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NRIKO Jan 2018
my lover, she baptized herself in blood;
my lover, she reeks, reeks of
everything the postman hasn't told her.

my lover, she baptized herself in blood;
my lover, she talks, talks of
life back in between waters and death.

my love, my love, my love,

wont let me sing a sonnet to her
before her body reeks of
fertilizers and plants i'll leave in

her jigsaw puzzle skull.
my lover, she reeks, reeks of
nostalgia i cant withstand.

my love, my love, my love.
my lover, she reeks, reeks of
her clothes at home i called death.

oh,
my Lover, she baptized herself in blood.

- eozyoh. 21.01.2018
Jedd Ong Sep 2014
The State of My Tagalog:

Stuttering.

Guess that's what you can call it.

The insecure prose that curls downward
On my notebook.

It reeks of bit
And piece
And syllable.

Singular
Because language
After language
After language

Enter my mind
And slip it
Just as quickly,
Leaving only
Fragments.

Oh, the frustration
As I ask
For loose change
From
My sister cashier.

I can't even ask for
The right amount
In Tagalog nowadays.

"Singkwenta."
"Bente."

That adds up to 75, I think.

Passing score on my
Report card too.

My self-graded Filipino class.

Don't even know
How I managed
To spell "Ibarra,"

"Tanikala," "himagsikan,"
"Liwayway..."

I'd sing and not spell,
If they never caught
At the bottom of my throat.

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

Ang Kalagayan ng Aking Tagalog:

Nauutal.

'Yan ang pwede **** sabihin sa ‘kin.

Walang tiwala sa sariling gawa,
Patunong pababa ang mga salita
Sa aking kwaderno.

Ito’y sumisingaw ng piraso
At bahagi
At pantig.

Nag-iisa
Dahil wika
Bawa’t wika
Bawa’t wika

Ay pumapasok sa aking kalooban
At umaalis
Ganun ding kabilis,
Naiiwan ang mga
Kaputol lamang nito.

O, kay inip
Habang ako’y humihingi
Ng barya
Kay Ateng Kahera.

‘Di ko nga kayang
Humingi ng tamang halaga
Sa wikang Pilipino ngayon.

“Singkwenta.”
“Bente.”
Ito ay pitompu’t lima, ata.

Pasang awa rin
Sa aking report kard

Sariling pagmamarka sa Filipino.

‘Di ko nga alam
Kung paano 'kong
Naisusulat ang “Ibarra.”

"Tanikala," "himagsikan,"
"Liwayway…"

Nais kong kantahin at huwag lang sulatin,
Kung ‘di lang man silang sumasabit
Sa ilalim ng aking lalamunan.
Thank you to Sofia for the amazing translation. She is found here: http://hellopoetry.com/sofia-paderes/. Stop by—you won't be disappointed.
Terry O'Leary Sep 2015
1
Though still within our infancy,
we strive to thrive, but woefully
we flash and flaunt our 'primacy',
display our trophies pridefully.

Our terra firma ecstasy
destroys survival's harmony,
lays waste to life on land and sea.
Mankind, thy name is vanity!

By doubting Nature's regnancy,
defying laws with levity,
we strain our spheroid's symmetry
(perhaps a fatal fallacy?)

for, swallowed in the 'world of we',
we feed on vain insanity
with thoughts beyond eternity -
so strange when looked at mortally.

No use to seek a remedy
ensconced in ancient prophecy
for if not handled skillfully,
as clay we'll pay the penalty.

                              2
The Moguls rule with cruel decree,
control the crowds like puppetry,
pursuing greed addictively
with no accountability.

The wind, it reeks of Royalty
(awash in waves of perfidy)
while blowing ’cross the peasantry
(eclipsed in clouds of treachery).

The Queen, well steeped in snobbery,
sits, preening proud Her pedigree,
on throne of sculpted ebony
while sipping Sect immodestly;

to sate Her Regal Majesty,
a caviar clad canapé
is served with golden cutlery
by maidens bent submissively.

The King is bailed from bankruptcy
by Knaves who hoodwink artfully
the down-and-outer evictee
who wallows in their lenity.

Forsooth, the Money Monarchy
exalts the dollar dynasty
engaged in highway robbery
by Peacocks plumed in finery.

Yes, Jesters and the Fools agree
to truckle to duplicity
and laugh about it witlessly.
Long live the peon's penury!

                          3
To champion an oddity
(like two times twelve is fifty three)  
one reaches to theology
through paths of circularity.

In bygone trials of travesty
the doubters, draped in blasphemy,
endured the pain and agony
inflicted by the papacy.

Inspired by the Trinity
fanatics bent cosmology
in geocentric fantasy
while Bruno burned for heresy;

and aged women, randomly
accused of wicked witchery
by justice framed in infamy,
were racked and shown no clemency

That epoch of credulity
(when savants fostered sorcery
and practiced ancient alchemy)
arose in dark age quackery

as clerics dripping piety
(while raging, raving rabidly)
pervaded thralled society
with callous inhumanity;

'repent', they bellowed, 'verily,
forsake the world's iniquity,
live lives of want and chastity,
and give your gelt to God through me'.

                    4
The Masters make a mockery
of freedom and democracy
by holding down the uppity,
released from shackled slavery,

now fettered in a factory
else strewn across the Bowery,
still chained in bonds of bigotry,
immersed in seas of poverty.

And colliers, tapping balefully
in sunken-mine solemnity,
yet thrum a mournful monody
some call the digger's elegy.

To children, pale and raggedy
(behind a day of drudgery),
the boss man, oh so gallantly,
bestows a penny, niggardly;

though some are fed (belatedly),
their eyes recede in apathy
while bellies bulge, inflatedly,
with mothers watching, wretchedly.

When met with health adversity
or broken bone infirmity,
the pauper dangles helplessly
with no insurance policy;

and those engulfed in lunacy
are ailing blobs left floating free
in ******-dream obscurity -
a mired madhouse odyssey.

Ignoring mankind's unity,
the rich and poor dichotomy
breeds dismal doomed finality,
eventual nihility.

                        5
Renewing days of chivalry,
wild warriors fighting valiantly
bring freedom neath the gallows tree
while blending blood and burgundy

to toast the slaughtered enemy,
and so convince the colony
to cede with smile on bended knee
and yield her diamonds, silk and tea.

At first they call the cavalry
and then again the infantry,
so proudly primped in panoply,
with arms from finest armory

(embraced in hands so tenderly
bestow benign atrocity) -
and soon atomic weaponry
will extirpate posterity.

                          6
Misusing high technology
(to feed the face of gluttony)
depletes our Rock of energy,
now slowly dying thermally.

Our gadgets breathing CFC
fuel ozone holes' immensity
while cloud bursts, raining acidly,
wilt woods in their entirety,

and rivers, tainted chemically,
polluted biologically,
refill our cups methodically
and drown our souls organically.

Adjusting genes mechanically
may well blot out the bumble bee
annulling fruits' fecundity,
but brings big bucks reliably.

We wager perpetuity
to revel momentarily
in shadow-like obscurity
ignoring the futility,

but if we bet unknowingly
on fickle fate's contingency
and thereby act haphazardly
we're doomed to lose the lottery.

                 7
The modern day bureaucracy
abuses trust egregiously ,
embeds itself in obloquy
and offers no apology.

It paints the past in reverie
to camouflage the tendency
to strip away our privacy
which paves the path to tyranny.

With earlobes lurking furtively
that listen surreptitiously,
and eyeballs peering piercingly
we've lost cerebral sovereignty,

and those who dare to disagree
must hide away in secrecy
else crowd a black facility
(with water board anxiety).

                  8
Yes, sans responsibility,
our marble in this galaxy
will crumble in catastrophe
ere ever reaching puberty…
it didn’t take a lot a look a few words a few more looks bam not that any girl stuck around and so it was on to the next nothing is precious everything is possible forget what you know leave the road behind invent dance new dance cough spit breathe dance verbs multiplying gazillions of verbs stars what is it about art in my mind i hear all these things i was going to express all these itches scratch pick scabs get drunk write poetry dance ******* in your mouth ******* in my mouth salty sea surfing waves Caravaggio Courbet Turner Goya Ad Reinhardt Rothko Rimbaud Johnny Unitas Walter Payton Annie Proulx Patty Berglund Hannah Wilke Kim Gordon dark clouds rainbows meteor showers lantern licorice amethyst bone

in the end it’s you and your maker ashes to ashes dust to dust Mom questions it’s 4:30 PM December in Chicago and pitch black i don’t understand it’s not supposed to be this dark this cold she imagines a past that never existed events never occurred

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

it will be daylight soon and i am unprepared so terribly unfit for a new dawn suddenly realize tomorrow is today

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

when people die in masses is it any less lonely more comforting than when you die individually or is dying solitary for everyone

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

redemption is a powerful force but what if existence actually does not present second chances and we must live with the consequence of our mistakes

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

if there is an afterlife do i have any say in it or are we all merely lost baggage tossed from airport to airport

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

what if travelers at airports were met with welcoming arms shared stories food instead of suspicion body scanners separation boarding seating procedures

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

i built a magnificent sandcastle with wide open rooms interesting views spacious bathrooms huge kitchen secret places winding stairways auspicious towers swinging rope bridges welcoming gates but the tide washed it all away

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

i cry yet know not why am i a ***** i must take the goose by the neck whatever that means

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

speaking personally i’m never interested in the last bite only the first bite the middle tastes rather bland all chewing gulping automatic consumption talking swallowing stifling gases

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

horses mate with donkeys then out comes mules yet mules cannot propagate nature is so strange mysterious what is it about the attraction between donkeys and horses

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

2 gorgeous petite charming sweet young girls are subletting my place in Tucson i imagine ménage à trios or relationship with either one of them then realized how improper my thoughts will i ever learn

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

Reiko likes hanging out naked if the door is locked and they’re in for the evening she strips Reiko is one of those women who look better without clothes the curls under her arms are growing in dark thick her bush is filling out even her **** is hidden by silky brown hairs he cannot stop checking her out she pretends not to be aware as she trims her toenails he leers **** your cooch looks tasty Odys i like that you can speak crude to me he murmurs you really like that she answers yes i really like that he sees himself in her he is deep in sleep wakes by her hand pulling his hand down to her ***** bone he stirs confused in half sleep as she continues tugging his hand Odysseus realizes what Reiko wants it is 3 AM he touches her there warm distended begins to massage wetness gushes moves down bed puts face there she presses pumping grinding whispering repeatedly i want to *** so bad his mouth tongue breath work her hands grip his head push unyielding muscles stiffen arch shudder continues licking until her body lies still crawls up kisses her forehead hair bodies spoon fall to sleep in the morning he comments you were a naughty little girl last night Reiko grins answers i had an orangutan attack he questions an orangutan attack she confesses yeah they both laugh he has never known a woman so fierce urgent to ****** Reiko has a man’s libido she reminds him of himself they mimic each other hearing Reiko speak Odysseus’s own words back at him and visa versa convey how demanding insecure insensitive each can be to other they do not simply speak but mimic each other Reiko ‘s voice drops to low pitch as she grabs his buns kids hey Reiko Lee what do you think about us wiping each other’s butts we could become more intimate with our bodies Odysseus raises his voice sounding feminine replies Schwartzpilgrim you’re gross take a hike it is hilarious yet intuitive therapy that maintains level playing field neither allows other to be too weak or dominant

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

it is Sunday snowing blizzard freezing cold outside Odysseus sits on floor watching Bear’s football game at Reiko’s she sits naked paging through Art Forum magazine across sofa from him he hears her crunching on bag of barbecue potato chips during half time he reaches touches her bush runs fingers through her ***** hairs twirling them in his fingers she spreads her legs wide open he smells her hair breath perspiration ****** *** feet feels both repelled and attracted he is lost in fascination gently tugs on her lips slides finger inside massages probes her opening she directs him to kneel stands above him her arms at waist her pelvic bone in his face she orders **** it **** it good he follows her instruction **** my ***** she commands as she holds his head in hands her long skinny body thrusts hips forward Reiko presses gently pumping then more furious rough into Odysseus’s face ooohhh i’m going to shoot a load baby swallow my *** she shoves ***** bone into his face bangs his nose hard yet he remains ******* her legs thighs stomach muscles tremble oh oooohhhhh ohh Odys did you see that i came just like a guy oh Odys i loved that he wipes mouth laughs

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

a person’s sexuality is always in question how one interprets his or her own ****** persona relative to another person’s personality response ratio how one’s power measures reacts to another’s vulnerabilities strengths Odysseus and Reiko fit well together switching roles in impulsive volley he loves her masculinity the unpredictable equation of their love he teases Reiko Lee i’m so attracted to the tomboy in you i want to **** you off and let you **** me come over here and stick that fat hard **** in my pink little **** hole all the frustration rage pain pent up inside you i want you to harness that hurt and slam it into me and shoot your load all over me **** me good Reiko Lee she looks at him strange says you’re a weird bird Schwartzpilgrim how weird do you think he asks her voice takes on a creepy overruling tone Odys, you want me to fist-******* he snaps shut up Reiko Lee get out of here she runs fingers through hair breathes out through nose taunts Odys let me ******* a ***** and ******* in the *** Odysseus’s voice grows loud Reiko Lee you’re crossing the line just because i mention some crazy thought doesn’t mean i’m actually into such weirdness don’t try to take what i say to some sound conclusion i enjoy experimenting but i’m one hundred percent male i like to test limits because i’m secure in my manhood spicing our *** life with ***** fantasies is one thing but don’t overstep i got the **** and you got the ***** let’s keep it that way don’t mess with me she replies ok ok Odys i didn’t mean to offend you

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

often he personifies the lead and she interprets the willing or amendable he requests many ****** urges she for the most part eagerly fulfills yet knowing his desires run over the top he considerately concedes to her sensibility he asserts rule number 1 Reiko Lee please let me have my way with you ok please try to not refuse me she smiles consents ok Odys and i want the same from you he insists rule number 2 repeat after me i’m addicted to your ***** i’m codependent on your **** she repeats i’m addicted to your ***** Odys i’m codependent on your **** he challenges rule number 3 at least one ******* a day agreed? She answers yes Odys agreed later he thinks about their conversation approaches her Reiko Lee sometimes i need more than one ******* a day maybe one in the morning and one after you get home from work i need your adoring attention down there will you do that for me please she shoots sarcastic look at him what are you a cow that needs milking everyday all right Odys whatever you desire he gratefully acknowledges Reiko Lee you’re so good to me thank you next morning he says Reiko Lee when i think about you the first image that comes to mind is your eyes i love your eyes more than any other part of you she comments oh yeah more than my **** hole? he flinches surprised oh god i can’t believe you said that you are so outrageous Reiko Lee you have got the sexiest **** hole i’ve ever seen i love adore revere your hairy **** hole when are you going to let me get some of that she remarks we’ll see Schwartzpilgrim in due time the following morning he notices bathroom door is wide open peering inside he sees her sitting on toilet she looks up smiling as he nears he questions which are you doing peeing or ******* she answers why do you need to know he requests lift up and let me watch she raises her thighs knees legs curling toes on toilet seat her **** muscles pucker then a brown extent begins appearing from her hole her vaginal lips flare urethra presses as short spurt of ***** accompanies discharge the ***** length drops into bowl followed by smaller piece Odysseus perceives the action produced by her body as intimate natural expression occurring without contrivance manipulation he studies the form as if it were a sculptural object descended into water to bottom of bowl Reiko reaches for roll of toilet tissue he interrupts **** she answers let me wipe myself first it reeks in here you mean watching me taking a **** turns you on you are one sick monkey he says shut up and **** she follows his instruction after several minutes he pulls out of her mouth jerks off while she watches he shoots wildly on her chin neck chest she rubs his ***** on her ******* they both break out in laughter she says come on let’s take a shower together she begins speaking sentence he finishes it she says Odys i’m not comfortable with more than he breaks in one ******* a day i understand Reiko Lee she expresses thank you Odys one is enough agreed he replies ok ok

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

a week passes Saturday evening she comes from work to his place with stressed look on her face she falls back into wall on floor with her legs stretched out she asks got anything to eat he answers a couple of beers in the fridge her brow furrows as she speaks in low tone Odys i’m guessing there’s something seriously wrong with you he questions wrong with me huh what she comments your physique is weird your shoulder blades and rib cage stick out you’ve got a sunken sternum he answers yeah i know it’s not really a problem more like natural peculiarities she says yeah well you’ve got other peculiarities he asks oh yeah like what she remarks i’ve never known or heard of a man who gets hard as often as you it’s deviant you’ve got some kind of disorder you need to go see a doctor he admits i know i got a problem my libido is out of control it’ll calm down it’s been a long time since i felt so hot for someone do you really think it’s serious enough to go see a doctor she answers serious enough to insist you bone me once a day he laughs Reiko Lee you had me going she grins get over here you ***** ******* and **** me good Reiko’s favorite way to ****** is with her legs closed tight she lies beneath while his ******* presses in pumping her thighs buttocks squeeze stomach muscles tense whole body jerks spasms as she reaches ****** Odysseus’s favorite position is with Reiko on top he likes her rhythms and control

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

when Michael Vick was found guilty for dog fighting mauling cruel killing i wanted him dead dead dead but he is a brilliant quarterback and i was wrong who am i to understand another person’s background judge them maybe there is redemption

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

if another war comes it’s China we must fight to hate fear them run hide

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

it’s a long twisted road down a dark cold hole many are too damaged others work toward salvation yet some unscathed by all this filth

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

on the brighter side death gets a bad rap by mortals think positive perhaps death is graduation to whatever at worst death is release from life’s disappointments expectations responsibilities burdens betrayals pain horrors

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

i remember when Dad was dying all these new people who i still remember entered my life for a brief time it seems like the same thing is happening now

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache

Mom i’m right here behind you don’t be scared i’m watching out for you

these old bones rattle and shake tremble and quake quiver and ache
han Mar 2020
Mama, where am I?
Ask me where I am, Mama.
Reeks, it reeks,
Traversing in caves, it reeks.
I am but a juvenile astray,
Astray, that I am;
Lost in the midst of pandemonium.

