"receptacles" poems
Somebody is shooting at something in our town --
A dull pom, pom in the Sunday street.
Jealousy can open the blood,
It can make black roses.
Who are the shooting at?
It is you the knives are out for
At Waterloo, Waterloo, Napoleon,
The **** of Elba on your short back,
And the snow, marshaling its brilliant cutlery
Mass after mass, saying Shh!
Shh! These are chess people you play with,
Still figures of ivory.
The mud squirms with throats,
Stepping stones for French bootsoles.
The gilt and pink domes of Russia melt and float off
In the furnace of greed. Clouds, clouds.
So the swarm ***** and deserts
Seventy feet up, in a black pine tree.
It must be shot down. Pom! Pom!
So dumb it thinks bullets are thunder.
It thinks they are the voice of God
Condoning the beak, the claw, the grin of the dog
Yellow-haunched, a pack-dog,
Grinning over its bone of ivory
Like the pack, the pack, like everybody.
The bees have got so far. Seventy feet high!
Russia, Poland and Germany!
The mild hills, the same old magenta
Fields shrunk to a penny
Spun into a river, the river crossed.
The bees argue, in their black ball,
A flying hedgehog, all prickles.
The man with gray hands stands under the honeycomb
Of their dream, the hived station
Where trains, faithful to their steel arcs,
Leave and arrive, and there is no end to the country.
Pom! Pom! They fall
Dismembered, to a tod of ivy.
So much for the charioteers, the outriders, the Grand Army!
A red tatter, Napoleon!
The last badge of victory.
The swarm is knocked into a cocked straw hat.
Elba, Elba, bleb on the sea!
The white busts of marshals, admirals, generals
Worming themselves into niches.
How instructive this is!
The dumb, banded bodies
Walking the plank draped with Mother France's upholstery
Into a new mausoleum,
An ivory palace, a crotch pine.
The man with gray hands smiles --
The smile of a man of business, intensely practical.
They are not hands at all
But asbestos receptacles.
Pom! Pom! 'They would have killed me.'
Stings big as drawing pins!
It seems bees have a notion of honor,
A black intractable mind.
Napoleon is pleased, he is pleased with everything.
O Europe! O ton of honey!
7.8k
I peruse exhibits through the modern art museum
Nails hammered into wood
And trash strewn on the floor
I couldn't help thinking
What the **** is this ****
These can't be the champions of modern art
Moonlight and Arrival morphed my empathy and perspective
The theater is fine
Music is there for those inclined to discover it
So what about visual art?
I know a few things for certain
Nails hammered into wood never changed my perspective
Nor does seeing a garbage can in a museum affect my empathy
Trash is not art
Trash is trash
Waste meant to be thrown in the proper receptacles
So as not to obstruct our view of true beauty
I will concede that
Beauty can be found in everything
Depending on analyzation variation
But those that live an examined life
Constantly see silver linings and sour grapes
Experiencing comfort in tundras to the point of banality
Those visions are much more interesting
in their organic state anyway
As opposed to an interpersonal expression of the seemingly obvious
So what to hang in an art gallery?
I have my own opinions
At this point in time
No visuals elicit more emotions
Than dank memes
When I'm consuming art
Questions are innate in my consumption
Is this a vessel for empathy?
Is this examining the human condition?
