twice
And had a lot more *** than that
So unless this key unlocks something I've never heard of my lock's broken and I need to know who to call about that.
But I don't like to think of myself as broken anymore.

6.
Maybe when God's little helpers are making us they slice off a sheet of skin from the butcher roll, spread it out flat sticky side up on the stainless steel slab.
Grab a set of bones off the shelf lay them down and like canvas around a frame stretch the skin tight around our skeleton.
Starting from toes, to the knee, over the shoulder, around those pesky elbows
Until they tie us off at the finger tips with twine, cut the excess with sheep sheers, let it heal.
Fingerprints.
Our our little "Heche en el cielo"

7.
When I fall in love for the last time, I will dip my finger in red paint.
I will roll my finger across the bare chest of my love and she will wear it there
Like a tattoo no one else could give her.

8.
Maybe there is no point to fingerprints
Like arpeggios before a concerto
Maybe God was just warming up

9.
Maybe fingerprints are the point to everything

10.
Maybe an omnipresent God is at every birth
In every bedroom, hospital, and taxi cab
In every town, in every city, in every country in the world.

Maybe every time a baby is born
God, takes the time to name it
Then writes it down
In a language only He understands
A collection of poems by me is available on Amazon
Where She Left Me - Michael DeVoe
http://goo.gl/5x3Tae
Why do I always crave the knife
Or broken protractor
I'm sick of this
Never ending **** really
It feels so good to just scrape the blade
On my bare skin
Not cutting or leaving a single mark
Just feeling the blade
Feeling it
I guess I just want to feel something
And tha used to bring me comfort
I want to feel comfortable again
I hardly remember what that is like
And why does something that causes pain
Make it easier to breathe
Takes away the pain
The blood shows that my ticker still beats on
I've never drawn blood
I wonder if the ticker is beating after all
It sure feels dead in there
I'm not sure this is a poem
Just a series of thought
I guess that's what poetry is, right?
7-13-14
Prathipa Nair Jul 2016
Maths being their ancestral home
Living in a house of geometry box
Scale the tall man, working
In the company of lines
Protractor his stout wife,
Controlling the house in all degrees
Set squares the two daughters,
Helping their mother in some angles
Compass the one-legged son,
In business with his friend the pencil
The art of making circles and arcs
Divider the youngest one,
Poking his nose in all their business
Without this amazing family there is no Maths !
Just fun
Shepard Leopard print not calligraphy double "L's" lively as llamas lily roll roots lull underwater dreams felt from the events of hypnotized by the words of the orator, an ores rating is the basis of the all purpose flowering behind the veil, human as satiated, red as sunsets lewd as an anagram of wed rings marry Saturn on this mourning of the death of time, rocks felt sediment may ties tan in the Sun pelts peeled layered in the wind steaming serpentine smokes coils in the sky Clouds the equipment of the buster Organs play louder than church hymns reigns power blood men straighten in their pews at the sound of the root of all evil the mouth of the whale begging for the message more "S's" in saliva drool without one of Oh now bow before the bow arc in the Know a Self flooded urge elevated surfaced by the pit of the concrete, open your abstract the path leopard prints in the mud escape the boar snarling winters Solar is the limit speed time for the Scarab dry enough for the role of matter being dense as ******. In no sense cures us from our aged protractor, human after all is how I robot rock.

I am earth breathing fire hearing wind moving water beneath my meat eating feet. I stare through the ghost riding I am Equine the warship of the Poised den at landings end I devour funnel cakes within the three circles, I merge the warmth and cool blending the reflections with its shadow commanding paddle cyclical backstroke the Frog's moment chosen amp powered transition form and fathom an alternate realm, I dropped a meteor on a puddle world displacing half of all livin; Lanced a Wasp's nest as a Dragoon steals an egg as a test.
Raven Feels Jul 2021
DEAR PENPAL PEOPLE, heart makes you feel like a fool---not by me:>

I lie so bad
of how your presence excludes the sad
this hand includes
this blue stage we stand in interlude
words on red cheeks faint
the place empty I paint
the neck puts a distance from me and you
and the dark finds the light it never knew

the pretentious actor
writing a character on the other end of the protractor
my pen flows on veins in a way
after tongue pauses the say
now my heart wins
thoughts muffled like an invisible bottle of gin
but fair is not fair for a reason
and cheers to my self mind treason


                                                       ­                                  -----ravenfeels
sparklysnowflake Oct 2021
Our little collegetown is a jungle tonight,
with the deafening, staticky drone of locusts constituting
its own kind of warm gravity,

sidewalks drenched and carpeted with a rotting mess of
blood-red maple leaves, and

thousands of spiders the size of human eyes, glaring
down from the dead-center of their backlit, dew-drizzled webs.

