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Martyn Thompson Aug 2011
i - Introduction:
ii - Lismore Park
iii - The Road to Maidenhead
iv - Town Square
v - Contradiction, contraband
vi - Saturday Afternoon
vii - The Circus Comes to Town (Sunday)
viii - The Show
ix - The ringmaster
x - The Fracas
xi - An incident at Upton Park
xii - No ball games
xiii - New found…
xiv - Nearly done
xv - Another time…

i - Introduction:

Come friendly bombs you’ve still to hit
The place whose name means quagmire
The town, the place that’s left bereft
Of soul, of spiritual fire.
But hurry, hurry, please be fast
For the crack dealer plies his trade
With slight of hand and cunning
A ghetto he’ll have made

The peroxide perms have now all grown
And muster outside shops
To wait for the be-suited sales rep
With his rocks and his alco-pops
They’ve all spawned offspring of their own
Fifteen-year-old cradle pushers
Who sold their souls in return for hope
To thirty year old cradle snatchers

Come friendly bombs it’s plain to see
The vacant, empty faces
The lifeless eyes, the pallid skin
The love that leaves no traces
The love that lasts a knee trembling minute
Outside Harry’s and Sluffs
A love that smells of emptiness
O they cannot get enough

Come with me, look over there
To the sculpture in the mall
The stainless tree with it’s stainless birds
And stainless birdsong call
A bird sings and the town all stops
To see from where this sound will show
A bitter disappointment when learned
It was played on the radio

Community service on the airwaves
To draw the crowd together
A song played, a one hit wonder
Reminds us nothing is forever
The sterile radio station plays on
Opiates to which we should yield
And bare our souls and be grateful for
The song of Bedingfield

ii - Lismore Park

The sight of a child playing in the street
Is one of day’s gone bye
But Lismore Park sees them out in droves
Stealing cars and getting high
The twelve year old sent out to play
Whilst mother takes a knap
But really she’s having it away
For a fiver and a brown wrap

The party at the house next door
That never seems to stop
The men all come and go and paw
Girls in this knocking shop
But halt weary traveller, stop!
Come sit and rest your back
The bench awaits you on the green
And the deluded maniac

The man who knows what’s wrong with you
And how to make it better
As long as he keeps his soul filled up
With cheap White Lightening cider
Six large cans for a five-pound note
From the corner shop near the school
An offer really not to be missed
And to make the drunkards drool

A songbird sits on the climbing frame
And sings his cheerful tales
A tune too much for our dear lush
The maniac exhales
The songbird sings and fills the air
With a loving string of notes
That reminds the sitters on the bench
There may still be a hope

A radio plays ‘that’ song again
Should you dare to forget the rhythm
The bird has flown away now
Fed up with this hypnotism
The airwaves are now filled with dross
Thanks to the flat opposite the green
The weary traveller moves on
“Better days has this place seen”

iii - The Road to Maidenhead

O friendly bombs do try to miss
The sweet blossom, the fragrant smell
The flowers, the green grass of the parks
The havens in this hell
Be careful around the Jubilee River
With it’s wildlife and sculpted hills
For a walk in this very man-made place
Will surely heal your ills

But spare no mercy for the superstores
That pollute and destroy our thoughts
“If it’s not on the shelf, we haven’t got it…”
The familiar assistants’ retort
Take no prisoners with the office blocks
That lay empty year after year
For they clutter up the atmosphere
And have no value here

O friendly bombs, o friendly bombs
The cabbages are all grown
They read the Sun and sing along
To the radio’s dreaded drone
Whilst in their vans they speed on by
Jumping all the lights
To price a job – a small brick wall
Based on a thousand nights

The car showrooms… the car dealers
Stack ‘em high and sell them cheap
Chop-chop salesman, soften ‘em up
The rewards are there to reap
Finance, part exchange or cash
Anyhow you like
“No sir, not me sir…
…I’d prefer to use my bike”

The bustle of the weekend crowds
The steamy traffic queues
Stare too hard at that red car
And suffer the abuse
Overtake the blue one now
And make him toot his horn
See him raise his voice in anger
To satisfy his scorn

iv - Town Square

Saturday morning, seven o’clock
The town begins to wake
A pair of sleeping winos
Dream about their fate
They plan their morning sermon
But who will really care
For what they say means nothing
Less than their icy stare

The busker and the balloon man
Wait to take their turns
To entertain and irritate
And suffer being spurned
By a thousand shady shoppers
Who’ve heard it all before
And probably given hard earned cash
To make them play some more

The trickster and the barra’ boys
Set up all their stalls
Selling mobile phone covers
And fake branded hold-alls
Adorn your phone with logos
Hankies for a pound
“Yes sir, we’re here on Sundays…
…(Providing there’s no police around)”

Grab a baked potato and sit
And watch the folk go by
Some will have you in hysterics
Some will make you cry
The man on his double-glazing stand
In his suit and in his tie
The perspiration on his head
Watch him wilt and fry

The songbird settles on the wall
And sings to our delight
A merry sonnet that will inspire
Dreams we’ll have that night
The wino shouts his sermon now
The bird has paused his song
This post-war sprawling Hooverville
Muddles slowly along

v - Contradiction, contraband

On the steps of the library he screams aloud
Through a mist of smuggled gin
“You’re all fools, the lot of you is ****
I’ve not committed sin…”
“It’s not my fault I’m a lush… a drunk
I don’t choose to live this life”
“You’re all wrong in carrying on
It’s you what’s caused my strife”

In his wretched form he abuses the world
Pooh-poohing this and that
A skunk telling the world it stinks
The polemic polecat
“Society has robbed me of everything
And left me less than whole”
“The only day that’s good is Thursday
When the postman brings me dole”

On Friday he meets his dealer
To fuel his pickled mind
The man with the van on Saturday
With the spirit and the wine
By Monday, he’s all skint and broke
The weekend has passed him by
He takes his place on the library steps
We shake our heads and sigh…

Every week the same routine
The same routine again
Like clockwork his life ticks on by
The suffering and the pain
But he tells us it’s all our fault
We’re the ones not right
But it’s very easy for him to say
The man who’s so contrite

The children watch him puzzled
It’s more than they can bear
“It’s very rude…” their mothers say
“To stand like that and stare”
But what, do they expect their young
To ignore this fool a mumbling?
For they will see it for what it is
A stormy weather warning

vi - Saturday Afternoon

I sit on a wall in Slough with friends
Sharing the Dutch export
Watching and laughing at the world
And it’s variety of sorts
A happy bond that we all share
The joy of simple things
Come friendly bombs and gather round
Watch us while we sing

The friendly bombs you call upon
Are they straight off the shelf?
It’s my belief, my firm belief
The bomb is in yourself
Ticking slowly by and by
Just waiting for the code
To trigger you and trip the switch
To make the bomb explode

We watch the people from where we sit
The hellholes they’ve all made
They don’t live they just exist on
The edge of a razor blade
Stop! Step back and take a look
It’s not too late to change
And become what you really want to be
An icon of your age

Over now to Langley Park
To sit and bathe in the sun
O friendly bombs please wait a while
Until this day is done
But what will tomorrow bring my friends?
And will it come too late?
Something that may save us all
The bombs may have to wait

A sedate sleepy Saturday
Away from all the crowds
Share a joke, a ****, a smoke
And laugh together loud
The sun warms our sombre souls
As on our backs we lie
Staring as the clouds roll by
United under the sky

vii - The Circus Comes to Town (Sunday)

Halt now, wait awhile please
Stop the counting down
Today the air is charged with joy
The circus comes to town
Must have arrived last night we think
Under cover of dark
And settled down and pitched it’s tents
In the grounds of Upton Park

The queue to purchase tickets
Trails far along the road
No. 53 offers cups of tea
From outside her abode
The crowds are mum, they say not a word
As they wait their turns to go
Inside the circus big-top tent
And sit and watch the show

We settle down and take our seats
With an ice-cream and a coke
But wait, where are the circus clowns?
Is this some kind of joke?
A wall of mirrors fades into view
And puts us in a spin
Reflecting all the bright lights
The colours and the din

The ringmaster enters, cracks his whip
And hands out little slips
“Everyone’s a winner” was
On every body’s lips
The clowns they all appear now
With a modicum of fuss
Hold on just a minute now!
The clowns we see are us

A spotlight points up to the gods
At the top of the trapeze
A giant money spider glides
Down with greatest ease
He touches each and everyone
All paralysed with fear
And hands out ten pound notes to all
Then promptly disappears

viii – The show

A strongman strolls out slowly with
A length of iron bar
A leopard spotted leotard and
Moustache sealed with tar
He looks around the big top with
A menace and a sneer
Surveying all the audience
He seeks a volunteer

The white van man he raised his hand
The tattoo on his arm
Said this man must not be crossed
To do so would mean harm
The strongman bent the iron bar
Across the van man’s back
Then invited him to strike him down
An unprovoked attack

The van man clenched his hand and hit
And hurt his mighty fist
A statue of the strong man shattered
Turning into mist
The van man stood and stared in fear
The mist it gathered round
And carried out our hero driver
He hardly made a sound

No-one clapped we all just stared
Our faces ghostly white
The strongman re-appeared and looked for
A second stooge that night
No-one raised a hand in fact
No-one said a thing
The strongman shrugged and vanished…
Empty was the ring

A knife thrower was the next to appear
And seek the help of one
With nerves of solid steel and courage
Secondly to none
Down came a fallen woman
Who said she had no fear
A knife was thrown and pierced her skin
Her right large ear-ringed ear

ix – The ringmaster

A second knife it struck her chest
She didn’t seem to weep
She didn’t seem to be in pain
Although the knife was deep
A third knife struck her arm and then
A fourth it struck her head
The knives that should be missing her
Were hitting her instead

Horrified the crowd looked on
Without a fuss or row
The woman now all full of blades
Politely took her bow
She then went back and took her seat
And never said a word
Not another word she said
And not a word she heard

A magician was the next to charm
And thrill us with his tricks
He pulled a rabbit from his hat
Then sat it on some bricks
He then threw watches at this beast
That grew to a great size
The rabbit caught them all and juggled
Them to our surprise

But here’s the rub when we all looked
At places on our wrists
No watches were there to be seen
A cunning little twist
The magician cracked a whip and put
The rabbit in a stew
Which vanished there before our eyes
Vanished out of view

The magician he announced that he
Alone did have this plan
To mystify and amaze us all
With his clever hand
Indeed he was the ringmaster
That owned this circus troupe
That terrified and petrified
Our frightened little group

x – The Fracas

A swarm of bees engulf us now
And cover us with honey
The ringmaster cracks his whip again
The bees all turn to money
Then suddenly the fight begins
As we grab this flying stash
Filling up our purses now
With the hard-grabbed cash

The ringmaster, a clever man
Calms us with his sigh
“There’s plenty here for everyone
…And more than meets the eye”
Suddenly a flock of doves fly
Sweetly through the air
They then attack the baying crowds
Pulling at their hair

Then with a deafening bang, a crack
A flash of burning light
We all cascade towards the floor
The circus out of sight
Confused we all stare around
Thinking it absurd
This bizarre spectacle should vanish
Gone without a word

I look from face to face to face
Whatever could this mean?
We all are laughing nervously
How stupid have we been?
We talk about the day’s events
We talk and talk some more
A voice booms from out the sky
“I’ve opened up the door”

“I’ve brought you all together now
To pander to your greed
To watch you take from fellow man
Deny him what he needs”
I reach in to my pocket
For the money I did place
It reads “Admission: 1 adult
To The Human Race”

xi – An incident at Upton Park

That week the local paper ran
An exclusive full-page ad
“Faland’s Travelling Circus Troupe”
“The most fun ever had”
But no review was there to read
To tell of our event
The strange encounter with this circus
To which we all went