Dank memes meet those criteria
Satirizing the powerful
Highlighting emotions and virtues in ourselves
That we're either proud or ashamed of
Memes share a common thread with poetry
In the sense that everybody can create memes
Or be a poet
I get the impression that
Universality of art diminishes it's importance
In the minds of patrons
There's an element of truth to that
But what makes art special is quality
And what makes art truly special is high quality
And that's what belongs in museums
Jun 14, 2017
Jun 14, 2017 at 11:23 PM UTC
I. the smell of sad
odorless colorless like ***** similar familiar sidewinder effects,
musty invasive, it has no specificity, no locale centrale, well closeted,
saddling sadding, in place, plain sighted better to toy our lives,
pervades persists, worse lingers, impervious to sprays
and even everyone’s good literature (even Will S’s),
good wishes good intentions and mood prayers
to the nearest lay god
on duty at the spiritual emergency room on weekends,
still stink
don’t think that this poem is for you; solely for the writer,
your doppelgänger ****** your mirror’s inside hiding out place,
I,
who has your sadness smell into my skin cells creepily crept
waft woof and warp wet weft-woven
into the sad receptacles hidden in my
head’s cubbies and the palms of my tree hands-covering face
there are cures so wonderful and inexpensive but unavailable
at the local Rite Aid, though they are the right aid recoverable,
so closer than close, so close that the internist
cannot prescribe them because he must inject himself first
because the live bacteria in the antidote can **** all
this odor lays down bamboo-strong roots;
to eradicate you must dig down deep,
six feet perhaps more, with heavy earth moving equipment,
uproot at the source, follow sad always all-the-way down and the root
great god gone,
but the saddest truth
stench odor yet present***
Dec 1, 2018
Dec 1, 2018 at 10:54 AM UTC
Turquoise rivers flow
From the frozen heart of the mountains
Along the road that stretches asphalt arms
Upward and upward toward the sun.
Tourists savor cans of beer
In the turnoffs.
Some of them are jerks,
And decorate nature with their trash.
Some of them are not jerks,
And put their waste in receptacles
While going “ooh” and “ah”
At goats.
Glacier is a place
For dreamers,
And fools,
Like me.
Oct 15, 2014
Oct 15, 2014 at 10:46 PM UTC
Last week we bought a bottle of epilepsy to share
at a party made to crash on dinner plates
rolling down uphill battles.
The clustering warm anticipation set to pounce falls short
with talks of who is late and who can't make it
because someone in the family disapproves.
Who cares about the bitter salt cakes in the dust of fossilized crustaceans?
The polar bears march to beautiful, pointless noise beating off the living receptacles.
The locals are scars in the conclusions deep in the visiting sounds—almost forgot but still murmuring.
The first citizens of noise.
Jan 22, 2013
Jan 22, 2013 at 1:32 AM UTC
1
Marion Island, 2011 and 2008
The fur seal courts the king penguin
runs after it,
as if the penguin were a desirable female seal
and then fails
(it’s just not possible physically;
and hey, the girl says NO!)
and then tears the bird to bits
and eats it
(if you can't ***** it
you eat it)
maybe that fur seal is a loser
chased out by other dominant seals
all female seals taken for the season
and so tries in desperation
to gain entry into a penguin
2
like other losers
many life-forms do it, it seems
insects, spiders, worms, frogs
birds and fish – they just do it…
chaotic with testosterone,
exiled from female receptacles
where you pour in *****
Nov 29, 2012
Nov 29, 2012 at 5:47 AM UTC
There are a lucky few of us, who benefit from the paltry services of the mental healthcare system.
The rest of us, well, we are the ones who walk naked down the street with absent faces.
We are the ones who sit alone and ***** on the street corners of your small town America.
Your America.
We mutter nonsense to ourselves, for the sake of a sanity that was denied us.
Denied us, yes, as we sought and sought a solution to our degradation, but we never could grasp that golden ring.
Mrs. Murphy trims her hedges.
And we walk obtrusively through the park
on your warm, sunny, sky blue happy day,
seeking love and connection with our own humanity in the garbage receptacles
that are scattered down the paths of our solitary confinement.
And in your eyes? Yes, yours!
We seek our solace, our redemption.
If only a single soul would glance up,
and connect with the eyes of our soul starved, 'yes, here I am, friend!'
We seek the self same recognition that you do.
We seek that opportunity to be.
That opportunity to be loved.
Jan 17, 2013
Jan 17, 2013 at 8:11 PM UTC
Some days the sky is a glass chalice we hold between our lips to take a sip
The palliative qualities divine in nature are seeping through the subtle splits on the surface of our palms
Fleeting textures suffuse through our quivering hands
Various hues illustrate the wrists as they coil upon the cadaverous structure
Outlining our internal scaffolding with diverse shades
Colours ricochet within our human receptacles
Our bodies are prisms allowing the light of the sun to shine
Beams break forth from the orifice that rests upon our undistinguished faces
Reminders of what is within splintering through every available opening
Wandering rays rendezvous at the core of the chest
Exploring uncharted paths on the geography of our physical selves
Transcendent roads vague to our periphery
Slowly defining their forms on the outskirts of our wearied retinas
Our illuminated minds, embodying the sun
candescent stones fortified by layers of bone meant to hold their fluorescence
Our organic beams of light, such tender arms, lingering in the punctured sky
are using the clouds as paintbrushes, pieced together bits of mosaic already at their disposal
Our backs resting on abstract clay with shifting pastels, whispering clarity into our cartilage
leftover laments torn apart to bits with the newfound realization that we are whole.