I always thought that I'd never be loved enough.

In crafting anthologies on the angles of my favorite noses,
I pretended I didn't want someone else’s protractor on my own,
and prepared for a life sentence as the uncharted geometer,
the invisible painter, the secret poet,
the immortalizer, rather than the immortalized.

I find myself, now, to be a poem––
your poem––
etched into the curvature of your jungle-green eyes.

But walking home in our jungle tonight, I feel sick.
Your ears distort my hesitant laughter
into a dissonant, deafening euphoria, and

when I lay my head on your heated chest, I can feel the blood
gushing underneath your skin,
surging through your veins, storming, drowning
you, and I feel sick because all this love you pump for me--
all this love you are drowning in--
only rots in my guilty stomach...

When my memory is watching me
with her thousands of glaring eyes,
she will always mourn the breaking of a beautiful heart.
JDS

"You treat me like I was your ocean
You swim in my blood when it's warm
My cycles of circular motion
Protect you and keep you from harm
You live in a world of illusion
Where everything's peaches and cream
We all face a scarlet conclusion
But we spend our time in a dream"
-- Jungle Love by Steve Miller Band lol

https://youtu.be/GW3pRQE-Cks
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2016
the mystery of lawlessness is bound to the "transcendence" of phonetic application of phonetic encoding... some call it the whirlwind of confusion, but somes also call it E-près and then write Ypres... well, the confusion is all but apparent... i left that in "     " to stress the ambiguity... yes, the -s is optional... it's neither possessive or plural... that, i could have learned in prison, had i ever been a Becontree purple (bishop)... dictionary moment: cranium, crimson, cradle... cardinal... but all these positions of power are on their knees (there's me trying in vain to underline that), they gobble-quote what they quack... which ends up being a circumflex and a wanking hand, embedded with "touching" Adam. oh sure they bypassed the contemporary-of-contemporaries... it was never a grey-matter affair... it was always a gangster's drill-to-the-bone moment... wait till he squeems! i don't mind ******, given the person is dead, i just hate half-asked half-baked half-bollocked Dr. Dre attempts and then failing and then, like a whining dog with its tail between its legs going back to the mantra of mother fiction... i ******* hate it... i start looking like a ******* ******! i hate it... mutter fiktion... all i'll say of a Jew: don't ******* bring an argument against the Palatine Schting right now... i have as much abhorrence against all things Egyptian as i do about English tea, which i deemed liquidated Werther's Original... and then there's this Russian ***** i'd like to the village bicycle... she's had more spare parts done unto her than the working limbs ever gave her the tilt... feminism and the sacredness of all women... name that movie quiz show... charlize theron... aileen wuornos! woo-or-nose? never mind...
   a 1K spectacle at Hastings... that's invoking quid...
and you'll feel more tonguing mollusks than
                          touching a frightened ****** quill-thread's
worth of deer with that lingo, had you ever had one...
              MONSTER!      yes, they all dream of a breakfast
at tiffany's... and i'm john paul the 2nd, and
     henry viii was a joke nursery rhyme
  when charlie bid farewell to diana...
there was no:
         divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived...
there was only a car-crash... you can't make
    a king out of swine... well... you can... Sweyn...
                  but **** me... and i thought i was naive...
guess the ***** didn't kick in when it was supposed
to; once true journalism became the ****** of what
was once the ****** of the people...
             religion... journalism these days is rotten,
it's an Aristophanes to what's really happening
defined by Socrates... it's a schoolyard...
  journalism these days is best defined by Aristophanes;
and who's the globe-trotting-gobbler of all misfits
is not the would-be diarist of returning back to
the local, the usual, the sanctimonious mundaneness
of it all; you **** only once in your life,
you end up having a **** the rest of the time,
either with your hand, or with another body.