The following Sunday we meet up
In groups of three or four
Since that incident in Upton Park
The spectacle we can’t ignore
No-one knows quite what it means
I don’t think that we’ll ever
Understand all that happened here
That brought us all together

Perhaps there is a deeper message
Given on that day
Faland may be telling us
That we have lost our way
He simply used us all as tools
To illustrate our folly
That had now become too serious
A risk to things so jolly

Every week now we all gather on
This hallowed piece of land
And this is very odd because
Nobody makes the plan
The idea comes to all of us
A self-ignited spark
And draws each of us in turn
To meet in Upton Park

We picnicked then we all played games
Then talked about the rain
We toasted our new friendships
And vowed to meet again
The bombs, the bombs they’ve all slowed down
Compassion saved the day
This newfound love we now all have
Must surely pave the way

xii - No ball games

The joy did not take long to spread
Across our grimy frowns
And bring a little sunshine
To lighten up this town
Happiness is upon us now
The whole of Slough-kind
Depending on how you look at it
And on your state of mind

The lush upon the library steps
The wino on the bench
The Publican and Landlord
The ***** serving *****
They all wear smiles and laugh a lot
And speak of wondrous things
A songbird perches on the fence
And merrily she sings

The children, o the children
How they sing and dance
Always being friendly
In any circumstance
They have no care for politics
You’ll see it in their face
They want to play with everyone
Who’s in the human race

Meanwhile back in Upton Park
The townsfolk meet again
But there’s no talk of horror
Or suffering and pain
Instead though how a monument
Should be erected in our names
And pulling down the signs
That read ‘No Ball Games’

The bombs have all stopped ticking now
And line up by the wall
And every now and then they clang
Just to remind us all
If we get too complacent
And don’t respect our friends
We’re marking down the seconds
To our bitter end

xiii – New found…

We shared our food and shared our tales
Life stories we all told
They made us laugh they made us cry
Left us warm and cold
The suffering we did speak of
Helped us understand
How fellowman and woman kind
Dwelt in other lands

We laughed at tales of folly
And stories of the past
Stories that we are in awe of
Stories that will last
For another thousand years or more
And travel on the wind
A gentle breeze that talks to us
Thrilling to the end

Gathering momentum
Our stories travel far
Picked up and told by new folk
Under glowing stars
They bring warmth and humanity
Softened by the rain
They travel back to each of us
To be re-told again

Who’d have thought this loving joy
This beacon in the dark
Would begin upon the grass
Of hallowed Upton Park
The greed has gone or mostly so
Now happiness is here
We’ve seen the light and now must spread
Our messages of cheer

Looking back it hardly seems
We could have been that way
Not caring if each other lived
To see another day
This new found near Utopia
Must spread across the land
And we must stand to offer all
Our warm and guiding hand

xiv – Nearly done

The story is now almost told
Of how a strange event
Saved us from our selfish selves
A message heaven sent
With cunning tricks and sleight of hand
The error of our ways
Was written up in greasepaint
Shining through the haze

A strange di
I wrote this in about 2004 - loads of literary influences in this poem. It speaks for itself really. Having read through it, I think I ought to revise / review and re-write some of it, but this is the original.... yay!!
Jess Rose May 2010
The pounding of the drum
was sheets of white paper
Each clap falling to the floor
Settling slowly
Like geese alight to water
We were there for this landing
Nosily, gracefully
The geese were
Ourselves

The drumming of the drum
Was a shell around us all
And we all spiraled in
Till the casements of the
windows shook
Till throughout the basement
And up the stairs
Was the sound
Lifted up again
Like the geese
And the paper pushers
And the polished
thrumming,
drumming,
humming

of

our

hearts
Terry O'Leary Jul 2015
As dawn unfolds today beyond my fractured windowpane,
a breeze beguiles the ashen drapes. Like snakes they slip aside,
revealing wanton worlds that race and run aground, insane,
immersed in scenes obscene that savants strive to mask and hide.

Outside, the twisted streets retreat. Last night they seemed so cruel.
While lamps illumed lithe demons dancing neath the gallows tree,
their lurking shadows shuddered as they breached the vestibule.
Within the gloom strange things abound, I sense and sometimes see.

Perdu in darkened doorways (those which soothe the ones who weep)
men hide their shame in crevices in search of cloaked relief.
The ladies of the evening leave, it’s soon their time to sleep!
The alleyways are silent now but taste of untold grief.

Distraught nomadic drifters (dregs who stray from street to street)
abandon bedtime benches, squat on curbs they call a home,
appeal to passing strangers for a coin or bite to eat.
Rebuffed, they gaze with icy eyes that chill the morning gloam.

Observe with me once more, beyond my fractured windowpane,
the broken boy with crooked smile, the one who's seen the beast.
With tears, he kneels and clasps the cross to exorcise the stain.
The abbey door along the lane enshrouds a pious priest.

At nearby mall, Mike needs a cig, and stealth'ly steals a pack.
The Man, observing, thinks ‘Hey Boy, this caper calls for blood’,
takes aim, then shoots the fated stripling six times in the back.
Come, mourn for Mike and brother Justice, facedown in the mud.

The shanty town has hunkered down engaged in mortal sports
while shattered bodies' broken bones at last repose supine,
and mama (now bereft of child) in anguished pain contorts,
her eyes drip drops of bitter wrath which wither on a vine.

Fatigued and bored, some kids harass the crowded alley now.
To pass the time, Joe smokes a joint and Lizzy snorts a line.
The NRA (which deals with doom) can sometimes help somehow,
though Eric died with Dylan in ‘The Curse of Columbine’.

Marauders scam the marketplace (with billions guaranteed)  
while babes with bloated bellies beg with barren sunken eyes,
and (cut to naught) the down-and-out (like trodden beet roots) bleed.
Life's carousel confronts us all, though few can ring the prize.

Yes, Mr Madoff, private bankster (cruising down the road,
with other Ponzi pushers, waving magic mushroom wands),
adores addiction to the bailout (coffers overflowed),
and jests with all the junkies, while they’re bilking us with bonds.

A timeworn washerwoman totters, stumbling from a tram -
she shuffles to her hovel on a dismal distant hill,
despondent, shuts the shutters, prays then downs her final dram -
a raven quickly picks at crumbs forsaken on her sill.

Jihadist and Crusader warders faithfully guard the gates,
behead impious infidels, else burn them at the stake
(yes, God adores the faithful side, the heathen sides He hates),
with saintly satisfaction reaped begetting pagan ache.

All day the watchers skulk around our fractured windowpanes
inspecting all our secret thoughts, our realms of privacy,
controlling every point of view opinion entertains,
forbidding thoughts one mustn't think, with which they don’t agree.

Our rulers (kings and other things) have often made demands
of populations breathing air on near or distant shores
and when they didn’t yield and kneel, we conquered all their lands
with sticks and stones, then bullets, bombs and battleships in wars.

Come, cast just once a furtive glance… there's something in the far…
from towns to dunes in deserts dry, the welkin belches death
by dint of soulless drones that stalk beneath a straying star
erasing life in random ways with freedom’s dying breath.

But closer lies an island, where the keepers grill their wards.
Impartial trials? A travesty, indeed quite Kafkaesque.
The guiltless gush confessions, born and bred on waterboards.
No sense, no charges nor defense. A verdict? Yes, grotesque!

Now dusk is drawing near outside my fractured windowpane
while mankind wanes like burnt-out suns in fading lurid light;
and scarlet clots of grim deceit and ebon beads of bane
flow, deified, within a corpse, the fruit of human blight.
In nineteen hundred forty-nine
China was won by Mao Tse-tung
Chiang Kai-shek's army ran away
They were waiting there in Thailand yesterday

Supported by the CIA
Pushing junk down Thailand way

First they stole from the Meo Tribes
Up in the hills they started taking bribes
Then they sent their soldiers up to Shan
Collecting ***** to send to The Man

Pushing junk in Bangkok yesterday
Supported by the CIA

Brought their jam on mule trains down
To Chiang Rai that's a railroad town
Sold it next to the police chief brain
He took it to town on the choochoo train

Trafficking dope to Bangkok all day
Supported by the CIA

The policeman's name was Mr. Phao
He peddled dope grand scale and how
Chief of border customs paid
By Central Intelligence's U.S. A.I.D.

The whole operation, Newspapers say
Supported by the CIA

He got so sloppy & peddled so loose
He busted himself & cooked his own goose
Took the reward for an ***** load
Seizing his own haul which same he resold

Big time pusher for a decade turned grey
Working for the CIA

Touby Lyfong he worked for the French
A big fat man liked to dine & *****
Prince of the Meos he grew black mud
Till ***** flowed through the land like a flood

Communists came and chased the French away
So Touby took a job with the CIA

The whole operation fell in to chaos
Till U.S. Intelligence came into Laos
I'll tell you no lie I'm a true American
Our big pusher there was Phoumi Nosovan

All them Princes in a power play
But Phoumi was the man for the CIA

And his best friend General Vang Pao
Ran the Meo army like a sacred cow
Helicopter smugglers filled Long Cheng's bars
In Xieng Quang province on the Plain of Jars

It started in secret they were fighting yesterday
Clandestine secret army of the CIA

All through the Sixties the Dope flew free
Thru Tan Son Nhut Saigon to Marshal Ky
Air America followed through
Transporting confiture for President Thieu

All these Dealers were decades and yesterday
The Indochinese mob of the U.S. CIA

Operation Haylift Offisir Wm. Colby
Saw Marshal Ky fly ***** Mr. Mustard told me
Indochina desk he was Chief of ***** Tricks
"Hitchhiking" with dope pushers was how he got his fix

Subsidizing traffickers to drive the Reds away
Till Colby was the head of the CIA