Like unearthed clairvoyance, we survey the translucent waters before us
peering into the stillness our bodies disrupt like the pillars of beautiful dissonance they are
Jul 27, 2014
Jul 27, 2014 at 12:39 PM UTC
I thought you were my life. I grew my life around this life.
You and them were all I had.
Lost home when voice broke,
now this wind that scatters all -
peregrine again.
How do I start anew? What part of me do I say is not me
now and where do I find the I was before us?
What part of the mist
is mountain-tears and what part
the last monsoon cloud?
The heart is a hollow of the bowl-song, an unrung peal
of the untolled bell, sullen tree laden with loss
First snow of deep night,
silence has a colour now -
a hue called longing.
But I must let go. Transitory, the joys of our life, like
the distant lights disappearing at dusk behind the hills
Go, larks, speeding east -
all my ***** loves set free,
now rises the truth.
I was free, always free. The receptacles are gone, but love
finds new vessels, new vehicles.
Emptiness is full:
the shell has all the colours -
gone the jezebels
but still rich the air in hues
that more can dip in and drink
Feb 16, 2015
Feb 16, 2015 at 12:29 PM UTC
o hand grenade red bodies of loring park,
you paintings of hand grenade bodies, you bed
with bodies and kneading and needing red hand
grenade bodies you bed, o and you the
bed and bodies, I sleep on the paintings of red
beds and hand grenades and emptiness, you the
hand grenades of the attempting and the receptacles,
you the womb of emptiness, the emptiness
for the womb receptacles, you the kneader of the
accidents and bodies and non-wet matches and
wombs, and you the wombs and you the wet
empty bodies and me and wombs, and you the
attempting yet starving, and the feast and
wet match starving hand grenade bodies and you
rasping and grasping and wombs the accident
receptacles starving, and you the receptacles and
wombs, and her the one I love, and we who cannot
produce, and all starving emptiness, and all
the bodies and wombs and grenade hands on
the paintings starving of this accident.
Apr 18, 2013
Apr 18, 2013 at 5:58 PM UTC
Today I am slickly coated
with the sheen of a long walk,
only holding hands with purpose;
the goal to find it.
The destination that holds promise
according to the latest yelp reviews-
promise worth remembering
while bearing the heat of the summer subways,
the morose and lonely feeling
of watching a couple cling to each other
as the trains swing our bodies around.
When the stench of the city streets-
the receptacles for those
who can't wait any longer,
invade our noses like they were home.
The promise that morphs into ringing
in my head when my stomach grumbles
next to the carts on the sidewalks
with the burning flesh they call halal meat,
smells warm and familiar
sharing shish kabob kisses and chicken knishes,
but I've left those days behind me.
Now I'm scouring the streets of Brooklyn,
for that new chic creperie sans animals,
things with faces, or friends if you will,
screaming "Find me!"
whilst dodging the heady scents of Popeye's,
and bacon egg and cheeses,
meat markets, fish markets, bright moving ads,
of women ******** clad eating burgers.
Would you like lox or sturgeon with that bagel?
and when I do get to the little mom-and-pop
of a hole-in-the-wall cafe,
I think of the carnivorous brothers and sisters
that have had the meatballs to join me.
The countless nights I've had to explain
where I get my protein from,
that yes, I can eat pizza.
And no, it's not a travesty
that I want to give up cheese.
Because the real travesty is in the this country's handling
of living things, and by animals- I mean all of us.
And carnivorous brothers and sisters,
when you're feeling threatened and defensive- and you've got
guilt and entitlement coursing through your
friend-fed veins and thus you claim,
We're shoving our vegan, vegetarian, pescetarian
efforts down your throats.