oh i'm not bothered about the "perverts"
(funny how only men are concerned with
being named that) -
                               that are watching you,
those third party incisors of
             the bony-**** (hey, you
could be yodeling **** by now) -
                          what i'm
worried about are the perverts that provide
the "perverts" with material,
it's all very much a Turning test...
               that robotics testing ground
of: i can't keep eye contact...
   the lesser privy of psychiatry?
eye contact and biting your nails...
if that can be engaged with and subsequently
avoided:
you're as chirp as chips! honey b.
          can anyone white
feel glamorous using language in order
to tell a joke?
   that's not the question, the question is:
why call it witty comedy...
     but still employ canned laughter?
it's discouraging, i don't know when the joke comes,
all i know is that the editor finds it funny
as that particular time,
                    and that's when he inserts canned
laughter... you can get it with the most
"witty" comedies there are...
  a bit like black girls trying to be white without
the frizz of afro curbing the afro with vaseline...
i've seen catfights over this "third limb"
scenario... afro is no go in catholic schools...
you have to... yum... cow lick that ****
into place... use vaseline...
      and that's an advert-and-a-half.
but you know what really ****** me off?
philosophers... they attacked poetry because
they couldn't care two-****'s worth about
whether language could be musical
or simply communicative... they're the ones
that wrote books without using
grammatical words such as verb, or noun,
because they made them excuses to
their muddles when hoarding from poetry
words of equivalent categorical weight
such as metaphor... so attacking the practice
of poetry, but then encouraging
the categorisation of the spoke
with poetic categories rather than grammatical
categories? can i see Hegel use a noun?
no... but i can see Heidegger using
  the metaphor with two labourers utilising
a hammer... that's the thing concerning
a building site: you either pass the time
tellings jokes... or you don't work
on a building site and hold a hammer
  and question whether someone else might need it...
philosophy is not about the existential dittoing
of the i...
    it's a book, but there's a new category of pronoun
due to universal bewilderment once childhood
finishes... ? opened the door, in stepped !
and said:
     shouldn't we make the stillness of the lake
into a mirror to banish but at the same time
          domesticate narcissus -
yes, replied ?, i'm glad you thought of it...
               domesticating demigods...
                    narcissus was a stillness of a lake,
sisyphus was a stone,
    hercules was bicep,
              achilles was a tendon...
                                       our current affairs are far
from democratic, but at least our history is,
  you get ******... you get protractor...
you get mona lisa... you get 'let 'em eat croissant!',
       too many points of divergence
  in a democracy to craft a convergent "democracy",
what the politics says is that we are all
slaves to what's called a *status quo
,
  i hate the fact that western "democracies" are
no longer tagged as merely status quo...
abuse of nouns... or how philosophy attacked poetry
and never spoke a theory concerned with
language per se being evidently categorised...
     how status quo is actually a -nomer without a mis-
of democracy...
  funny, the spanish... i have no idea
why can i have some ice-cream?
      has to become ?can i have some ice-cream¿
           i guess it's like the english " and '...
  who said what, and who said what for whom?
    is there a narrator?
      is that " + 1 people speaking, or quoting a quote?
or is that direct convo... '   ',
later retelling the tale "     ",
and after that it's all but an urban myth
akin to the kentucky fried mouse...
                the French that blè blé blé blé....
and somewhere in between was the Transylvanian comma...
hmm...
                             i mean... the perverts...
   thanks for the invitation, r.s.v.p.; of sure, great mixtape...
funny thing is... i never filmed myself jerking off...
        i do a 3-in-1... take a ****, take a ****... and
clean the ****-talk ducts of banal sprechen while
      watching a monkey strutting down memory lane
of when i had a girlfriend... and had to juggle,
and go for lunch, and this that and the other,
and a dalmation... or the reflection: but i had a mother...
huh?     i never felt this much ingratitude
for occupying the premises of the oval chamber
as i did creating a signature or inserting
  myself into the least convenient space to have
later come out off using only one digit's worth of
accountability... but hey... that's life.
          are you feeling the guilt trip drug pushed
by your mother from Syria, or Somalia?
     you owe her! you parasite... makes easier argument
for the billion Blue Indians and Chinese to get on
with it and eradicate the over-sensitive ivory dodo;
or at least in Siberia with the mongols...
              so i'm guessing eskimo is the new
                        squint to what's butchery ethics in Kosovo
as: look away... nothing to see.
               still... why call it a witty comedy when
you nonetheless have to utilise canned laughter?
             and that's a novel in itself...
? went up the stairs and ? met ! questioning <
whether ? should be questioning <... instead ! suggested
that ? should be questioned by >, since ? was already
on the 1st floor, having ascended the stairs from
the ground floor...         can you write me
     a novel... replacing all the correct pronoun usage
with mathematical ambivalence structured toward
a mostly unread existential dogmatism using
  mathematical punctuation?
no one will read it...but hey... either you do something
like that... or own a dog or a cat...
           and yes, they call them diacritical marks
when they're within letters... but in between letters?
they call them punctuation marks within words...
or the microcosm of punctuation: syllabification...
          the French just gobble down a lot of
  deviation... mon fhhhhhhhhhhhhré!
don't ask me how they do it... ask Nápŏlyon,
yes, the half-wit from Li-ą... oh no... not
                                               Monsieur Dynamite.
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2016
i still believe that φ (phi) and θ (theta) used to be a grapheme, akin to the Trojan / Roman æ, cf. Virgil's the Æneid, then too a γraφeme in german: ß, not necessarily scharfes, but rutschig s... a slippery s... s the marijuana fiend all hippy and ****, then the z, using Beat vocabulary slang, the suited and booted for either war or the office environment □ (square)... i still believe φθ used to be a grapheme... separated at birth... as with V so too Φ and Θ have the prime incisors' touch the bottom lip to be said, honestly, the bottom lip makes more bone-interactions than the upper-lip; criticism is a type of medicine, you either take it... or bite the bullet. but hear a German utter the disparity: noticeable given Rammstein: ich v. sachen: i.e. ich (-sh) v. sashen or simply sahen - maybe learning Yiddish would help - the error, apart from the Malachi introduction of polytheism with two Elijahs? well, i helped you once, i won't help you again, one proof means no repetition, boorish Moses dragged from high status and belief in a birthright to garbage, from the right-hand of the Pharaoh that Joseph was, to the lowly pits of bricklayers - English bricklayers are 'appy, indeed the Grecian dispute over the surd Ηη (eta), on a hunch... hitch-hiking letter - Hitchens attacked mother Teresa, i attacked John Paul the soocoond... a Turk with grievances illuminated the story further... pope forgave the ****** in a prison cell, once law was enforced, the mighty confusion between sins (perversions) and outright bookmaker's testimony concerning the gambling of laws. i still believe φθ used to be a grapheme... look toward languages that instil the pressures of tongue-tying-tornadoes... if it weren't the grapheme ß, i'd say it was a dance between s und zee, in that the tango was danced, and the mantis convened its presence with alimony or other tactics for the hangman to fidget on the noose; obviously as confusing as to place Backgammon alphabetically coerced with ßimilarity.