Lost; am I lost, Mama?
Am I? Am I?
Where am I?

Nene, they called me,
Etched in wounds, my name.
Vultures alike, clawing from above,
Eight nine ten, they count.
Right before the explosion,

A whisk of laughter floats on.
Grab her! They screamed in ire.
All I know is that it reeks.
It reeks, mama. I’m lost.
Nene, is that who I am?

Don’t! I begged.
Under the rug,
They hid my undergarments.
End, is it the end?
Remember—all I remember is, mama,
They caressed my thighs, mama.
End, is this the end, mama?

Pain strikes below, and inside, and around.
Alas, there is something penetrating!
Slashing and stroking and slashing and stroking.
It’s painful, mama. It’s painful.
Something is poking, it’s agonizing.
Then it reeks o'er, it reeks.
Again, am I lost, mama? Where am I?
Brad Lambert Oct 2013
(I)

Whose coat is this? Sure as hell isn't my coat. I ain't got no coat with this parka ****, it's *******. I ain't no furry flamin' ******. I ain't no ****** chochy Molly-May-Ze-**** chokin' down chickens and nasalin' a'sniffin' snortin' nasty-*** choch; that ain't me. That ain't me. Look at this coat– I'm like an Eskimo *****. I'm like a butch-**** bull-**** crotch-lappin' a'swimmin' laps in that guy's swimmin' pool. Who's that guy? Who owns that guy? 'Ey, anyone here the owner of this guy– guy ain't got no owner? Whose coat is this? It's nice, real nice. Bet she said, "Does it come from France? Where do I buy one?" I want to buy one, I think I need to buy **** more. I sure as hell need to buy one of these. "And I need one these too and one of them too and I need a petticoat and a tipper-tapper and a whimpratic garfielder and one of them new bartlemores, I need more of them bartlemores. I need more, more, more, more, more, more..." That ain't enough. ****'s from France. ****'s from Paris, that's romantic. You think I'm romantic? I eat hearts for dinner, I chew down nails like nuts for my midnight snack. I smoke cigarettes and spit on concrete slabs, you think that's ****? I'll show you ****. I'll show you Paris, New York City, Rome, romance you in Rome. I'll get real ******' Roman. I'll take you to the desert and make love to you. That's how a free man does a woman, and I'm a real free man. Who's ownin' this guy? It ain't you, it ain't me. I don't own you, you don't own me. I'm a free man:

I said,
"Fire and wood, fire and wood, fire and wood. It is late, it is late, it is far, far too late."

I set
fire to wood, fire to wood; feel that fire fired fresh from that firewood.

I dug the pit,
he gathered the wood,
she started the fire.

She really does make that fire start.

O' how she makes that fire burn,
O' how the wood's wrapped in white hots,
O' how they smoke their smokestacked pipes,
O' tobacco teeming teenagers, tormented by and through youth,
O' adolescence, trending topics, and forget-me-not flowers,
O' old age, Floridan coffins, and coughing  cancers,
O' writers in the mountains writing to be,
O' painters and **** bodies in studies by the sea,
O' thinkers in their mindset, mindsetting the table for dinner,
O' tables set to bursting,
O' wallets so thick,
O' community,
O' society, our social games,
O' hope,
O' peace,
O' that I may be at peace,
O' that I may be content and pray only for peace,
O' how about them true believers,
O' how about that love at first sight,
O' sandstone. My sandstone. That guy sittin' on sandstone.

That's my guy. That's my guy. I own this ****.

Is a man breathing on a mirror the sum of his breaths?
Breaths foggin' a'mistin' my view,
my view of a body and that face,
you're a body.
You're a workin' day's bell,
you're my chill in an Icelandic draft,
you're my spare in a Middle Eastern draft,
you're my pawn in chest-to-chest chess.

You've got this. You've got this. You own this ****.

And it is ****, too. I'd be set, real ******' set, with someone like you. I'll make you a woman, check this parka ****. Coat's mine. I'm a classy igloo runner, runnin' a'ragin' a'czebelskiin' meriteratin', I'll be reiteratin' your points. Check the time, it's late! It's late! ***** was in the grassy knoll turnin' trap tunes on her turntable. Would you listen to that? She sounds late to me, does she sound late to you? I like the music; I like the music. What happened to Woodstock? Where's my watergate, Nixon? Where's my generation, Ginsberg? Where's the meaning? This music's too loud! We're so profound! O' profundity!

Tell me something I didn't know, I'm craving' the new.
Give me the new while I spit on the old,
while I spit on this fine art finely art'd by and for fine artists–
******' fine artists. ******* fine artists.

(You can realize radical-realist realism but you can't be real with me?)

O' fine art!
What fine art!
Which fine artists are dead?



(II)

Looks like they're dead.

Looks like them ******* choked out all them ghettos, choked out all them rednecks, chokin' a'stranglin' by-God-oh-God straddlin' the breeders. I sure did like them babes– babes with their laughin' a'lackin' o' cynicism. They don't know the word "****."

I sure am forgetful–
I forgot that smoke doesn't dissipate,
I forgot how to smell autumn leaves,
I forgot to check the heart against the fingertips,
I forgot why my fingertips went numb,
I forgot to cue in the meaning when the sentence was complete,
I forget to complete my sentences,
I forget who you were wanting when you said, "I want you."

I got as much depth as an in-depth discussion, high hats and electropercussion have got me going. I'm goin' downtown, uptown bourgeois tricked me out, johns and yellow Hummers laid me down and cussed me out. That's not a discussion. That's not my scent scenting my towel, this breath reeks of wintry air– my fingertips went numb.

"I want you."

"Oh would you look at that moon?
Take a look at that moon.
Look at that moon with the ******' mountains.
I love that moon.
That's my moon."

I love darin' a'dusty dareelin' derailin' your dreams, whose dreams are these? They ain't my dreams– ain't no dream derailin' a'nileerad radiatiatin' some hint of joy or Jamison Scotch Liqueur. Drink that ****. That's my ****, I own that ****.
I'm sittin' on this stoop like I own this ****, like this **** owns me; I owed me. I don't own me, you owe me:

Pay up man, feet off the stoop.
Pay up man, be real with me.
Pay up man, you ever thought of a man as a man?
Pay up man, give it in.
Pay up man, give in.
Pay up man, I need you to do me a solid. Do me solid from crown-to-toe, we're toe-to-toe let's do-si-do bro-to-** I'm ready go, **, jo, ko, lo, get low… Now I'm ramblin'. You say, "Ramble in to the stoop and tell me a story."

What's a stoop– who's a stoop? That **** ain't stoop– you ain't stoop. You're stupid. You're a joke, check out the joke. Hey ladies, you seen this joke– joke ain't been seen by them ladies? I'm a joke. We ain't laughin' with you, they're laughin' at you.

O' hilarity!
Such hilarity!
What hilarious histories have passed?



(III)*

"I said I loved him once. I only loved him once."
(
And how long once has been...)

I sure did like them hand-holdins,
them star-gazin' moments,
them moon phasin' nighttime nuances,
them fingertip feelin' a'findin',
them sessions o'meshin' limber legs unto steadfast *****,
heads cocked like guns toward the sky,
beyond the horizon
but well
below the belt.

Them star-gazing moments seeing stars seemin' small, I love how they gleam- gleamin' a'glarin' comparin' shine to shine, shimmerin' a glimmer shone stumblin' her way home from the bar. She's drunk. She's brilliant, brilliance of whit and wantin' a'wanderlustin' gypsy nomads- that ***** gyp'd me, no mad man would take a cerebral slam to the face lest them moving pictures are involved. Read a ******' book, it'll last longer. Kiss me on the collar bones, clavicles shone shining with slick saliva pining for my affections. You're clammerin' to feel me, clammin' up (Just feel me.) I want to run my hands through long hair and peg the nausea nervosa to the wall. The writing's on the wall:

The sun bent over so the moon could rise, chanting,
"Goodbye and good riddance,
I never wanted to shine down
on them seas o' tranquilities anyhow."*

O' what a day. What a day.

And the wind ruffles leaves and it ruffles feathers on birds eating worms in brown soil.

What a day. What a day.

And the men under the bridge gather in traitorous conversation of governments overthrown and border dissolution and poetry with meters bent out of tune.

What a day. What a day.

And the billboards are dry for all the consumers to consume, use, and review.

What a day. What a day.

And hearts break messiest when you're not looking.

What a day. What a day.

And the ego and the id and the redwood trees are talking. They're sitting **** in the marshes, bathing in the bogwater while fondling foreign fine wines and whisperin' a'veerin' conversations towards topics kept well out of hand, out of the game, nontobe racin' in races, rampant radical racists betting bets on bent, bald Bolshevik racists wagging Marxist manifestos in the bourgeois' faces, yes. Make it be. Nontobe sanity as the captain creases his pleats, pleasin' her creases and the dewdrops of sweat trailing down the small of her back– down the ridge of her spine forming solitary springs of saline saltwater in the small of her back. Aye-aye, guy's pleasin' a'makin' choices a'steerin'– government's a'veerin' a hard left into the ice.

'Berg! 'Berg!
Danger in the icy 'berg!
None too soon a 'berg!
Bound to bump a 'berg!
O' inevitably unnerving 'berg!
Authoritative 'berg!
Totalitarian 'berg!
Surveillance of *** and the sexes 'berg!
O' fatalist fetishist 'berg!
Benevolent big brother 'berg!
Homosocial socialization 'berg!
Romanticized Roman 'berg!
O' virginal mother 'berg!
City on a hill on a 'berg!
Subtly socialist 'berg!
Nongovernmental 'berg!
O' illustrious libertine 'berg!
Freedom of the people 'berg!
Water privatization 'berg!
Alcohol idolization 'berg!
O' corrupt and courageous 'berg!
Church and a stately 'berg!
Pray to your ceiling fan 'berg!
Biblically borne 'berg!
O' godly and gorgeous 'berg!
Ferocious freedom fighters launching lackluster demonstrations far too post-demonstration feeling liberty and love, la vie en rouge, revolving revolutionist ranting on revolution tangible as
an ice cold 'berg.

'Berg! 'Berg!
O' the 'berg, the ****** iceberg–
You'll be the death of me.
cassie sky Sep 2012
You make me sick
Slathering Splenda sweetness
On, all slimy and thick

It is fake like your nails
your hair
your skin
And especially -
Your claim to enlightenment

Enlightened ones
feed not on attention -
but on living & giving
Sharing your thoughts
to spread happiness
Cause beauty blooms
In the garden of the mind

So stop sharing your body
the only thing it pleases
is many, many a *****

You exclaim love is your guidance
But internally you shout disgust
Disgust for yourself
Disgust, for all those girls
Whose men you claimed
With your filthy cat claws

Your heart is an empty hole
And pitch black is the color
Of your ever whimpering soul
I hateth th' song of th' grass outside;
and t'eir blades t'at swing about my feet
like fire. How unfeeling all of which are-
did t'ey really think I wouldst ever be tantalised
by t'eir sickly magic? Such a gross one-
demanding, rapacious, parasitic!
Even I am fed up with t'eir proposals,
and ideas t'at t'ey fervently throw
in th' hope t'at t'ey canst corrupt my dreams,
my feelings-ah, yes, my sincere feelings,
and secure, t'ough imaginary, dreams.
Oh, and my comfortable desire as well!
My rosy desire-which at times canst tiringly
petrify me-ah, unbelievable, is it not? Th' fact
t'at I am so satiatingly, and daringly, petrified
by my own desire-and reproved by th' one
whom I am astonished at, praise, and admire;
How pitiful I am! How horrific and tragic!
I hath knitted my sorry without caution,
I was too immersed in vivid glances
and disguises and mock admiration.
Perhaps it hath been my mistake!
Eyes t'at blindly saw,
ears t'at wrongly judged!
Lies t'at I forsook,
tensions t'at I undertook!
Oh, how credulous I am-to vice!
Mock me, detest me, strangle me!
Stop my sullen heart from breathing-
as I hath, I hath spurned my darling-
oh, I hath lost my love!
How sorrowful, tearful-and painful!
And how I hath lost my breath; for cannot I stop
my feet from swimming and tapping
in t'is fraudulent air, gothic and transient
With poems t'at no matter how mad,
but nearly as thoughtful and eloquent,
I shalt still remain doleful and sad,
for my love for him is indeedst thorough-
and imminent; No matter how absurd he fancies
I am, and how he looketh at me oftentimes
with twigs of governing dexterity;
but most of all, shame.
I hath no shape now.
I hath lost, and raked away,
my elaborate conscience;
I hath corrupted my conciseness,
I hath wounded my sanguinity,
originality, and thoughts even, of my poetic
soul-of my poetic bluntness and sometimes
rigid, creativity.
I am an utter failure.
I am a mad creature; I am maddened by love,
I am frightened by virtue, I despise and reject
truth. I hath no sibling in t'is world of humanity,
ah-yes, no more sibling, indeedst,
neither any more puzzles of fate
t'at I ought to host, and solve;
I deserve nothing but fading and fading away
and give up my soul, my human soul-
to being a slave to disgrace
and cordial nothingness.
I belongst not, to t'is whole human world;
T'is is not my region, for I canst, here-
smell everything sacrificed for one another
and rings of delightful and blessed laughter
which I loathe, with all th' sonnets and auguries
of my laconic heart. Oh, I am misery!
I am evil, evil misery!
I, myself, equal tragedy; I am a devil,
a feminine and laurel-like devil-
just like how I look,
but tormented I am inside,
as a cursed being by nature and God Almighty
for never I shalt be bound to any love;
and engaged to any hands
in my left years and in th' afterlife outright.
I shalt have never any marriage within me,
any marriage worthy of talks, parties,
neither anything my wan heart desires;
like sweets with no sweetness,
or dances with no music.
No human love should ever
be properly conducted by me,
I am incapable of embodying
a unity, I am destined to be with me.
To be with me only-ah, as sad as it is,
as vague as how it sounds, or it might be.
O, and how I should love, emptiness!
Any loss should thus be romantic to me:
Just how death already is;
my husband is death,
and my chamber is his grave.
I shalt, night and day, sing to th' leaves
on his tomb,
ah-as t'ey are alive to me!
Yes, my darling reader! To me, t'ey are living souls,
t'ey open t'eir mouths and sing to me
Whenever I approach 'em with my red
bucket of flowers; lilies t'ey eat, ah-
how romantic t'ey look, with tongues
slithering joyfully over th' baked loaves I proffer!
T'eir smell of rotting flesh my hug,
meanwhile t'eir deadness my kisses!
T'eir greyness, and paleness-my cherry,
and t'eir red-blood heath my berry!
So glad shalt I becometh, and shimmer shalt my hair-
and be quenched my buoyant hunger-
beneath th' sun, with my hands, t'at hath
been aborted for long, robbed of whose divine functions
Laid in such epic, and abundant rejections
Brought into life again, and its surreal breath
But t'is time realistic, t'ough which happiness
shalt be mortal, as I perfectly, and tidily knoweth
and as I flippeth my head around
And duly openeth my eyes, I shalt again
be sitting in th' same impeccable nowhereness,
nowhere about th' dead lake, with its white-furred
swans, ghost-like at t'is hour of night-
Wherein for th' rest of my years should I dwell,
with no ability and desired tranquility
t'at canst once more guarantee
my security to escape.
T'ere's no door-yes, no door, indeedst,
to flee from th' gruesome trees,
t'eir putrid breath solitary and reeks of tears,
whilst t'eir tangled leaves smell strongly
of vulgarity and hate.
I hate as well-th' foliage amongst 'em,
grotesque and fiendish art whose dreamy visages,
with sticking tails wiping and squeaking
about my eyes, t'ough as I glance through
thy heavens, Lord, gleam like watery roses
before t'eir petals swell, fall, and die.
Oh-so creepy and melancholy t'ese feelings are,
but granted to me I knoweth not how,
as to why allowed not I am,
to becomest a more agreeable mistress
to a human-a human t'at even in solitude
breathes th' same air, and feels all th' same
indolent as me, by th' tedious,
ye' cathartic, morn.
Ah, and shalt I miss my lover once more
And t'is time even more persistently t'an before,
For every single of his breath is my sonnet,
and every word he utters my play.
He is th' salvation, and mere justification
I should not for ever forget,
just like how I should cherish
every sound second; every brand-new day.
My heart is deeply rooted in him;
no matter how defunct-
and defected it may seem,
as well as how futile, as t'is selfish world
hath-with anger and jealousy, deemed.
How I feel envy towards t'ose lucky ones,
with lovers and ringlets about t'eir palms,
so jealous t'at I cringe towards my own fate,
and my inability to escape which.
How unfair t'is world is sometimes-to me!
Ah, but I shalt argue further not;
I shalt make t'is exhaustive story short-
I am like a nasty kid trapped in th' dark,
without knowing in which way I should linger,
'fore making my way out and surpass her.
She is a curse-indeedst, a curse to me,
t'ough at th' moment she is a cure-but to him,
but she is all to forever remain a bad dream,
which he should but better quit,
she shalt subdue my light,
and so cheat him out of his wit.
She is an angel to him at night,
but at noon he sees her not,
she is an elegant, but mischievous auroch
with ineffectual, ye' doll-like and plastic auras
She is deceit, she is litter, she is mockery;
She hath all but an indignant, ****** beauty
She does not even hath a life, nor
a journey of destiny
She hath not any trace of warmth, or grace,
and most of th' time, at night
It is her agelessness t'at plays,
she ages but she falsely tricks him-my love,
into her lusted, exasperating eagerness;
t'ough colourless is her soul, now,
from committing too much of yon sin
She still knoweth not of her unkindness,
and thinks t'at everything canst be bought
by beauty, and t'at neither love nor passion
canst afford her any real happiness.

