"prufrock" poems
The beauty of comatose can only be seen through
the eyes of a wizard in a blizzard
strutting in garlic slippers,
or Christ with knees bent at the tabernacle
peeling bananas and kicking prayers
farther than eternity with each gapping second,
or like Basquiat slumped back to the wall,
with ounces of speedball dancing through his veins,
eating 80’s free-based fried chicken *******
as his eyelids paints beautiful nightmares of lemon flowers
and Bacchus bacon over a glycopyrrolate desert
of flagrant cuckold buffoonery.
Or like leprechauns burning chocolate ******* candles
on the mantle of Zion, sipping oatmeal sprinkled
with Staten Island malt liquor bacon.
or like Tupac reading the thoughts of Mother Shipton
through the daze of California cannabis
and hearing the ominous voice of Plutarch sing death assignments
from heaven to Assassins on horsebacks goggling ***** water
to wet the dry bones of their throats as they prepare to fulfill
the gospel of self-fulfilling prophecies of being fell by ***** bullets.
Or like sophisticated wallets of spice and kitchen characters in a bald head
cooking chemical kisses and 18 February nights under Moloch’s skin,
where constitutions are written in charcoal diaries with Egyptian ciphers and razors.
“I had rain sowed into the pockets of my sneakers and composed 1310 eulogies
at the basement of king David’s tower,” said the Kraftwerkian caricature,
as he dangles cigarettes in remembrance of Klaus Nomi and philosophizes on the proliferation
of poetic vandalism at urinals where modernism failed under the phosphorescence of coloration at the avenue of no trees where Picasso's "Guernica" **** Lies All.
Jul 17, 2012
Jul 17, 2012 at 6:01 PM UTC
On a foggy dark London day
Strode Mr Prufrock, Alfred J.
He made many an allusion
About ****** confusion
Now he’s dead like Phlebas…ok?
Feb 4, 2016
Feb 4, 2016 at 3:13 PM UTC
Darkness calls on us like the Siren's Song,
with the optimism of Candide, we charge on
because we know "things are exactly how they should be,"
But we're ignoring the fact that we cannot see!
We cannot be free!
No wonder Yossarian went so **** crazy,
trapped with no way out...
Like the old woman protecting her individuality in her burning house.
In this day and age,
Individuality burns out faster than paper in flames.
As fragile as Hamlet's mental state,
**** it's gone.
We're left as scared and self-conscious as J. Alfred Prufrock.
Questioning ourselves,
We don't dare disturb the universe.
Forced back by scrutinizing hands
through the shrunken entrances of our comfort zones,
Left torn and scarred
because they don't accept who we are.
I walk the halls with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,
Watch identity evaporate without concern.
Ignorant voices, the poison dripping into my ears.
I walk the halls a ghost.
They think I'm weird,
Maybe a few screws loose,
but I'll tell you what...
"Crazy" Orr is the one who escaped Catch-22.
Though I fear there is not an Odysseus within all of us,
I fear we are not prepared.
For when Darkness calls on us like the Siren's Song,
temptation is seldom overcome.
6/13/14
Aug 26, 2014
Aug 26, 2014 at 4:55 PM UTC
Imitation is the ******* of creativity.
So where for art thou romantic silopsisms?
Meta-physical lotion, rubbing Prufrock's
bald head. Where are the errors, syntactical?
Intimation is the blow job of canon,
The body, electric, ******* on Mt. Abora's
Cliff face. Short syllabic thrusts put the pallet
in trouble. Sharp edged thoughts caught in the throat of the speaker, leaving them mush-mouthed,
Sentimental.
The poor rhyme scheme, literary analysis 101
feet, and meter abandoned for fun,
Or played with weakly piling on what will
Fit neatly enough in the bottom swill.
Unrequited love notes, star-crossed cries,
Knotty tangled sentences to explain the deep ties,
Out of focus snapshots of pixilated lives
Even this bad poem, escaped the editor's knife.
Oct 6, 2012
Oct 6, 2012 at 3:23 PM UTC
The moon can make your eyes burn
from its brightness.
God's Canopy of Grace.
A lot of a good thing often makes you ache
for more.
We examine simplicity,
Utter awe, incurred by a moment:
Driving into the nothingnight
The wind touching everything
Two hands growing old and familiar
Staying warm together
Trying not to destroy the stillness.
Along with fragments of the sky,
We
Fall,
Golden.
How is it, that the world has not stopped shimmering
since we saw the moon drench the flatland?
