Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Nahla Nainar Jan 2017
I met a composer of true lies once,
Who wrote wonderfully believable lies about me,
Scented with love – or so he said.
But the wind whooshed them all
Off the table
Before I could read them over his shoulder.
Now they hang like plastic bags
On lone branches of autumnal trees.
Shredded, meaningless and unreachable
Except to a ragpicker.
Me.
Rohan Nath May 2017
Breathing in the shadow was his destiny;
Yet he walked on the street pleasantly.
Little feet embraced the scorching asphalt;  
Yet he walked on the street without a halt.
Skinny arms struggling to move his sack;
Yet he walked without turning back.
Belly crying for a roti and some water;
Yet he walked like those didn’t matter.

He knew he had to fulfill his concern;
A duty to survive and somehow earn…
Mandy Owensby Oct 2014
Waiting on the bone collector

to come collect the pieces I left her.

The pieces of bone from this ragpicker

She grinds them for her white gunpowder.

To shoot me up
or shoot me down

when that bone collector comes to town.
saige Apr 2018
dirt roads are where i
come alive
another starless night
in a pick-up through
timbuktu

drive, drive, drive
mom's dad's truck
now it's only dad's
so if i have a kid
this ram will be his
mom's dad's truck
times two

drive, drive, drive
my bed is empty
another sleepless night
through timbertop ridge

no licence
no ****, sherlock
i'm all over the place
still, i keep her between
the ditches
dodge potholes and
blow backwood smoke
east of me, in the rear view

cassette tape, brakelights
window low and heartbreak high and
someday
a dirt roads is where i'd
like to die
just like grandpa did
Ken Pepiton Dec 2018
Ted Talks in the background, the rush of forming in to me time.
A test, a lure, a net, yes

Sunday, December 09, 2018
11:24 AM

A Beta test, they bet the tithe on the human race.
Wisdom set the milestones,

Pillars to bear the weight of knowing both
possible and impossible no matter how the alpha

bet degrades under pressure to conform, for
Short term gain,

how far out can a man imagine, how future can one be?

Mathematically, wherever, where, in ever, you are you are now.

A platform
A standing place
A flat butte above a

Broad alluvian fan laced with gravity formed fiords,
see, look, we live on a whole world which
is fractured and half frozen.
All of us, ever, have lived here.

Google earth.
Use the tool you have.

See farther than you imagine you can.

Take time,
you have some of your own, right?

You breathe?
Take one breath for only you.
Listen, as you breathe, is this a voice

or mere words we imagine meaning more

than then when we imagined

we were seeing through goggles,
no peripheral augmentation,

goggles with blinders, urban adapted tech
from the old days,
blinders?

War horses in the Iron empire wore blinders,
Chariot racing war horses always wear blinders,

boys watching wagons in movies would notice blinders
if such boys had grown to knowing idle from not in

my realitiy. Itified, but run within,
disconnected from competing reality ifications
I inherited with the wind.

Watch the welder's goggles, see when he removes them,
don't attempt to see what he saw through them,
trust me, he was not making gods.

I say again. Radio to now.
re-ad re-al re-wise devize a way where there
nor there
nor there, nor then, nor then and there
is no way to seem, no other
being than being, as a verb.

No else.
Oh, well, I'll tell.

A heretic is a self-willed entity able to think about thinking,
e-special when time is in turmoil,

We all have our life and being in time, at the moment.
We behave, then one has an urge, a whim, a fantasy…

see further, see different, ex-spire-ment. Bet that breath,
the one you took for yourself,
the one you treasure.

Take a step,
Fear not, giant steps feel like falling going down and
mountains going up, but get some altitude

see where the snake in the core of the magneto sphere
shed its skin, shook off the dust of the third world,
attached each spec of dust,
be it any element or rele mental in the re-alm of Whatsoever,
a single gravity bound drop of water.
In that,
Suspend the noble miner-als, dis-solve the salts and acids and such

Let the eukaryotic work on version 2.0, epi-genetically, as
they shall say, some day, after the fact.

A little leaven, the kingdom is like that, when it works.

Wanna bet this makes some dust? Did you sneeze? Or me?

think now, 's no co incidence, me writin', you readin'
it happened. A hap hapt. We share that,
infection effect.