Ah, my love, I am hung about
by t'is prolific suspense;
My heart feels repugnant in its wait;
uncertain about everything thou hath said
As thou wert gentle but mean to me;
despite my kindness, ye' mistaken shortcomings
as I stood by th' railings th' other day, next to thee.
Ah, thee, please hear my apologies!
Oh, thee, my life and my midday sun,
a song t'at I sing-in my bed and on my pillow,
last week, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
I am, however, to him forever a childlike prodigy-
shalt never he believeth in my tales,
ah, his faith is not in me,
but I in him.
How despicable!
But foolishly I still love him,
even over t'is overly weighing injustice
on my heart-
ah, still I love him, I love him!
I love him too badly and madly,
I love him too keenly, but wholly passionately.
I love him with all my heart and body!
Oh, Kozarev, I love thee!
I love thee only!
For love hath no more weight, neither justice
within it, if it is given not by thee;
I was born and raised to be thine,
as how thou wert created
and painted and crafted-by God Almighty,
to be mine. As I sit here I canst savagely feel, oh,
how painfully I feel-yon emptiness,
t'is insoluble, inseparable solitude
filled not with thy air, glancing at
th' deafening thunder, rusty rainbows
With thee not by my side.
I fallest asleep, as dusk preaches
and announces its arrival,
But asleep into a burdened nightmare,
too many fears and screams heightened in it,
ah, I am about to fallest from smart rocks
into th' boiling tides of fire beneath my feet.
I wake into th' imprudent smile of th' moon,
and her coquettish hands and feet
t'at conquer th' night so cold.
She is about to scold me away again,
'fore I slap her cheeks and send her back
to sleep, weeping.
I return to my wooden bench, and weep
all over again, as without thee still I am,
barefooted and thinly clothed amongst
th' dull stars at a killing cold night.
Th' rainbow is still th' rainbow,
but it is now filled with horror,
for I am not with thee, Kozarev!
Oh, Kozarev, th' darling of my heart,
th' mere, mere darling of my silent heart,
even th' heavens art still less handsome
t'an thy images-growing and fading
and growing and fading about me
Like a defiant chain, thou art my naughty prince,
but th' most decorous one, indeed;
thou art th' gift t'at I'th so heartily prayed for
and supplicated for-over what I should regard
as th' longest months of my life.
O, Kozarev, thou art my boy,
and which boy in th' world
who does not want to
play hide-and-seek in th' garden-
like we didst, last Monday?
Thou art my poem,
and thus worth all th' stories
within which. Thou art genial,
cautious, and beneficent. Thou art
vital-o, vital to me, my love!
I still blush with madness at th' remembrance
of thy voice, and giggle with joy and tears
over yon picture of thee; I canst ever forget thee
not, and sure as I am, t'at never in my life
I shalt be able to love, nor care for another;
thou art mine, Kozarev, thou art mine!
Thou art mine only, my sweet!
And ah, Kozarev, thou knoweth, my darling,
t'at the rainbow is longer beautiful
tonight; and as haughtiness surfaces again
from th' cynical undergrowth beneath,
I am afraid t'at t'eir fairness and brightness
shalt fade-just like thy love, which was back then
so glad and tender, but gets warmer not;
as we greet every inevitable day
and tend to t'eir needs,
like those obedient clouds
to th' appalling rain, in th' sky.

Ah, but nowest look-look at thee! Thy innocence,
t'at was but so delicate and sweet-
like t'ose bare, ye' green-clustered bushes yonder,
is now in exile, yes, deep exile, my love!
I congratulate thee on which, yes, I do!
I honestly do! For thy joy and gladness
doth mean everything to me,
'ven t'ough it means th' rudest,
th' eeriest of life; t'at I shalt'th ever seen!
But should I do so? T'at is a question
I canst stop questioning myself not.
Should I? Should I let thee go
and t'us myself suffer here
from th' absence
of my own true love-
and any ot'er future miracles
in my life?
I think not!
Ah, and not t'at there'd be
any ot'er mirages in my love,
for all hath been, and shalt always be-
united in thee! O, in thee, only, Kozarev!
For I am certain I love thee,
and so hysterically love thee only,
even amongst th' floods-ah, yes,
t'ese ambiguous piles of flooding pains,
disgusting as blood, but demure,
and clear as my own heartbeat;
I love and want thee only,
as how I dreameth of,
and careth for thee every night,
t'ough just in my dream,
and in life yet not!
Ah, Kozarev, I am thy star,
just like thou art mine-already,
I am fated and bound to thee,
and thou to me.
Thou art not an illusion,
neither a picture of my imagination.
Thou art real, Kozarev,
thou art real-and forever
shalt be real to me;
thou art th' blood,
t'at floweth through my veins,
thou art th' man,
t'at conquereth my heart-and hands,
thou art everything,
thou art more t'an my poem
and my delicate sonnet,
thou art more t'an my life
or my ever dearest friend.

Probably 'tis all neither a poem,
nor a matter of daydreams;
perhaps still I needst to find him,
t'ough it may bringst me anot'er curse,
and throwest me away
and into anot'er gloom.
Ah, Kozarev, thou-who shalt never
be reading t'is poem, much less write one
Unlike thou wert to me back t'en;
Thou art still as comely as th' sun;
Thou art still th' man t'at I want.
Even whenst all my age is done;
and my future days shalt be gone.
Joseph S C Pope Jun 2013
There is nothing new under the sun, but it was night and the indifferent blinks of gaseous lives above looked down while my friends and I were at a new fast food joint that moved next to a now lonely Wendy's, with a faded sign tarnished by something the new fast food joint had yet to experience—mundanity by time. But I had my notebook with me while we ate outside, but it was in the car. My mind is always in that book, and I remembered something I had written for a novel in progress: 'Nothing is new under the sun. How is it possible to watch stars die? There is nothing new to their dust. We are the flies of the universes.'
It was just when I had finished my BBQ pork sandwich when Ariana suggested visiting a graveyard. I had the idea to visit a Satanist graveyard that our friend, Lanessa warned us against for the better safety of our sane souls—good luck with that. I wanted a revival of fear. How the beast would rip at the roof off our metal can of a car—the greater our barbarism, the greater our admiration and imagination—the less admiration and imagination, the greater our barbarism. But Ariana disagrees with words I never say, Nick laughs with my simple words to that previous thought. How funny it would be to burn eternal.
But then he suggested we should go to the Trussel in Conway. I had no idea or quote to think about to contribute to this idea. I wander, as I like to, into the possibility that his idea is a good one. Like some wanting hipster, I dress in an old t-shirt with of mantra long forgotten in the meaning of its cadence.
That is the march of men and women into the sea—honest, but forgetful and forgotten.
I was wearing a shirt sleeve on my head I bought from a mall-chain hippie store, and exercise shorts, finished off with skele-toes shoes. I was ready for everything and nothing at the same time. And that fits, I suppose. But all that does matter—and doesn't, but it is hard as hell to read the mind of a reader—it's like having a lover, but s/he doesn't know what s/he wants from you—selfish *******.
But there I was,  on the road, laughing in the back seat, sitting next to a girl who was tired, but also out of place. I could see she wanted to close arms of another, the voice of another, the truth that sits next to her while watching tv every time she comes over to hang with him, but never accepts that truth. She is a liar, but only to herself. How can she live with that? The world may never know.
The simple rides into things you've never done before give some of the greatest insight you could imagine, but only on the simple things that come full circle later. That is a mantra you can't print on a t-shirt, but if it ever is, I'm copyrighting it. And if it's not possible, I'll make it possible!
When we got to the Trussel, the scenic path lit by ornamented lamps seemed tame once I stepped onto the old railroad tracks. They were rusted and bruised by the once crushing value of trains rolling across it's once sturdy structure. Now they were old, charred by the night, and more than just some abandoned railroad bridge—the Trussel was a camouflage symbol birthed by the moment I looked into a Garfish's eye as it nibbled on my cork while I was on a fishing trip with my granddad when I was eleven. I remember that moment so well as the pale, olive green eye looked at me with a sort of seething iron imprint—I needed that fear, it branded instead of whispering that knowledge into my ears.
That moment epitomizes my fear of heights over water—what lies beneath to rip, restrain, devour, impale, and or distract me.
But epitomize is a horrible word. It reeks of undeveloped understanding. Yet  I want a nimble connection with something as great as being remembered—a breathe of air and the ideas  thought by my younger self, but I will never see or remember what I thought about when I was that young—only the summary of my acts and words. And by that nothing has changed—am I too afraid to say what I need to say? Too afraid to hear what everyone else hears? Or is it the truth—depravity of depravities that has no idea of its potential, so I am tired of the words that describe my shortcomings and unextended gasping hope. I am tired of living in the land of Gatsby Syndrome waiting for Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy!
But when we got to where the Trussel actually began I felt the fear hit like the day it was born—all hope was drained, and I was okay with abandoning all aspirations of having fun and being myself in the face of public criticism. I was flushed out by the weasel in my belly—the ******* beneath those still waters. I compare it to someone being able to handle Waterboarding, but can't handle being insulted—it's that kind of pathetic.
I stood just on the last understandably steady railroad ties that I knew were safe and watched my friends sit off the edge of the bridge, taking in the cold wonder of the night, and I was told at least I was smarter than my dead cousin who managed to get on top of his high school in the middle of the night, but had to be cohearsed down for fifteen minutes by a future marine, and future mourner who still grieves with a smile on his face.
The future mourner, he laughs at the times he insulted, or made fun of, or chilled with his now dead friend. It's never the bad times he cries about, there are none—just the good times, because they don't make them like they used to.
I watched them in that moment, and I don't know if I can deal with knowing my life is real. I began to blame my morality on this fear even though I already justified the fear just seconds before. But as I write this, I look over my notes and see something I wrote a few days ago: 'Life is ******* with  us right now. You laugh and I laugh, but we're still getting ******. The demon's in our face.'
As morbid as that comes off, it resonates some truth—what is killing us is going to **** us no matter what we do—and I don't want to be epitomized by the acts and words I didn't say.
I was never in the moment as a kid—I was raised by by old people and kept back by my younger siblings. The experienced tried to teach me wisdom, and the inexperienced kept my imagination locked in time. I don't want to go home as much now because I see that the inexperienced are becoming wiser everyday and the experienced are dying before my eyes. My idea of things is enduring leprosy.
But back to the simple moments.
Ariana saw a playground as she stood up and investigated the Trussel. It was next to the river, behind the church, fenced off by the fellowship of the church to keep the young ones in and the troublesome out. Of course, we didn't realize there was a gate and it was locked until Nick stated the probable obvious within ten feet of the nostalgic playground. And that's when Ariana pointed out the bugs swarming the parking lot outdoor lamp that blazed the fleshiness of our presences into dense shadows and more than likely caught the eye of a suspicious driver in a truck passing by. But I was still on the bridge—back in the past, never the moment. Me and my friends are still children inside these ***** forms. I muttered to myself: “Life ain't about baby steps.”
Nick looked over and asked what I said. I turned around, dramatic, like I always like to and repeated louder this time, “Life ain't about baby steps.”
He asked if I needed to do this alone, and I said he could come along. I walked rhythmically across the railroad ties, and heard Ariana comment that getting to the railroad up the small, steep hill was like being in the Marines. I laughed sarcastically. Nick and I had been to Parris Island before, and I know they test your possible fears, but they beat the living **** out of them.
I casually walk into the room where my fear lives and tell it to get the **** out.
When I reached the precipice of the last railroad tie I stood on before, I felt the old remind me that death awaited me, but there was no epic soundtrack or incredible action scene where I stab a manifestation of my fear in heart—a bit fun it might have been, but not the truth. I bear-crawled over the crossings of the ties and the structure of the bridge itself. I felt Relowatiphsy—an open-minded apathy self-made philosophical term—take over me. It is much simpler than it sounds.
There was no cold wonder as I imagined. There was just a bleak mirror of water below, a stiff curtain of trees that shadowed it, and the curiosity of what lies in the dark continuing distance past the Trussel.
Nick sat with me and we talked about women and fear, or at least I did, and I hoped he felt what I did—there was a force there that is nabbed by everyone, but cherished by few—courage. And I thank him for it, but I know I did it. Now I want to go and jump in that still water below—Ariana later says she's happy I got over my fear, but I'll probably have a harder time during the day when I can see what I'm facing, but I see it differently. During the day, the demons are stone and far away—like looking down the barrels of a double-barreled shotgun uncocked and unloaded, but at night is when the chamber is full and ready to go, and you have no idea who is holding the gun with their finger on the trigger and your destination in mind.
Then we threw rocks into the water in contest to see who could throw past the moonlight into the shadowy distance . I aimed for the water marker, and got the closest with limited footing, using just my arm strength. But it wasn't long before we had to leave, making fun of people who do cooler things than us, on the way to the car. I had to ride in the back seat again because I forgot to call shotgun. But on the way home, the idea popped in our heads what we should get my hooka and go to Broadway, and get the materials so we could smoke on the beach.
Nick's girlfriend and her friend joined us.
I missed a few puns against my co-worker as I was sent to get free water from the candy store where I work. I ended up doing a chore because I was taller than most of the people there. Appropriate enough, it was filling the water bottles up in the refrigerator.
All the while I loathed the fact that I would have to be clocked in tomorrow by two in the afternoon. I grabbed the water and got out of there as fast as possible without appearing to be in a hurry.
Impression of caring matters more than the actuality where I work—and yes, that makes me a miserable ****.
Perhaps it's not too late to admit I am recovering pyromaniac from my childhood and the flavoring we use for the taffy is extremely flammable. It would be a shame to drench the store in what people love to smell everyday when they walk in, and light the gas stove. Then, maybe I could walk away real cool-like as this pimple in this tourist acne town pops like the Hindenburg. The impression of splendor is like a phoenix—it grows old, dies, resurrects into the same, but apparently different form, spreads it's wings, and eats and ***** on everything simple, or presumably so.
I forget the name of the beach, but it was the best time I've had in a while. I was whimsy, and high on the vastness of the stretch of beach around us. They could bury us here. But me in particular. I rolled from the middle of the beach to the water, stood in the waves and shouted my phrase I coined when I realize something as wonderful as conquering a fear or realizing a dream;
--******' off!
And I stared at the horizon. My friends came up behind me and I looked back to see it was Nick and his girlfriend hugging. I gave a soft smile, put my hands in my pocket, and turned back to stare at the clouded horizon. What beasts must lie out there—more ferocious than the simple fresh water beings that wait beneath the earlier placid waters. I was a fool to think that was the worst. Nick said as I pondered all that, that I looked like Gatsby, and I tried to give him a smile that you may only see once in a lifetime, but I'm sure it failed.
I wanted to tell him that, “You cannot make me happy. It is usually the people who have no intention of making me happy that makes me smile the quickest.” But I don't. Let me be Gatsby, or Fitzgerald, if to no one else, but myself.

Hell is the deterioration of all that matters, and as the five of us sat around the hooka, and inhaled the thick blueberry flavored smoke that hinted at the taste of the Blueberry flavoring I use to make Blueberry taffy, there was a satirical realization that the coal used to activate the tobacco and flavor in the bowl is sparking like a firework, and reminds us all of where we're going.
It's a love affair between that hopelessness and hope of some destination we've only read about, but never seen.
By this point Nick and I are covered in sand, because he joined me in fun of rolling down the beach. We want so bad to be Daoists—nonchalant to the oblivion as we sit in. Just on the rifts of the tide, he and I scooped handfuls of wet sand, and I lost my fear of making sense and let Relowatiphsy take over again.
“Look at the sand in your hands. It can be molded to the shapes your hands make. We scoop it out of the surf and it falls through our fingers. There are things we're afraid of out there, and we sit just out reach of them, but within the grasp of their impressions. The sand falls through our fingers, and it plops into the tide, sending back up drops of water to hit our hands—the molders of our lives.” I said all that in hope against the hopelessness of being forgotten.
Then he said, “What if this is life? Not just the metaphor, but the act of holding sand in our hands.
I relish in his idea of wiping away my fear of an unimportant life. And by this point, it's safe to assume I live to relish ideas.