Your hand still in my hand
Your eyes blink, often
slowly.
As they close, I yearn for them
to open up to me once more,
and glimmer with the warmth
you've stored away inside your soul
just for me.
*Don't look away,
even if it burns.*
You speak love into the shadows
Lights, again above our heads.
I'm always dazzled by light when you're around.
We pray for things like peace,
and discover that God's been giving it, all along.
J. Alfred Prufrock had it wrong:
*The universe begs to be disturbed
By love like this.*
Letting the wind and moon
and the stillness press upon us.
We are infinite.
And a little dizzy.
Hope expands in our chests
So many birds scatter the sky.
We are Walton, Nebraska:
A normal surprise,
God's whispered secret about beauty
covered in the moonlight,
heard only by the wind
that pushed us together.
Feb 24, 2013
Feb 24, 2013 at 5:39 AM UTC
Fourteen years old
and my life was a trap -
My ankle was caught
All red and ragged
In the jaws of an age-old machine
Designed to catch boys.
But there was a missing cog –
a little *****
because there was a way,
(There was a way)
There was a way
to
get away…
College Library,
Domed and dark,
The silence disturbed by a bluebottle’s
Rumble
And the sly ticking of my own gold watch.
Oh! Getting high on the smell of
Other people’s universes,
Tissue thin and
Dogeared immortal -
Gotcha!
I’ve got 'em all!
You can’t contain me in these walls,
I can go an – y -where.
I can get drunk on Holden’s Highballs
Or Sebastian’s brandy,
I can weep at the grave of Ignatius Riley’s
Sexually inappropriate wank-fantasy dog,
I can neatly eat Prufrock’s peach
Or a dismal breakfast in a seaside caff
With Dallow and Spicer
And dear Rosaried Rose
With one eye on the sea and
Some lukewarm tea.
I can spend a season with my namesake,
Far away from Heaven,
And shake hands with Satan as he
Finishes a speech,
Wiping his mouth on a swollen
rock,
Hot as heaven and black as a leech.
I can walk that sheep on B612,
I can whip around the Second Circle
Of Hell
Or lock myself in a toilet
With Franny,
I can live in a garret with a garrulous ****** -
I can be East of Eden,
Wonderland,
I can die in Venice,
I can shoot soldiers in the sand,
I can lust after Lo – lee – ta
Tip of the tongue,
I can be a girl,
I can be a nun,
Blow into a conch,
Diffuse a bomb,
Digest my lunch,
Be a sub,
Be a dom,
I can sparkle here,
I can be free here,
I can just be here
And there are no rules here,
Just one boy
And a book
And a bluebottle
And a watch.
Aw dear -
What a flawed design for a cage!
Aug 22, 2014
Aug 22, 2014 at 6:59 PM UTC
it’s been a long time coming
like eliot, I too am winter’s forced friend
like eliot, round my head the swallows also fly
always wandering
always wondering
when will my spring come?
Jul 27, 2010
Jul 27, 2010 at 10:57 AM UTC
I could be dead by tomorrow,
wrapped in the comfort of
silence. Spread out on the
floor of yesterday. I loved
you so many years ago there
is a calm scrape on the days
meridian.
I turn myself in for being
ridiculous. " Do I dare to
eat a peach? ". I cross the
sandpaths of memory and
kick the castles yesterday
left. No tomorrow for us.
I, like Prufrock, dizzingly
look for the summer night,
walk unsteady in my old
age lest I die to finally
and forget.
Caroline Shank
1.20.2023
Jan 21, 2023
Jan 21, 2023 at 7:06 AM UTC
Believe me when I say I’m in a deeper love that I have ever been,
and I promise to love you more than J. Alfred Prufrock loved any woman.
Aug 8, 2013
Aug 8, 2013 at 12:20 AM UTC
It was a day like this,
in March; smiling blue sky,
cheering wind, chill and brisk
A day like this, on the Charles
It was a good day
for sailing, hiking out
side by side, racing upwind
‘til feathers by the bridge
rocked us like babes,
laughing verses of Rimbaud
lamenting Milton
and the Arch-Fiend
We sailed circles round the eights
sculling their way to Henley;
we called them slaves
and gestured like Merry Pranksters
We tacked and jibed, glided downwind,
and on a broad reach, we saw Prufrock
standing on shore, downcast,
as mermaids slipped on board
and sang with us:
A verse for Nausicaa
A chorus for Eidolon
Mar 11, 2014
Mar 11, 2014 at 7:34 PM UTC
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes; 25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to ****** and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go 35
Talking of Michelangelo.