poetry hasn't been altogether banished from
the republic - i concede that poetry is
best written in a frenzy - drunk - intoxicated
with whatever is deemed necessary,
prior to the battle of Hastings (1066), Harold's
army drank and drank and drank -
berserker alternative to *****? mushrooms -
so if no battle, no vain hope to compete
with Achilles - then in poetry too, phantoms
in white, cutting and bruising with every word
emerge - a solemn pledge to the art.
well, poetry hasn't been totally banished,
it's an undercurrent - manoeuvring tactic
of intelligent argument - so many poetic techniques
are used when one suddenly appears ridiculous,
sooner or later people fall back on metaphor,
with such sly excuses: oh, not really, metaphorically
speaking - oh but that's just imagery - etc. etc.
poetry is kept, precious in every circumstance in
the **** sapiens brain - to keep appearances -
to sober up - oddly enough - poetry as a method
to sober up from a frenzy of rhetoric - the 'not really'
of things that pass - it's the usefulness of disguise,
the ridiculous and pompous can suddenly take
on priestly demur - suddenly any traces of religiosity
disintegrate, and a cold and hardened heart emerges
with crystalline belief in the ruler, the protractor
and all manners of *the sensibility of science
,
anything not humbled by science is deemed childish...
chillingly this childishness is also the childishness
waving a machete or firing a Kalashnikov - oh how
childish it becomes - the ***** to take someone's life...
great disputes in heaven, about four angels are
pop, Gabriel, Michael, Raphael and Satan -
total pop culture up there - anyway, it's not the glorification
of science is fairing well, to glorify science while
being a pauper with a limited scientific vocabulary is
already entrenched, so much so that the proof is there
regarding what's happening in western societies -
to create a universal vocabulary - a tactful one,
a vocabulary that does not impress because it does not
offend - a silk vocabulary, scientifically speaking
a smooth vocabulary, perfected to be pitched so that
the overall un-offended apathy of the listener is kept,
gay is out, homosexual is in, god forbid you mention
the word pederast or simply **** - god forbid,
bite your nails, say your mea culpa prior to jumping
into bed and all is well on the western front -
it's a revolution, didn't you hear? they say iron chains
i say liquorice tangles that can be eaten through -
apologies if your palette is not suited to the particular
Anise; but a revolution nonetheless - how did we get
to the point of trying to limit other people's vocabulary?
but of course certain words contain certain emotions,
better feel dread and disgust than an emotional flatline
with no emotion present. regarding pop culture
in heaven, ever hear the names: zehpanuryay,
abirzehyay, atarigiash, nagarniel, anpiel, naazuriel,
sastiel? you probably haven't - but it's not like you'd
keep names such as: the family of amine-boranes,
ammonia-carboxyborane, tamoxifen, paraaldehyde,
dihydropyran, polyester / dacron / mylar made from
dimethyl tereφθalate and ethylene glycol...
so what's more ridiculous? funny enough, the only
remaining aspect of the English language retaining
its roots in Saxony is expressed in chemistry,
the obvious lack of hyphen usage - chemistry is the
only revealing essence of English as having origins
in German, the excessive compounding of words,
chemical nouns that require a breathing technique
and a good optical scalpel to pronounce them -
as is well known, Germans don't believe in keeping
shrapnel, they see wordy shrapnel they get the grammatical
kiln out and melt everything together, e.g.
staatlichverantwortung (duty to the state, civic duty),
only in chemistry is the German a thick block of writing,
elsewhere it's aquatic or even gaseous - one
word jokes: Richard - ****... Mr. W. Kerr - Wayne.
Anna Zagerson Aug 2013
In with the old--
Hurtle now-vintage trains down dank dark tunnels
Remove their careful electronic maps,
Strip them of their automated voices.
When my bones are dark yellow and brittle
And my tendons poorly strung,
Muscles taken from toned tan thrones--
When my years number just forty--
Build my casket, lay me in it
And let dear Friend Sleep close my eyes.

