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Brandon Sep 2013
The smoke tasted like Christmas as it sank into her lungs. She swirled her tongue expertly inside of her mouth playing with the simple taste of holiday and pine. It was the first time that she had felt the effects of the herb in a couple of months and she would savor every second. Virginia watched on as the joint rolled with two extra large pieces of raw organic rolling papers burned in the slow drawl the way a Cuban cigar burns. Her lungs filled with the smoke and she continued to breathe in causing her ******* to expand further out word. A smile came onto her face as her lips parted carefully holding the smoke still in her lungs and not let any escaping. She leaned forward and opened her mouth more as if she were going in for a passionate kiss and locked lips with the man in front of her but did not close her mouth for a kiss. She blew the smoke from her lungs into the man's mouth  causing his lungs and chest to expand and fill with the smoke. When Virginia's lungs and ******* had finally sank back to their normal ample capacity she and Nicholas closed their lips for a soft short kiss before pulling their faces away from one another. Nicholas held the smoke in until he needed to breathe again and blew the smoke out of his nostrils. "Shotgunning is by far one of my favorite ways to smoke" Virginia crooned in her sharp Romanian accent. Nicholas did not say anything back but grabbed the joint and inhaled and filled his lungs to their capacity and leaned inward to return the shotgun blast. When the ritual was over they did not remove their lips from each others lips after the first soft kiss. Instead they continued to kiss first with small ones that were soft and barely felt. They moved onto a heavier more passionate kiss and the smoke in Virginia's lungs began to come out and bury both her and Nicholas's faces in the smoke. Both she and him inhaled while kissing more wildly feeling the smoke recirculating between the two of them. The kisses were rough in a lustful way and were accompanied with small sharp bites on the lower lips. The smoke had began to die down and Nicholas leaned back away from Virginia's still eager lips and said "If I ever **** myself with a shotgun, it will be that kind of shotgun."
nicholas ripley Jul 2014
Folded into this numb-husk of unknowing,
undeveloped eyes, wrapped by distressed skin,
continue to peer, unseeing, accustomed
as they now are, to a feed of distant

Telegenically Dead. These short lives have been
socially shared and mocked,
as morgues overflow to floor;
impromptu fans recirculating mournings hot air.

There is little chance for grief on Day 13;
rage has to be spent like a brass cartridge
or slung stone, or drowned in red pools
mixed with the water of collective driblets.

Meanwhile a politician says something else.
July 2014
Antiphon Benedictus II / Sybilla Herophile

The wide influence of history was automated in rituals; it would indicate a bibliographical time rather than secular. The antiphons will take us through the hallelujah of eternal times and along the path of the Spring of Castalia. In singularity will be Delphic Herófila, primordial of Delphi prophesying Trojan conflicts. By reinterpreting her priesthood, she leads us to the Templar Adyton, which can be reinterpreted in a Christian way in the classical antiquity of this antiphon. Being able to be captive, she looked serious and wise, visionary and with customary strange gestures, for an abnormal state of Young Sybilla woman who was later supplanted by older fortune tellers.

The Antiphon Benedictus says: “Herophila you were plagiarized and ridiculed by a heterodoxy that knows rituals and sacred cares, the Pneuma that emerged from the cracks upset your incongruities, which settled on the millennial pedestal in Macedonian territorial geographies, uniting with Alexander the Great, recirculating in Sibylline centers and dividing the doors of Sober Hell, towards epiphanies of the cult of light, and of the sacred pairs of wisdom.

The discussion took place in front of those who surrounded the perimeter of the Antiphon; there was Vernarth and Saint John the Theologian. For decades the twilights have not made the red blood cells of the Cassotis iridescent, which defied a hydrographic competition, for the purpose of desembalming the bodies of the Falangists that emerged from the Temenos of Patmos; secular space for the auditoriums of the antiphon. With ornamental fictitious oracles envisioning the inadvisable opening of opposing eyes towards a Mysta or Mystírio Eleusino, so that finally, given the toxicity of Mercury's sulfide, they would emancipate themselves by making objections to the hypothesis of ruddy post-mortem symbols, which the braves of Tel Gomel, when appearing outside the extinct topic, so that the Benedictus songs would button their navels, which was the only thing that united them to the Sybillas who came from the expropriated ethics, and from the Cinnabar outpatient clinics for long periods providing life in the quantum of Mercurial Ambrosia. Being this preferably housed in the skulls of the V (Fifth courtyard of Helleniká, but this time with eschatology of the Koumeterium of Messolonghi). Eurydice is associated with an exhumation in front of the alerted and emitted effluvia of the Herophile after the Zygastron, which shone from a canvas and that Borker preserved from the Laurel Woods, in a sycalyptic horizon of the equinoctial Aftó of the Kaitelka Cetacean, which nitrated oxides from the eastern vertical, on its back, spauto shredding with purple carbonates towards the Rubicunda del Tinctorium, and from the rhizome that hydrated the enervated and dispersed drops that remained from the convulsion of the Metelmi wind, and shaking the fin that came from this Balaenidae specimen Mysticete, in casuistry of a whale with Down syndrome, but with prodigious psychic powers.