The last bit of sand from the last handful of sand was washed from my hand and I looked back at the clouded horizon, pitch black with frightful clouds and said:
“Nick, if I don't become a writer. If I live a life where I just convince myself everything's fine, and that dream will come true after I finish all the practical prep I 'must' do. I will **** myself.
I looked at him, Relowatiphsy in my heart, and he said:
“As a friend, I'd be sad, but I'd understand. But that means you have to literally fight for your life now—regardlessly.”
And he left me with those words. Just the same as my granddad left me a serious heed before he wanted to talk about something more cheerful, when I asked about his glory days fishing the Great *** Dee River. He said: “I wish I'd been here before the white man polluted the river. It would've been something to fish this water then”, then he paused to catch his breath, “Guess there are some things that stay, and others than go.” Then joy returned, as it always does.

But the idea of what was happening to me didn't hit me until we were a few miles away from the beach, covered in sand, but the potential of the night after conquering my fear of heights over water had been shed in the ocean.
Around midnight, when the headache from the cheap hooka smoke wore off and the mystic veil of the clouds over the horizon has been closed in by the condensation on the windows of some Waffle House in Myrtle Beach. There was a wave of seriousness that broke over my imagination. Works calls for me tomorrow by two.
There's not much vacationing when you live in a vacation town.
And midnight—the witching hour—spooks away the posers too afraid to commit to rage against the fear.
But there are others—college students that walk in and complain about the temperature of the eating establishment, and the lack of ashtrays—how they must be thinking of dining and dashing—running from a box, but forever locked in it.

They make annoying music as I write this. That is how they deal.
This one was the unedited version (if I make that sound naughty or euphemistic).
Nikki I Sep 2010
Jealously's a you-know-what
I hate her with a passionate rage
My heart barely harbors this feeling
But every emotion has a stage

Jealousy should go away now
No one loves her, she's uncool
She just makes me look bad  
I let her use me like a tool

Jealousy is the ugliest of all
She lurks in my mind until I break
Her clammy hands suffocate my heart
I end up giving what she wants to take

Jealousy lives everywhere
She's a million places at a time
Toss her in the fire, my dear
Just wait, and out she'll climb

Jealousy is the only one I truly hate
She's ruined perfectly good days
Get lost, you stupid imposter!
You're always misleading our ways!

Jealousy reeks of insecurity
Hungry and scared like a forgotten pet
But Jealousy doesn't play nicely
She just builds and builds regret

Jealousy is always hiding
You never know where she might be
Keep an eye on your heart and mind
She's always looking for another lost key.
2010
Joseph S C Pope Jun 2013
There is nothing new under the sun, but it was night and the indifferent blinks of gaseous lives above looked down while my friends and I were at a new fast food joint that moved next to a now lonely Wendy's, with a faded sign tarnished by something the new fast food joint had yet to experience—mundanity by time. But I had my notebook with me while we ate outside, but it was in the car. My mind is always in that book, and I remembered something I had written for a novel in progress: 'Nothing is new under the sun. How is it possible to watch stars die? There is nothing new to their dust. We are the flies of the universes.'
It was just when I had finished my BBQ pork sandwich when Ariana suggested visiting a graveyard. I had the idea to visit a Satanist graveyard that our friend, Lanessa warned us against for the better safety of our sane souls—good luck with that. I wanted a revival of fear. How the beast would rip at the roof off our metal can of a car—the greater our barbarism, the greater our admiration and imagination—the less admiration and imagination, the greater our barbarism. But Ariana disagrees with words I never say, Nick laughs with my simple words to that previous thought. How funny it would be to burn eternal.
But then he suggested we should go to the Trussel in Conway. I had no idea or quote to think about to contribute to this idea. I wander, as I like to, into the possibility that his idea is a good one. Like some wanting hipster, I dress in an old t-shirt with of mantra long forgotten in the meaning of its cadence.
That is the march of men and women into the sea—honest, but forgetful and forgotten.
I was wearing a shirt sleeve on my head I bought from a mall-chain hippie store, and exercise shorts, finished off with skele-toes shoes. I was ready for everything and nothing at the same time. And that fits, I suppose. But all that does matter—and doesn't, but it is hard as hell to read the mind of a reader—it's like having a lover, but s/he doesn't know what s/he wants from you—selfish *******.
But there I was,  on the road, laughing in the back seat, sitting next to a girl who was tired, but also out of place. I could see she wanted to close arms of another, the voice of another, the truth that sits next to her while watching tv every time she comes over to hang with him, but never accepts that truth. She is a liar, but only to herself. How can she live with that? The world may never know.
The simple rides into things you've never done before give some of the greatest insight you could imagine, but only on the simple things that come full circle later. That is a mantra you can't print on a t-shirt, but if it ever is, I'm copyrighting it. And if it's not possible, I'll make it possible!
When we got to the Trussel, the scenic path lit by ornamented lamps seemed tame once I stepped onto the old railroad tracks. They were rusted and bruised by the once crushing value of trains rolling across it's once sturdy structure. Now they were old, charred by the night, and more than just some abandoned railroad bridge—the Trussel was a camouflage symbol birthed by the moment I looked into a Garfish's eye as it nibbled on my cork while I was on a fishing trip with my granddad when I was eleven. I remember that moment so well as the pale, olive green eye looked at me with a sort of seething iron imprint—I needed that fear, it branded instead of whispering that knowledge into my ears.
That moment epitomizes my fear of heights over water—what lies beneath to rip, restrain, devour, impale, and or distract me.
But epitomize is a horrible word. It reeks of undeveloped understanding. Yet  I want a nimble connection with something as great as being remembered—a breathe of air and the ideas  thought by my younger self, but I will never see or remember what I thought about when I was that young—only the summary of my acts and words. And by that nothing has changed—am I too afraid to say what I need to say? Too afraid to hear what everyone else hears? Or is it the truth—depravity of depravities that has no idea of its potential, so I am tired of the words that describe my shortcomings and unextended gasping hope. I am tired of living in the land of Gatsby Syndrome waiting for Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy!
But when we got to where the Trussel actually began I felt the fear hit like the day it was born—all hope was drained, and I was okay with abandoning all aspirations of having fun and being myself in the face of public criticism. I was flushed out by the weasel in my belly—the ******* beneath those still waters. I compare it to someone being able to handle Waterboarding, but can't handle being insulted—it's that kind of pathetic.
I stood just on the last understandably steady railroad ties that I knew were safe and watched my friends sit off the edge of the bridge, taking in the cold wonder of the night, and I was told at least I was smarter than my dead cousin who managed to get on top of his high school in the middle of the night, but had to be cohearsed down for fifteen minutes by a future marine, and future mourner who still grieves with a smile on his face.
The future mourner, he laughs at the times he insulted, or made fun of, or chilled with his now dead friend. It's never the bad times he cries about, there are none—just the good times, because they don't make them like they used to.
I watched them in that moment, and I don't know if I can deal with knowing my life is real. I began to blame my morality on this fear even though I already justified the fear just seconds before. But as I write this, I look over my notes and see something I wrote a few days ago: 'Life is ******* with  us right now. You laugh and I laugh, but we're still getting ******. The demon's in our face.'
As morbid as that comes off, it resonates some truth—what is killing us is going to **** us no matter what we do—and I don't want to be epitomized by the acts and words I didn't say.
I was never in the moment as a kid—I was raised by by old people and kept back by my younger siblings. The experienced tried to teach me wisdom, and the inexperienced kept my imagination locked in time. I don't want to go home as much now because I see that the inexperienced are becoming wiser everyday and the experienced are dying before my eyes. My idea of things is enduring leprosy.
But back to the simple moments.
Ariana saw a playground as she stood up and investigated the Trussel. It was next to the river, behind the church, fenced off by the fellowship of the church to keep the young ones in and the troublesome out. Of course, we didn't realize there was a gate and it was locked until Nick stated the probable obvious within ten feet of the nostalgic playground. And that's when Ariana pointed out the bugs swarming the parking lot outdoor lamp that blazed the fleshiness of our presences into dense shadows and more than likely caught the eye of a suspicious driver in a truck passing by. But I was still on the bridge—back in the past, never the moment. Me and my friends are still children inside these ***** forms. I muttered to myself: “Life ain't about baby steps.”
Nick looked over and asked what I said. I turned around, dramatic, like I always like to and repeated louder this time, “Life ain't about baby steps.”
He asked if I needed to do this alone, and I said he could come along. I walked rhythmically across the railroad ties, and heard Ariana comment that getting to the railroad up the small, steep hill was like being in the Marines. I laughed sarcastically. Nick and I had been to Parris Island before, and I know they test your possible fears, but they beat the living **** out of them.
I casually walk into the room where my fear lives and tell it to get the **** out.
When I reached the precipice of the last railroad tie I stood on before, I felt the old remind me that death awaited me, but there was no epic soundtrack or incredible action scene where I stab a manifestation of my fear in heart—a bit fun it might have been, but not the truth. I bear-crawled over the crossings of the ties and the structure of the bridge itself. I felt Relowatiphsy—an open-minded apathy self-made philosophical term—take over me. It is much simpler than it sounds.
There was no cold wonder as I imagined. There was just a bleak mirror of water below, a stiff curtain of trees that shadowed it, and the curiosity of what lies in the dark continuing distance past the Trussel.
Nick sat with me and we talked about women and fear, or at least I did, and I hoped he felt what I did—there was a force there that is nabbed by everyone, but cherished by few—courage. And I thank him for it, but I know I did it. Now I want to go and jump in that still water below—Ariana later says she's happy I got over my fear, but I'll probably have a harder time during the day when I can see what I'm facing, but I see it differently. During the day, the demons are stone and far away—like looking down the barrels of a double-barreled shotgun uncocked and unloaded, but at night is when the chamber is full and ready to go, and you have no idea who is holding the gun with their finger on the trigger and your destination in mind.
Then we threw rocks into the water in contest to see who could throw past the moonlight into the shadowy distance . I aimed for the water marker, and got the closest with limited footing, using just my arm strength. But it wasn't long before we had to leave, making fun of people who do cooler things than us, on the way to the car. I had to ride in the back seat again because I forgot to call shotgun. But on the way home, the idea popped in our heads what we should get my hooka and go to Broadway, and get the materials so we could smoke on the beach.
Nick's girlfriend and her friend joined us.
I missed a few puns against my co-worker as I was sent to get free water from the candy store where I work. I ended up doing a chore because I was taller than most of the people there. Appropriate enough, it was filling the water bottles up in the refrigerator.
All the while I loathed the fact that I would have to be clocked in tomorrow by two in the afternoon. I grabbed the water and got out of there as fast as possible without appearing to be in a hurry.
Impression of caring matters more than the actuality where I work—and yes, that makes me a miserable ****.
Perhaps it's not too late to admit I am recovering pyromaniac from my childhood and the flavoring we use for the taffy is extremely flammable. It would be a shame to drench the store in what people love to smell everyday when they walk in, and light the gas stove. Then, maybe I could walk away real cool-like as this pimple in this tourist acne town pops like the Hindenburg. The impression of splendor is like a phoenix—it grows old, dies, resurrects into the same, but apparently different form, spreads it's wings, and eats and ***** on everything simple, or presumably so.
I forget the name of the beach, but it was the best time I've had in a while. I was whimsy, and high on the vastness of the stretch of beach around us. They could bury us here. But me in particular. I rolled from the middle of the beach to the water, stood in the waves and shouted my phrase I coined when I realize something as wonderful as conquering a fear or realizing a dream;
--******' off!
And I stared at the horizon. My friends came up behind me and I looked back to see it was Nick and his girlfriend hugging. I gave a soft smile, put my hands in my pocket, and turned back to stare at the clouded horizon. What beasts must lie out there—more ferocious than the simple fresh water beings that wait beneath the earlier placid waters. I was a fool to think that was the worst. Nick said as I pondered all that, that I looked like Gatsby, and I tried to give him a smile that you may only see once in a lifetime, but I'm sure it failed.
I wanted to tell him that, “You cannot make me happy. It is usually the people who have no intention of making me happy that makes me smile the quickest.” But I don't. Let me be Gatsby, or Fitzgerald, if to no one else, but myself.

Hell is the deterioration of all that matters, and as the five of us sat around the hooka, and inhaled the thick blueberry flavored smoke that hinted at the taste of the Blueberry flavoring I use to make Blueberry taffy, there was a satirical realization that the coal used to activate the tobacco and flavor in the bowl is sparking like a firework, and reminds us all of where we're going.
It's a love affair between that hopelessness and hope of some destination we've only read about, but never seen.
By this point Nick and I are covered in sand, because he joined me in fun of rolling down the beach. We want so bad to be Daoists—nonchalant to the oblivion as we sit in. Just on the rifts of the tide, he and I scooped handfuls of wet sand, and I lost my fear of making sense and let Relowatiphsy take over again.
“Look at the sand in your hands. It can be molded to the shapes your hands make. We scoop it out of the surf and it falls through our fingers. There are things we're afraid of out there, and we sit just out reach of them, but within the grasp of their impressions. The sand falls through our fingers, and it plops into the tide, sending back up drops of water to hit our hands—the molders of our lives.” I said all that in hope against the hopelessness of being forgotten.
Then he said, “What if this is life? Not just the metaphor, but the act of holding sand in our hands.
I relish in his idea of wiping away my fear of an unimportant life. And by this point, it's safe to assume I live to relish ideas.

The last bit of sand from the last handful of sand was washed from my hand and I looked back at the clouded horizon, pitch black with frightful clouds and said:
“Nick, if I don't become a writer. If I live a life where I just convince myself everything's fine, and that dream will come true after I finish all the practical prep I 'must' do. I will **** myself.
I looked at him, Relowatiphsy in my heart, and he said:
“As a friend, I'd be sad, but I'd understand. But that means you have to literally fight for your life now—regardlessly.”
And he left me with those words. Just the same as my granddad left me a serious heed before he wanted to talk about something more cheerful, when I asked about his glory days fishing the Great *** Dee River. He said: “I wish I'd been here before the white man polluted the river. It would've been something to fish this water then”, then he paused to catch his breath, “Guess there are some things that stay, and others than go.” Then joy returned, as it always does.

But the idea of what was happening to me didn't hit me until we were a few miles away from the beach, covered in sand, but the potential of the night after conquering my fear of heights over water had been shed in the ocean.
Around midnight, when the headache from the cheap hooka smoke wore off and the mystic veil of the clouds over the horizon has been closed in by the condensation on the windows of some Waffle House in Myrtle Beach. There was a wave of seriousness that broke over my imagination. Works calls for me tomorrow by two.
There's not much vacationing when you live in a vacation town.
And midnight—the witching hour—spooks away the posers too afraid to commit to rage against the fear.
But there are others—college students that walk in and complain about the temperature of the eating establishment, and the lack of ashtrays—how they must be thinking of dining and dashing—running from a box, but forever locked in it.

They make annoying music as I write this. That is how they deal with the inevitable death of the night. They bruise the air I breathe with love and faith and trust with no meaning—without even meaning it. But what do they know what I didn’t feel when I sat on that bridge or cowered on the fringes of the ocean? Their hands aren’t ***** like mine—their confidence does not seem fractured by these words that will never reach them, or their kids, or grandkids.
As day begins to move, I know I work at two and will be home by midnight again. The witching hour—where some stay and others go.
Life's a Beach Jul 2014
I know the smell of everyone I've ever loved
wanted
hated
lusted
snorted like a dying drug addicts last meal

My first smelt of deities
a mens deodorant for a boy
who didn't know what he
wanted, but he knew what
he should.
He was sharp, uncertain, his
natural scent masked by an
advert.

My second smelt of fields
the earth was his roll-on
and though he'd mask it in
the oils of men, I knew he
smell of a hearth, hormones
and her heart on his sleeve.
His scent was primal and I
bathed in it's rawness.

My third smells of fire
whatever he's burning,
midnight oil, stress,
nicotine, I can sense it
soaked into his skin with
sweat. Encased in fire,
I suffocate on air nowadays.
He reeks of home, lust, longing

and hope.
Martin Bailes Mar 2017
It's over, its done ...

American Christianity stumbles forward
toward a cruel topsy-turvy world where
help is weakness, compassion is cruelty
& divisive isolation is preferable to
welcome & concern.