                                        January 1972
There is an image
Working to free my mind
From violent dawns
It probes at the backs of my eyes
It tells me I am prostituting myself
Here in my bedroom
In incestuous union with myself
I hallucinate and fantasise about
Doctors sons, butchers boys
Teenage thieves, deserters
Drug pushers, scandalous rent boys
Vagrants, pimps, prostitutes
And silk lingerie and don't care.
I sit destitute of thought
An insonce dissonance of macabre music
Playing out melodies of an image in my mind
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2017
i read stories of angry drunks and wonder:
           why am i so "pathetic" reading into calm?
don't know... truths by a millionaire
might make more sense...
mix ***** with coke watch
the icecubes melt and then take another
sip and it's harsh, pinching like
a crab's signature...
         but then alcohol formulates
around me like a memory tool,
gone are the lessons of school,
      gone the need for arithmetics that
lead to no hoard of gold of erebor -
just that cinema and standstill -
   like my genesis of memory,
  with a great-grandfather in kindergarten
him playing the piano and me playing
a toy piano aged 4, and in my memory
he representing no clear image
but a mere shadow / merely a shadow...
               or laughing at my great-grandmother's
funeral, then sitting up at night
   gnashing my teeth so hard
until i managed to bite off a piece of my
left mandibular central incisor...
         and in the mourning crowd
  when close family members were throwing
flowers into the grave unearthed
and being asked to do likewise
i shouted no!...
                      and took the intended flower
to be thrown into the grave
   to my grandparent's home and sat there
with a candle, gently burning
     the petals with the flame until
the petals, originally red, turned purple;
it seems i can't forget my education in chemistry,
that's not me saying i prefer thought "experiments",
i find them abhorring,
             it's still perplexing how that rose
that was intended to be thrown into the grave of my
great-grandmother ceremoniously
     turned purple from red when gently
applying fire from wax...
        i'm sure a bunsen burner flame of blue
flame would have scortched it...
    as i'm sure you agree, there are hues
to fire, blue flames and very engaging chemical
experiments... in all honesty?
   i did the best chemical experiment in school
and not at university... thanks to mrs. khan...
it involved extracting polyethylyne
in an in vitro environment...
               what you might call an event horizon
akin to physics...
                    oh physics, and the fact that
it's focus on procuring adherents does not stand
within an in vivo environment they propose
to speak about it...
          oddly enough, chemistry does not
popularise itself, only biologists and physicists
popularise themselves,
         chemists usually turn into amphetamine
pushers...
  like: because it began with a ****** name
     and an even ******* primate, do i care?
no... i'm getting drunk!
  why do physicists and biologists get the *******
high-ground in culture and chemists get
the sub-culture? oh right... poetry and
the counter-culture...
      i own the literature:
a. atkins' physical chemistry
          b mcmurry's organic chemistry
c. shriver & atkins' inorganic chemistry...
   from experience though:
    organic chemistry is where you have fun...
it's almost culinary in nature,
   and the patience involved...
sometimes an experiment can last for days...
i find the other two environments too sterile,
well... inorganic chemistry is spectacular,
i'll just add that it's flamboyant...
             physical chemistry is a ******* graveyard,
that **** is so sterile that you don't
   even know whether it's physics or just
applied mathematics...
               but how electrons travel in
organic chemistry's textbooks?
            i could do that **** for ever -
                    the nearest thing to x-ray vision
of what is formed and how it all seems like
quasi-robotics of something taking off a faulty
limb and asking for a more manageable counterpart,
it's all metaphor though, evidently not literally
applicable...    but that doesn't say it's not similar
in the case of having such a point of view...
  but yeah... why do biologists and physicists
think they can speak about their theories
  as populists might speak their political agenda
when they're forgotten the principum in vitro?
                 what they are doing is what
current right-wing political movements are doing,
giving them a platform akin to populism
     i.e. via the principum in vivo...
                    i mean it's there, including chemists
running amok shoving toothpaste and petrol down
peoples' lifestyles... and sure, pills...
    but i find that less demeaning than showing
ideas into peoples' heads... like it might
       change their narrative skills for the better...
still...
        now i'm tempted to find the third alternative
to vitro / vivo...
                               in mirror, a replica,
    something that can compensate the phenomenological
groundwork for, say, the punk or goth movement...
     trouble is, what could be resurrected from latin
to derive the word mirror...
     mercury?                           it has to be,
given in silico, so there must be a counter-elemental
derivative working from that...
thus -                                             in mercurius,
     that ought to prescribe the x            definiton
     to a situation                  where + is rarely
                       attributed to the movement of the canvas;
and yes, writing can also imply
serving the dish neglect to all wordly affairs.
Kelly Bitangcol Feb 2017
justice
  
noun*  jus·tice \ˈjə-stəs\

the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness.*


I woke up at midnight to the sound of a gunshot. I was beyond scared to look at my window and see what’s happening outside. But I gathered all my courage and got out of my house to see policemen and their vehicles, to see many people emerging to take a look at what’s happening. And then I saw a dead body, a man with a cardboard sign saying he was a drug pusher. It felt like my world dropped at that moment, I couldn’t sleep that night because all I could hear was the sound “BANG!”. The next morning when I went outside I was confused that the people not bothered, that they acting like nothing happened, that they did not care. I asked one guy if he knew what happened last night, and he said yes. I asked him if he was even terrified, if these killings are normal, if the sound that I will be hearing every night is a gunshot, and he said, “Don’t you worry. A gunshot means justice.”


A gunshot means justice. It means if you hear it in the middle of night, it doesn’t matter if that someone is a person you know, it doesn’t matter if you know that person is innocent, because that gunshot means the thing we’ve all been seeking for. It means you don’t have to be scared that people are getting killed everyday without any due process because it’s for the better. It means watching your fellow people die but you have to be happy because they’re bad people, they deserve to be killed and it’s for the country. It’s justice, we’re killing criminals who deserve it. And we promise, innocent people will not be a part of this. But does justice mean a teenager getting shot by the police, and it turns out he wasn’t the one they were supposed to ****? Does justice mean a 12 year old girl getting shot by a stray bullet when she was about to go to church? Does it mean innocent people dying, shattering a teenager’s dreams, taking away the lives of children? A gunshot doesn’t mean justice, especially to the victims. When we live in a Catholic country where people say we’re supposed to follow the bible but when it comes to this they all suddenly forget about God, when people shame you for loving someone because it’s a sin but we’re failing to remember one of the commandments of God, “thou shall not ****”. When we always say we need to forgive people, but drug users and pushers don’t deserve second chances, they deserve death. When they’re asking for help but instead of giving it they pointed a gun to their heads. They said this will keep our nation safe, but does safe mean being frightened to walk at night because you can get killed without even doing something, when the possibility that someone you know will die is too high, when you know that every night another person dies? But all they say is that what we have to do this, to be able to achieve justice.  


But how can justice prevail when the thief who stole money from us got out of jail and is now living happily? When the dictator who stole and killed our people was considered a hero? When the top criminals of our country are now free? When the rich can be given a second chance but the poor gets shot instantly? How can justice prevail when our human rights are being destroyed and forgotten?


justice
noun  jus·tice \ˈjə-stəs\
rightfulness or lawfulness, as of a claim or title; justness of ground or reason

There are millions of dictionaries in the world. And all of them have the word justice. Maybe they have the same, or different meanings. But the word justice suddenly becomes missing when we talk about the victims of the killings.

(k.b)
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2015
it’s been foggy for the past two days,
i blamed fireworks on halloween
rather than guy fawkes’ celebration to
burn the magna carta... i still prefer the beltane
festival of burning rubber skin tires of pensioners
extending for a plastic surgeon’s career;
it was foggy these two past years,
i can almost start an art movement or set-up an art school
ensuring all paintings are painted with fog-overtones,
as i blow cigarette smoke into the air...
but this is the zenith of autumn,
the earth has started to breathe, the muddy field soil
has started to turn into mush, to mush,
it’s begging the plughole sepias of a hectare into easing into
moisture so the boots land a footprint into flemish tired in the trenches
for the toilet plop...i’ll dismember onomatopoeia spelling
and retrace the origins of dyslexia... i will!
insert this anti-intellectualism of england laughing at the words
sartre and *****... piston... etc.,
then become content with en masse surveillance.. everyone’s happy!
win win situation!
he he he... giggles for rounds of ***** shots and double-glazing...
keep the van gogh canvases... we need pristine voyeurism sights
across the street and never bothering to chip in to the gallery funds.
it’s autumn at its zenith with two foggy nests of the moon exposed
and i’m forcing cigarette smoke into the air to match up...
i’ve heard news that a lady psychologist and a professor are interested
in my works... back home in poland,
they are announcing a secret reading of my work
in the underground chambers of a church in szewna, akin me to a gombrowicz,
i’m about to become a merchant of poetry.... here’s cinnamon for words,
here’s chilli for specified terms that tingle the tongue.
back home i can reclaim this misunderstanding of all necessary jokes
in england...
so this article comes along... stresses the difference between england and france...
the difference?
in england: a. i’m trying to write a book... b. how much money did you get upfront?
typical of bank of england signatures being given with a safe investment...
in france? a. i’m writing a book... b. what’s it about?
that’s europe, cross-continental, with the isolationism of england
like the isolationism of england if f.d.r. was the prime minister
and everyone spoke gaelic, so there...
frogs are princes... with such cares the article mentioned...
it mentioned rousseau as the joker card of blames
for the french revolution...
well i know that scientist is a misnomer of intellectual,
after all, the scientist is the man with a ruler and centimetre
and the intellectual doesn’t bother to count up the centimetres
of welsh words... but a scientist is hardly a cobbler...
so i give darwin... the english intellectual exploit surfacing as
the modus operandi of the holocaust...
‘it’s almost like a darwinian pact,’ said faust,
'i peered into the monkey and knew of the trouble it would translate,
this collective categorical translation that didn’t say:
orangutan is chinese and chimpanzee is greek, the gorilla is italian...
how the hell could we have evolved from the monkey
if there is no single species of monkey, we’re already as diverse
as the ****** monkeys! so a chimpanzee ****** a gorilla
and the first humanoid was spawned?' ******* you english colonial
******* and your limb-for-limb relativity, oh wait...
i’m writing in english... now isn’t that paradoxical...
but the f.d.r. akin isolationism craves for artists that not only perform
with their backup cognitive singers, i.e. song writers...
(like the song by vanessa paradis - joe le taxi -
being almost like ellie goulding's on my mind)...
how did it all become defaced with karaoke and a prenuptial of fame...
i just want the original rolling stones... i don’t want people turned
into adverts... i don’t want artists turned into slogan pushers...
i rather keep the kites of drugs.... i can’t do this... my heart’s broken,
but that's because the audience that's being sold
the art is too young to respect the go-along practice of drug use with the arts.
CK Baker Jul 2017
hickory nuts
and wind trees
are keeping
at the old buckle bay
light house corners and
shaker church craft
slip anchor on the southern tip

secret legions
and phenolic board
tuck in at gout dock
bands and nations
and miracle speak
fill in the center hall

sand hooks
and water domes
cover wharf road
***** bay toppers
and seven horse chugs
scatter the swollen upper deck

packards and pushers
and rusty back rails
skirt the night
lanterns and sterns
and navy gulls
steady on task

sand cakes
and drift wood
held tight on
the mystery tour
yellow tails
and tide pools
flat line
at royal reach

paddles
and cables
find ripples way
smugglers and smitties
take cover
from a
northern gale

down on
pocket shoal
there’s a graceful hue
~ they’re serving up
belons and xan…
it's time to get in
for a fill
sunshinecoast porpoisebay sechelt
mt Nov 2013
And now,
Ladies and Gentlemen
The story of a man
Who lived and died inside his own head
Came into this world on a whim
And left on a whisper
Leaving behind just his footsteps
For the waves on the nights
Darkness came too early
To wash away,
Clean to the bone
Leaving just the shiny purity
And reflections for those interested
In the forest,
As all good mad men roam,
He got lost on the edge of,
Between beginnings and endings
And no real divisions.
Occasionally, finding a wise man
To split his time with
Making it the three of them
Him, the man,
And them together
Roaming with direction
But still purposeless
Because a purpose
Would be their downfall.
He feels most comfortable
When he is certain there is no guide
No difference between territory, charted
and uncharted
Because there's no one to make maps
Only forays forward
Leave the paths clear
Spontaneous insight lost soon enough
Mystic Seam on his forehead
Childish gleam in his one blind eye
The Silly Being
Cutting his way
Through the molasses, thick
Of time
Space, inconsequential
But he knows,
The only certainty he dares carry
Is that heaven,
Heaven, doesn't begin.
Cannot be reached.
The pearly gates are grim
Not a soul passes through them
But too many
Leave through the alley exit
For Heaven is not a place
Heaven is time
Time well spent
Because the burden of passing
Is forgotten
Destroying gates
And slicing meaning
Road block!
Why!
Only in my head!
Detour!
Runs out of steam
Pure words
tainted
lost again
run off the road
missed the stream
Back to a story
A story of myself
Framed in bigger terms
Thoughts, thinking of big
And ego eating dinner
It's what the doctor ordered.
Trying to convince
What it could be, nothing
to be nothing
go nowhere
while paths grow and clean themselves
Srubbed raw
swallowed by my
tallest trees, growing richly
inside a small world
with deep holes
to **** and cling to
Being Nobody is an Overcoming
Defeating the propaganda of Somebody
The self lies
It can only grasp
Fruitlessly
It finds for itself
It can't see beyond
No!
Never that simple!
To save yourself you must save the world
Only fools grab all they can

"Only fools rush in"

Only fools stay back
Playing with fire
It's a prophesy
Doing it because we can
Is the route to go
The only route we know
There are no reasons
Sometimes directions
Even if they lead nowhere
Right back atcha'
Screaming, cuddling
Cuddling?
I'm not the sentimental type
At least,
I pretend not to be
Maybe it shows
I don't know
That's what it comes down to
Yeah,
I don't know

I can't remember a single thing I heard on the news
Even if it's all engrained in
My bark brain
A pair of loveless lovers
Wanted to prove to themselves
So they cut into my soft brain
Their own story
And I would return the favor
But I lost the binding to the pages
Of my story
But if I could so humbly request
O,
Greatest Story Tellers
And Yarn Spinners
Of our time
I would very much like it
If I was, humbly mind you,
The Greatest Story
You ever told

But Nameless
It would be my overcoming
There would be no excuse
Not to do great things
Even better if no one
Knew that I did them
It would fill my heart
And be a great conversation piece

"Hey Ladies..."