We breathed an effectual breath, together,
in and out, the clues are everywhere,

the better man won, then we became better,
both, wombed and un. one another we

make, effectual we, make good,
by our very nature,
born, as we were post the information deluge
that washed the blinders from our
children's eyes, for ever after.

we can be the side-bet clan,
betta value, betta moment of your own time
attention to the mean
general inteleosity
of being better,

being better beta testers for effectual fervent hope
for good for goodness sake.

Heroes go through hell.
We never pitch a tent and dance around Pandemonium.

The bet. AI is or am?
See it logger rythmical,
Ax,
hands to handle to tool to cut, break, scrape.
How would you, you, chop a tree?
Eat? You, not ancient ancestor you, you

manifested mature **** sapien sapiens augmented you,
what do you think will make life, in general,
be tending toward your happy ever after,

after silence, for about the space of half a time?

Hey, how do I say looky here here?
I am
alone.
Ah,
some know Ah, she knows,
Wisdom has a way, a wombed man,
beyond the original
ginal general gentle plan for an atom on this scale,

but nothing is impossible, so something must be done.

Progress, motion.
Relative to what, do you perceive motion?
Whence base ye di-rect e-rectors forming lines

point A to point B to so on soon as someone
sees forever in the apple of his Grandma's eye.

[found on a stele in northern Baja, 2018. Interpreted, sometime later]
(ragpicker's note: this thread links to a junkyard near a Green Book,
The Loma Vista, listing.) The sign, in those days, read:

Axles greased for free.

The symbols mean now that people
travailed along these old stone roads,
and kindness in the journey
greased the wheels in the wheels of those
auto-mobile-means of travailing.

Axles greased for free. Will sing for my supper.
Will you wont you will you join my dance?
Free
Golden oils,
gifts from the whale that ate my father for
non-monetetical bearing
of the wait to know,
wheel,
before it squeeked.

Itching ears, hear? The squeeks, the growns as the old
home stretches,
like her skin's too tight,

Ah, intelligence generally
available for the price of the tools used to use
any knowledge perfect
or perfecting
effecting
affecting the manufacture of you, Roll on,

out to infect the masses shopping for hope.
Sneeze for me, say Ah. We knew her when…

Wisdom was the reason for the season.
The principal setter of the sakes,
also set beginning and end.

Side-bet. 2 bucks, I bet time is temporary.
Paypal me when you lose. Ten to one, my favor.
Collect from Wisdom if you win. Even money.
Having been encouraged to this degree, I heard Google has, for years, budget 10 percent to "other than Goohle business", for the mathematical reason that good works that way.
Ken Pepiton Jan 2019
See the reasons warring

who fools fools for money then makes the king pay

that one m'y be the culprit

whence came the king thing?
I mean it did not pop full formed
into mito mom one

fining
day as a re of sun set its eye on a
particular nail hole
in the tin roof corrugated

good word, rug ated, like walked on, y'llthank?

a collective loss of soul
noticed by the few

mad men who felt some call to lie'n when
facts,
camera obscura facts, proved they saw
I saw
light bent
through a nail hole
brought the sunset to my wall

or all of it that mattered,
the part I saw...

face? No,
yeah, I could see that,
If I could see what you say you suppose

supports your pre-sense presence if it ivity
whither Grammarelyearly versions

howled as I claimed the idle words holding true

riches from the stone re
jected jeckled and hidden, lapis,

was there a gem with in and a gen with out?
Ah, he sang that line

Ragpicker evolved to Recycling Frontliner Earth day Youtube stars
what a job. Save the world...

stumbled and
lost the thread

fracture  ice cracked ice mud shrunk in from
hidden  edges where the weakest

or most open

imagine you are with me in the mud

bubbling old ideas settle peace

fully here fully there, the ever over
flowing where
we met.