The Cinnabar wandered through the clothes of Tel Gomel's disembalmed ones, who colored themselves with sulfur mercury and revived from the oracles of Herófila, who woke up early with Eurydice validated by her Orphic impetus like no one else. The specific parts were tints of vital signs and epidermis shoots that trembled through the epiphyses of the tibiae that decanted arthritic through the femurs, and that rose with timid muscular masses, until they reached the instep where the celestial holes of Vernarth appeared, that he struck each one of his faithful with his Xifos sword, to bleed a bronze chalice for their reduced movements, stacked on crossed legs with dejected cheekbones that fell on their feet.

Reddish spots on his jaws and on his forearm they were transposed with red salvific footprints of Eurydice that he brought from Charon, but that expressly limited them in the posterior scapula that came arriving from the fifth courtyard of Messolonghi completely stiff in black. The muscular insertion was made of pale ocher, and the Cinnabar was elemented to verticalize the involuntary bodies of the earthquake, before the controversy of the makeup of their resurrection, after an outfit that they had never used before, pigmented by an antiseptic oracle of Herófila, which already insisted to compensate with war shrouds the size of the Benedictus that self-shod the iron suns, and that buried fangs of light and life in their facials, moving in the nervous of the trigeminal towards the ethmoid, causing rales of stimuli feminoids, for the enthronement of the women present in the only atrium of the Mandragoron. Thus they remained in multi-partial stages of the psalm that revived them, to go to meet the Hegemon Alexander the Great, who emerged synchronously from Larnax, from an eruption that uttered the greatest insults of political clarity, in the fierce agonies of his perforated lung. Parasites were sprinkled like empathic germs of Hellenism, conferring Masken resurrection, beyond the curtain or canopy that separated them in Persepolis..., returning from the Indus, for the funeral that would pass through the departure of Hephaestus. Rigor-mortis buried a soul overheating in pulmonary contusion, after a feverish respite, and re sulphating in the rhetorics of Plato and Aristotle.

The Sybillas no longer menstruated on the tripod, the Pythoness in their prehistoric eagerness was conceived twice cyclical, which were reconverted into prehistoric female raptures that confirmed the exo-red blood cells of the menstrual torment, to become reconverted Christian goddesses who were doubly buried in one past joined to the other, and that they were about to precede the next past-present, on an oak that supported them, clinging to them to bear the pain that never existed.
Sybilla Herophile
No one hears this or sees it at all
It's not life, sound, or feeling.
It's an absurd apology from an ancestor,
A silent delta supporting static streams,
A breeze displaced from intentional orbit.
On it we float, aimless as little baskets of Moses,
Destined for quarries filled with birth stones,
Passing stables, sprawling into sensible horizons,
Through fields of recirculating whispers, and beyond
The nebulous mountains of abstract memory.
This seismic world divides us, eventually
When we come to the coniferous death:
one emboldening, one defying the sovereign sun,
We lay down our life force--
   -suspending the moments long enough
   -excavating lives lost in massive capsized ships
   -forgiving each other's steps in the inevitable fall
--and rest among the fertile, archived graves.
She visits there, laying a flower on each stone,
Replacing black with yellow, again and again.
An echoing gesture of love for us all,
The drifters outside of sight and sound.
Like anyone, sometimes I can't help but dream that death isn't as bad as advertised, and the dream does sometimes help cure my melancholy.
Ken Pepiton Apr 2021
Nations  arose after the days of Peleg,
in the legendary story of Babel,
which
does have a present presence on the surface,
of the after Babel yon der myth of us
we the sapience augmented common sensed band,
single-sideband, of course, if you can cut the antennae,
to this old freq,
radioman entertainment zone, post
pasts unbelieved arizen
as we see around about us

we the beings thinking we were put here,
by no will of our own,
okeh? Hard for me to agree, for
I was a self-willed child, on the earth of 1954,
made unspoil-able, by my measure, sould,
so whatever I touch prospers,
it does not turn to gold, but time,
precious years
in days
proving once more, the way of life
remains reproof of instructions,
glitches gitinin, gremlins ist-hextical real messages,
say measure twice, cut once, keep plenty
of spare teleo-smores, say again
- whisper- find the answer -

DID is the strategy, not the disability.
Gitcheractagethah, adam henry….haul ***

Call the cops. I shot the sheriff.