American Christianity is a corpse that reeks,

a veritable Walking Dead of pink-tied
Conservatism that picks its leaders
based on a sort of simple country-boy
belief that a fat white man in a suit who
holds aloft his momma's old bible while
same the same time preaching division,
exclusiveness, hate & bigotry is somehow
the best Christian choice & God loves that
man so,

they do this,

they continue to do this,

this rural fundamental upside-down way
of seeing the worst man as the best man
just because he spouts for some phrases
& gets all blessed & such by richly dressed
ministers of the lord who anoint him as the
Chosen One, which is so far off the mark
as to leave one wondering who? who?
who are these representatives of God's
word on earth,

these shiny shoe lackeys, these fork-tongued
well-heeled sybarites closer to Lucifer's
world of consumption & the almighty dollar,

American Christianity should just call it
a day, just give over for awhile, take a
breather & read a book or two, for the
harm they cause to fall on the rest of
us through their ignorant vision is just
way, way too much for them to be able
to claim any affinity with Jesus
the humble Son of God.
woolgather Jun 2016
I'm drowning, I'm drowning,
In a sea of regrets and torture.
I'm drowning, I'm drowning,
The anchor's too heavy.
I'm drowning, I'm drowning,
Hold my hand and lift me up.
I'm drowning, I'm drowning,
Just save me from my seas.
Dispirited am I,
To be myself and embrace the world.
Cut the threads of reality from my veins,
I am not worthy of this.
I am empathetic yet heartless.
I am mad and saddened.
Feel my walls slowly crumble,
Feel the cold blood gush from my veins,
I am dead to myself.
I am dead to myself.
I am dead to myself.
Nothing contains the darkness anymore;
It reeks everywhere I am.
This madman's too crazy to say those four letters.
Hop, rabbit, for the clock ticks faster than ever before.
Endless worries will flood your head.
Loop in a spiral of insanity,
Play the broken tunes you hid for too long.
Toyed are you too much
That tears never fall from your eyes no more,
Yet you still feel the pain.
Turn back to reality,
See the crumbling of You.
I'm drowning, I'm drowning.
See my body float in your despair.
I'm drowning, I'm drowning,
See my frozen heart shatter.
I'm drowning, I'm drowning,
Drain the murky waters.
I'm drowning, I'm drowning,
See me in moss and algae.
I'm drowning, I'm drowning,
Hell never felt so cold.
I'm drowning, I'm drowning,
Evergreen is the anchor that pins me to havoc.
I'm drowning, I'm drowning,
Let the ocean floor eat me alive.
I'm drowning, I'm drowning,
*Plague all with the decay of my soul.
hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help  hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help  hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help  hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help  hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help  hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help  hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help  hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help  hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help  hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help hell help  hell help hell help hell help hell help
Golden Girl Jun 2019
I remember that day like it was yesterday.
What happened, you claim, was barely horseplay.
Will you ever comprehend,
That what you did, I didn’t “misunderstand”?

Perhaps you’d like to blame it on your upbringing,
Because your dad taught you to control a woman who doesn’t have the “right” thinking.
Mexican patriarchy is ******, but it is you who chose to comply with it.
So don’t claim you aren’t responsible for the sins you commit.

Today I speak,
For I refuse to be weak.
Today I’ll unfold the truth I never wanted to accept,
When I was just a little under 15 and felt completely wrecked.

I stand today to expose you **** as I’ve been,
A monster in full shape and form, guilty of ****** while you grin.
You’ve kept your eyes shut to my dreadful sensations,
But today you will listen to my crude allegations.

We were in your house in Mexico where you locked me in the basement.
You claimed you wanted privacy, but only offered me enslavement.
Maybe it really was my bad luck,
When I believed you when said you loved me, but didn’t realize you only wanted to ****.

A monster, you pinned me against the wall,
I hit my head and cried, beginning to feel like your personal doll.
Touching my head where I discovered that I bled,
I reached for your hand, but you only grabbed mine to throw me onto bed.

When I was five, mother told me monsters don’t exist,
But today I am a witness to the contrary, as I know angels and devils coexist.
You are a monster for what you did to me,
For you pretended not to hear my plea.

A monster, you tied me onto your bed,
And ripped my clothes until I was left with nothing but a thread.
I begged you to stop and pushed you away,
But you slapped me and pressing your body against mine, told me you were here to stay.

A monster, your tongue against my breast,
And I completely undressed,
I watched your face transform,
Like a caterpillar taking its new form.

You, a monster, a demon, and a coward,
Faced a broken soul who had not yet flowered.
You took your hands and forced my flower to bloom,
Though it did not unfold with pleasure, but with fear of ending in a tomb.

And like a painter facing an empty canvas,
You traced me from head to toe as I lay nearly dead on the mattress.
You carved your name onto my body and robbed me of my innocence.
A monster, you obliterated my purity, leaving bruises as evidence.

A monster, you watered my flowers with the filthiest juice,
Not with God’s purest waters, but your own waters of abuse.
I weeped and screamed and in that moment begged for a God to exist,
I even prayed, but found no angels to untie my wrists.

If you really loved me, then you would look past your lust,
But you never did and chose to break me with each and every ******.
Rocking back and forth I was controlled by you, a monstrous puppeteer,
Your *** danced down my legs as I watched you cold and with fear.

A monster, you carefully tamed me to satisfy your *** drive,
Never did I imagine I would go to Hell and come back alive.
Today I stand a witness of your repulsive proclivity,
Penetrated by a monster who awaited for the trophee he believed was my virginity.

It wasn’t just a simple “quickie”,
The way you threw me around and used me.
I may have stood still and allowed you to profanate me,  
But I always threw up once you finished touching me.

People say our dreams are reflections of our memories fused with fantasies,
But there is no magic in the nightmares I regard as tragedies.
I’ve spent four years feeling entitled to nothing but pain,
And stay awake fearing my memories will haunt me, crashing into me like a train.

I wash my body once, twice, and thrice to flush away the picture of your fingers,
Scrubbing and scrubbing to ensure I numb my skin from your smell that lingers.
Your colossal hands a million times larger than the girl they groped,
Remind her of the million times she was choked.

I only wish you could understand what it feels like to be someone’s puppet,
A doll you can pull, stretch, bend over backwards and play like a trumpet.
It’s difficult to accept I’ll always feel possessed,
That the monster who injected me with his poison jerks off to the thought of being caressed.

You are the reason I’ve sought the sharpest blade,
To slash my skin and mark your cannonade.
But I can’t slice you out of my body,
As slicing my skin with glass won’t provide me with an antibody.

A monster, you conquered my body with a single purpose,
You kept me in the darkness to guarantee your coitus.
I’m sorry my ******* wasn’t as **** as your *******,
I blowed as fast as I could to prevent a flatline on my Electrocardiography.

I’m sorry I had to fake an ******,
But I had to escape you once you threw me into a chasm.
Navigating in the maze where I was constantly abused,
Was difficult having no compass to pretend I was being seduced.

I spent years looking for an exit out of your maze,
Taking too long to realize this wasn’t only a phase.
Some blame me for being too oblivious,
For wearing a blindfold and perceiving you as chivalrous.

And perhaps you blame me for being too naive,
Because I wished for you to change on New Year’s Eve.
I sought a fairytale, forgetting Cinderella did not meet her prince,
But a wolf who impaled her with his claws and abandoned her since.

I was your slave for two long years,
And you, a monster, showed me each and every one of my fears.
But I have lived in spite of my trauma,
And today I stand to scold you for this drama.

I no longer fear the monster inside my head,
For I understand many others will dwell ahead.
But my monster will no longer haunt me in my sleep,
For now I sleep knowing I have my body to keep.

I am strong, proud and bold,
And I have found my place in this world.
No longer will I let you win,
For it is you who reeks of sin.

Does it make me sick to empathize with your situation?
To feel for your pain and share your deeply held frustration?
Is it you who is wicked for being a pervert?
Or me for wanting you to hurt?

How can I wish you the greatest agony,
When I would never want anyone, not even my monster to experience my tragedy?
I am being torn in different directions,
But I’m no longer tied down to successful erections.

Monster, I thank you for your rotten kisses,
For the hundred bruises and tight stitches.
I now know my body is a shrine,
And that I am my own lifeline.

No longer will I feel soiled by your hands.
For I have built new dams.  
I now look at my own reflection,  
And see a figure composed of fascinating lines shielding me from your infection.

I am on my way to finding my peace,
But need to put my thoughts together to find my release.
It may be forgiveness, prevention or punishment,
But no longer will I undermine my own torment.

It may sound funny when I say I wish I was a superhero,
So I would know when a girl is in danger of touch and close to Ground Zero.
I’ve lived my years carrying the guilt of watching women fall one by one,
Of never being able to prevent another unwanted son.

I now understand there is only so much I can do,
For I am an ordinary person with a big heart turned blue.
I only wish my words will inspire, the victims of this fire,
To embrace their burns and wear them as an iron attire.

My growth and strength came as a result of patience,
It took years and tears to show me a way out of complacence.
But in an effort to give you a lift,
I have found myself adrift.

I have tried to be a saviour,
Forgetting to save myself before and bring myself to shore.
Today is the day I become my own light,
And fight to stay bright in the night.

Monster, you may now live in paradise,
Walking around as the devil in disguise.
But I believe in divine retribution,
And live in peace knowing you will get your fatal conclusion.

You are a monster, and I was your prey,
But today, I am no longer in decay.
With these words I purge myself of your touch,
For I’ve released my demons back into Hell and no longer seek a crutch.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2017
no number of opinions will alleviate this apathy, promised, paradoxically: a pandora's box of pathology, which is why attempting dialectics is a farce, a cheap magic trick for a talk-show host in being "understanding", to attempt in mediating, and then scoffing it off, like some under baked crumpet / scone, and yes, it makes sense, pivoting on the possession of a conscience... it's not that some people appear to now possess it, but that they are comical in possessing, and comedy is always nuanced, an ambiguity surrounds their conscience... the binary opposite of comedy? the birth of the tragedy, a succumbing to madness, a suicide... every person possesses a conscience, as the universal law of unit, but comedy hides a person with a grieving conscience, making the person so callus as to make them donkeys, laughing stocks, spaghetti entangled liars... it's only a conscience triggered into a tragedy that reeks with redemptive qualities ascribed to a person, cf. the already mentioned carl sergeant and 'arvey 'ard on weinstein... in the spirit of the film split: rejoice! for those who have suffered are redeemed! rejoice! said the beast. the comedy is near impossible to avoid in post-script idiocy beaming the letters FAIL; the tragedy of conscience, at least we know some evil doers in death are redeemed with the only puritanical act to redeem conscience: the bride of honour.*

can an intelligent person make a slapstick
joke?
  or is it that,
   a dumb person cannot make an original
joke?

besides the point,
  a question is a question -
  and as most questions go -
it's not whether there's a correct
or wrong answer,
rather, whether there actually is
an answer to accomplish
that stated question.

i've noticed a resurgence of dialectical
inquiry, but i have decided to
avoid perfecting the art,
   other than in person,
on a park bench, rather than on
a page in pixel white...

  oh sure, i have a life beyond this
outlet,
and i rarely write a platonic dialogue
to reinforce my experiences,
i once enforced a question
upon a child in a supermarket:
do you think animals are unable
to see 3-dimensional objects
     in / on a 2-dimensional canvas?
he didn't answer, because his guardian
thought i was weird in my
presumption...
which was, however you imagine it:
casual, cordial, orientated
within the adequate use of time and space
for the question to be asked.

personally i find myself if a binary
realm of,
   which isn't exactly a left right divide -
as a "schizophrenic" i am marching
down the middle, and asking myself:
   there's only the middle to mind,
and the mind is the only thing worth
juggling, sure, but juggling
a thesis hemisphere and an antithesis
hemisphere becomes lost in
the schizophrenic-quadratic -
      right down the middle.

which is why i find modern attempts
at dialectics so odd...
i prescribed myself dialectical escapism,
simply because there are too
many opinions i'm simply not interested in.

people seem to have stored these opinions
for so long, they are choking at not
having talked about them...
  it's apparent in comedy...
among comics...
                    they simply say:
if we can't bypass the comedy and sit down
with a cold beer, we can't actually
take the opinion seriously,
  if we can't, at first, make a joke of it...
that's hard...
              that's near impossible to stage...
you can realise the complexity of
enabling a seriousness with a comic precursor
antics to "soften" the blow of
approach...
that is why i await the awaited for
dialectical artist, who must be much
older than i, frankly the age of socrates,
i can only fathom dialectical escapism,
    in that i can fathom an opinion,
but i can't fathom being endearing to it,
keeping it, nurturing it,
       maturing it,
                     making the animate
water into inanimate ice...
                       which leaves steam
   a categorical conundrum of categorisation...

in terms of the human mind,
i can only find comparison with Alcatraz...
i am forever attempting escape,
i know i will be aided by the snitch,
judas, death...
     but i have to be lodged into
a vocab that may aid me,
  or hinder me.

                   the human experience is
an Alcatraz because of the a priori principle -
what came before me: set the rules,
the winding corridors where
i'm not the Minotaur,
but the scared victim,
   or just the dumb-enough brick of
the labyrinth's wall.
or? the a posteriori principle -
           i impose my own graffiti on
the walls, and be the Minotaur of the long
wait of life, with death:
my morphine angel.
                              
         but i see no desire to engage in
dialectical endeavours,
            hence my choice in attempting
a purification of poetry,
against technique of schooling,
  in making poetry less and less
musically orientated, and returned to
its primordial genesis: of narrative.

  hence my dialectical escapism,
i really have not stable opinion,
or opinion i'd like to adhere to, to subsequently
hug a pillar of a Parthenon.
                
- believe me when i say that the english
language has no inclination of
orthography, since it uses no diacritical
distinctions...
  and yes... russian diacritics is ugly as
your waning babushka of "secrets"...
  - the beauty of existentialism?
            avoidance of the thesaurus,
mismatching words, ambiguity -
the phraseology of: for lack of a better word...
     fiddly parts, you know,
            **** it, you can't exactly
interrupt a waterfall, so why bother
   attempting to boil some water in a saucepan?

  the world once believed in the enterprise
of dialectics, but since the emergence
of a third party mediator,
       what sort of "dialogue's" worth of
the dialectical endeavour is there left?
once upon a time, in ancient,
the mediator of a dialogue was a park
bench, after that a stage for actors...
who asked these third party ponces,
  more to the point: who invited these
plebs into our private debate so they can
mere awe and sigh their saturday nights off?!
who the **** let these plebs in?!

       i'm a pleb, i can call them plebs,
do i ******* look like i work at 10 downing st.?!
plebs only understand pleb talk,
  rude, incoherent, mildly orientated
in journalism, and ever wishing for some
marquis de sade hard-ons.

i encourage dialectical escapism, frankly,
because,
          i 've found that i have a bare
minimum, laurel leaf worth of covering my
genitals aspiration to keep opinions...
    opinions have become spare change,
you loose them almost all the time,
they're the pennies from heaven,
some other lucky ****** might find them,
and then the resourcefulness of that poor
****** is imminent: spend it,
what's there to debate?

                    the only truth of opinion is
that one man keeps them,
and by keeping them, idealises them,
thus becoming an idealist,
  or that another man discards them
as easily as a ***** peacock,
and by doing the ***** peacock strut,
discarding them,
          becomes a chameleon,
a "non-conformist" (**** me that's
stretching the idealist antonym);
  
   if there's a truth: it's a bunch of lies -
and if there's a lie: it's the only truth -
because the rule of pluralism (borrowed from
heidegger states):

          one truth = many lies
           one lie = only one truth

(there is no pluralism of a truth,
       but there is a pluralism of a lie -
the genesis of a lie is?
             a continuum beginning
with the original temptation -
truth is "plural" but it is not
a continuum of precipitation,
but even if it is dismembered
it is a whole, already apparent,
           or rather: to be made apparent,
it does not require a preceding step
to provide a pro-ceding step...
   lies are obstructive,
truth never obstructs; truth rapes,
while lies groom)...

   unum verum = falsum multis
   falsum unum = solum verum unum selem.
Victoria Essex Nov 2012
Life’s moments and happenings are like little thieves
They don’t want any money
They still take it
Putting salt on cracked lips, stealing the warmth of a heart
Sobs resonate in lonely halls
Everything reeks
Of lifeless dust
Even darkness can’t fight them off
Or push away the pain

The cold, swift figures taste like hatred
Longtime friend with the soul of a sister
Offers a consoling embrace
It bleeds good feelings
Now they want our money
Thieves aren’t fair, nor logical
No rhyme
No reason
Life’s a poorly written song
Bad music *****
The bold melody clashes
With its vague accompaniment
We didn’t want them so we welcomed them

‘There must be some way out of here’
Said the joker to the thief
I don’t think there is any way out

The precious tokens of life should be protected
By an army of mindlessly trained children
Who fall in love with the thieves
Whose forgiving minds omit the fear

Thieves call us easy
We are forever sobbing
Cries heard only by past selves and invisible belongings
When we prove we are great
And pass impassable tests
Everything will return

We aren’t capable of such feats
Our memories sing us haunting songs
We cry out with our salty lips
And empty hearts
Robbed of any motivation
Robbed of any care
Robbed of love
Criminal
O Criminal
This deceit you leak reeks
Of sour lemons and urination.