Pull up one eyebrow
Flip out my pocket-halo

"I've done it, done it all.
Not that you would know"
Just the way I'd like it
Then remind myself
I hate bars
And talk a walk home
Late at night
(Okay, maybe a jog)
(Fine, a sprint)
The night suffocates
If you hold your own neck closed
It's a nice change from day.
People have finally turned on
Engaged
Maybe its the fear,
Time to relax
I've forgotten that
But seeing others alive
Is the last thing that reminds me, I am
I am, too.

And, I hate heredity
It can make folks forget
That
They are, too
I inherited nothing
Except confusion
And that's the only gift to offer
Because
You know you love someone when you can be
Confused, together
It would bore me to death
If we could understand each other
That might just be
My Neurotic Impotence talking
Looking for an excuse to shiver in place
Yes,
Neurotic Impotence
not
neurotic impotence
It's my second name
I hate middle names
People keep them secrets
For no reason
I hate secrets
Secrets don't exist
Somebody always knows them
So they can't be very secret
National Secrets, too
Give my my cut
I'm a gossip
And I've run out of stuff
To ride conversations
Straight into
I don't do enough weird things
Or get involved too often
To tell a good story
The windows to my mind
Are sufficient
I've been informed,
That they're quite pretty, also
Makes me feel a bit better
About all the time I've invested
At staring at the tops of trees

Not much, actually

It makes me look pensive, I think
Almost like I know what I'm doing
That saddest part is that
I'm not completely lost either.
Hovering in the middle
Neither here, nor There
Typical, I suppose
So's indulgence
But I say,
Kids,
Older folk devoid of experience,
Indulge
Only in yourself, however
Indulgence isn't the problem
It's not knowing why

Now let me preach a minute
True prophets
Ask for nothing in return
Not a dime,
The good ones,
Not even your attention
They stand on their private
Street corners telling to the stars
In both hushed whispers
And crashing screeches
About what they think
And the day the find
A disciple
They will be pleasantly surprised  
Because that was never part of the the plan
They are prophets
And saviors
Because they are the select few
Who saved themselves

And now,
The man we talked about earlier
He's still alone
He's a bit afraid
Enough so to not find someone
To tread the waters with him
Because he is an almost fearless man
He doesn't fear scenery
Place, and time all the same
It's the implications that weigh heavily
On a psyche that's already burdened itself
On long bus rides
To remind himself (and his good pal,
psyche)
That he isn't going anywhere
The city he thought he was bored of
Has slipped into the background
And now that the future
Might just
Actually happen
It's time to freeze in place

It's a nice break against the pushing
rush of reality
To stop and smell the roses
While right behind
His back,
The world implodes
The sky blossoms open
Only fools rush in
Only fools stand back
Survey the scene and you
will lose the gist
The parts will show themselves
And you'll miss the whole
That's where it's alive
Don't get so caught up in the pieces
It's the weight
You'll drown in
It's a little death in the family
Enough to shake it up a little bit
Thanksgiving, dig in
One less the thing to worry about
And one more thing to write off
I'm sure there's a grand deduction for it.

Remember when I said I hate things?
That's not true
I don't hate anything
Things only exist, and are
Because other things are
That they aren't
And I can't love
So there's no hate
Nothing to compare it to
It's more of an empty feeling
With a silver lining,
It passes quickly
I haven't found the thing I just Hate yet
There's always a catch
Call the Holy Hotline,
There's always a catch
We're here for your calls, 24/7!
Heaven is neon
Brothels, tight lipped doors
It's
Sanctified Skidrow
Baptized in Hard Liquor out
By the chalice alley
The heavenly Saints
Who were brought down
Straight from
"Up There (He's smiling down on us,
I swear I can feel it, if I strain really hard and pop the blood vessels in one of
my good eyes, He's there, He's always there. I swear, She told me so,
Late at night, screaming o god at the ceiling, That's when I feel him,
***** blood and Canonized ***)"
These saints, now,
Or perhaps Saints,
Mumble to themselves
And sing invisible praises
It's weird
The visionaries are all weird
But to be insane in an insane world
Offers a sliver of freedom
Between all the crucifixions and handcuffs
White noise, and head banging

I never got
What other people called
Soul Searching
Because I did it everyday
Being broken down
and rebuilt every week
Goodbye o, Worldly World!
Not too cruel
But never too nice, either

This is not the end
I realized
That there is no end,
Is there?
That's the only certainty

And the man asked me,
"There's no end is there?"
Cigarette in mouth, limp
No, no
There never is
And the walls
We have built
Will collapse
If we turn our backs on them long enough
And soon enough
The Hopeless
Caught on each side of the wall
Will have to to unwind
Themselves
From the thick braid
They've found themselves in
Insanity
Unwinds the same way
Curling inwards
From the corner of my closed eye
Fractal Freedom
In a million parts
Twisting into
The beautiful whole
To be at liberty
To uncoil again
Back here again?
Always back here
Insanity
Before and again
And the big wide world would
Drive you so
If you dared understand it

I think I
Might just be part
Of an elite class
The ****-ups
The movers and shakers
But never the pushers
The world rotating around them
Looking for an in
Exits to nowhere aplenty

But right now,
I sit Here
Sterile, and sick
The man's voice buzzes, and rattles
Like the old AC at my grandma's apartment
The air,
Almost as dry
His low hum splits would could be
A comfortable silence
And I suppose,
That's why they think we're here
For all the "could be's"
The first words out of my mouth
Are a shrieking car crash
The mechanical man
Has such a grip
On the Atmosphere
His cogs and wires
Are free from the disease
That i Am
Rotting in my seat
Outside, where I cannot go,
The sky is static

Why is it static?
I'm afraid
It's been that way too long
And now my walls melt into the sky
Buzzing and Flickering
Low Light
The worst
It's now a diagnosis
Tell me what I have
Please oh please
It's in my head
But feels like my chest
Sitting in place
Might be
Cruel and Unusual
Long walks on the beach sound nice
But alone
If you can be with me, and alone
You're the one
-Aw....thanks me!-

And it scares me,
Like many things
The dreary rounds
I make each day
That I've built my own prison
I might just find myself
More free in a cell
(Free up my schedule a bit, just a bit)

And facing that mechanical man,
My voice dries up
Pulling my thoughts
Down with it
Flush
A soft touch to
The hard lighting

Uh,
Maybe I need to lay down
Where the grass cuts my shins
I've given up
There's nothing but god above us
And nothing below us
The sky is god
And it is empty.
This poem began as what I would like to think of as cohesive, but I just let my thoughts lead me and let it snowball into whatever the hell it has turned into.
AprilDawn Apr 2014
Spring 
 into
this half life  
I've dug
and drug
myself through
sweet sunshine
Finally
infuses hope
into
these  stone  
cold
bones
Spring in Massachusetts ...this one is about  the tulips  all around the  front of our rental home.
Ciarra Reneé Jan 2014
you strive for perfection
gotta be the smartest
gotta be the best
A's and B's are the only grades your eyes will view
you, check your Parentlink religiously
20 hour days in attempts to prove something to someone who probably doesn't care
no social life, no
your best friends are Microsoft word and flash card apps
a boyfriend?
why of course his first name is no, last name homework... but ever so often you cheat on him with a good nights sleep
a good nights sleep that replaces the memories you're supposed to be making
the high school years you're supposed to be enjoying
late nights partying?
more like late nights cramming
Saturday matinees ?
more like Saturday SAT prep
and when you finally cross the finish line and get your diploma it all settles
it all settles in that no one cares
you go to college and there's a campus full just like you
a bunch of high gpa's and low social lives
and you still have yet to realize you're just a factory worker in training
you treat college just like high school
a 21 year old unemployed ****** with expectations that have just been kicked in the stomach
nose in the books as apposed to the sky
no dreams just harsh realities
it all marinates with you mentally that you just studied a complete 8 years of your life away when you become a nothing but a statistic
no longer the best
no longer the smartest
an average salary
an average job
and an average life
with no memories to reminisce on
no crazy college stories to tell your boring spouse
no cute high school sweetheart stories to tell your boring kids  
and now all you have is emptiness and a cubicle
because while preparing for your future you lost sight of the present
in attempts to be a young adult you forgot to be a teenager
you climbed uphill mountains to live the middle class life you avoided and now you're just hoping that someone will take you seriously when you put "Honor Roll student" and "passed Calculus" in your obituary because other then reproducing a couple more pencil pushers you've accomplished nothing
and no, no I'm not pessimist I take things for what they are
and living unfulfilled, or having no "yolo" moments in your life is not something that should be taken lightly
we, break our backs and blister our hands to end up making 30 thousand dollars a year  
and for what
to be another functioning member of society
did you ever have dreams?
or did practicality and necessity beat those useless obliterating hopes?
the only momentos you have from your wild years is your diplomas and your regrets
there is no praise for the high school student who partied away their future
but next to alien species finding a healthy balance is the least known thing to man
so
live fully, live honestly, shine brightly, fulfill every hope, fill every crack, fold every crease attempt every dream, leave your doors open, for someone less fortunate then you couldn't unlock one if they got a miracle
life slows down for no one.
don't forget to take a moment, to stop and smell the roses.
Warren Gossett Dec 2011
I've been trying to poet off and on
now for awhile - but it's hard for a guy
like me, born and raised in small towns.

I've never really learned to swear,
not like a poet anyway. Not like Bukowski.
I mean, what kind of poet would

the world expect me to be? Except that
I'll admit I can drink with the best.
A Huffstickler I'm not, or a Bukowski,

or Etter, or Kerouac - guys who knew the
big towns, the *****, the dives, the rehabs,
the back alleys, park benches, soup kitchens,

flop houses, drug pushers — Humm, come to
think of it, we got all those here. But not
the all-important big town poet attitude.

I'm just this hick, delusional perhaps,
trying to fill a blossoming hole inside
of me that grumbles and claws for more,

and there's gotta be more to life than this crap.
In poeting I used to try and rhyme, like as
in "poor" and "*****", but there's

no rhyme to life, just grab it and clench.
Just life, death, burial and maybe a little
something for the dog afterwards.

The preacher says there's more,
the devil tells me to forget it,
(I'll listen to him occasionally).