Renegade boomers, eh? You seen some, h'eabouts?

Hunter people, no-sense talk babblers, yon der here
we come
sons of them guns was left.
Yep, ***** head on an old man in vietnam t'day,
tells a story told since ******'s,
time, at the briefest,
least heated
hate
instance of one once main flow, recirculating as the water
remembers,
all this did happen, parts of all of us were here,
in this moment, relative to you.

The entire creation groans in travail awaiting…

wait a minute.
we did do this, as a whole. See, besides knowns lost,
for their use in con structing the destructive idea given
Tubal-cain.
The enthrallment of Tubal-cain, you may imagine,
progressed with the reiteration of the father's curse on cain,

the signal emanating from the seed that knows the cost of dying.

Cain and Able, well, we have a few ways that tale makes the sense.
Have no fear, all that is past understanding, it cannot crush you.
Commoners hold the common sense, rule of reality.
Peace outward.
The commons are in fine shape,
fret not, we got some old peacemakers smoking flower,
blowing smoke up monstrosity's assine suggestion that I die.
Keep on sowing... see what dead seed raises up
Nat Lipstadt May 2023
<>

Donovan Leitch
“A word of advice: There's no shame in mimicking a hero or two”
(rock singer accused of being a Dylan imitator)

<>

Nat Lipstadt
you did not awake today,
announcing to no one particular,
I am today, as of now, a poet original

I will employ words in new combinations,
try & tricking you to believing my everything,
is cutting edge, unheard, dare I say it?

original.
yet that very word betrays us/me,
we all have origins, seen and unaware,
we intuit breathing words through our ears

the people’s patois, artists who invade us
subconsciously, placing jargon of beauty
on our paths overlapping, life’s happenstance!

Me?  Ogden & Walt, Dylan & Dylan, Donne & Cohen,
others unknown to you, when we stumble into one another
while traipsing verbal trails, toe stubbing on herbal pebbles,
rocky sounds, adjective crumbs

know. ac-know-ledge. if you can. sometimes you can’t…
other’s words subtle invade, takeover a particular neuron yours.
waiting for your employment, recirculating air mutuel.

yet, you understand, tho total recall is an impossibility,
so you pay extra for storage, napkin scribbles, torn pages, bytes of
snippets that face slap, irritate, burrs that burn inside

reach out to the masters, join your fellow plagiarists, ranks,
well worth joining, do not frustration forswear, nothing new,
under the sun, but yet! that very Sun rises daily, a familiar path

but miraculous diurnal, subtle modified, anew & renewed,
nonetheless, asking you for your worship, you very own
novel sunrise prayer, so come!

when gifting, regifting, write with reckless abandon,
commit, recall, conspire, despair, then inspire & believe
!

<>

Kurt Vonnegut

“In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond - and his response is magnificent: “Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!”

**<POSTSCRIPT>
Wed Apr 26 2023
8:28am
nyc
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2020
”Well, my friends are gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not comin' on.
I'm just payin' my rent every day in the Tower of Song”

Leonard Cohen lyric from The Tower of Song


§§§

this lyric hits, it’s a ten fingered cheeky ****** marking,
fits like a new white t-shirt, clean~perfect in every aspect,
I’ve just changed song to poetry, so nobody’s complaining

axiomatic, slept less a than three shambolic hours last nite,
don’t ask what I was doing or even a simple why, even the
vultures grew tired, helplessly hoping for solutions to start appearing

water pressure ok, poem spigot strong but the words desiccated,
it’s time to revisit roots, back to where I’ve come-begun, bury losses,
seek no consideration, write in isolation, a-quiet niche, a shhh! beach

my silent reverie owns me and the angels, biggest fans, just can’t
get enough, know their faith is strong, never proofing reads required,
content to wait till find my lost chords, comforts of only fresh truths

so arrivederci, until we meet again, when cadences have resumed,
rolling in unbroken, won’t need other’s words recirculating my blood,
till my slip sliding over, direction from arrows stabbing new openings

rented a storage unit in nearby woods, empty shelves greet ya with a
‘ready, willing, and able,’  many open arms looking for fulfilling, a job, that don’t even pay minimum wage, but the benefits are just fan-tastic