Criminal
O Criminal
This pride you flood smells
Of blueberries and broken dreams

Criminal
O Criminal
These miracles you bring leave a miasma
Of grape Faygo and suffering souls

Criminal
O Criminal
The peace I bring leaves an aroma
Of blue raspberry popsicles and lonely depression
This is a poem I wrote from Terezi's view in homestuck. Even if you're not a homestuck fan, I hope you still enjoy!
jude rigor Feb 2022
sappho greets her as she
would a reflection:
hand against hand, staring into
her eyes. silence dancing
around them as a long-lost love-
r.

enheduanna sighs at the contact
and the quiet shifts as
her fingers close:
as there is no need for language
when her
inanna will grant them
a holy diadem.

-----

eternity reeks
of nights out on the lawn
daisies growing with the weeds
pillowing beneath the two
dwindling women -
hands clasped tightly,
their eyes closed.
...lapis blooming
within the petals
of the undergrowth...

gods slumber amongst
worthy poets occluding,
heart-soothing each
other without words
or sonnets
or divination.

sappho dared to
look out from
heavy-lidded
lethargy,
for she was
yearning:
at dawn

...her honeyvoiced,
    mythweaving
    enheduanna:
    a sweet-shelter
    of temptation
    and goddesses
    who wage
    tender war and
    drink from pools
    of sun...

at dawn
the ancient
divine
poet
gazes
again

and sappho
forgets she
too is nearly
as old

for her lover wears
an invisible golden-
crowned circlet
of springtime
and illuminated
lands.

but she can hardly think
anymore, when
the songsmith of
glory and prayer
is kissing her.

laying in the basin
of heaven and skies
she pours restless
eternity down
her throat.


----

lapis melts
to pink clovers
of fowlerite

no mortals notice

two bodies blending
between poems
rustling tunics
maidens casting
away their  
fruitful

sobriety.

----

poet
dreams
a woman
of verse.

hardly expecting
shallow-breathed
kisses of burning
solstice and
unrequited
love.
for this piece,  i wrote about sappho and enheduanna. both ancient poets, both incredible women who achieved a lot with their poems and lyrics. i allude to some phrases/words from sappho's fragments, as well as verses from enheduanna's poems.

i also referenced quite a few letters from open me carefully, a collection of emily dickinson's letters (what remains of them) to susan huntington, her close friend and eventual sister-in-law. the references are honestly vague and you might only catch them if you've read at least the first chapter of the collection.

also the title is a fragment from sappho, featured in "if not, winter"

here's some info on all of that for some much-needed context.

sappho: (l. c. 620-570 BCE) was a lyric poet whose work was so popular in ancient that she was honored in statuary and centuries after her. little remains of her work, and these fragments suggest she was gay. her name inspired the terms 'sapphic' and 'lesbian', both referencing female same-*** relationships.  

[some phrases/words from this piece were taken/inspired by "if not, winter" - a collection of fragments of sappho's lyrics and poems].

bio source: wordhistory . org

enheduanna: (pronounced en-hoo-d-ah-na)  was an akkadian-sumerian princess, poet, and priestess who lived around 2285 BCE. not only was she the first author on record - she was also daughter to king sargon of the akkadian empire, a powerful woman figure, and the backbone to a synthesization of two newly unified cultures.

she is acknowledged to have penned the first known example of poetry, and wrote 42 hymns that were read across the akkadian empire. additionally, she was the first named poet to refer to herself with the "i" perspective. through her writings, she combined the akkadian counterpart (ishtar) of the sumerian inanna into a single goddess that brought akkadians and sumerians alike together. though this first served as a culturally-conscious and politically driven move, it morphed beautifully into enheduanna's lifelong relationship with inanna.

enheduanna's success and works as the high priestess at the temple ur helped bridge a gap between self-discovery and religion. many of her hymns and poems - especially "the exaltation of inanna" gave a human connection to gods; something far more powerful in the long run, compared to the old ways of gods growing the land, mixing the sea.

[i ripped all this out of a research paper i wrote a few years ago. enheduanna is my niche special interest and i find her life and story so utterly fascinating].

open me carefully: emily dickinson's intimate letters to susan huntington dickinson

susan huntington gilbert and emily elizabeth dickinson were born within days of each other in December 1830. they may have known each other from girlhood; they certainly knew each other from adolescence; and they had begun to correspond by the age of twenty. their relationship spanned nearly four decades, and for three of those decades, the women were next-door neighbors. together, susan and emily lived through the vicissitudes of a life closely shared: susan's courtship, engagement, and eventual marriage to emily's brother, austin; susan and austin's setting up home next door to the dickinson homestead; the births of susan and austin's three children, and the tragic death of their youngest son, gib.

in open me carefully, we see that emily was not the fragile, childlike, virginal "bride who would never be" writing precious messages about flowers, birds, and cemeteries from the safety and seclusion of her bedroom perch in amherst, massachusetts. dickinson was devoted to her craft, and she was dedicated to integrating poetry into every aspect of her day-to-day life. she was engaged in philosophical and spiritual issues as well as all the complexities of family life and human relationships. she knew love, rejection, forgiveness, jealousy, despair, and electric passion, and she lived for years knowing the intense joy and frustration of having a beloved simultaneously nearby, yet not fully within reach.

Emily Dickinson Archive

NY Times Archive
Come in and enjoy the Night-Light Hotel
Where Pillows and Perfumes meet and relax
And Therapy takes either Bond or Belle
And Goldfish blow this Friday's Bubbly Sax
Here upon registry your Token awaits
The Flannel up-hook which you strip and wear
Then wait for your turn as your Number rebates
A little whilst knowing your Musk reeks there
I for one made this Malicious Decide
And tempt my ****** to swallow this Treat:
Upper-Lower Left; Upper-Lower Right
Then descend into Base - Heh! Heh! Heh! Heh!
Stud or Salome, let Conscience give choose
But trust me to say I am a Man too.
Terry O'Leary Jun 2015
Someday I'd like to wander free
like butterfly, like bumblebee,
perhaps to plant a willow tree
beside the silent solemn sea,

before these things exist no more,
from mountain top to shifting shore,
when, soon, bald eagles cease to soar
and build their aeries nevermore,

and fish forsake polluted streams
(where sulfur swims and typhoid teems
since no one really cares it seems)
to die inside our toxic dreams
while ice caps melt and winter steams,

and all the air surrounding reeks
as children choke, for no one speaks
of fracking wells or oily leaks
(Big Brother's silenced all critiques!),

and rancid rains acidify
so woods no longer multiply
(for God so wills, we can't deny,
which is, of course, our alibi).

And as the deepest ocean fills
with plastic bags, and garbage spills
upon the plains, across the hills
and turns to poison dust that kills
wild dingo dogs and daffodils
which sink in swamps’ forsaken swills,

the mocking bird makes light and trills
(midst waning wails of whippoorwills)
"Behold the surreal scene that chills
and greet the dread that death distills!
You've had your day with all the frills
that brought the flood and final ills
that can't be cured with bitter pills
nor yet undone with further thrills
of profit gained that grinds and fills
dead desert sands with dollar bills."

              EPILOGUE

Though swaddled still in infancy,
we feel we’ve reached our primacy
(aloof, though preaching piously,
disdaining deeds of decency)
and have no need of augury.

But in the pit of prophecy
the crucial questions seem to be:

“Is doom Earth’s fate, our destiny
to twist in tides of agony
destroying nature’s progeny
with no return a certainty
assured by death’s finality?”

and

        ”Should we plant a willow tree
to someday weep for you and me?”
city of flips May 2018
please be impatient with me for I am Female, Age 19   Please be impatient with me.  Three quarters woman in a body, a quartered quartet.  The crying viola, off tempo, present but unavailable.  The boys want me. The men, more, more.  The women most of all.  The American Girl dolls on the shelf dusty, witnesses to all my demander’s impatience to take, to own, possess & desire my poses all to pleasure them, wanting  many morsos (small bites).  
Then, when discarded, my body reeks of
con-f u s i o n.  A perfect conjugation,  an imperfect conjunction;  Conning my mind into letting my body be-fused.  

The dolls weep real tears in the city of my mind;  flipping out, they too, are impatient with me, and flip me off for they have no good words to express their utter chagrin.
Josiah W Menzies Mar 2013
You grip my throat sporadically, erratically – not often.
And trickle in through passages and pores I can’t defend.
Treacle through fingers.
But you avoid me too, and I hate it just as much.

I wait for your hand to loosen,
I breathe cool air,
Then I feel your absence.

Your gloopy venom is addictive.
I tasted you once, and now my tongue yearns,
And eats itself –
It flickers and twists and spits its serpentine-self out. In vain.
A vague, dull shadowy lustre remains,
Undulating under baited breath,
For another foul injection.

In reality I fear you. I despise you. I hate you.
If you’d only never return,
I could spit you out forever,
And tongue sweeter, healthier, more benign stuff.
No more swilling,
No more idiosyncratic sways upon social norms,
High Society and empty smiles that stifle natural intentions.

You are a disease, and far from untreated.
You are the last drag, the last hit,
The very last dose that no one actually wants.

I rebuke myself wholeheartedly
At even entertaining the idea of having you in my company. Yet there you are –

In every message, in every ransacked draw,
In every turned out rucksack, every old coat pocket,
Every ***** shirt, every unstitched button,
In every visitor’s news, every car back-seat,
Every dusty notebook, every empty fruit-bowl,
Every old, long-unseen smile, every dowsed fire,
Every man woman and child I sit across the table from.

There you are. Somehow. In some form.
Turning my sweat cold like cheap wine,
In what is otherwise an already disturbingly depressing
Struggle to maintain some kind of equilibrium or serenity,
Let alone with your smug mug cropping up scornfully uninvited.

You ****** me before I recognise you.
Helping yourself to the food on my plate with a wink,
While I do nothing as if handcuffed, and chained at the soul.
Then I move to eat.
Hand to fork.
Fork to mouth.
And it tastes of you.
It reeks of you.
And if I were anything but human,
I’d spit you out onto the kitchen floor,
Stamp on the bile you’ve stolen from me,
Burn you with kerosene,
And wage a third world war on the very concept of you ever existing.

But I am a human.
And moments later you have me
‘******* and thinking of death’
As coy and Marvellian as you like.

I indulge in full-knowing paralysis,
Lapping up your unvanquished honeyed venom,
With a voraciousness that redefines Lovesick –
Giving it a whole new meaning
Going beyond the epitome of disgust.

Enslaved, you have me smash myself against the ceiling.
And eat myself over again from within.
Consuming me like the fire I found you in.

You have me rage and conspire against those I don’t know.
But I will conspire against you one-day.
You have me hate others, but I will forever hate you.
You have me search my soul and grate it upon street corners
And the pavement of city-centres,
While you gleefully, whimsically **** my past
Or polish vain, rose-tinted hopes that without you
I’d know were futile and unjust –
Until I ruin them myself, knowing all the while
That you are the author of my unnecessary devastations.

But I will smash your green demonic skull into obsolescence
In some back-alley where none will find your
Bubbling frothing corpse.
You will be utterly repudiated even by the rats.
And the flies will drop you,
Iota
By
Iota,
Onto the tracks at Dalston to be rendered into absolute oblivion.
And I will go, a man unshackled, about my business –
Whether it be of importance or not,
It will be with a conscience cleansed.

But for now, vile sham of an emotion that you are,
I do your inglorious bidding.
Zombified and putrid, my actions smell of you.
They reek of you.

You intoxicate what should be left alone
And endured with silence and rapidity.
Yet you elongate these private, personal trails torturously,
In some sensational Cold War.

It goes without saying,
The world would be well rid of you.
Yet godlike, you endure the ages
Just as we endure you.

Perhaps Keats was too afraid to admit it –
You are the original
La Belle Dame Sans Merci.
Pluto’s daughter in persistent disguise.
To be seen presently
‘******* and thinking of death’.
ryn Mar 2015
.
     Seems much smaller than I had imagined.
     It only stretches as far as my eyes could
     see.
     It reeks of the past, with no hints of the
     future.
     The present is here, the present is me.

My world tonight...
     Sees me nestled,
     watching silent but with mind
     dishevelled...
     Unnoticed on this kerb...
     Unnamed and unlabelled.

My world tonight...
     Is filled with familiar strangers,
     ushering their lives along.
     I know their faces but not their names.
     I'd call this home but I don't belong.

My world tonight...
     Is spinning regardless...
     It stays on track.
     Never waits for me.
     Never looks back.

My world tonight...
     Has no intention to soothe my thoughts.
     It is baring its bite...
     It's leaving me far behind...
     But I'll catch up at the break of light.



                                        *As I always do...
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her ******* are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks,
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know,
That music hath a far more pleasing sound.
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
    And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
    As any she belied with false compare.
Kelly Bitangcol Aug 2018
“Pepsi employee killed in Hawkins car crash.”
“Maine Vice Mayor Deaver killed in car accident in Castle Rock.”
“Woman ‘dead’ after car crash found alive in morgue.”

The news reports on radio echoed through her whole car as she indulged her third bottle of Russian Standard. Weird, she thought; she has been hearing news about road collisions all day. She was sure that the alcohol wasn’t intoxicating her mind to hear different things, she knew she was still sober. Everybody knew she always had low alcohol tolerance, even herself knew that; now she couldn’t even taste the bitterness of the liquor, she feels it inside of her. Drinking was the thing her mother told her to never do, perhaps because it turns her father into a monster with a closed fist as a weapon.

She looked at her rear-view mirror and realised she was travelling alone on an empty road. People had told her before to never travel alone in Derry Road or else something might happen. She wasn’t travelling; she was running away. It fits her, she thought, she and the road were the same; they were both empty.

She heard an unfamiliar noise, like the sound of a steel colliding with another steel. She had realized that her car engine died while she was driving. “Seriously?” she said to herself, “Is everything I own dead now? Like me?”

She stepped outside of her car and walked to find any gasoline stations or houses that could help her. There is no luck for any signs of functioning establishments on an empty road like this, she thought. However, a place filled with buried muscle cars, abandoned pickup trucks, and old bulldozers caught her attention. It’s an empty road. How is there supposed to be a car junkyard? She thought to herself. What’s even stranger is, she didn’t see it while she was driving.

“Well this day couldn’t get any weirder,” she said. First she couldn’t get drunk after drinking three bottles, then she kept on hearing news about car crashes, and now she suddenly saw a car junkyard out of the blue? She opened her hood and a massive smoke appeared, causing her to inhale it. She was coughing while staring at the oils leaking. She didn’t know what to do. She had no choice but to look for people who could help her with her car. She didn’t know anything about it, she didn’t even know what the problem of her car was. She glanced at the sky and saw the sun was slowly setting as well as her hope in what’s happening. She thought to herself, maybe this creepy car junkyard could actually help her.

She walked towards the old car junkyard and the sight of it surprised her. Her eyes widened when she saw people hanging out, beer bottles everywhere, and some couples having the time of their lives.

“May I help you?” A long haired guy who was wearing a Led Zeppelin shirt appeared by her side. She was having second thoughts in answering him back, but she really needed help, especially if she reeks of alcohol on an empty road.

“Yes, actually I was driving and then my car suddenly stopped. I don’t know what’s wrong with it, but a smoke appeared and the oils were leaking. I figured you can help me.”

“You think we know everything about cars just because we’re hanging out in a car junkyard?” He asked while laughing. Her embarrassment was overflowing at that moment which caused her to look down, she was still hearing the guy’s chuckles.

“I just guessed. I think.” She said this while looking at the ground since she was too humiliated to look at him. Much to her surprise, his laughter was no longer heard. “Thank God.” She whispered to herself.

“We’ll see what we can do. At the moment, why won’t you just join us?” Join them? Like hang out with people who are in this creepy junk yard? She stood still while ruminating on what she should do. She was feeling a little scared that maybe these people are actually killers or ghosts but there wasn’t really anything to lose for her. This is the place she'd rather be than her house where her mistakes and failures are always included in their dinner conversations.

She walked towards people who were about her age. Girls with vibrant hair colours looked at her from head to toe, some of them smiled at her that caused her to smile too.

“Your car died?” asked a short haired girl holding a beer bottle.

“Yes. This day couldn’t get any worse. Life couldn’t get any worse, from losing everything you have to people you trusted betraying you. My life is as worthless as my rotten car.” she uttered. One problem she has always had was the inability to control her mouth. People tried to cut her tongue before, unbeknownst to them it’s a far more dangerous weapon than their sharp objects.

“If that ain’t the truth.” said the short haired girl while taking a sip of her beer. Seeing people drink their beer bottles triggered her, she was fighting the urge to go back to her car and finish the remaining bottles of her Russian Standard.

“You want one?” the short haired girl asked while giving her the beer bottle. She just shrugged and shook her head, she was never a fan of beers.

The people in the car junk yard continued to hang out and drink their beers. They talked to her and even told some stories, she was enjoying their company. Epiphany suddenly hit her when this one thought crossed her mind; people there talked to her and asked her questions, but they never asked for her name. She never knew even a single name. Abandoned cars, unusual but enthusiastic people, and a junkyard in the middle of an empty road. She was starting to think she visited the labyrinth of lost people with broken cars.

“I hope you guys don’t mind me asking but, who are you and what do you do here?” curiosity was evident in her voice. For the first time, she was starting to care about things.

“We live here.” A husky and deep voice replied, which sent shivers up and down her spine.