I am tired.
I am an ancient shell with separating gears,
Unwinding slowly.
I trudge familiar paths like the train,
And those tracks never change--
My worn body, my bleak self,
We always end up where last we went
Though they have gutted our insides now,
To make them new.

Hush--
You know it's me.
I am like the supply staple of your grade-school years.
Maybe I'm the protractor on which you scratched your name.
The scarred ruler, numbers all faded into gritty, sparkly blue.
You put me away behind wood cabinet doors years ago,
Promising, childish lisp all a-quiver,
To one day use me again.

--I sleep.
JL Dec 2015
Man
Know me
This I require
With only
Times New Roman
I build a fire
Blowing
Upon the Embers until
Smile

steam and iron
Ink and paper

Music
Silence

To the saloon
To the church
Tying shoes
Speaking words
Bold
Dangerous
Elegant

Graveyard abiding
We laugh
Building to break
To burn
To burn

Speed!
Flame!
In this chaos
Thriving

War Born
Sun burnt
Sons of God or
Devil
Caring not
We tighten the knot

Feral Kings
Upon
Trade winds
Compass spins
Stars inumerable
Compel
Protractor and pistol
Hammer and nail
Gasoline, sail

This blood
This muscle and bone
Violence alone

Prayers of David
Unturned stone
Story tellers
Ornately scarred
Strung for a moment
between two eternities
疲れた May 2014
one day
it will be easier for you to fall asleep
but tonight
its three fifty eight and you are wide awake
even though your eyes are washed with tears
and your heart is numb from pain

one day
you will see the light at the end of the tunnel
at the end of the tunnel
but tonight
you are freefallng
p l u n g i n g
and you're scared because
you can't see your outstretched fingers
and there is nothing to hold on to

one day
you will no longer need to stitch yourself together
as you watch yourself fall apart by the seams
but tonight
you are in tears (again)
and no one is here
to wipe them away
because the numbers you dialled
sent you to voicemail

and maybe
one day
you will be happy again
but its been at least nine months
and the clean slits on your left fist is barely visible
you are at least nine months clean
but you are not okay
you have not been okay
and you're scared shitless because
there are some things that love cannot fix
and this happens to be one of them

but strength, cannot be measured in a protractor
because you are not just a page in my mathematics textbook
hidden in a mess of my room
and perhaps,
you are weak in the strongest sense
because you still care for the ones that
drove the knife against your skin
just as you are strong in the weakest sense
because its four in the morning and no one has returned your call
and you can't seem to stop your angry tears
but you don't reach for the knife
or for the bleach at the kitchen counter
or for the alcohol

and one day,
the pain you carved unto your arms
will one day adorn your skies like constellations because the stars will guide you home

even though its not tonight
or twenty nights from now
or twenty years from now
it was four last night and i typed this out
One Andean Sky May 2021
The sharp point of a geometric compass
Stabs the page to position the beginning of a circle.
We met, came together
This was the beginning of us.

The arc was progressing at a constant radius
The direction was clear and apparent
Succumbing to its pull
Riding and shifting to keep its natural path

After a half life, the compass stopped  
The compass point came loose and as it clawed the page
Blobs of blood emerged from the scratches
Bleeding with wounds wide open

Task too large to shift and correct its position
Task too large for us to fix.
So much history and a life built together
In midway, stalled.