Think again and know that we're only doing the best
we can to help what we believe in.
That we eat and live
with purpose and promise in mind.
Real women can eat vegetables too.
You can take vegetarians to barbecues.
Trust me, we're good at co-existing,
Are you?
Sep 8, 2015
Sep 8, 2015 at 12:36 PM UTC
This lonely container; used to interact and circumnavigate
the complexities of this earth, of this land, and of this temporary place.
To meet, mesh, mold, and communicate mentally and physically with other
fleshly canisters on this ride, this trip, this journey.
Then emotion is what our essence does, the spirit of us that resides within,
Yearning to unite with the ethereality of another, to bind with their intangible magnitude.
Loneliness connotes desolation, void, and emptiness; the heart weeps longing to fuse,
There is unconscionable comfort in reaching an island in twain, not in singularity.
Though these receptacles oft give us fleeting tastes of satisfaction,
It is yet impermanent and fulfills the hasty need of our lust in the interim.
Yet when we make exquisite LOVE to one another,
Our vessels dance whilst our souls provide the music, the dance floor, and the ambience.
We were made to be together,
And I love our fit.
ChawzzyScript
Feb 8, 2013
Feb 8, 2013 at 11:55 PM UTC
To the many readers, I ****** off with my poem about Bukowski.
I don't loathe Bukowski. My point is that he is a cult writer. His cult seems to be made up of people who are ignorant of other much better writers of his time. If they read the Beats (in particular Gary Snyder) or others like Richard Brautigan, Jim Harrison, Wendell Berry and many others, they would see how poorly his writing stands up to comparison.
Bukowski's persona is what seems to attract people. He knew that and cultivated it. It was his meal ticket. The poor, drunken, uncouth, outsider, loser who was scorned by the literati of his time. In truth, he was a writer of pulp poetry. What he needed was a good editor. You could take all of his books of poems, cut out the rambling, self-serving, tedious, self-glorifying ******** and cut them down to maybe two books of decent poetry. His prose is better, but not that much.
Young people, lacking better poetry for comparison, are mainly attracted by this cult of personality. Young people are attracted to rebels, even bogus ones. He himself said he didn't write, he just typed. Some hero.
He portrays himself as a big, tough *** willing to fight the whole world. Actually, he was a fat drunk barely six feet tall. That's why I laughed at him when he threatened me. I was 20, just three weeks back from Vietnam. The thought of fighting an old drunk seemed pathetic to me. I could have easily killed him. Who goes to a poetry reading for that?
There was also his attitude toward women. I believe he really hated women. He saw them as receptacles for his ***** nothing more. He used his fame to **** a good many young admirers. He's not alone in having done that, but he was obsessive about it. Women were a perk, nothing more.
In the end, his cult status will remain, but he will never be taken seriously as a writer, because - by his own admission - he wasn't. There is much excellent poetry out there by better writers of his time. Do yourself a favor, read them, educate yourself. If you only read mediocre poetry, you'll only ever be a mediocre poet.
Even at his most unheroic, he is the hero of his stories and poems, always demanding the reader’s covert approval. That is why he is so easy to love, especially for novice readers with little experience of the genuine challenges of poetry; and why, for more demanding readers, he remains so hard to admire.
Please: Join in. Tell me why I am wrong or right.
Mike Essig
Jan 20, 2016
Jan 20, 2016 at 4:28 AM UTC
quite drunk in this evening tender with rue – there is a gentle hand
that whirls against the bougainvillea.
things remain to be constantly in the tranquil as I am not
yet shaken in my fragile frame –
the leaves rustle in the 19 degree cold moon,
the beer bottles emptied, stacked beside the receptacles.
she and I could be dead, and it took me 3 years to know this:
there is a photograph of her thrown somewhere
behind scraps of metal, caged there, like a jailbird
in a jailhouse, screaming blue against redness.
I had love, and love died.
you neither flinch nor move at the very slight of me,
passing over the porch of your reading.
the thing that once moved now festers
with stillness, and so many vibrant explosions begin in the sky
and there is nothing discernible in her abject eyes.