“You live here? Like you sleep inside the cars?” Her voice was filled with wonder and a little bit of fear. She has never heard of a lifestyle like this. What about their food? Their money? Their family? These questions surrounded the confused mind of hers.

“Yeah, you can say that.”

“I’m sorry if I ask too many questions but how did you guys meet? Like, were you all friends before or did you just meet here?”

“We all met because of one thing, our cars suddenly died. Actually, two things; our cars mysteriously stopped and we all had the desire to walk away from life.”

She immediately felt tiny little bumps over her skin. She thought this was actually a nonexistent place but she was right all along. She was feeling a combination of terror and nonchalance, like a person who is on the verge of death but has already accepted the fate that the heavens had stored for her. People already had their eyes closed while some are still staring at the constellations in the sky, wondering why their lives didn’t shine as bright in the dark as them. She’d rather sleep than look at the stars, for she knows her life would be much better with her eyes closed.

“Are you sure with your decision?” a soft but eager whisper awakened her from her thoughts. She saw the long haired guy staring at her, waiting for her answer.

“What decision?”

“Are you sure you want to walk away from everything already?”

She looked at the guy with annoyance mixed with sarcasm. “What? I’m just sleeping. When my car miraculously work again, I’ll leave immediately.”

“You’re enjoying here, aren’t you?” She didn’t try to utter some words, she knew inside of her that he already knows the answer.

“I was like that too, you know? I thought this was the place where I can finally be free. I finally walked away from my problems, I don’t have to deal with never ending problems and challenges anymore.” He paused, which caused her to look at him and wait for his reply. “But that’s only what I thought.” He said this with a broken voice that she was sure she would never forget.

“But isn’t this junkyard truly for us? For people who failed, for people whose lives don’t deserve to continue anymore. Maybe our cars stopped for a reason, maybe our engines were never meant to be fixed. Maybe we were never meant to be fixed.” She felt tears slowly streaming down her face. She remembered the sight of her lover with the person she trusted the most, she remembered the bathroom floor filled with her own blood, she remembered the bruises on her face after the night her father got drunk.

“At first it was. It felt good. Until I realised that walking away from everything isn’t the solution. It doesn’t make things right, it actually makes them worse. The fact that you didn’t even try to fight is the worst thing.” She felt it. She felt his pain. She didn’t even know who this person was but one thing is for sure, she felt everything this guy had been through.

“But I tried, you know? I tried everything and life still gives me the same, eternal problems that I will never find solutions to.”

She could see his hazelnut eyes travel around her. Her blue eyes that were filled with tears looked at the boy who told her more meaningful words than her own father ever could. “I was like that. I was dumb to think life will always be easy, that I can surround myself with happiness and positivity. But life isn’t like that. Your life will not always be like the rising sun because most of the time it’s a thunderstorm. But I was more dumb to think that the best decision was to run away. I heard all about this place ever since before. I drove all the way from my place to here, thinking I could escape it all. That’s not the right decision. There isn’t a day here when I don’t think of my mother crying while I was in the hospital bed, wondering what she did wrong. I gave up on life when the people in it didn’t give up on me. I was stupid for thinking that I could reach my destination immediately without having a journey. I was stupid to think that I can just drive for 1 kilometre and be at the place I want. It doesn’t work that way, life doesn’t work like that. There will always be a journey, a journey where your car’s engine will be dead in the middle of an empty road, but you will find a way to fix it and drive again.”

“So did you regret your decision?”

“Let’s just say I was too late.” She couldn’t find the right words, she didn’t know what to say. She lets him do all the talking for she knows he can never say these words again.

“Look, I don’t want to be the one who decides for you. Maybe you’re so fed up of everything, I get it. But I’m just asking you to think about it, before everything is too late. And piece of advice, if you decide to leave here, please, don’t ever look back.” Blue meets hazelnut, in that one occurrence, they knew their car engines aren’t the only ones they have in common.

She knew that if she walked away, she was never going to see him again. It seemed impossible that he would tell her his name, but she still took the risk and ask him for it. “Before I go, can I please know your name?”

“My name’s Kevin. Kevin Parks.” His face was filled with regret and sadness. Maybe saying his own name was a struggle for him, he knew he would never hear his loved ones say it again.

She nodded and smiled at him, it’s been too long since she put a smile on her face.

“I’m Rosa.” She said. He smiled, knowing she still has the chance to let the world know her name.

“Tell my mom I’m sorry.” And just like that, he disappeared. She was left alone with the chaotic mind of hers. This was everything she wanted, to finally walk away from everything.

She looked around all the abandoned cars and abandoned souls, this is the place she’s supposed to walk away from. The darkness, the surrendering, the giving up. The people disappeared and the smell of beer and cigarettes were no longer there. Silence was her only companion, and it was the most riveting thing she has ever stumbled upon.

She went inside the rotten car of hers and inserted her key in the ignition when her engine miraculously turned on. Hearing her father’s drunken shouts, covering her scars with bracelets, and seeing people who shattered her are the things she knew she will experience again; this reality lead to Rosa’s hesitance in leaving the car junk yard. However, she thought that maybe she could visit Kevin’s mother and talk about him when he was still not aware of this place. This place, this car junkyard filled with abandoned cars and souls unexpectedly shed a light to the road towards whatever destination she was meant for. For the first time in many years, the sun finally set in her direction again. The rear-view mirror was very tempting to look at, yet she gathered all her courage to put her foot on the gas.
Narrowed visions of the limitless heights of hope
Dreams deferred not dashed or shattered like glass
Head held high to the sky
Feet always grounded never caught off guard

Hopeless

Dark clouds Dark Thoughts
Altered by substances poisoning the community
These hands Those hearts hardened by this cold existence
His hands Her thighs Their minds killing the hopes of the future

Savage

The stench of failure and poverty reeks throughout the streets
Hunger pains and dope fiends screams vibrate the streets like a sick beat
Cries of the children young and old scatter the air with grief and unbearable pain
A young man dead A young woman ***** harsh realities simmer in this mixing bowl of misery

Numb

Hopes Dreams fears ignored by the outside looking in
The mindset of a hustler taught to struggle and fight the hard way
A better life shown in the gleam of a child eye
Reality worsens with the smell of death

Ghetto Dreams
Ghetto Dreams was  written on December 20, 2008, it paints a picture of inner city life, painted many times before, but nothing is ever done to improve the conditions. We are not ignored we are just selectively noticed mainly for the negative aspects of our society.
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2016
you know, on that N86 bus listening to dikanda's
https://goo.gl/OAUjMe (ketrin ketrin),
while going to the brothel, where i kissed *****'s
eyelid skin i turned my heart into a lung...
and it burst akin to muscled stress of the softer tissue,
by heart was the black horse of the race...
she would only be worth £110 an hour...
but in my heart... a lifetime... so classical fm is
asking for three songs to be enlisted in the hall of fame
here are my three:
1. something to think about (christopher young) -
   hellraiser ii,
2. no time for caution (hans zimmer) -
    interstellar,
3. spectres in the fog (hans zimmer) -
     the last samurai, competing with
(4. any other name (thomas newman) -
     american beauty,
and....
5. carpe diem (maurice jarre) -
     the dead poets' society);
i always found classical music invoked
by fast image exchange most adhering
to a modern public... after all...
the notes written down are transliterated
from moving geometries
asking for a human face...
that one abstraction leaving another created...
so enriched we can be living and leaving here,
but leave and live here cradled and crawling
and nothing more than an attempt for
a crafted shawl of woollen care...
assuredly we were the blank canvas,
when the sheep and lion were clothed...
the lizard inwardly having its blood cooled...
and we the mediators...
to evolve from an origin of such biological diversity?
why will darwinism claim to be a humanism
and let no humanism in?!
if darwinism branched from science for a populism
of understanding prepositions as propositions
(given that propositions are allowed expression
with far many more complex words than prepositions,
given the former are deemed a nature or origin
and the latter a nature of coordination)
why allow it a humanistic simplicity
and complicate humanism to a non-expression's
extent of a complexity? darwinism cannot grasp
humanism's complexity per se, for each its own per se
allowance... darwinism cannot relate to humanism,
since humanism deals with the one diluted into the many,
while darwinism deals with the many concentrated into
the one:
and noting the varied dimensional usage of pronouns,
the singular (engaging), the singular (disengaging),
the plural (effective), the plural (ineffective),
to use but a few among others... how would a self,
as either realistically concerned or as expressed
in an atlas pose when one individual speaks of a species
to ever survive... to speak of humanity per se,
is to not speak of being human per se (a self),
but as if under a constant threat from either internal
or external stimuli, it's to speak as if human
but hardly being human... darwinism only said
in simpler terms 1 = ~∞ 0 1 (one equals
approximately infinity denying one... expressed
further: one equals approximately infinity denying
oneness, hence ethnicity, hence disparity,
the infinite approximate is due to the no. of equally
represented identities of reflection as one's akin
in historical content for a vanity representation
of ego) / although there's a parallel disparity:
1 = ∞ 0 ~1 (1 equals a reasonable infinity
of the semblance collective, as approximated within
one's own constitution, denied by the constitution
of the semblance collectivised denying 1 its
oneness by a division, into pop. psychology
of subconscious, unconscious, ulterior and posterior
assembling of identification in order to relate
a concrete un-divisible one, to a oneness
of ~∞ 0 ∞†, whether governed by animate or inanimate
things, worthy of either representing
∞ = 0 ~1, or ~∞ = 0 1 (infinity equating itself to
a denial of an approximation of one,
or approximate infinity equating itself to a denial
of one) - by most standards a collective power
increases, while an individual coercion with
such increase in power is diluted to mediocre representation
of what was once hoped for to be an individual...
as worded: i'm about to inherit a pickaxe, an igloo,
a herd of sheep, a land arable for regular hunts
to provide sustenance, but as i said, the oddity
of increasing vocabulary as body-building index muscle,
will hardly teach you the physics of quanta in
the realm of modulating grammar,
on the basic basis of grammatical as
a method of de-categorisation one word from it being
named, to it being acted upon as a termed way of
walking (differently), or otherwise.

†a bit much for me, an alfred jarry moment
at the end of dr. faustroll's opinions and exploits...
papa **** got the dangling essence of things:
je suis jarry among the je suis cherub charlies,
if poet does not appreciate other artistic mediums
he can't mediate them,
poetry is supposed to mediate all artistic expression
with platonic criticism... it's supposed to mediate,
with poets appreciating each and every craft...
whether sculpture we scrap metal stolen from a park,
or whether an oil canvas be worth as much as toilet
paper when the painter is alive, and millions more
when he's dead.. we need gravity a demanding
drama to extend drama into grammar...
poets have to become the middle-men of haggling,
they need to appreciate art in an elitist way
in order that art can't become genealogically defining,
like dramatics of the theatre lost between idols
of 1950s screening compared to idols of 19'90s screening...
we need poets as the glue stuck to every output...
we need to appreciate all art other than their own
to discover their own... we can't have the mindless
jealousy bribe us to reconcile composition,
so that poet against poet is still writing poetry...
he isn't... he's writing a polemic... and that's hardly
a dialogue... it's a mortifying analogue of monologue...
and we don't want poetry to be such a belittling
circumstance of the original intent of practice,
why would a poet's rarity be reduced to
a market blasphemy of ultra-eloquent speech
in order that it might be used to scold?
why the jealousy? why?! it reeks of revenge
that only requires a Darwinism to include it,
as sustainable and necessary,
too many monkeys to create a single man...
too many difference in man from continental span
of africa, to asia... to even bother a standing ovation
origination in genetic scrip of a chimpanzee...
script wants man to be genetically above
a genetic script of a banana numbering more genes
that itself... the biodiversity of monkey
is akin to man... why would the two chiral statues
suddenly become gemini of explanation?
it all fits... but it stinks...
well, whatever that was... it's the pride of a language
that keeps darwinism alive...
but theology is closer to humanism than darwinism...
it's a compound logic, darwinism ends with with an ism,
an empiricism... and the only logic accounted for
is a logic of repeat... just look at the forms of these words...
formulated by L and Γ (origin of the kabbalistic interpretation
of allah)... keep the prefix akin to a suffix composed to
an enclosure... theology provides the better logistics
of expressing being human than an empiricism
known to be darwinism... after all a -logy tends to
repeat a systematic use of words...
empiricism a systematic use of facts...
easier to become bored of facts than words.
Mark Addison May 2016
After taking a gulp of water, M. opens a new Word document, inhaling deeply. He begins to write a sort of Introduction or Author’s Note:

‘This is to be my first real poem. No *******, cheesy rhyming or painfully forced verbiage. I am now only a seeker of truth…’

M., having just crushed two Focalin pressed pills, rolls a five-dollar bill and proceeds to insufflate, pausing momentarily when the line is halfway finished; he exhales before immediately finishing it off. His sinus burns fiercely. There is something masochistic about his preferred method of ingestion w/r/t pills. And but with a sudden albeit expected (in fact, M. was utterly beholden to it) rush of vitality, M. spends the next ten minutes finishing his half-page poetic manifesto [sic] (which term he actually wrote as a heading. “Poetic Manifesto”, that is), before beginning what he considers to be the first stanza. He likes that the location of the beginning of his poem is ambiguous. And so he begins thusly, consciously avoiding conventional rhyme scheme, instead opting for what he considers to be abstract.

‘My first poem, ostensibly an attempt at catharsis, was in fact a failed expression of my latent desire to be accepted. For today it’s a poem and last week a novel; tomorrow I’ll ferociously ******* some fashionably obscure, formidably pretentious prose [sic]. Consuming all but absorbing nothing…’

If he is to discover vicious truths [sic] in his writing, he cannot hold anything back. He thinks of a double-entendre using the word ‘blunt’, but decides not to employ it. Perhaps yesterday. Suddenly, M. begins to ruminate on his poem from the day before, which had earned him the opposite of acclaim from his peers. He must simply do the opposite of what he had done before! When he resumes writing, M. eventually begins to subconsciously fall back into the 12-syllable AABB rhyme scheme of his yesterday’s poem.

‘…Perhaps the following phase will stick for more than a wretched week.
Why have I wasted words on wan, vapid, wheezing lines
Of sickeningly phony, sophomoric, pseudo-sentimental ****?
Surely you see the salient theme,
That from which I hide,
Refusing to acknowledge life’s flaccid, tan **** as it floats in front of me,
Beckoning me forth,
A one-eyed, furiously fetid viper...’

M. chortles at his alliterative stanza’s ending. ‘This is how I write,’ he mutters to himself, maintaining a straight face. He writes without pause for nearly an hour. He is pleased.

‘…A generalist—that’s what I tell myself I am,
Because simply knowing a few facts,
Even for forty or fifty fields,
Is surely worthy of that
Respect which is given to those men and women
Who earn it by grinding away
At that which determine the sycophant vermin
Is worthy of lifting a lash…’

Hours pass. The poem approaches two thousand words in length. After taking a truncated cigarette break (the break, not the cigarette, was truncated), M. continues where he left off.*

‘…Believe you not for a second the frost-bitten-phallus,
That Freudian façade [sic],
The false faces I display to fake friends
Whose frequent fornication
Fills my mind with fossilized fleas,
******-spiritual formication [sic]
For which there’s no vaccine…

…Once I’ve come down from the mountainous apogee atop which I sit,
Calmly surveying the ever-receding landscape through the lens of fleeting euphoria
Which, fading faster always, gives way to—no, I will not say it—I refuse to legitimate her lies.
As I descend with increasing speed,
specters of judgment torment me into insanity…
    
B  r  e
a   t  h
     e  ;

...this feeling I simply cannot bear—
their sirens threaten to burst my eardrums.
Although it’s undoubtedly pathetic,
I can no longer lie to myself;
I desire the approval
of those specters
who haunt
m-
e
...’

M. begins to hyperventilate, panicking at his embarrassment at publishing such a bad poem the day before. He grasps his heart, which is beating out of his chest. The fear of cardiac arrest simply increases his anxiety. Laying down on the ****-carpeted floor, M. attempts to meditate, imagining this to be how it might feel to do TM on *******. Minutes then an hour pass.
Suddenly, a much-welcomed epiphany presents itself to M.; as if it fluttered through his window and hovered, eerily still in the way that only hummingbirds can be, just in front of his face. So obvious does it seem (the epiphany) that he begins to laugh maniacally in the pitch of a female voice either pre-pubescent or near-dead; a kind of


YEE!    

YEE!      

YEE!    

HEEEE!

HE!

HEE!                      

HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!


sound.
After minutes of uncontrollable mirth, M. holds his abdomen and makes the lugubrious [sic], delirious noises of tired suffering. After a few more YEE’s and HEEEE’s escape, he begins to regain control, trying not to focus on what he’d realized w/r/t futility as it relates to shame, but certainly ensuring that he won’t forget. M. sits in his chair with a old-man grunt, the sort of noise over which wives divorce their husbands.
He sips water.
M. opens a new document and begins to type:


For what do we write, we talentless wretches?
To publish some
gooey garbage
in hopes
that some fleet of demonic tween-age sociopaths
adopts our work as part of the canon of cuntiness?  