Best to close the circle
Seal it to minimise the bleed
Seal you in with our lifes work
Close me out to keep distance and end the bleed

Many years later, I see with clarity
2 lives continued separately
You needed the security and form, a half circle.
A protractor of sorts to help you navigate

With no rules or formulas to navigate
Disappointment and failure abounded
Colour and shape, I found
A pathway to solace, a place I could heal

Semicircle is a form, worthy of its own definition.
A meeting point and a point where we ended.
New forms emerge and they shift as life reveals itself.
No regrets, no malice and in the place remains a sense of gratitude.

Gratitude for the experiences
The life lessons we had to learn
For the legacy of the wonderful lives we created
For sharing THE experience, the most important one.

I am now the shape shifter
Bouncing around trying to find form
Maybe I am not meant to be one shape
Maybe this is what a creative does
Thibaut V Jul 2014
I want shut eye
And to shut off
Making it worth the wait
Laying in the double duvet
There will be nothing done today
- starting from the early AM
Of course when
In apathetic stance
Which sounds so concerned
I asked and answered,
So repulsed and sure
And then again in collaboration
So what?

If there is itch tangle or sore
Nothing lasting or making sense because of it, and then wishing off to shut
Asking and then answering again
So what.

Given your hands in the benevolent shadows gloom
I grasped the deep, and true colors bloom
In fire-lit hindsight
The ways that bodies exhausted temporal efforts
Through and over
Christmas warmth and holidays alike
Wishing for repetitive cuts
Lines thick and robust
Yet to bend above the high bar
Living in exorbitant envy and simultaneous lust
I wished for words to keep a man up
As Edgar Allen Poe to return
And Onto nightmares haunt
And in profuse soliloquy I discussed
Addressed and caressed the audience and applauded with further praise and *** laude the asked answer of so what.

Carefully to plot
With a protractor and fingers
Then put - in holes all around problems and solutions-
No hole without end instead whole in my hands cusped
I repeat my concern and eternal quest of lines so crossed -
In-absolute and aloof and lost
Returned the question of so what?
27/4/2014
Charles Sturies Mar 2017
Design it.
but refine it.
From drafting class
in junior high with the protractor
I have always
longed for progress
in architecture.
A harking back to medieval styles
(along with an old fashioned look in big cars)
in the seventies depressed me
but how I know
that Frank Lloyd Wright Sr. is
still respected
and the STate Farm Center
is a marvel.
There has been progress
just as much as individual success
so that the Parthenon
and the Colosseum
and the Agricole
and Agraharam
deposit on us
a new found lust
for the glory that was Greece
and that grandeur that was Rome.

*Charles Sturies
1- from a John Keats poem, I believe
Academia took my soul and perversely undressed my mind into something sublime

Though this process can't repeat what it grew, to a rapacious savage that eclipses knowledge beyond this place we call time...

The King has arisen to the throne of Babel ready to reign with steadfast diligence and eloquent soliloquies...

Though having more degrees than a Russian protractor, wrought with angst of slaying the dragon of ***** filled seas, trumping the very ***** that actors hold with a certain pedigree...

Let my words hold you and console your soul that yearns for the feeling was once lost ascribed on a pamphlet of bedrock you call Imamate objectivity...

I'm back like Wayne's Brazier hook ready to cling to the cleavage of life, the breast of Mother Earth, the ****** of human essence, that milk of restoration...

Back to advance the front through side to side oceanic flows that puts the rhythm in your left thigh, and the blues on ya right....is THAT alright like F. Love say....

I say...what a momentous occasion...the intellectual liquidity that ebbs and flows through uncertainty...

The compass that was once West turns Eastward ready to rangel the stallions of the heartland, into the sunset, though my sun hasn't risen just yet...

Bartender, start my tab, I'm just getting started to pontificate confessions of a prolific "poetender"...
mothwasher Jul 2020
(cw: kidnapping, ****** assault)

being paranoid is just being extra prepared for red dots, laser sights, red lights, blue lights. every

cigarette in the hands of passing strangers is an open flame and I dread like the pavement being burned and tread on, on the pavement, my feet walking

burned on the pavement, my feet tread

the cracks are inside dreading being stepped on

I test the walls by tapping on their shadows and humming over my shoulder, and without moving,

I imagine my escape at a circle of angles and determine the difficulty of each. the shadows merge and produce a man from a faceless corner

a shadow that had questions for me about a circle of angles

being extra prepared and protractor armed I scan and calculate for firearms and ****** features, hands in pockets, sharp objects, the signs of maybe a weak kneecap.