?¿ yen yanker ****** ain't it?¿

hiero-glyphic ifs effeing ity ness. per se.
mud shrunk in from
hidden n-degree edges where the weakest

or most open bonds are loosed on earth as they are
ever
let go let be let

until he be taken, obscureference,
Bubble Bible fact' never acted as if I knew

he who letteth shall let until he be taken out of the way.

may be today. lest we forget

imagine you are with me in the mud
I find I am enter tained in ways no hermit ever imagined. Good days are to be commended for having been, I pose or posited.
Surbhi Dadhich Apr 2018
Heaven hallucinates me
Heaven of the inadvertent utopia
The sacks of anonymous pleasure
Piled over the funerals of euphoria
Heaven hallucinate me
Heaven in the invisible grain of sand
In the spattering of silvery raindrops
Banging my top vacant storey
Bursting my heart as bombs
Heaven hallucinate me
When that poor ragpicker wears a smile
When gloomy darkness starves for glittering light
The warm hugs of sun
The recreation of nature
Heaven for which I dreamt for
This isn't hallucination
I'm..I'm truly in heaven..
Ken Pepiton Aug 1
In this medium, this is a day in a never
before, or after, at this point, chance.

You, too. This is you reading,
we both read, me at about 5WPM,

You, I suppose, read much faster, but
I think each letter,
I think and retie the old rules
for noise to knowing distribution,

from the first of us to reawaken
literacy assistants lost in confusion,

all the drives wiped magnetically
in random three body pulses

patterning textual re-al ways
we make thoughts feel always
alike and sometimes
never just so,
special as
to make its own point, in mind,
differing by the acknowledging seer,
cerebrally touching the chaos phase.

-------
What do we think,
in novel situations,

as balance, under gravity

center point massage, context
contest, pressing away wrinkles
class-ified known seats of certain
wildass ideas that remain at large.

The relatedness of us, you read, I
read earlier, this line, while reasoning,

mortality, life's individuational notion,
immortalized in scripture granted life,
at one appointed time
in the minds of those forms of mankind,
left outside
the sphere of Christian influence,
on the emergence of corporate minds.

Pythagorean Jesuitry Concentral Will
to re enactivate old idle words, that on
time and truth are rarely considered ritually.
But as long ago as we know, as we,
sapformed branched trees
of scattered biohope,
find life's a gas

we breathe.

---------------
Ragpicker, old friend, I wish

I had all the old friends, again.
And, I pray, I say, in truth, once

more than any man can think, or ask,
to know in such a way as to feel, once

when we were more than memories,
we planned to understand the faith,

the rituals of shared initiations confirmed,

only permanent boys become war heros.
We who live to hide the lies, we
War makers, reapers of the bounty,
blessed by the institutions constituted

when the first parents split, in Reno.
D-i-v-o-r-c-e, Joleen, please don't take
my man, just because you can, take
him by his pecker and make him crow,
R-e-s-p-e-c-t
I love you,
like my little brown jug, y'know.

------------

The culture has not changed,
the cultivation of comfort, for
the classic Midas curse continues,

and becomes enhanced, honed
to precise wills to have power
to hold singularly valued works
of art in olden days, Da Vinci 'n'em.
worth easy entireshitons, in Bits'n'
Religion and Finance, fidelity trust,
among human mindforms that respond
to instruction offered, to incentivise,
in lieu of sacrifice secrets demand
from one acknowledged knower
of the fundamental fruit from
our branch in the forest
of first known uses,
and misuses.
- My word, you can bank on it.

Hold have, fist make, hold this thought,
think who can hold the wind in his fist?

Let me see. Said by the seer, that's thought
prayer, so we all say, let us see, and we agree.
Amen.
We see, we stand and see, we agree, we can

agree to raid the pack rat's pinion stash, we can
agree to use money to horde power in moneyform.

Take it easy, old man, the idea we serve, as words,
logos fit into sequential letters, letting us think,
freely thought
we may learn more, again, more, most certainly
possibly imaginable, while we are being entertained.

Who is telling the story, who controls the narrative?
Who is learning the patterns entaled in holy writ?

Tattle tail grammere consciousness, it feels wrong,
to be a tale bearer, but this is what we do,
me and you, ready to read, and read already.

But time's patient insistence, in massless ever
after this level was adjusted, to the degree
next seems inevitably what we aimed at.



----------------------
Seventh grade science,
the enlightenment reenacted.

Alas, poor Yorrick, recollected,
why?
Because, I never doubted literature
contains tools to use in mortal meditation.
- the marble page in Tristram Shandy. e.g.

We, reader ready or not, we die, and none,
we personally vouch for upon bane of shame,
has ever told me why the scars had not healed.

Not me, but Thomas did, gnostics say.