Jun 22, 2014
Jun 22, 2014 at 1:20 PM UTC
The iron in your blood is palpable
And as my nose discovered it
It was like a new religion to me-
A break into your apartment
In the middle of the night,
Wearing knee socks and a football jersey,
Hallowing religious experience.
And as much as you like them
I can NOT appreciate Corn flakes.
My feline has found a base in my guitar case
Much like I have made a mansion,
A toasty nest in your dominance wafting veins.
Watching her lay there
I understand
What it is like to be.
What it is like to be
the supplier of ultimates
And not ultimatums.
Like how God feels when he see someone
Bathe in the diminutive properties.
And as much as you like them
I cannot appreciate Corn flakes.
They taste like toenails.
I want to fasten my seatbelt to this.
I want to send you text messages
That are blank and know you know exactly
What I meant to say.
I want to make love to you
Without ever touching you
Because grip might be too rough
For what subsists here.
I will eat your Cornflakes, Mr. Prufrock-
I will eat them up.
Jun 25, 2011
Jun 25, 2011 at 3:36 PM UTC
I am Emma Bovary
I am Prufrock
I am the Underground Man
I am Gretta
I'm trapped in my mind, wondering why I am in this situation...
I'm unsure of myself and my feelings...
I needed to dominate but now I realize what I got isn't what I want...
I'm judged by my past and still wanting to re-live my glory days...
I too am Baumer...
I'm fighting but it's time to rest
Oh Dorian! why am I so perfect?
Tomorrow, I'll be at breakfast and won't see the girl who made me feel this way, I'll give up hope
and continue lying saying "I'll elope"
Besides, she'll think I'm ugly and I'll feel alone and ashamed
I too...
Am Decaying on The Inside
Mar 29, 2015
Mar 29, 2015 at 10:30 PM UTC
She was the heartbeat of desire,
while I was a dry upper crust of a writer.
She was the Flamingo, fluid with grace.
I was just a stiff member with a bank teller’s face.
I lay with the lady as a matter of course
We woke up the next morning with all innocence lost.
I married Viv then and in London remained
where J. Alfred Prufrock cemented my fame.
It was between the two wars, when poets still mattered
Though the world of our birth was bruised beaten and tattered.
Viv had many needs that I couldn’t fulfill
Her one infidelity rankles me still.
The silence between us grew as loud as the Bourse.
Though our pairing proved barren, we never divorced.
My footsteps were haunted by this girl with my name.
I resolved we should part. My friends thought her insane.
Maurice, her brother, signed to have her committed.
I saw her just once, a perfunctory visit.
She was young when she died, just turned Fifty Eight.
My fate would be different, I had longer to wait.
Of the man that I might have been, little remained
She made me a poet, my dry soul she claimed
Nov 6, 2014
Nov 6, 2014 at 10:16 PM UTC
Half asleep feet shuffle in aimlessly;
Water fills the celestial coffeepot.
Chocolate brown grounds by a spoon are allot.
A spoonful spills to the floor! This marks its tragedy.
Another, another, so painfully,
This tragedy would make any distraught.
How can sleep be torn from eyes so bloodshot
Without the black elixir so holy?
The sleepy feet walk through the garage door,
Each brooms' handle is long like cold harpoons.
It sweeps up the wasted dreams on the floor.
"I measured out my life in coffee spoons."1
The tedious toil begins once more,
And so go the morning coffee mistunes.
1 - From "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot
Apr 28, 2021
Apr 28, 2021 at 2:46 PM UTC
Oh, Mr. Prufrock,
Pinned and wriggling on that wall.
Sometimes I wonder what those painted butterflies feel.
Sometimes I think
I know.
Measured with stretched bits of thread,
Taut and clean and precise.
Labeled with little placards
Like neat white grave markers.
How macabre, that we must
Skewer
Lovely things.
Define them,
Limit them,
Destroy them to preserve them.
I
Am formulated too.
I have felt the cold cut of it in my chest.
Behind that glass, up on that wall,
I wonder what that royal blue, feather-light creature felt
Just before the lights went out
With a bulbous, giant eye peering down
Carefully impaling it.
Those shiny black legs--- so fragile!---
Struggling.
Oh, Mr. Prufrock
I grow old as well.