So:
should you spot a man ungainly wrought,
weighted down by a harpoon cross, resting,
‘pon on his cursed Cain-marked back, fingertips,
you need not move to the other side, or hide,
'tis only a make-believe poet, no longer believing,
with his recording device, seizing your rhapsodies
to rhyme with his own collected artifacts, your crinkly
smiles are his meat, his metier, his chosen career,
to be again a comfort caresser of your illusions into
a shapely sculpture of words be-loved, keeping-worthy,
tokens of a reexamined self worth, a new girth, leaner,
a celebration for the keeping, dug up with pail and shovel,
a best left hid on his treasured island, in a treasure chest, only his new-no-good-best-most-satisfying-new-no-good-best-mystifying-sati­sfying-cursing-muses-who-got-two-knee-on-my-soul-I’m-
howling...
­
Monday Jun 1, 2020
self-explanatory but if you don’t get it, then:

“there is no “better” in poetry

mine yours theirs, alive or not,

just gasps tears and blood
whimsical smiles and isles
cuts and burns of pained revelations,
hidden in fog,
that words try to delete away,
through the shrouded mists of
human tissues,
unconstrained by the
bounded shape
of the human cell,
our first, our own
self-imposed jail”
jessica obrien Nov 2021
I.

all of physics boils down to approximating the body of an animal as a sphere.

in acupuncture, body is the ear.

thinking twice is a cricket of conscience;
the outcome ends, then the end begets.

a subatomic particle decays into an entangled pair of other particles.

pallbearers bring out the empty casket.

II.

the index finger bends to meet the thumb in
mudra, recirculating.

i had dreamt last week that an animal had died in my womb.

half resurrected elsewhere as a provisional version of another person,

half came back to me again as my own intuition.

trying to hear it growling in my silent stomach,
i had cupped my hand to my ear.


III.

all of time boils down to approximating
the realm of a moment into increments.

at the end of the first hour of the day,
23 more hours will rise to meet it.

who is to say another world is not imprinted
within our bodies like a hologram that we puppet?

all energy changes forms,
none destroyed and none created.

quantum physics parses out particulates,
intricately arranged to be related, to inherit.
Habits Jul 2018
Perseverance through Hope lead men
Into their seeming unreasonable dreams.
Gazed upon—determination
Coursing and emerging for a better future.

To stand easy, but to keep balance
Is truly a challenge. Eyes met with goals—
Sight locked like their mindset.

Time being the great enemy. Legs begin
To shudder and collapse, leaving a living
Corpse. Remnants decomposed beyond
Memory— grasping for resilience.

Select few avoid death we all love.
For they are the True Mighty—
How even they can be tarnished.

Legends still linger past a tragic
Memory. Thoughts recirculating—sparking
New desires. Cycles forever repeating—until
Men refuse.

Deserted with the remaining souls
desperately clinging for what no longer has
Grip. And the cycle breaks—forever crushed
Under man's sloth.
Lawrence Hall May 2022
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

         Leaving the Party Early for Some Fresh Air and a Smoke

Our host was oozy one moment, threatening the next
The drinks were watery, the hors d’oeuvres nothing more
Than pigs in blankets of cruelties and cliches
Among guests likely to call them horse doovers

Through the bottom of my glass I could see
Only a few weak industrial fizzings
Recirculating from Tammany Hall until now
Pasting new labels over unoriginal sins

Unoriginal sins to file and shelve -
I left the Party in 2012
Upon ceasing to identify with any political party.
Dennis Willis Jul 2021
This lantern I've been given
doesn't light up for ****
maybe next time it
sputters alight
that glimpse
will make all things clear

I think I will be whole
when it shines a circle
not these angular draws
where I seem to be shadow
with light in my eyes
thru water prisms

The panic part of light
just out of reach
hands full round
what I cannot see
sometimes a keyboard
retching dark chars

Cagey stuff
recirculating itself
as if I am a theatre
and absurd lights
that lead to the stage
in case of fire
sandra wyllie Mar 2020
to cover up. Recirculating their
own breath in a paper cup. They
look as death, these walking zombies
emerging from their places, hiding morose

faces. All you see are beady eyes from
cipher warlocks that scurry by. Paper Mache
on the streets/in the subway. Their smiles
have been erased. They won’t extend

their arm for a handshake. Scared as rats
of what will spread. Boil the sheets of their own
bed. Spraying everything/wiping it
down. Chemicals sit as lice on top of every

frigging device that is found. Sanitizers
everywhere. All I see are fearful stares. It’s
not a world I want to live in, where people
are afraid of touching each other and kissing.

— The End —