I remember driving past your home in front of
a little, quaint house and I swore that the even your voice
speaks to me in evenings full with the thought
of never knowing you again.
you are so real like the horse that grazes the field
underneath umbilicus of power-lines,
yet so fake and feigned like the truth that tries
to assess itself , crawling mazy back into my drunken arms
like a child startled speaking a thousand things
I have already no use for.
sometimes the sun is like a house on fire.
sometimes the simmer of onion smells like ******
most of the time, the look on my face, half-drunk and half-believing,
looks like a night distilled and fractured by voices.
I will never ask for your hands to touch,
I will never ask for you body to make heat,
I will never ask for your footsteps to chime in grave music:
I have my own defeats to keep me
that way: toppled and scrounging for light.
let me be.
I have seen many warfares and not a single shot of a rifle
has broken me into the man that I once was.
I drive back to you and it is never the same:
it is banal to say that you have yourself
and I have my own, deep in study.
let us drive back to roads whetted with kisses
and from there, start to disentangle
like leaves from boughs
deep in December.
Dec 18, 2015
Dec 18, 2015 at 7:03 AM UTC
The day when the jasmines embossed on the glass
were stained, nobody ventured into dust-laden streets
from where even the day was retreating.
Shadows, grew tall, four-headed monsters in the lamps
flickering from all over. Chasing a form, I ran
like a child after a severed kite, into the eye of the storm.
Bare footed, numb to pain, all the shards of broken
glass did not matter. At the end of the alley
disfigured receptacles, no doubt dead, lay greeting.
The sirens blared but I did not hear. The oaks
were falling by tomes, but I did not hear. When
eagles were all that haunted this deathly hamlet,
I did not hear. When at the end of the alley
I fell to my feet and my hands were dyed red
from touching my feet, my eyes were too moist to see.
Oct 19, 2014
Oct 19, 2014 at 3:22 PM UTC
The Shaktic Yonied con-i-cative chronicle
Receptive magical majesty
Why do I insist to refuse the image
Which given to all for a being
I must, I must. but lust for sustenance
Greed gleamed gem, imaginative benefits
Illustrious acceptances held in receptacles
Analogous referrals for smarmy mastication
She: What a Be. The present of this presence
Shaking her out, letting go of these pretense
And obligative fashions
Of latching ons, to momentary ideals
Peeling them down, because permanence is the illusion
The banana tastes better without the Denial
Whittling woodwork
The sawdust agrees
We push, we push forth.. Hesitant to be forceful
Yet sometimes that's the force in it's own manifestation
When's the plan the being, and the being the plan?
Over exhausting contemplative complications
Isn't just a bean plant To eat the seed
And relish in her nourishment
But that want can be that active fault-line
Tectonically rupturing this productive structure
Impatience of the anticipating ambition
Crumbling foundation of her imaged experience
Perception is the adversary of all this malarkey
Projecting the doubt filter on how perceiving this reality
Realization of creation, the constant remembrance to strive
What's the precidence and where's my mind to?
Blind me! Blind Me!
To forget the exhaustive duty
Her beauty is so suiting
Long to fruit.
To be swooned so soothingly
Nov 4, 2020
Nov 4, 2020 at 11:12 PM UTC
Is it
Those dreamy eyes of yours that I can't stop staring into
Those orbs that led me to your soul in heaven
Those receptacles that can elicit a myriad of emotions with a look
Or
Could it be
Those sumptuous lips of yours that I can't stop kissing
Those heavenly gates to your river of nectar that tastes ever so divine
Those sensuous portals to scathing remarks and honeyed words
Or
Is it
Your beautiful, wonderful mind that I cannot stop delving into
Your attentiveness to every detail when I tell you things about me and my life
Your appetency for knowledge of the universe and every single thing about me
Or
Could it be
The way your body merges with mine so perfectly like puzzle pieces
The way we understand each other so intimately like Siamese twins
The way you smile when you look at me, full of love and hope
I don't know what it is but I do know this
I love you baby
May 7, 2016
May 7, 2016 at 12:33 PM UTC
"Clouds of Thought"
The muse arrives with familiar ease
And illumines the realm of inner view.