I wonder if they ever feel---
Those winged acquisitions of ours---
The crumbling fragility of their beauty
Of their bodies.
Bodies that a stiff breeze can knock asunder,
Bodies that a sewing needle
Can unravel- I am OLD.
Your words stick me through
With who I am,
A sword the size of a pin,
But I am powder light
I am
Paper thin and I am so
Absurdly trapped--- A soul of supernovas
Held inside the tentative shell
Of a monarch butterfly
King of
"If you touch me the oils from your fingers will burn my wings away like acid."
How cruel! How laughable
And how exhausting
That I carry inside me
My own destruction
That I am a paper lantern
Which swallowed a holocaust of flames
And realized its mistake only when
Pregnant with immolation.
How exasperatingly final, and how precarious.
It must be so frustrating to be a butterfly,
Isn't that what you meant, sir?
To be so light
To be so gentle
To hold in your hands your little white label grave plate
And know, just know
That hardly anyone will wonder how much the needle hurt
Before they read it.
Sep 4, 2014
Sep 4, 2014 at 5:53 PM UTC
The eyes glowed as she nodded
into the apartment. She’s been out.
She comes and she goes
as Prufrock once lamented;
all of that banal nonsense.
She always has things to do,
she only stays the nights,
worn out and turned on.
She begs it all from me,
the self, the mind...
It is all I can to simply
bend the knee.
I concede as man has
conceded since the first in Eden.
I write late into the night,
but not when her footsteps
echo up the stairs.
Not when she nods in,
eyes glowing,
lips silent and pressed tight,
legs, ears, fingertips;
all of the above moving vividly.
I have nothing to
do but sit. I have nothing to
do but wait.
She drags her mess in
with beautiful disaster
and I with eager anticipation.
The pen is mightier than the sword,
but not this.
I am not even a writer anymore
but a servant, a vassal.
She comes and is gone by morning
and the mess is left,
and the page is empty,
and the door shuts silently
but it keeps me from going back to sleep
all the same.
Dec 15, 2015
Dec 15, 2015 at 4:37 AM UTC
Getting lost in your eyes is, I am sure,
Much like being rescued from Tempest waters
With the Blue Moon dappled on my back.
What you see wonders with, I often find myself drowning in
But I never suffocate, no,
And I never die;
I just lose my breathe for a moment
Before you bring me to life.
I would very much like to meet the Sirens in your mind and appease each she through acquaintance;
I will jump in at the deep end with no questions asked-
Alas, I am not worthy to drink nor feel
The Aqua of your embrace,
Instead I cloud my face
And speak the lines that Prufrock spake:
'I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.'
I am undeserving of the swim within your sweet, salt water,
It would seem.
Feb 6, 2018
Feb 6, 2018 at 3:36 PM UTC
Mistah Gates. He dead"
Time is an ouroboros and
the Earth a flat circle
Measure out your life
in insta pics
Let us go then, you and I,
through empty diamonds
and deserted play grounds.
Let us visit, if you will,
the battlefields ,
streets full of bodies
that decay in minutes.
In waiting rooms people come and go
and speak of tanks and Bushido
Eyes I dare not meet
Can see me with their headpiece
made of straw
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Forgotten, as we stare at our new ones.
Jul 11, 2019
Jul 11, 2019 at 11:31 PM UTC
J. Alfred, I'm sick of your whining --
get off your **** and do something!
Yes, I know life is meaningless.
I know you've got a lot of time on your hands.
Of course, tea parties can be boring.
But let me just ask here: "Is someone making you do this?
Is someone making you hang out with these cold, scornful
women?"
Surely a guy like you could find someone to relate to. It's
not that hard.
No, you're not Prince Hamlet --
and you're not an attendant lord either.
You're J. Alfred Prufrock!
Eat a peach, for-God's-sake!
Talk to the mermaids!
Just do it!
<Note: It's useful to think of Whoopi Goldberg as the speaker.>
Jul 10, 2018
Jul 10, 2018 at 2:30 PM UTC
*lonesome
as an island with
waves that roars but no one listens
a legion of people
in a downtown intersection
but I stay afloat in desolation
in the midst of a city hustle
I reclused to move
I defeated myself
and surrendered with the action
I live in a jungle of solitary
like a hermit dancing on the ocean floor
They call me Alfred Prufrock
but this is not a love song.
Oh, halt! he wasn’t writing a love song.*
May 1, 2018
May 1, 2018 at 6:20 PM UTC
What is this selection of love so natural
To drive men insane and women to purgatory
Can Mr Darwin explain?