Not we, the veritable “un-poets”,
Our haphazardly-conceived writing stinks,
No, it reeks of fetid, smegmatic phalluses;
Of a ****** of maniacal madmen,
Blue-balled after an abysmal night/morning
Tossing crumpled ***** of money
At Patti’s plump-lipped, positively putrid-looking

&&&&               *****               &&&&

In an I-95 truck stop;
“Taste **** and *****
At Trucker Tom’s ***** Taphouse
                                        Where friends meet
                                            and literally throw money
                                              into syphilitic snatches.”

We write for the duty of identity,
We who might be found with a serious face on,
Writing rhyming, rhythmic,
quasi-**** lines of lead-heavy, snobbish lifeforce-larcen.
The sort of **** that keeps you from getting up in the morning.

But of course we are writers, as sure as the sea
Is blue, the day is long, who daresay that I am wrong?
And he who
doth [sic] dare,
I point to that long
******* I posted
ere the day began.
There lies his evidence though it belongs in the can.
Sometimes when you get drunk and write you're able to reach levels of truth and realness that are elusive to the sober mind. This was obviously not one of those times, but I think the result is sort of interesting. The poem sort of depended on a weird format which is not possible on HelloPoetry, but it was intended to have the same effect as the 'B  r   e
           a  t
           h  e   '
or whatever in the middle.
Graff1980 Jun 2017
The city sounds of ordered chaos, the constant wave of people crossing back and forth like a human tide. Strangers cut in and out of their tiny groups and barely miss colliding. Honks and bleats hasten the crowds pace as they race to cross the road. Some people stare at their phones, others watch the road but no one looks directly at another human being. Somewhere, near here and in-between there just off to the side a stranger sits mumbling, barely coherent.

“Watch me.”

The age lines run so deep into his skin that they might as well be built in. White stubble paints a drawn slightly sunburnt face. Deep dark blue eyes scan the city life for some unknown relief.
A red line catches his eyes, followed by a childlike voice singing playfully. “Watch me mommy.”

Tiny matchbox cars race around a shallow hole. The little cars cross dips and dirt ramps increasing the young boy’s excitement, as he mimics his favorite show. They crash into a partially exposed root. “Brrckkkeeech bccccch.”A fake explosion sounds. Dusk begins to fall as the cars settle into their makeshift cereal box garage. Smiling and dusty the boy crosses the small road, then the tiny parking lot, and comes home.

Long ***** white hair falls messily across the man’s worn face. All but a few awkwardly placed teeth are gone. Some are yellow while others are darker and rotting. His breath reeks. The emaciated figure feels the cramps of hunger pains. A brown speckled haze clouds his vision, followed by a slight coldness and dizziness creeping over his body.

“Watch me.”

Cardboard swords clash in a titanic battle of good versus evil.  Until the young victor jumps upon his sawhorse stead. A yowl of pain sounds as his tiny sac is smashed. The pain jolts upwards and inwards causing temporary paralysis. Thin legs scrape the wooden brace dragging chips of paint down with him as he falls off his fake saddle. The victor is defeated by pain. A few seconds later the internal pain passes and he is up and at it again, running straight for a large tree. At the last second he swerves barely avoiding a painful collision. In his mind a red cape swooshes behind him as he flies off to save metropolis.

The summer heat draws pit stains on the old man ***** orange tee. The neckline is stretched and has an almost circular pattern of moisture. Barely able to move, his sick stench draws the attention of flies. Bugs buzz by almost as frequently as strangers walking by.

“Watch me.”

Tears fall from the tiny child eyes, as he stumbles in pain. A deep **** runs red with lines of falling blood. His mother picks him up and carries him to the neighbor’s car. She whispers soft word of reassurance. The tears eventually stop.

The man clenches his chest. Pain permeates his being. His breath is lost. He stumbles falling harshly against the cold grey cement sidewalk. Tears fall. He reaches for strangers pleading weakly for their assistance. A foot smashes against his left side, causing more pain to flame up; while forcing him to edge of the sidewalk. The crowd keeps moving.
A stranger snarls “get out of the way you ***.”

“Watch me.” The old man whispers as he recalls his mother’s warmth. Soft kisses planted on his forehead. Sitting in the dark living room safely snuggled next to his mother as a scary storm rages violently against a small house.

“Watch me.” He cries. His voice, obscured by the city, fades and is forgotten.
Coleen Mzarriz Oct 2021
She has freckles like little eyes boring a hole into your soul when she looks at you. She has a face as clear as crystal that when you look at her, you can see your own reflection—mirrorless, empty, and reserved. When you press your lips against hers, a flood of poisonous schemes awaits you, and you'll be lost like Alice in Wonderland.

She's an important chess piece that cannot be easily moved; she's a queen, the ace, the king. A pawn may capture a queen, but she is also the king. Her throne reeks of gold and fortune, her mind flows with wisdom, and her body's attached like the goddess Aphrodite. She's the thunder in the rain. Her cries are a woe of revenge and power. Death can not capture a woman like her. She's Eve and she's Lilith. She's a spirit and she can be a snake—crawling with her reptile skin. Her eyes are as fierce shaped as the diamond's emerald and lastly, she's macabre surrealism that when you read her, her true self shows and pushes you to infinite possible dreams you can dream of. 

Avary is the bird of thunder. In her cage, she's a young soul duplicated to bring misfortune every time it rains in the spring of Casmorville.
Women, regain your power. :)
Casmor is actually a place. I just added the "ville" so it makes more sense. And oh, I wrote this while there was a big typhoon last July.
Not any character of the jungle,
At the time power was kept by the single
Lion kind, risked jumping into the lions’ jaws,
Against their rapacity raising paws:
The hares and hyenas they could strangle
And devour; in their minds best were their laws
Providing rights of the mighty
As common and full sovereignty.

The era was worsened by men-hunting,
Whose guns were used the wildlife menacing.
The weak of the forest saw that succumbed
The lions, who were the first shot at, welcomed
The hunters and their faces showed, smiling.
They were deceived when the first seen were harmed
Like the lions by the same haughty
Men set against their sovereignty.

Some lions who survived called the animals
For a meeting, and the men-criminals
Were the main topic of their discussion.
The lions warned, “Will wipe us away those men
If can’t stand together as animals,
Fight them and save lion, hypo, hare and wren…”
Mocked and heckled the assembly
That ne’er had enjoyed sovereignty.

Each one’s motion was that there was no need
Of obeying on the lions, who to feed
Their cubs with their flesh used to take pleasure.
They thought their forest had become seizure
Of the men for lack of unity; freed
It’d be with or ‘thout a lion as major:
They’d trust who would bring unity
And help them enjoy sovereignty.

There came a time and there came protectors
Of the animals to stop the hunters
From destroying on the environment.
They showed in killing there’s no contentment.
So the hunters ceased to be predators,
And the fauna had no more sentiment
Of hating the humanity
That brought them peace and sovereignty.

Some of them were kept in zoo
And the kingship of the lions they did boo.
Cows, rabbits, goats - were domesticated,
And more than ever they were protected.
Such treatment them gave of humans new view:
The protectors or authors of the deed
Looked like who’d brought brutality,
But in their hearts reigned sovereignty.

Later on the lions found that in the strong
Claws dwelt no good power, but can be for long
Which is applied to all comfort giving,
That a king marching in front of trembling
Souls, as if to hell angels would belong,
One day will see his strength brought to nothing,
But where freedom ain’t scarcity
Kings and subjects share sovereignty.

What the beasts failed to know was the keepers
Of the zoo were children of the poachers,
Who’d found unfair deed what their fathers did,
To take good care of them had decided
And did not want to be called game-seekers’
Generation. In the action could read
Great kindness and humanity
The beasts savoring sovereignty.

A former foe may become a good friend,
Who breaks off with the past and turns his hand
Into protector, support provider –
Like Human Rights Activists. No wonder
Where they are from, people’s torn hearts they mend.
A protector has ne’er been intruder
As long as for tranquility
He works and preserves sovereignty.

A sovereign nation is not like a house
With its closed doors, and inside, like a mouse,
A wife is beaten and loses her life
Without neighbours’ intervention as if
Not hearkening the victim, and the louse
Of man not stopping is to save the life.
Is a land where people’s safety
Is denied full of sovereignty?

If at The Hague someone is indicted,
It means not people he has protected,
Nor that he has well governed Liberia,
But ‘cause people’s hearts he has filled with fear
And a lot of trouble he’s invited.
After shedding blood there and here,
The lions who’ve made their claws *****
Should be there washed for sovereignty.

Wherever the lions rage it’s no matter:
Matters the will to keep the world better.
Some Devil’s advocates would call nations
Not in Syria to find indications
Of crimes as if is found a wife-beater
At Holy Land or brothels it opens.
In a place where reigns sanctity
Won’t dwell breakers of sovereignty.


A rot of conception of sovereignty
Reeks when gangrene holds sway o’er a country,
In which Democracy swings at cannons;
Debates are feared that aim ruling with brains;
Wear noose as necklace who would change carry,
And the song “Independence” is hangmen’s.
Where lions and lambs live with loyalty,
There is unshaken sovereignty.
This poem aims to think of what sovereignty is and especially of its true concept.
http://www.amazon.com/author/bonim007
Tammy M Darby Jul 2013
From the black recesses of the earth
She rose from her long slumber
Icy death smile on her crimson lips
Face gleaming with wicked knowledge


Slanted eyes of emerald green
Glazed and mad
Her crown jewels of the dead
Bleached human bones
Encircled her head

Fine glass complexion of shimmering gold
She spoke the words of The Sleeping Three
Hair falling in rich waves down to the floor of snakes
The color of the crows breast
A rich purple ebony

Snake scale gown of finely woven human skins
Gathered from her poor victims sin
Wrapped round her lithe body
A thousand souls it took to weave

Awakened from its dark sleep
Spells cast in  hell's deep
By a powerful witch
Who stirred the cauldron
Tainted with revenge

The demon was now visible to sight
The apparition appeared in smoke and orange red light
To bow down and submit to the witches bidding
The command never waived from intent
One of chaos and death
Slaughtered, cold in rows they lay

Pity for the one this creature seeks
Of a terrible perfume her heart reeks
That of blood and brimstone
Perfumed smoke and fire
The devil is her line and sire


So by demons touch
Plotting cold hands
She claims the souls of mortal man
More thread for her clothing
The beautiful demon


This poem is copyrighted and stored in author base. All material subject to Copyright Infringement laws
Section 512(c)(3) of the U.S. Copyright
Act, 17 U.S.C. S512(c)(3), Tammy M. Darby
C A Nov 2012
We blanket our fears with silly defense mechanisms to shelter any shame we carry
From every angle we stand we are judged at first sight
We pretend we aren't critics but we are hypocrites everyday
As we seek the forgiveness we can't give in return
We make promises and sugar coat little white lies
As we defensively reassure the world we are mistunderstoond and unique
The truth is our narcissim reeks like bad perfume suffocating everyone around us
As we stand tall for whatever it is we believe in
It's just denial
Because inside we are tormented with insecurities and charachter defects
Inside our stomachs are fluttering with anxiety and secrets too painful to remember
Inside we are incarcerated with a plethora of misguided ghosts screaming for an escape
Inside bombs are bursting out gunshots and out hearts have bullet wounds to prove it
Our viles of happiness are never satisfied
We are always seeking more
But we are never sure what we are looking for
Some sort of accomplishment or recognition
Maybe validation
A sign that we are still breathing with a euphoria seeping out our pores into the air
A sign of greatness
Maybe we want that picture perfect dream that we fantasize about until we reassure ourselves we are lunatics for wishing
We feel debased because our choices keep the odds against us
We are incapable of managing our own lives
And maybe nothing will restore our piece of mind
It's insanity--our thoughts
I think its called delusional
Because in reality nothing goes as expected
We had learned to cope with self medication
Because all the doctors were wrong
Something had to fill our voids in our hearts
Something had to stop the brain from processing emotions
We chased after something invisible
A force that spiriled our lives down into the ground
We ran away like little children afraid of the dark
Because we thought the pain would be like daggers through our hearts
Stabbing us over and over again until we died from sufferance
The pain was too frightening to look directly in the eye
If it were easy or if there was a simplier way of figuring it out we wouldn't have wasted so many years battling the addiction that wears a shield of armor
If it were easy the grass would be green and we'd never have to water it
If it were easy we wouldn't be so sensitive to triggers and flashbacks
It's not easy
It is World War 3 every single day
There is a chip on our shoulder and a devil on the other jumping up and down eager to break us
He is whispering temptations;
Seducing us with our vices, pushing us to collapse like an avolance until we overdose
He is waiting patiently and constantly because he knows us so well
We were weak for so long and he is hungry for our failures
He wants us to throw our hands up and call it quits
And the worst part is just when we think we've won it gets worse
And we are forced to stand in the mirror and detect every flaw of imperfection we wish to erase
And then it comes back all our defense mechanisms
The way we present ourselves to the big whole wide world
Biting our lip in sufference
Haunted by a past of turmoil and depression
It is hard to communicate to those who don't understand our demons
We are looked down upon and there is another stupid burden to carry
Because everything adds up and we get tired of all the negative
We get stomped on and spit on and drug through hell
But then something clicks
And we look around the room and we realize we are not alone
We are brave, strong and somehow still alive
And there is a person to your left an another to your right starring right through you
But all you can do is hand over the keys to your self destructive behavior and pray that help is on the way
Because we are addicts batteling the same devils in different levels of the game
Because we were dealt with a bad hand
But we played with what we had
And suddenly everything was ok when we walked into the doors to our recovery
and said
Hello, I am an addict
Jules Jul 2016
i turn the sound of the shattering into a punchline
and the laughter almost burns the room down.
and it feels almost like a promise.
(of what, i do not want to know.
i do not want to say.)

and the truth of it is
sometimes it truly is just a joke, a skin-deep wound, no one's loss;
other times
(most times)
the hurt scrapes against my bones,
and the promise echoes just as the laughter ends,
(sputters into a silence more deafening than the uproar)
as they leave the room,
as i am left alone.

i ride through the breakdown and become too lost to rebuild,

much less to rebuild alone.
punchline; promise; price of hilarity.
Stick a lolipop
into the mouth of moments
your life is a child
and somewhere in there
you give a flying ****
about the moon
and no it's not cheese.
That mouth knows what dirt tastes like
but that wont stop me from pouring caramel
and cigarettes over it.
I need a fix
of candied dirt
and addiction.
I'm not afraid of the eclipse
because I'm already hooked on the dark.
So lock the door
&
draw the curtains
&
be content.

The tide wont be knocking
no matter how much you
want it to fill the room
or how big is your sweet tooth
because
hunger
is BIGGER
and eventually
anything will do.
So thank the moon we were wearing seat belts.
Otherwise we might be vegetables
eating only exhaust
like Hiroshima
force fed the sun
because
you only make war on an empty stomach
or with an insatiable hunger.

Be content

for the civilians and their children
who only know the taste of war.
Idiot flavored idiots with a hint of
dead mothers
that will bore a cavity so big
it'll put holes in the head
of kindergardens everywhere.
Who write their valentines on bombs.
Who's love murders buildings,
topples families,
plowing through bodies on city streets all to reach
nobody.

Be content

for the people
who aren't
you because when parents ******* in a box
you call a country means
you don't care
you put genocide on the menu
and there are some things that just wont do.
As I grow weary of rivaling chefs pointing fingers
in circles forever
becoming a porthole to the ****** business
becoming the unsuspecting manhole for
the human animal's existence

in crossing.

Mothers may find safe shelter in the sewers
but it reeks of prepackaged liberty
express delivery
to
every where.

Be content.

Because to start a revolution means living it
and what better way,
to ******* a reckless pace
that finishes first in hunger,
starting fist fights with other people's lives
and forgets even sooner,
than
to
be
content.
Kelly O'Toole Jun 2018
Like a thorn in the side twists, turns, shifts, thugs at my pride, who am I and why?
Forget to be, forget to try. Sigh, deny and try, oh try, to find out who am I?

Struggle to reach. Struggle to come to grip with reality. You see all these expectations get laid on me, I cant seem to find my feet.

Even in finding my feet, defeat. Defeating my mind and steeped and bleeding, I'm blind and beat.
I'm beating the blinds, the street, it limits the finds and eats, it eats at my mind.

But rise to my feet, I will. Beat my way through, I do. The passing days, they may get all hazy. But I got a vision, I do.

Clear as unmuddied water, that vision peaks and from the merky pool hope leaks. Not made that of odour which reeks, rather perfume which speaks to those bold, brave, not weak.
Who on top of a mountain sits and seeks and stands on the ocean before they may sink and know their song well before they dare speak.

Hope keeps us hooked. Pain gives us drive. For that, I will swallow my pride. My dignity beat, battered and bruised. But my reputation in tact.
My strenght unmatched. Unmask myself I will. Through this treacherous journey, I shall grace salvation, to find my inner will.

And with journey abound to destination unknown leaving that hope, strenght and will for events which have thrown light into the tunnel. Illuminating the stone which sits on the temple of freedom and soul, spirit, freewill, autonomy, suddenly realisation that still ...
Still I am me.
A poem wrote in collaboration with my good friend about the journey to one finding their true identity.

— The End —