When I was one and twenty, eh,
I knew I knew I was involved in ever after

an exploitation of Earth's elemental stores
of gravity's selective churning sorting sub-
crustal induced distillation essentialization,

gold and silver and tin and copper, enough
to begin with, smithereens, ironic char

harder, more, Mohr, Moore, and Iacocca,
industrial diamonds, just in time,

abandon all hope of effortless absorption,
for us to know, we must trust the experts,
those experienced in life's reproofs
when the spirit that was common
among the young exposed
to Seventh Grade Science, in 1961…
read Hiroshima and were exposed to
a random Barry Rudd Riddle, usual.
and the Child Buyers visited parents,
and set a course for experiences,
guaranteed to lead to political insight
essential for skill accumulation in aiming.

At invocating the hat
on liberty
on the dime,
at the Phrygian Midas Liberty Olympiad,
- cut to present, Phryge, yes, check,
- the same hat as on the 1916 dime,
- after Jekyll Island, after Income Tax.

Symbolic Coin flips to show the bound ax.

Augmented Intelligence Mastery,
at ARPA, core humint experience,
of the O, really variety, resulting
in the 27ers, and the Damnamvets,
{Presumptive Ischemic Heart Dissed-ease}
Boomers, all called to observe
and be tested and scored by early AI.
The survivors of the war on drugs, remain
our last pre-color-TV demographic reared
using the Progressive Collective Mind AIM.

Analyze your own self, is that uncouth?
Own self, ya'll say yourself, eh, so, we own
our own selfs, see, we ai-n't so unschooled.

When a self knows its own truth is tested,
and corrected whenever the sunspots surge,
and collectively minded individuals, 'r'urged
to buy Whammo Toys, without the reps,

that Duncan Yo-yo used to reach tiny minds.
thereby missing the ***** Loman tie in to
Industrial sales management preparation,
or Creative Writing Teacher Cert, mail order.

So all who came past that to this era, 2024,
witnessed the rest of that decade,
aware of what the world was tuned to,
as if programmed to comprehend the new.

After experiencing both. This pen has umph.
Suffer it to be so now, waiting is
patience perfecting the waiting.

----------
For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest;
neither any thing hid,
that shall not be known and come abroad. {Luke}

Suppose we imagine everybody knows,
because we learned from a credible historical
documented evolution in useful and unuseful laws,
that real truth makes truth users free
of the mortal moral landscape,
civilized by the world's great religions,

and their guardians, the loyal citizens of Earth,
bizarro fractured holy sacred secret oath, binding
those chosen in the old traditional submission
to the sacred message at the core of money,

the initiated mind's military ready, siryesir, set,
the message to Garcia myth, believed simultaneous
with the emergence of the mind sciences, traditional
use-ifity user ropes shown, after message delivery,
exclusifity, if we agree, we and only we, be chosen
to know this new take on the novel distribution in
the form of mere words, clear text, seen plain
effect. Affectionately, we the few in our own we,
we the readers of these rarer still, in this other we,
narrators of life's whole process, used to cheat, us
the ancien regime we, fairy tale, Disneyified we,
the people who read poets because we feel we

are the dearest of random readers in the chaos,
that gives us sunsets and Halmark cards and movies.

And by knowing now, more, again, Love is a catchall.

Arthur Lee, is dead and he still inspires me to know,
we did grow old in a time with more new knowns
than ever were imagined, even in the esoterica of old.
Nothing disallows an experimental novel in the raw whole life edge experience.
If I ever wrote a novel, this would be one of the first chapters to take life.
More is pushing for a second chance at calling this the actual work.
Satsih Verma Aug 2017
Returning to the ragpicker
like a lone fly
of love triangle, said― were you
writing a letter to confess your love?

Like a glue sniffer, I
am stuck with you.
O brown earth, raw
wounds heal …

When I sing a blade
of grass, when I sit
under moon, holding your
hills for comfort.

My head nestling on
your heaving breast, while
I sleep without―
a dream.

It was devastating to eat
you. Your cauldron, bubbling.
Someone wants to pay
back your sun, your moon.
Bobby Copeland May 2021
glad night
this mortal joy
                        so long
    uncertain and
                ridiculous,
                         sublime

     need i remind you
     love is best
not understood,
                practiced
     constantly
                                beyond belief

death and doubt
set looking
for a weakness
you deny
i think you must know
                     something now

i mean
i should tell you
my heart depends
on madness just
as the ragpicker
on litter and the breeze

— The End —