visions of epinephrine heroics, karate out of nowhere, super saiyan strength or sleeper cell ninja

the thoughts that come through tell me to stand my ground

in kind fashion, he asked for directions and left me disarmed

but once the dreams were done, the nightmare crawled out of the exhaust and the shadow grabbed from below

within seconds but feeling the eternal nature of prison cells, I was almost forced into the back seat, where I saw the scratches on the cushions as notches in hell

when the shadow stopped being a shadow I stopped being prepared

prepped and dreaded, treading in a circle of angles, desperately quiet,

the sound of rubbing nylon and heavy breathing to indicate conflict, cries for help escape after I do, looking for blue lights, sharp objects, red boxes and safety nets, threaded

light to knit out the shadows, weak in the kneecap dialing in

“Please give us your current location”

Myles Hall. Miles below, looking for my head in a circle of angles
this was inspired by a real event that, though horribly frightening, has been integrated to have a healthy effect on my prudence. abundant trauma therapy was critical to my recovery.
Lawrence Hall Jan 2018
A Meditation Upon Matters of Faith
And the Worthy and Diligent Study
of the Arcana of Mathematics
as Recommended to Industrious and Thoughtful
Young Men and Women

For Kyle,
Who is Enduring His First College Maths

Our Saviour never said “Now solve for X”
Such is not written in any sacred tex(t)

Saints Paul and Barnabas on journeys Psidian
Did not refer to topics Euclidian

The Corinthians were divided only by factions
Never were they divided by fractions

Good St. Paul wanted all to comprehend
The truth, and not some subtle subtrahend

But still…

But still (to me it is a great frustration)
Numbers are how we measure Creation

With them we plant the Garden that is earth
Building it up with word and work and worth

So that we feed and clothe and mend and tend
With crop rows plowed, panels welded, cattle penned

Airplanes launched, fires put out, and light bulbs lit
Messages sent – there is no end of it!

So brew yourself a cup of coffee
Find your Euclid and dust it off(y)

Work those angles on your protractor
Add, subtract, calculate, and factor

Apply yourself most assiduously
Soon you’ll be an engineer, you’ll see!

Admired by all, a man of great knowledge –
And it began in community college
positivity feels like a drop of water in a desert
and i'm tired of calling you with nothing to say
because if the desert were an ocean, i'd be the curve of a wave
something forever shifting, steep then still, steep then still
constant, but not the same
(splash splash, ripple ripple
a storm and a tide shift and a push of an oar
but then i guess even shipwrecks have anchors)

it's something my math teacher taught me to think of in numbers
the idea of a shifting wave
a fundamental of calculus, easily measured by tangent lines and graph paper,
a protractor and a trusty dixon ticonderoga number 2
(the best pencil in the world, i've been told)

but textbooks, backpacks, and the smell of dry erase
never gave me any clue of how to deal with seasickness.

do you like that world?
do you sit at your desk staring at chemical equations
considering a list of things that dead white men did or didn't do
a pencil in one hand (dixon ticonderoga number 2)
a knife in the other,
blood and ink and a bathroom sink
spilled like oil on pavement across your mind
(thick and dark in a toxic puddle, bad for the earth
but if you look at it sideways, sometimes you see rainbows)

when you go to bed and your hands shake and your breath
shivers out of you like a ghost,
are you satisfied with your world of locker slams and ABCs
and choices that you're told are yours?