Quietly births a soulful breeze
Forms clouds of thought in purest hue.
How lifted do I tread and plod,
Humble receptacle, servant of God.
Each mortal frame a joy contains
That soothes the soul and heart to find.
A healing balm for worldly pains
A heavenly cleft from beastly mind.
Oh, how honored do we tread and plod,
Humble receptacles, servants of God.
Nov 29, 2017
Nov 29, 2017 at 8:45 PM UTC
Let us hear her gushing in the wood:
this was the stream that went in spate
and wrecked so much
Was it nature? Was it man?
The lakes, them old receptacles,
they are shrinking like grandma's grin.
Everywhere the invasive species:
it's called development, the hyacinth
whose pollen are now all over.
It's what we need, advances the glitter:
into the paddy fields,
swallowing up the marshlands
onward, onward, we go, out
into the sea sands,
we claim the skies, we are rising
It's measured in high-rises and
encroachments on embankments.
Write, write, in those towers of Babel
all the babble, those ******* codes
them the world so loves.
settlements be shanty towns,
We need making cars for all over.
Here in India.
Development, we need it.
havoc a few not a big price, now?
Dec 19, 2015
Dec 19, 2015 at 1:20 PM UTC
My entire life I was told little girls were made to be seen and not heard.
I was told women were meant to get married, serve a man, bear his children, and obey him.
I want to tell you that’s not true. Little girls are not made to be ***** receptacles and incubators; they were not made to be live in cooks or maids. Little girls were made to prove all the men in their lives wrong.
Little girls are made to pave the way for all the other little girls who’ll come after them so no little girls have to hear that their dreams are not valid because they were born with the disadvantage of being a woman in a man’s world.
Now when I speak I shout, when a man interrupts me I speak over him. When a man tries to tell me what I can do with my body, I speak out and I stop him.
I am not a silent force; I am not going to be a housewife simply because my father says women aren’t strong enough to be in the workforce.
I’m done being silent, I’m done being pushed aside, and when I get my first pay stub I’m going to take it to my father and say, “Look what you've caused.”
Aug 3, 2013
Aug 3, 2013 at 5:26 PM UTC
God the Father of mercies
does not demand much
He only wants us to be open to His love
we don't have to work for it
we were, in fact, made to be receptacles
we were made to be loved, first.
God's will is love and God's will created the whole universe
God is love. That means that nothing but love sustains us
nothing but mercy keeps us from the fires of hell.
How can you know the truth of our Lord and not be changed forever?
Feb 29, 2016
Feb 29, 2016 at 9:57 PM UTC
*Home of stinking breath , bat **** rides filthy air
Refusing to hearken , aluminum -
beer cans crushed , pitched into full -
trash receptacles , father the vagrant -
pining for replenishment , mother -
the receptionist trying to feed fearful -
children
Just build a 'Still' in your ********* room and drown in the copper kettle
Drunken men emulating the Phoenix , may your plume of smoke -
travel faraway from your children , may they attain the mettle
to lead normal lives , close your disaster like a ridiculous book ,
shelve your selfishness and the toll it took* ....
Sep 27, 2016
Sep 27, 2016 at 9:37 PM UTC
the mysterious roar of colorado winter winds
shhhh-es through wool fibers of your beanie
providing deafness to all other sounds
ill-suited as anything
other than the predominant sensation
it is
indescribable nothingness and purity
upending curbside trash receptacles
creating ice walls of former snowfalls
and tears in the eyes of you and your dog
smeared cloud formations set against
the ethereal cerulean hum-glow clearings
cutting its perspective
into a day’s agenda
and while taking refuge
in robust shelters
it howls out reminders of its presence
Feb 24, 2017
Feb 24, 2017 at 1:20 PM UTC
*a thoughtful little frown
on his face like a crown
the little boy's cute words
waft gently from his lips
as sweetly he intones:
grandma when you go
how will grandpa know
how to get to where you are
grandma, tell him the way.
his words are like the cream
oozing out of a sweet spout
into life's waiting receptacles
as out of the mouth of a babe
words about demise come forth*
Apr 24, 2016
Apr 24, 2016 at 12:59 AM UTC