I doubt not , but is the meaning clear
Why love one to one remains so dear.
Karl denied it, Lenin too
And Uncle Joe dismissed it
As a plot to subvert what was good for the proletariat.
But in that recent time when Hitler’s darkness shadowed
The Earth
Love glowed in the gloom of the despair of nations’ Terezins
Which to-day helps to repair our broken dreams
Of why we love one to one.
Keats loved one ***** Brawne
And Coleridge his Asra
But what is ecstasy’s advantage?
When comes the pain of separation
Mr Darwin, please explain.
Is it lust, is it reproduction?
But then when love is thwarted
We cannot function,
Where is the advantage
Mr D --- what is the aim, can you explain?
How the coiled spiral passing from time to time
Its immortal message which condemns each generation
To the pain of separation
When the reaper calls, or the rival sunders
The coils of love’s message we’ve inherited
Since the beginning of time.
Why? What is the advantage?
Mr D, please tell me your answer.
The whales they sing one to one
Like Eliot’s mermaids singing
Not to Prufrock but perhaps to you and me
The message of communication.
Is this love as one to one
Each supports another wounded
By the enormity of the harpoon?
The dictator’s message in another form
Devoid of love, sundered, never whole
Coming from that Terezin we never solve.
Dysfunctional Mr D, where’s the advantage
For such conflicting feelings to evolve?
David Applin (Copyright 2015)
March 2012
May 9, 2015
May 9, 2015 at 5:08 AM UTC
I imagine you naked
I imagine you dead in faint recall
I imagine your hands the gun metal
I imagine your teeth the fence guarding flesh
I imagine your perfume, your mother’s wake
I imagine your strut a dance to J. Alfred Prufrock
I imagine you singing from each to each
he puts it like that, and you have become overwhelmed
by passivity
as in a salutary
as capitulation
as the Earth surrendering to rain.
I imagine you clothed
I imagine you alive in the demise of day
I imagine your hands studded to the hilt with lacquered sorrow
I imagine your teeth gnawing my skin to suture
I imagine your tears, the sea in front of your mother’s grave
I imagine you
fucking in the silver head of morning
Apr 25, 2016
Apr 25, 2016 at 8:59 PM UTC
When I am with you I don't wanna talk about politics.
I wanna talk about the universe within me.
Something that's bigger than us, something also selfish.
With you i'm selfish, you brought out the best and worst in me.
I wanna talk about the things with immediacy
philosophy, literature and poetry.
I used to love to discuss politics, the
collision between different ideologies.
But now i just want to know everything,
Everything about you, your nerves, your cells,
Is a whole new world to me.
Read me the love song of J.Alfred Prufrock
Let us go then, you and I
To the nearest park and blend me in.
Jun 14, 2019
Jun 14, 2019 at 2:42 AM UTC
Some days hang in the sky like gems
Or encase me inside, quite still.
Above, the light is crystalline
And on the horizon, filtered soft
I sit, like Scheherazade and gaze
At the oscillating leaves
And wandering clouds,
Letting them create a hum inside me.
Senses turn to water and slide down
Beneath my skull, draining tension
And even careful thought,
Until all that’s left is the mind,
The vibrating Paradis,
The enclosed garden of antiquity,
Yet boundless tending of awareness
That is unaware,
And the long, slow drift of Life.
…
I could stop there
But near-erotic sensations
Through all my nerves and skin
Lead me on,
As if sinking down into a pool,
Inside a liquid chalice of energy.
Eyelids half-closed,
Viscera descending
As the being relaxes.
Limbs flex and let energy flow
Until there is no barrier
Between myself and the earth.
Like Prufrock, I come to rest,
Not ragged claws but a thoughtless droplet
Or ancient sea lily that waves
And, we have seen, walks daintily
On tip-toes across the sea floor!
In the currents I send out tendrils
Of light and vague curiosity,
The only human thing left,
As it once was, before consciousness
Trespassed, before anything was named,
Before judgment was passed.
It is mind without thought:
The brilliant void that changes not
From sunrise to sunset.
I could remain like this forever,
Simply being;
All is a luxury of torpor,
Serenity and certainty.
And if one psyche plaintively asked,
If this is all,
I should reply that for these
Several moments,
“This is just what I mean,
this is all.”
Oct 19, 2018
Oct 19, 2018 at 8:31 AM UTC