So, for me, I'll probe a little deeper and
scrutinize a little harder, perhaps drink a
little heavier, and maybe find a plug

out there that'll fill the hole inside me.
Maybe even put it in words.
Become a poet.
--
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2018
.alimony: basically? i don't like paying for something... that i can't keep; savvy?!

so "these" people,
have no problem in exploiting
your girls into becoming
their advert agents?!

the girl who advertises
free-lance style,
but doesn't get paid
for the advertisement,
per se?

no problem?
i have a problem...
  a real ******* problem!
so... you basically
reinvented the Marx / Engels
critique of child labor?!

so you have this advertisement
dynamic, with unware
children, pushing your products?
making the slightest mark
on the buck...
    
            you have children pushers...
you have children mmaking
the profit margins...
    yes?
             you, *******, ****-tards!
    so the children
you "employ", are doing the hard
stuff, to incubate your
bureaucratic employees?
and keep them in employment
positions of mediocre power?

you have to be,
******* kidding me!

   your type of people are beyond
fake news....
you're paedo-news...
some of us would care
to denote at: covert excuses...

   take ashley wicka...
a corporate pimped *****...
how old is she?
barely 15?
         looks like the advertising
community, really needed
first person advertisers...
   first person accounts....
esp. young people...
  because?
  the older generations,
"the gap": wasn't paying into
the gimmick...
    
i actually abhor what they
allowed themselves to do with
the young people...
   i'm sick, tired, and
almost feigning fatigue from
the list of excuses
that surmounts the excuse for
ethical practice...
   which is never was,
and never will be...

       i'm too lazy to give a ****...
give me a .gif contra
a **** movie extract....
          have your little siesta
of ******...
   have it, **** me...
saves me a gym deliberation...
not ending up a
gymnast...
          rather, a pivot for  bending
knee...
             i've learned **** the lazy, lax way...
when asked by a Bulgarian
*******,
if i wanted to girls for an hour,
i replied the Joker's reply...
comparing the differential
of, a world, divided
into men who ****** one girl,
and men who ****** two girls...

i'm like a dog chasing cars...
if i caught one?!
i wouldn't know what to do with one!
in this instance?
i wouldn't know what to do
with two!

           have your anti-****** boast-trip....
your ******* innuendo,
your ego / ******* sized over-trip...
****... let me stretch your *****
out for you...

           point being?
i don't have to own, what i ****,
or... don't ****...
but you do...
    your self-esteem is dependent
on a form of closure...
so?
     you **** it?! you own it!
hello! surrogate phantom pater!

where's your
elephantiasis
****-size glorification,
now?

        oh, right... sorry...
forgot...
now comes the alimony;

look at me, doing the Pontius Pilate
Houdini trick!
or showing you,
the disappearing, *******!
Brandon Barnett May 2014
with my feet on the ground
and my head in the clouds
I try to survive this trip stepping around
every stranger in the strange crowds

dreamers have no place in this world
so my heart fights my day job habits
my creativity shot from cannons is hurled
while I run down holes chasing white rabbits


have I lost my mind?
where was it before I asked?
did all the drugs politely turn down all the questions of my kind?
did every line of coke spell answers to my lifelong pain masked?


with my tie on to make a dollar
I can shake your hand with the fakest of faces
but the relief I need to loosen the collar
always leaves little strung out traces

but isn't life made to never count one person?
isn't that why we marry and breed?
so we have misery's company as the days worsen
and an excuse for the green bill greed


you think I fear the conference room meeting?
I'm more afraid of Captain Hook
because as I grow down I realize the stories
were precious distractions from all the beatings I took


******* wear my life for a day and try to endure the hurt
I've learned the pain killers that go down like spoonfuls of sugar
I've learned to suture when the blood spurts
and the bars and friends with compliments will always be my pushers

so with feet on the ground where the killers carry all the keys
I keep my head above all that's you spell out as real
and I'll never take another **** on my knees
because the pushers and the wonderlands make sure I never have to feel
Sethnicity Jun 2015
V
I don't know where to start... I feel pain
infinite points traced around my brain.
Many ticks ***** injustice migraines
Now I wanna vent on hot air blimps
self proclaimed pimps
till my tongue twists limp
or turn a loaded gun on immature mutual funds
my grain is rough
and I've grown bitter an tough
my mind metal is scuffed
I Dizzied my Gills be cheeks blowin up guts
what happened to the wonderful world
musta been the Tea.. now I'm Ralphing up Chucks
high society
in memory
it used to be
where I wanted to be
Visa Via
English living was the life for me
guess I'd traded up for some Hot **** reaL-It-Tea
I think I've had enough
guess I stuffed and over fluffed
had too much empty v (MTV)
sipping on that 4 twin Tea
Now I gotta V!

IV
I vibrate so viciously
I violate all variations of conform Ahh!, Tea
Been too long slipping on and spilt ma Qi

I'm tired of
The warnings the warming the tide turning the swarming
Killer bees  Wu is me
for I've been sipping on Boo Blue Tea

III
I lost my voice yet still voting
while Hippy flippies are still steady chat hosting
I'm Roasting poli-sci-fi-ers who can't find a town square
but got bags of opinions on world politics here and there
face-booking without a book in their face
fighting freedom by being dumb ignoring the truth such a disgrace
soldiers fighting harder at home to make it a home
feeling lost and alone their kids barely even grown
ready to start living
thought he was done with the killing
till he saw a villain on his throne life lost all appealing
come to find out that his wife had done gone
so settled on hanging strange fruit to shadow shalom
While
I'm so far out of the zone
that I get these messages on my cellular phone
Reality Strike terror Domes unsafe at home Wu is me
I'm miles away sipping on Too Long Tea

II
Yet homeless happy people without thrive ability
party pushers posting pictures with such jive hostility
acting out with rational it's like sporting politically
Obama's on my starting team with poll pushing agility
I Got two Clintons on my backup fantasy league
don't watch local games or who's selling off senate seats
not all are frozen but most have chosen illiterately
on the block taking tokens steady smokin and broke and  
no matter for realities that are steadily approaching
call me young in notion but I can't stand for lack of motion
late nights to early mornings I'm writing in search of potion
like Juliet rests in pieces I see the gauntlets broken
YOU can't save the planet **** IT so Janet pass on posting
Nothin new under sun we **** for fun and Whales **** in the ocean
as if Ape won't **** Ape Mother Earth will keep her motion
Wu is Me now I see I've been
Sipping on Too Wrongs Lefty

I
I hope you know I care
but start by loving your neighbor there and their and they're
reciprocate the truth and stand aloof of those who dare
put money before truth
visage before root
facsimile before proof
save the sympathy for devils
or get the **** out my booth

Check the numbers
Global hunger
riches blundered
voice down under
jobless convicts
bodies ditch in
Wars we pitched in

I'm talking about true world vision

social image
tweeting pigeons
Madolf mongrels
hate crime heroes
Welfare wealthy
advertising gimmicks
famous like ***** limericks
IMF, what a concept
acceptable debit?
nuclear threats
hating one another for what we choose to worship!?
It's already on our doorstep...
... yet we get hung up on the stu pet
"Ooh! Ahh!" "Green" Part Tea Bullshat!
Clinging to our jobs not because we like what we do
but we feel we have too!
Some parts of the world unite for things
other than Death and Dollars Popularity and Power!
... now look at US!
I'm just A fish on a diet of Super fishy all lit Tea

0
What do rants and arguments with myself and the world lead to?
Long silent sips of tea.. and this.
Cedric McClester Apr 2019
By: Cedric McClester

The biggest drug pusher
That there ever was
Never did half the things
That Big Pharma does
But they get away with it
Primarily becuz
Of the billions they make
For their chest of drawers

The biggest drug pushers
Don’ t live in the hood
But they]re the ones
That get locked up for good
But they’re not the ones
Who ultimately should
When the disparity
Is fully understood

The biggest drug pushers
Wear white lab coats
And often are seen
Tacking copious notes
To justify the opioids
That their scrips conote
That we see them issuing
Out like by rote

The biggest drug pushers
Seem to get away
None have been sentenced
To a prison stay
They’ve been successful
At keeping at bay
Law enforcement
To this very day






Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2019.  All rights reserved.
Glynis Kearney Jun 2010
Vacant, empty, bottle corked
sour
followed
shadows
stalked
billboards, ankhs, purple peace
fever
groupies
slow
release
pill pushers, drunkards, hollow wholes
pimps and
******
broken souls
black, white, all in tune
sunsets
rising
wednesday's moon

nothing inside
nothing out
listen how
silence
shouts!!
©  Glynis Kearney
Gaffer May 2015
It’s only Rock n roll baby, so heavy
Listen to the words
Don’t they tell you something
They say I was wrong
Hear me baby, cos I die tonight
Rock n roll baby, so heavy
Roll me another joint, and I’ll tell you about my life
The story of my death
But don’t fret baby, it’s only Rock n roll
So heavy, listen to the words
They say, give into hell and sin
Make believe people go insane
Take a few pushers, Rock n roll
Listen to the words of my final epitaph
But don’t fret baby
It's only Rock n roll.
JoJo Nguyen Aug 2013
I'm not religious.
I'm not even spiritual.
I'm just a cold, soft Vulcan.

The system of the down
has isolated me here
to think, which is what a Vulcan
does all the time.
It's really pointless.

It is desert, hot and cold
served in deprivation,
meditation, and
solitude.

The system has been doing
this for eons.
It's called increasing
systemic risk when stressed.

I make a cognitive chunk
for you to cogitate
over coffee.

Picture this.

Wandering Boy Scouts (BS)
in their pickup trucks,
helpful, strong,
vicious when aimless,
efficiently cruel,
mechanized abattoir makers
mass pit diggers,
merit badge takers.

Smell the BS.

It all goes into baking
gooey brownie BS,
repugnantly pungent,
and redolent of sweet
burning flesh.

Stressed, the down system
spits BS out
randomly to nucleate,
and procreate if possible.

Breeding a new Brand,
with Cult leader Classes
and all the -isms.

Visionaries with their caries;
Pushers with agendas hidden;
Leaders steadfast in conviction,
taking a nation, against
all odds, in Battling Bulges,
****** lines hidden
within clean, pleated
leather skirts
that still reveal penciled
seams up straight
shaved bare legs.

This is how the system
shakes itself; auto  
****** asphyxiation.

Vulcan's never shake
the bars of their cells
because there's no barring
except Great Walls
forbidding, with a wink,
killing each other.

To be thy Greek brother's keeper,
is to cut not that brother man,
but the other brother man
down with BS fervor and ***;
madness, before bondaging
his wounds in mummified
State, taped shut  
with a healing kiss.

To have dominion
over the animals
means a bludgeoned
pleasure, or
transplanted
desire.

Dominion to exploit
blunted, unconditional,
emotional resources,
until the system
gels again, vaginally
or astrolly whole.
Ron Peacock Jr Nov 2011
Though the; core of the earth can be measured in Kelvin
What happens on the surface is a negative hell man.
Its a; cold world that we live in
From the government, law enforcement, and politicians.
Everything you do, where you go is like your swimmin’
Piranha on you tail take everything you've been given.
Through the gutters we roam in search of new beginnings.
Man; is this life we live really worth livin’?
Just to find out the when, where and how of your ending?

It’s a; cold world that we follow.
Pushers giving you pills and telling you to swallow.
The pills of conformity, we all had a taste.
Some just got addicted so they feigning for that 8.
Nose stuck on the internet searching for conspiracies.
Illuminati, JFK the whole entire industry.
The media’s agenda is the way we all proceed.
People tread the tail cause they all afraid to lead.
Probably afraid to bleed, to impede on the culture.
Well now it’s time to feed, swarm down hungry vultures.