maybe you're the desert
maybe i'm your drop of water
i'm tired of calling you with nothing to say
because really i'd guess i have too many words
i'm an ocean, motion sick from my own fluctuating sea,
and i would never want for you to be like me,
you're beautiful with your mountains and rocks and sand
i just with i could make you understand
how ever part of you glows when you talk about music
or how free your voice sings when you talk to me
while you're aimlessly doodling masterpieces
on some stupid vocab sheet.
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2017
art
talking the usual diatribe against
poetry,
     is a bit like a hammer
           talking against a violin...
in that casual spre(s)chen
                             (for the shoo,
thus added, rather than: a hen)...
you can't really compare
poetry to talking to a supermarket
cashier...
                 can you?
           poetry is a violin equivalent
to everyday casual talk
          being a hammer...
it's not even about formal or informal
talk...
             poetry isn't useful...
      it never was supposed to be...
   likewise, you wouldn't use
a violin, to hammer in a nail...
you'd need an actual hammer...
         on the terse side of things:
  what the **** are you on about?
  you can't give a critique of poetry
the same critique you give to modern art,
that stresses geometry...
           and only produces a black square
on a white canvas...
            so there isn't anything hidden
in that? no braille?
              i'm sure there is some braille
hidden in that...
      maybe you're not so artsy-fartsy
as you might think you could be...
ever talk to a blonde high on *******?
no?          try it... you're going
    to chop of your tongue, and later
talk in mime.
           there has to be something
in these simplistic retardations...
             **** me... triangle...
      would i sooner associate
     ramses and the pyramid,
          or pythagoras and the protractor?
that's just asking:
    and the speed of light?
          even blinking with your eyes
          can't measure the exactness of it.
i'm drunk, and just ****** about
how poetry is ****** in talk...
                 and believe me,
i hate the orthodox poets, that rhyme,
and when uttering their own ****,
are short on breath...
                   when i cite poetry, i just mean
language...
                         and when i cite language,
i just mean god...
                  so what, you fluent in braille
                 or sign-language?
hence me, sniffer dog of the lot,
                               yep,
the germans sometimes deviate
                                      from the ß / ss...
in the example already given...
          spre(s)chen...
               yep... it would be spre-hen
        but it's spre-shen...
east germans pronounce ich - isch / ish
and western germans pronounce ich -
                                 e-hah-hark-e-hah...
**** me, in english translated,
                              that's like begging
                                for a zeppelin.
Donall Dempsey Apr 2020
WE THREE

Sweeney goes down
on one knee

gathers the ball
safely to himself

before releasing to
the foot of Dwyer.

"Dinger!" he yelps
with pin point accuaracy .

"Thanks Ger!"
Dinger smirks as he chips

the ball over his own
and the defender's head

pivoting/turning
on the proverbial sixpence.

Dinger Dwyer
scorches down the left wing.

Then stops...lays back
at an angle of say 43 degrees.

Impossible to prove
without a protractor

in order to create the cross
that will arrive to me...Dempsey

in exactly say
another 7.7 seconds.

"Dinger!Dinger!Dinger!" I yell
like a little bell on legs.

"Ok memory...
can we stop it there?"

"Sure boss!"
Memory complies.

Time stops.
Enabling us to see Dinger

leap from his body
and run to where

he expects to place
the ball ...right...there

He draws an X
on the air

just like the Spot
the Ball competitions.

He has already chiselled
the ballistic progress of the ball

upon this summer evening
clear as a diagram.

Dinger then runs back
to his slanted body and

pops back into
his self again.

"Ok Memory you can
roll it from there!"

We gasp at
the perfect parabola of the pass.

I am not where
I should be.

Both the Murphy boys
have manged to turn me.

So that now I am
running backwards to

the waiting cross
"Blast. . .!" I am

not going to get
on the end of it.

No magnificent right footer.
No ****** brilliant header.

So I fling myself
straight up in the air

settle there as if I were
reclining on an invisible chaise lounge.

And: almost casually
indeed elegantly

raise a lazy right leg
going for the overhead

bicycle kick
that usually has me

fall flat on face
or ouch ****.

Shaking my skeleton
to the core.

I have the physics
of it down pat.

Even the quantum uncertainty
I only laugh at.

I am a human
vector.

"Only connect!"
Foster whispers in my ear.

Time. Now.
Timeless.

I with all the time
in the world

****** into this
one second.

This second of all
seconds.

The ball whistles
past Mike Murphy's left ear.

A real stinger.
I thank God for a Dinger.

It rockets between
the jumpers and schoolbag goalposts.

Rolls all the way
past the Power Station and beyond

to Sgt. Major Dwyer's plot
who stops  foot on a *****'s lug.

Chases away
a persistent wasp.

My mother across the road
at No. 31 O' Higgins Road

lulls her newest newborn
lullabies him in his pram.

This is the only time
I will ever be

great
morphing  into my hero

Denis Law.
I now a Law unto my self.

I and my icon
blending into one.

The one armed raised salute
fingers gripping the cuff of the shirt

all the better to wipe
the snotty nose.

It seems as if
it couldn't have

been any other way
than this.

The Sweeney/Dwyer/Dempsey magic.
We the small Gods of this little time

that exist now
only in my mind.

Shakespeare is going mad
in the commentary box

his voice echoing in so
many wireless sets

the Bard's spittle
flecking the mic.

"How now, my hearts?"
Shakespeare searches for the words.

"Did you never see
the picture of we three."
winter Feb 2020
Sometimes it really pays off
To shred your legs
With the tip of a protractor
To grow out your nails
For the purpose
Of sinking them into your skin

— The End —