It’s the; cold world that got us dying.
Fight for your beliefs and end up in an asylum.
You ain’t even gotta riot, to be quiet is a sin.
Yes sir, yes sir, yes sir. Amen
That’s the story that they preach.
Subliminal, under the surface.
Nobody knows the truth so it all seems perfect.
Well...
Does it all seem worth it?
Keyan R Oct 2018
What kinda flowers would you like to have?
besides my own tulips, I have
I honestly don't know much about the garden or the seeds
I know not every day is greeted by dandy lions
Or as fertilized in the fruits of its daily labor
No one owes your favor
We're all petal pushers
Waiting to blossom from the buzzin'
Not everyone has the will to stem tall
Some may wilt away; Some may brighten the day
But, I just want to floret
And never look back
Dancing on the breeze like a leaf
Forgetting the roots
What a relief
You see a few years ago
I was part of define fitness yeah
And I thought it was weird the way
They treated me
They wanted me to be a rich ****
They wanted me to sell my art
Basically on the road at trash and treasure
They pushed me around like I was a piece of meat mate
They didn’t care about my safety
They just wanted me to just
Enjoy being slim
Maybe I do but in my own way
Not drinking salty water or beef stock no way
Just eating the food I like you know oh yeah
You see it is hard to be like them
If they treat you like a rich ****
You know taking you out wiping
The poor man out of you
You see I had it made
Before I joined define fitness
I enjoyed doing things
And having fun yeah
Making me lift weights
Heavier than my own weight
Define fitness is an organisation
Full of rich ******
You see I had it best
Before I had them
I had to do two squats after one pull of vacuum
Eating everything with 10 shakes of salt on
Putting salt in my water
Like I am drinking out of the sea
I had it best
Before I had them
I could’ve broken my back
You see I was slack
I won an award but if I wasn’t good
The next session
He would say I will take your medals away
Which I think they are a bunch of rich ******
Sure it is good to exercise but mate
Were pushers
I hated them they made me feel like a ****
You you you
I had it best
Before I had before I had before I had them
Time after time I wanted to leave them
And go back to solo exhibitions in
The art hall
And not sell them at trash and treasure
Like a loser does
I had it best I really had it best
Before I ever had define fitness
Treating me like a rich ***** of an adult
And not just a nice adult I want to be
******* DEFINE FITNESS
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2015
when you start talking... you rarely unravel the brain's conspiracy for secrecy, you never want brain = heart automation with solid theories that are rarely given an individual bias to be based on... a bit like those pencil-pushers working in offices for MI5 or MI6 who thought spying was all in fiction, but rarely confirmed the fact: in the c.v. it was stated: show your intelligence to prove the vulnerability of others easily persuaded... that's called providing intelligence... and those adverts for london hipsters on brick lane and hackney pavements just blew my cover... because no one really knows if one will doppelgänger the plot... with the body alcoholic and the shadow intelligent, or vice versa... the oddity... please call david bowie.*

in the freudian sense we get an origin of understanding
with a little boy, who's about to become oedipus,
we have diagnostics from a complex, the oedipus complex,
but with jung the childhood origin of diagnosis is
missing, childhood isn't the source of the problem,
after all we are born with a weak bladder and weak
**** muscles, hence the diaper, hence the elevation
of the problem into the realm of a collective unconscious,
i.e. the plumber doesn't know what the electrician does,
the electrician doesn't know what the artist does,
or how he does it, it's not that we're all unconscious
unable to craft any collective or individual meaning,
but i can recognise a freudian sympathy in 21st century
practice of psychiatry from a jungian one...
the freudian simply assumes your childhood was a nightmare,
that you were abused... but to a jungian - with the
offshoot of the testimony of laing's anti-psychiatry
never mind szasz... you say you go drinking at night
into the woods alone... they sense a fear in themselves
and simply un-diagnose you; which i managed to do...
i can count about 10 psychiatrists who diagnosed me
this that and the other... but they never asked me about
the problems in my mature being, they were looking for a
hurt child, sure i grew up in an environment without
a father between the ages 4 & 8... my father was just
a voice on the telephone and the first nintendo,
a gameboy... but i was surrounded by older people,
my great-grandmother read me a picture bible
and taught me to tie my shoelaces like i'd tie a ribbon
of a present, my grandfather took me for walks with
the two dogs i owned: axel a dobberman and bella
the alsatian, me piercing one of his bicycle tires to get
him off work at the steel factory for a day...
the steel factory closed, went bankrupt, or simply sold-out
to foreign spanish investors, many people left the city
of my origin... never mind...
children are not compulsive liars... but those who
emerge from childhood become compulsive liars...
children are selective liars... once the cookie jar is
opened... once the dog ate the homework...
they can't even combine lying with imagination,
after childhood you can't even do that, you can't
even combine lying with imagination -
there are no images involved, only words, black holes,
symbolism... all you get from an expected combination
of lying and imagination is that imagination
becomes ****** expressions, bordering on apathetic
****** expressions.
but guess what, above all what i said...
i was diagnosed as mad... but i never set foot in an
asylum, a knothouse (knot, yes, madmen are
like knots, jumbled up, the linear pattern of vitality
suddenly becomes a knotted sphere with only cats
able to unwind it - set loose the cats into the madhouses
of the world!) which can only mean ONE thing...
if i was diagnosed mad, but never entered a madhouse...
i'm assured by the laws of deduction, that, i, am,
in, fact, in a society that's a madhouse...
no wonder people can't appreciate the beauty of
the world, they took theology to the parasites
and explained things that way,
plus they advertised, started traffic signalling...
now days people simply pass trees and mountains
nonchalantly... they're more interest in what's organising them,
once words were kept in books... those great bricks,
but since people managed to make everyone literate,
the words broke out from the alcatraz of their
enticement and ventured out, like robots trapped,
and became adverts coca cola and warnings 50mph...
then the beauty of the word disappeared, because everything
in diamond contortion odd simply became dull,
dull because life became faster... and there was
no way of allowing reflection on unmovable things
to contain any speed - otherwise become a dog,
hold something resembling a branch in your mouth,
bite down, keep it in your mouth long enough
while you carry down the stairs a copy of witkiewicz's poems
and your tongue will become alive and numb
with poison... it will become a poison arrow...
and now that arrow is aimed at your heart.
Sethnicity Nov 2016
V
I don't know where to start... I feel pain
infinite points traced around my brain.
Many ticks ***** injustice migraines
Now I wanna vent on hot air blimps
self proclaimed pimps
till my tongue twists limp
or turn a loaded gun on immature mutual funds
my grain is rough
and I've grown bitter an tough
my mind metal is scuffed
I Dizzied my Gills be cheeks blowin up guts
what happened to the wonderful world
musta been the Tea.. now I'm Ralphing up Chucks
high society
in memory
it used to be
where I wanted to be
Visa Via
English living was the life for me
guess I'd traded up for some Hot **** reaL-It-Tea
I think I've had enough
guess I stuffed and over fluffed
had too much empty v (MTV)
sipping on that 4 twin Tea
Now I gotta V!

IV
I vibrate so viciously
I violate all variations of conform Ahh!, Tea
Been too long slipping on and spilt ma Qi

I'm tired of
The warnings the warming the tide turning the swarming
Killer bees  Wu is me
for I've been sipping on Boo Blue Tea

III
I lost my voice yet still voting
while Hippy flippies are still steady chat hosting
I'm Roasting poli-sci-fi-ers who can't find a town square
but got bags of opinions on world politics here and there
face-booking without a book in their face
fighting freedom by being dumb ignoring the truth such a disgrace
soldiers fighting harder at home to make it a home
feeling lost and alone their kids barely even grown
ready to start living
thought he was done with the killing
till he saw a villain on his throne life lost all appealing
come to find out that his wife had done gone
so settled on hanging strange fruit to shadow shalom
While
I'm so far out of the zone
that I get these messages on my cellular phone
Reality Strike terror Domes unsafe at home Wu is me
I'm miles away sipping on Too Long Tea

II
Yet homeless happy people without thrive ability
party pushers posting pictures with such jive hostility
acting out with rational it's like sporting politically
Obama's on my starting team with poll pushing agility
I Got two Clintons on my backup fantasy league
don't watch local games or who's selling off senate seats
not all are frozen but most have chosen illiterately
on the block taking tokens steady smokin and broke and  
no matter for realities that are steadily approaching
call me young in notion but I can't stand for lack of motion
late nights to early mornings I'm writing in search of potion
like Juliet rests in pieces I see the gauntlets broken
YOU can't save the planet **** IT so Janet pass on posting
Nothin new under sun we **** for fun and Whales **** in the ocean
as if Ape won't **** Ape Mother Earth will keep her motion
Wu is Me now I see I've been
Sipping on Too Wrongs Lefty

I
I hope you know I care
but start by loving your neighbor there and their and they're
reciprocate the truth and stand aloof of those who dare
put money before truth
visage before root
facsimile before proof
save the sympathy for devils
or get the **** out my booth

Check the numbers
Global hunger
riches blundered
voice down under
jobless convicts
bodies ditch in
Wars we pitched in

I'm talking about true world vision

social image
tweeting pigeons
Madolf mongrels
hate crime heroes
Welfare wealthy
advertising gimmicks
famous like ***** limericks
IMF, what a concept
acceptable debit?
nuclear threats
hating one another for what we choose to worship!?
It's already on our doorstep...
... yet we get hung up on the stu pet
"Ooh! Ahh!" "Green" Part Tea Bullshat!
Clinging to our jobs not because we like what we do
but we feel we have too!
Some parts of the world unite for things
other than Death and Dollars Popularity and Power!
... now look at US!
I'm just A fish on a diet of Super fishy all lit Tea

0
Ultimately if you voted Thank you for joining the Conversation; if not, Thanks a Lot! I hope your shadow enjoys watching this implosion slowly consume everything and everyone around you while you hold up the wall where your eternal shadow will remind future generations that, ("You gotta have an opinion" - Vincent Vega).
Jake Danby May 2015
Ask
It is winter, icy night outside the ancient terraced house, crisp
and creeping-cold, the road fleeting and the boisterous,
rejoicing revelers invading my room unseen but well heard,
silky-blacked, silk-backed, slick-backed, on the loudbusybarstriken front street.
The houses are sleeping like the dead (though the dead shan’t wake the morrow, in the deep, frosted earth) or sleeping like snoring Grandma
Passed the creaking stairs, behind the thick wooden door.
The chimneys enjoy a smoke, and the street watching in lazy light.
And the people of the long and aging road are lying, dormant, on hold now.

Be still, the birds are in wait, the office-workers, the budget-blunderers, the dole-wallers and money-splashers, equestrians, assistants, cricketers and coppers, the seller and the sold to, convicts, clergy, scrap-men, soldiers, the wary eyed whistleblowers and bleak spinsters. The elderly lie alone, cold and widowed, falling in love in dreams of those long passed, gramophones serenading them with swinging sounds since forgotten. The bachelors lie not alone but feel it, aside women they met but a moment prior. And the sloothing silhouettes of foxes stalk in the brush, and the fallen leaves clump prickled by the spiking spines of a slumbering hedgehog, and the hens in the clucking coops; and the mice creep across grassy planes playing hide and go seek, darting and ducking, amidst the quiet nightly warzone.

You can hear the frost amassing, and the old homes groaning.
Only your eyes are alive to see the bellowing chimney pots washing the black sky with grey, consuming and spreading, smoke. And you stand alone in hearing the working dogs retort with the sky, the primal yowl, where Jack Russell’s, Bull Terriers, Whippets and Grey Hounds, Fox hounds, Patterdales, Lakelands and Border Terriers take wolven shape and warrant the moon and stars to adjourn.

Heed. It is much too late, or early, the day-break behemoth’s begin to crawl blind through dawn, slumped uniform and jangling key and toast crumbed stubble, golden tie pin and tracksuit top, parted as the red sea, racing rats, inhaling bus fare; openmouthed in Citrone’s, rattled morning news; in Pickwick’s cafe shutters exhale the bleak dark and swallow first light. It is genesis in Chester-Le-Street, coagulating evermore, with breakfast offers stuffed down its throat, passed my frosted window pane, sleet and rain, headphones, lit cigarette, black brew two sugars, lichened grave stones and flashing blue lights. It is break of day amongst the pushers of pencils.

Watch. It is discontent, dragging, alone coursing through a bacon stottie; clinging to a dead end rock, aside the cockles and mussels, to be exhumed by an uncomfortable chair and the computer on the blink.

Is this it. Ask. Is this it.
Sethnicity Aug 2015
Yet homeless happy people without thrive ability
party pushers posting pictures with such  jive hostility
acting out with rational it's like sporting politically
Obama's on my starting team with poll pushing agility
I Got two Clintons on my backup fantasy league
don't watch local games or who's selling off senate seats
not all are frozen but most have chosen illiterately
on the block taking tokens steady smokin and broke and  
no matter for realities that are steadily approaching
call me young in notion but I can't stand for lack of motion
late nights to early mornings I'm writing in search of potion
like Juliet rests in pieces I see the gauntlets broken
YOU can't save the planet **** IT so Janet pass on posting
Nothin new under sun we **** for fun and Whales **** in the ocean
as if Ape won't **** Ape Mother Earth will keep her motion
Wu is Me now I see I've been
Sipping on Too Wrongs Lefty
More social commentary...
http://www.writerscafe.org/writing/Sethnicity/1054690/
Remember Real I Ty is never Caffeine-Free!
bleh Oct 2016
we break into the graveyard after hours. no purpose, but it's just there, down the road. and it's nice the way it overlooks the ocean.
   climbing over the hedges, we see a middle-aged couple already there, blasting dixieland on a portable radio. we share a confused look, and just leave again, a tad indignantly. it's the kinda thing that's ruined if someone else's doing it.

                                                  summer drags on,


the sound of trucks. bubbled wallpaper in pavement creaks.
wonder with the directed slice of soft fallen pillow lumps.

we
          round the way to the two parks, one with the children mewling on the wooden
stumps and the other with the cigarette butts, sports grounds, snubbed out sunday radio. the wind make a steady jaunt down the long
forgotten corridors. there's little to see here, but it's an easy place to make home. the trees sway something rotten that would make a newcomer uncomfortable, but you learn to shut it out.

we're
standing in the road, hands in pockets, against the chill. no one's sure what to say. not sure if saying anything really helps the fact. it just embroids the situation with complexity, detracting from an otherwise pure, if unpleasant, tone. we settle for a 'see you around.' the claim, if it is a claim, is false. the movers come early the next morning. and the house down the way stands vacant. the boards rot away. a year later the building is knocked down. rebuilt. craftsmen and diggers. but the same lot. same dirt. chewed up and digested. every winter the worms die. are replaced. tendrils expanding and contracting. sit down. it becomes so wearisome, but sometimes the sun's mild presence  makes it okay. the boards buckle in the damp morning light. the
  water filtration system hums down the road. the neighbour's kid crosses the road to the other park. kicks a soccer-ball for a few hours, gets dejected, and returns home, is reswallowed by the painted timber.  


the bible pushers did the usual rounds on wednesday. Mrs. Grensten would always let them in for tea. we'd watch from the other window, and imagine infidelities, convoluted fetish play that they'd get up to. a game of enticing disgust. eyes on the window in the hope they'd slip up, and we'd see a shot of tired flesh among the drawn curtains. a vacant voyeurism. laugh in the boredom of a dreary sin.
       they haven't visited for some years. after Mrs Grensten died, the next time they came Mr Grensten chased them away with his walking stick among coarse shouts and tears. the downstairs windows and now left open, but there's nothing inside


your pen-pal in Romania sent a postcard. they didn't write anything, but there was an old chapel in a field on it


some days the sea is quiet. generally in the early morning, during lowtide. under the moon the sand takes on this expansive pale blue luminescence  
        usually it's either too crowded, or the waves make up for the lull in people. i thought i had a point here, but i didn't


  she stands in cotton robes, stained and dyed with gin. mother says to ignore her. she rings a small ornamental bell. you don't really get it. you ask why she's ringing it. with a finger to the mouth she shushes you. you look offended. as you 're about to persist in demanding explanation, she steps out into the road, just as a courier van speeds round the corner. she wears a soft smile. the tiremarks on the cotton makes a pattern that reminds you of something, but you're not really sure what.


a humming light on an old oak table. there's a peacefulness here. you loose tempo, and the crowding figures look at you with irritation. you feel small and wish to melt, to become liquid and drain away, move in motions already dictated, they ask the next question. Who are you? Why? Justify your reasoning.
       a half ****** caramel drop. sticky.
       pavement grit. coarse.
   they
                closed the walkway due to wasp nests.
you're not sure which route to take. you pass
     by the graveyard instead, and look out to sea. there's a gentleness here. it reminds you of something, but you're not sure what


   we used to find bugs at the pond edge. the area had a piercing smell, but that was part of the charm. it meant we'd never dare enter the water, though. one day in teenage bravado, we did. it was slimy in texture. suddenly, you pushed my head down among the green folds. there was something there. a soft, but solid texture, like jelly. electric scatterings. old tire tracks folding out, like a deconstructed rubiks cube. i shoved your head in as well. we laughed and splashed in viscera.  wye's spoke in empty folds and promised us the world in reassuring tones. the warmth of a log fire on a winter eve, crackling sparks glowing in undulation. the muffled tones of a showerhead, blanketed in feathers. a mellow smile of the certainty of an inviting future. we lay on our backs and the sun shone down through the trees. as it passed the yardarm we headed back to shore, lost rapture of the soft kisses of meadow-banks. you grabbed a rock and bashed me in the head. a solid but glancing blow. this too, was fine. no fear, just laughter. i grabbed one too. with blunt instruments, we chiselled skin and bone. small enfolds of the rising moon. we stretched out, fingers entwined. no fear. possibly regret? but a soft regret, the kind that tracks the passing of time, that lets you register the ceaseless withering of the past, and hopefully, see beyond. rivulets of blood. i breathe in your gaze, and melt into grass. just laughter.


the stitches in the corner of your mouth are rotten. that's good, that means the healing is done. flesh reunited with flesh. you feel it with your finger. there's a bumpiness, but little sign of much else
see you around
Ken Pepiton Feb 2023
Look once more,
look back and see the way, to now
from
when reason first was used
to master the frame
of mind, embodied, as mine,
informed with shapes of things solid,
shapes of things inside,
shapes of thing outside,
shapes of thoughts stacked in sequence,
after the hallelujah,
as per holy orders of worth appraisal,
services rendered,
magic performed,
life administered, for another week,
any body can handle one more week.
After the hallelujah.
learn that definition once, and you never
see sequential activity in ritual
as before,
magic effectuation, affection, as joy
one mindful, chewy, gustatory morsel,
of child-like faith, to be conserved.
Conservatively speaking,
Whig-wise, knowing one's prepositional relativity.
We labor, not in vain… to become worthy
to tread, with shoes, on streets of gold.
where milk needs no cow, and honey bees
never need be busy all day.

Riches and sweets, both
take more than either promise, aimed at
via entertain-mental mmm-usings tight
at tension, mind's time spaced taut
edge of me, edge of mine,
edge of ever aimed at
thus far… where we suffer this is so…
- measured timespace in mind agone…
Then we live through the last now, to die.

Becoming the author, fisher for being bubbles
afloat in ever after all.

At my funeral. To spare the hassle, imagine.

Friends and loved ones,
most are dead, or far away;

but we recall times, vague days
incidents for which we each hold bits,

instants, reality instantiated, pastense,

feel the kiss, feel the shame, the joy,
the hope, the loss, the win, the terror,
the truth of no perceptible way,

away from quit.
--------------

Infancy instants, perhaps, we guess,
we recall being babes, for briefest
recollections of perceptions kept, some how

to be reformed from shards of information
stored some where in an image of a moment

seen from the frame of a seer, not me, seeing
me, infant me, tossed and caught by a laughing
man in a sailor suit…

and, the oddity, of the singular infantile memory
stored some where for reconstruction, living
entertainment…

like unto Agricultural Entertainment, an art form
ancient as harvest festivals,

when locals picked the orchards, and our worlds
were edged in otherwise wild hedge rows,
where little creatures live at child level,
where words miss heard give stories twists,

too odd to be retold while holding any of the small
awe, aw, so sweet, too dear to let be meaningless,
but
as truth been told,
mean is bad in dogs and men, mean is bad in mankind,
mean is common,
mean is most common,
mean is measured, granted
mathematical reality, mind my means, you know
"intend, have in mind;"
Mental meaning application, folded man-kind wise…
Sometimes connected to root *men- (1)
"to think,"
which would make the ground sense of man
"one who has intelligence,"
but not all linguists accept this.
Liberman, for instance, writes,
"Most probably man 'human being' is a secularized divine name"
from Mannus [Tacitus, "Germania," chap. 2],
"believed to be the progenitor of the human race."

~~~~~~~~

Institutional minds, adapted from drama,
worn like Superman's or Bishop Sheen's cape.
Übermmench, **** sapien augmentacious,

**** habitus, us, as we think, we are.
We are no other way,
as a man thinketh truth, as a mind may think,
fine, so is he, in his own mind, right or not,
limited fineness, judged, discerned, quarkishly
ever finer, to this very point,
where mind being time being comes to mind,
in you.
We, momentarily, agree, aggressive face to face
point, fair call
at the inner edge of the inverse square
practical fractal constant…
gravest of issues, at thought
speed of intention to grasp. Percept perceive
link touch… flowing listing seeping soaring

bemused become
amused and entertained, feeding on ensamples,
as sorted characters,
defined societal aspirational imaginal
roles in reality aboard 1950's era Spaceship Earth.


Standing, unbowed, before kings,
bowing before mean men, thinking

all ya'll are said to be created, made
equal…
valued worthy
of opinion expressed as yours, as
wings put on wishes, shoes on prayers,
for warding reaching pulling pushers
-list as wind, in cognitive bias, right
lean as wild grasses launch new seed,
- double helix, twisting up
- from down,
feel massive missal push us on,
orbital, for a lifetime,
be maker of a being bubble
be a minding creating creation,

as weighed in balance, or mass, as gold
or wind in force testing wills for making

a way, where no way was.
Dead end. No way from now, but through.

Wind beneath my down swung pinions,
lifting my imaginal self over my useless

wait state, ever learning, never learning
the whole truth we are sworn to tell,
as soon as
we begin to see as others see, subject,
object
seer
seen seeing, saying

we may be minders of findings, guardians
set to watch,
set to see,
set to say look this way, these invisible limits

terminal connection looping past through
you
as my word choices,
pass the blood brain barrier and pierce
eternal you, in stasis.

- ---------------
- post radio war, not so long ago

"how ' we gonna keep 'em down
on the farm, after they've seen Pairee?"
- enter the era of the salesman
Total war, full power propagation of faith,
in practice, words are empty, meaning
is made- hate festered pride
of whiteness, same color as the rich, qualia
as equally mistaken in terms we call common,
****** speech of the non-reading classes,
stupid peasants, children of useless men.
Lower by far than, Biblical men
of the baser sort. Belial's
sons of total depravity,
two rungs lower than average
working classes, labor, any collared man willed
to pay sweat for bread and circuses.
And a dry, warm place to sleep.

Man, the reasoning creature, is what he eats.
Man does not live by bread alone.

Imagine grooming a gimp, from puberty.
Imagine Michael Jackson, "the kid is not my son!"

Look out, Howard Bloom. Duck.
Watch the boy do a thousand shoulder shrugs.
See the fantasizing worth of awe in focus, this
is us,
we paid to see the man perform, in a role made
from lies a child uses
to make just now,
reasonable, just
cause,

I can, I have power given me by Life, look,
who can imagine being the fan,
aw, man,
nobody longs to be
in the nosebleeds, being there
is not being you,
when all you can become has become true.
Just imagine,
fakes never make it.

And truly a big tragedy to be avoided, next.

We interview… the biggest nobody,
an entity insisting formless information imagines
bubbles of being limited
-- some strings of pearls rolled up

roll into little *****
of gnoshit pearls, treasure true, in essence
from dried gnosisnot. These we cast not to pigs.
To think a readers reasons
for writing, become one
of the rare breed born
to become readers
of one thousand books, once before you die.

------------------
If Warhol made action seem so mundane,
might I not make fun seem so slow a function
to make perfectly reasonable,
picking a fight with a lie,
because I can… being created equal to that task,
I can recognize lies I told,
I know where the handles are, I know what holds
the handle to the secret meaning of things,
can seem material, where free will
is culture locked as impossible.
Thingo no hypo.
Action movie, opening sequence,
as liturgical as any measured reassurance,
enter in, become the entertained,
we live in another realm, we only play at
while being entertained, we only watch roles

being presented for judgement,
test your will to link a mind projection,

from a former time shaped mind, aimed
at drawing an audience, a crowd,
all agreeing upfront to pay
for the mirror neuronic stims,
in a darkened room filled with fools such as I.

Who allows possible a gunfight with ***'s,
at goal-to-go range, taking five minutes,
and no named characters die,
all blood is non player blood,
only a child's mind never exposed, flash,
allows that to feel real, for five minutes,
into a nonreal mindtimespace
reality
of ever once,
and ever after, onces

such as once, seeing a gun in your face,
once hearing the bang, from a gun in your hand,
once
upon
recalling that was a movie, and I never killed a man,
but by osmosis, I imagine I can see
how hate
works the same as ******.
Relax.
Recall the unbelievableness.
--- so what are silent action movies feeding,
young Aldous Huxley, a bright well educated lad.
{We are all alphas}
-----------
"His uniqueness lay in his universalism.
He was able to take all knowledge for his province."
-------
Only a rich man's son may so say.
Even, as limiting to level, if such leveling
evens the odds, serves to increase resolve
to square the circle and fix pi to simple, once
and
for
all. As events in the heaven occur, fractally

added in fine ality… at you, dear reader, enlivening me.
Infinitely, relative to yesterday.

Of course, comic books count. As in the future,
classic video games shall seem poetic code.
I appreciate the reader's task more than the writer's. Writing is easy, reading what you write from the outside is the reader's task, unless it feels like a game.
Brent Kincaid Jan 2017
One night in December,
The streets were army gray
And hurrying strangers
Rushed home for the day.
Nimble legged salesmen
Sold flowers by the street
And rhythm was the rumble
Of voices cars and feet.

The young were dressed for parties
Some sang with radios
And over-friendly women
Assumed their favorite pose.
Trashcan colored beggars
Searched gutters with their hands
While uniforms saved sinners
With sermons songs and bands.

Patrolmen sang the pop songs
From slowly cruising vans
As nighttime changes faces
Pushers change their plans.
The movie marquee lightning
Put movement to the sound
As nameless children squabbled
For pennies they had found.

Uptown they're making movies
For Hollywood L.A.
They listen to the sirens
Downtown far away.
The Civic Center phantoms
Are easy to forget.
Folks simply close their eyes
And they haven’t seen them yet.
They haven’t seen them yet.
Emma Johnson Apr 2010
So you know I wasn’t raised in the hood,
But in a beautiful place in Surrey enclosed by woods,
Had quite a nice childhood,
Until the age of ten, everything was all good.

It all changed when my Dad went away,
Couldn’t cope with my Mums Bipolar state,
When he left I have a photo memory of that day,
‘Promise you won’t get divorced, I want you to stay’.

Then that kid had to grow up quick,
When mum had an episode, breakdown psychotic.
Held the family together through all this ****.
Then lost the plot myself couldn’t handle it.

So I left home very young, let down by pen pushers.
Dumped in and out of care, social workers?
Isn’t it a wonder how I became an alcoholic toker,
Stress of my life turned me into a chain-smoking joker.

A year I slept in my bus stop,
Stealing food to survive from various shops,
Helped to sleep with prayers and alchopops,
Checked on by ‘Rosy cheeks’ the local cop.
© Emma Johnson 2009
Callum Moffat Dec 2011
For now a soul for sale
If I'm lucky, I'll get enough
For something to drink
For now a soul for sale
Or perhaps something to
Get me high
For now a soul for sale
It truly depends on the person
Looking for one
What they would pay
For now a soul for sale
Or do the bartenders,
Pushers,
One night standers,
Hopeless romantic weekend questions unanswered
Own it?
How can I sell something I no longer own?
Wouldnt I remember doing this?
Or did I lose it?
That seems Like something
I would remember doing too,
Like losing your wallet
Or virginity
So that's out of the question
So for now a soul for sale
Ember Bryce Sep 2013
I slowly lose it every once in a while.
Get too "out there", philosophical thinking.
I lose myself in thoughts, but seem to find out more and more Truth.
I get a spark on insanity, but it helps me see the sanity in it all.
I get happy to know this is in existence, then sad and angry that no one else sees it.

Sometimes just want to drop everything and yell: "Do you not see this, do you not see what is happening right now to you to me!?"
We are incredible beings, with the ability to think and feel, and know we are doing so, the capability to create, destroy.
Yet some of us are still mundanely getting up at 5 to go to a job we hate to come to a broken home to watch our favorite t.v. show to help us escape from our lives, to drink some beer to chill out, to buy that bigger car to make us feel less small.

If everyone, right now, could just stop what they are doing, look up at the stars..
you are connected to everything

If everyone could realize that this Earth is our original Mother and our only Home, like really see, maybe even feel how she feels, would they respect her more? If they knew the natural givings she offered for us to live, the herbs, food, habitat, water, medicine, etc, would we stop destroying it?

If everyone would focus on meditating and Love as much as they do the clothes they wear or the shows they watch, imagine the exponentially positive vibrations this world would propagate!

I understand a lot of our ancient wisdom has been swept under the greed and power rug. I understand some people and cultures still adhere to these, and to other natural laws of love and life. But i also see the opposite, and the indifferent.

t's good to be good, it's bad to be bad, but it's worse to be indifferent. Some of you are. You hide in your magazines, your T.V. Shows, your gossip, your fake happiness. the happiness you create out of thin air and consciousness. That is how I make my happiness too, but I don't birth mine out of sorrow and lies.

I know what I know, and I am satisfied, but will always remain a student, and hopefully at times, a teacher.

The children are growing, evolving, and astounding me. I've always known there was something special about children, and there is. They are the closest ones to the realm between Life and Death. They know more truths than we do, and we tell them lies. We tell them what they know in their heart and soul is not real, which is a huge mistake. Because also as children, we start to believe it, so we conform to a society of one-way thinkers.
Indigo, calling out to you to color the spectrum with your radiance of intelligence. Watch out for these guys.. I know I have qualities, and I try to have many conversations with others that do as well.

Insomnia. Why? Idk. Several reasons. Writing helps. Maybe I have too much **** up in my head. I need to get some of it out.

Still I cannot help but fathom the fact that I know all these things, (and I know others do too) yet I walk around the bare white walls and see the blank step ford stares of other inhabitants of this planet.  They are all going about their business as if nothing is happening. As if all of this is normal!
Sure I can do all this homework, go to work, pay rent, pay for school, drive a car, text and drive, eat this fast food, study, make my parents happy, make the cops happy, don't step on anyone toes, just try to be the best in my field, find someone, marry them, have kids, raise demons in this Hell, cry, become old, wonder where my life went, buy a motorcycle to make me feel better, see my kids all of a sudden leave my house, get sad and lonely again, continue my mundane job or hopefully have enough money to quit and travel, maybe retire, maybe have a cool hobby, try to **** myself with cigarettes and ***** before I live old enough to really hate myself.
Yea, that sounds really normal. I mean comon' most People on this Earth live like This. (If you can call it living).

**** NO! WE have the powers and capabilities to think and to do, so ******* do them.
think for yourself, do for others

It makes me feel better to come across things like Spirit Science or The Emerald Tablets or The Flower of Life books. Because it proves my sparks of insanity are real. I am not alone in the way I think.
This non-believer found something to believe in.
Now I must be patient, I do not want to become one of those 'bible-pushers' i hate so much.
But the Movement needs to move..
Nigdaw Jul 2019
Written after seeing the film of the same name, starring Robert De Niro.

I drive these lonely streets at night
Picking up shadows from under street lights
I'll take anyone, kooks, pushers, hookers
I'll travel any place, don't bother me
Not my business the hours these people keep.
The rain lashes down, blurring the bright lights
Like a watercolour painting, mixing, blending
Some day a great rain will come
And wash all the **** off the streets.

I feel inside me a change coming
Someone must somehow stop
The users and abusers of the innocent,
There must be one to make a stand.
I see young girls, fourteen or fifteen
Walking the sidewalk for the pleasure of creeps
Selling the dream of teenage ***;
What dreams do they have locked away
Washed into the gutter by the rain.

I see drug pushers selling people's lives
On the dream of a trip to the wild side
Everyone is trying to get out, escape
But the streets have a grip you cannot see,
You can buy a potion to get you high
But from this hell there is no easy exit.
Some come to this circus to trade
They need to live their life of lies
And I am the ferryman to the other side.

Some day a great rain will come
To wash away all of this ****,
Women will be able to walk safe, alone
Without looking over their shoulder;
I feel a change coming in me
I must be the one to make a stand,
These children of sin need a home
Somewhere to shelter from the storm,
Then maybe I can sleep nights again.
Michael Bingoff Oct 2009
Momma took a lot
of stuff to get where
I'm at.
Momma took a lot of hits
and lived with a broken
back.
Momma still works like
a dog,
Momma walked through
rain, and fought through
fog,
But trust me when I say
still to this very day,
even though I stand
as a broken man,
been knocked down
more times than
Mike Tyson.
I'm not bulletproof
or ten feet tall,
but best believe,
I'm as strong
as a brick wall.
I stomp around
with pounding feet
and Momma can always
count on me.
Til the day I die,
with every waking
breath I try.
Pushers and pullers
need to beware,
when ever Momma needs me,
I'll be there.
Mark Toney Oct 2019
24
24 begins with its cruel rule:
"No sustenance or quenching of thirst
until the sad/happy day passes."

Caring women with initials enter
Poking, prodding, asking the same questions,
While loved ones nervously watch.

Close friends, friends, and strangers
Phone and visit, offering their comforting words.
"We love you."  "We're praying for you."
"Make a pact with God."  "Chin up!"  "Happy Birthday!"

Their messages intermingle with disquieting thoughts
Of hopes and dreams left unfulfilled.
"Why me?"  "What now?"  "I knew it was too good to be true."
As hunger gnaws, and expectation is postponed.

A caring woman with initials enters one last time,
Poking, prodding, asking the same questions,
As the pushers of the bed arrive with their benign smiles.

Unwanted darkness returns,
As uncommon mortals work at their bizarre craft,
Opening the golden bowl,
Exposing its precious contents.

East and West Coast loved ones,
Separated by time and circumstance,
Carry on their prayerful vigil.

As 24 continues,
Surrounded by love,
Sustained by hope.
4/26/2018 - Poetry form: Free Verse - A friend's daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumor at the age of 23.  The day surgery was scheduled just happened to be on her 24th birthday.  She was supposed to be taken into surgery early in the morning, but she had to wait all day until mid-afternoon before they finally took her.  All that time she couldn't eat or drink anything.  Friends and relatives from the East Coast to California were wishing her a happy birthday and a successful surgery.  Emotions ran high.  It was very surreal.  When they finally took her to surgery we didn't know if she would live or die.  Thankfully, the surgery was successful.  I wrote this poem for her that same night after I left the hospital. - Copyright © Mark Toney | Year Posted 2018
Edna Sweetlove Nov 2014
Oh tell me where has England's glory gone,
Lost golden days of beef and lukewarm beer?
Now it's polenta in a gastro-pub,
Chilean Chardonnay, Tequila Slammers.

Her Empire proudly pink on schoolroom maps;
India, Afric, source of plundered loot galore.
All gone, all gone, black faces back in charge
And black drug pushers stalk old London's streets.

Fat huntsmen dressed in pink, all banished now,
Their yelping foxhounds ripping prey apart,
Celebrating sick English country ways
Before returning to their mortgaged homes.

City yobbos yelling down their mobiles,
Fatcats slurping up their creamy profits;
All the public cares about is football
And the *** lives of the media's darlings.

So where has England's honour gone today?
Up the American military ****,
Our government showing its smug disdain
For what decent people care and think.

We've sold out to baseball caps and burgers,
And imported TV shows for the mentally *******,
A visitor attraction for obese rich yanks to drawl
"We're real glad we saved these Limey's ***** in two wars".
Kelly McManus Aug 2019
Bartender's better
than theoretical quacks
and some poison pills

                                    Kelly McManus

— The End —