"rehash" poems
it seems my entire life is defined by drinks.
mother's milk out the womb.
(and maybe those suckles were sweet - it's not like i remember - but her words, for the rest of my life, certainly weren't.)
an hour-long debate, with my best friend at twelve years old - apple or orange juice?
(orange, obviously, is the right answer. we rehash the argument sometimes to this day.)
the day i turn 19, a beer in my hands.
(i'm sat around a campfire with my closest friends, birthdays all older than me - the beer tastes disgusting, as cheap alcohol is, but i'm glad to be there.)
yesterday, i had 1 coffee and 2 mugs of lemon honey tea, 4 glasses of water.
today, no tea, but 2 cups of coffee, a glass of milk, and 3 glasses of water.
i bite at my nails when i'm nervous, swallow down the spit that comes with it, the bile that rises.
last summer, i visited pei, had a raspberry cordial - my favourite drink to date - then bought a case of 4 more to take home with me.
last summer, when i lived in new brunswick, my friends in the same building knew me as the one who would always have a drink in hand - a milk tea, or maybe a pink lemonade, maybe that obscure korean soda i liked.
when i left new brunswick, i took a photo of my 2 trash cans, of the way they were both filled to the brim with empty bottles and cans and jugs.
i still miss the apple cider they made there.
my life is defined by drinks, sips, swallows, taking five minutes to breathe by making myself a nice whipped coffee, trawling the internet for pretty coasters and glassware for an hour in lieu of doing actual work.
Eventually, i close the shopping tabs, take a sip of coffee, and resume with the rest of my life.
Nov 5, 2023
Nov 5, 2023 at 7:38 PM UTC
You wish for me to put in words
What I have to say
Like the answers that I've given
On their own
Could never relay
They come and go
Touch on fate
Dissipate and replicate
The disingenuous nature
That you frequently necessitate
Extend your olive branch
Then act like you feed me
When the branches are famished
Needy, condescending and deceiving Conceiving that I'm the villain
When I don't respond to how you react
Like you could perpetuate in me
The supposition for your tact
The fact that you lack any original clarity
Is the reason I'd never reach to you
Like I was Seraphim
The simple reason
That I'm writing all of this
Is simply just to prove to you
That I don't have to convince
I don't have to persist
Rehash, then reminisce
Like treading through faded memories with you
Will satiate my daily fix
I resist
Because I know exactly where I'm headed And you insist because that truth
Is what keeps us separate
Every second
You playcate on a pretense
When your intentions are crystal clear
And I can't provide that service
Or serve that purpose
While I'm standing here
To be perfectly honest
I never promised you anything
All I did was sigh and reply
To how your heart would so readily sing
Then you project your insecurities
Directly to my face
As if I was the one who gave them rise
Within the first place
Protecting your manipulations
While contemplating your motives
Are exactly the reasons we're done
Before we even started
I'm sick of being a punching bag
For someone acting devoted
And now it's been denoted
I've written you off, this story is done
This time you're in the subject line
Because you are truly NOT the one
Apr 9, 2019
Apr 9, 2019 at 12:45 AM UTC
Lo, the drunken ordinance of light through
stained glass, lest to rehash the peopled
white of infinity.
Reach...with what folding passion second
guesses the labor of its love...the warm
footfalls of the sun overlaying the intricacy
of a snowflake...as captions of bone
dissolving upon the motion picture.
Perpetually opening seasons enamored
directionless...cancellation and activation
which is The Spark upon dark...striations
of dreams upon the gyres of galaxies.
Proofs positive of palpable breath, given
and taken in gloried passage.
The cloistered ghost gifted the laughability
of its cloister.
A polish fit for heresy...listen to the
crystalline structure as it bats its eyelashes.
Oct 11, 2014
Oct 11, 2014 at 10:27 AM UTC
Ordinary words in ordinary order
Slouch across the page unnoticed
Mundane metaphors and trite observations
Destroy catch phrases with every old saw
Memes are dragged behind overused hashtags
Until they morph into yesterday’s news
Dusty and bent and soiled on the edges
Same ole rehash of the same ole crap
Whitewashing the fence of involvement
The old wive’s tales are alternative facts
That dance to the tune of an illiterate piper
In a boring routine choreographed by
A sullen pre-teen who finds herself grounded.
Wherever you’re going,
You can’t get there from here.
ljm
Jul 2, 2017
Jul 2, 2017 at 8:44 AM UTC
And now we see the singularity
of the artist, wrists spread bare on
mimed canvas, finally we see
his consistency.
Lazarus is dead on the first day.
Gold background, rocky outcrop,
sense of cluttered space.
Do you see the decay?
Can you sympathize, or do you notice?
I cannot sympathize with Duccio,
I am too vain to admit his Maestá
survives while my brain rots from
alcohol. But I remember Duccio is
at least fifty years old when his Maestá
preeminently destroys my career
as a visual artist. I do not mind.
Lazarus is dead on the second day.
Duccio had many pupils, among them
Simone Martini, whose Annunciation
is a cropped rehash of Byzantine/Gothic
flopped with Duccio's handy flair,
a pious reverence and virtue.
It sweeps and moves. Or attempts.
Lazarus is no longer sleeping.
I have never been to the city of Florence,
not now nor the 1300s, so I need not
explain my lack of comprehension.
Lazarus has risen now,
but it is different than I remember.
Lazarus is all alone, and
Lazarus is alive,
doomed to walk in mortal Hellfire
a second time over.
Dec 5, 2014
Dec 5, 2014 at 2:16 PM UTC
Hey kid, I woke up buzzing, here
In the future ruins of ancient America.
Staring, after the imperial sunrise,
Listening to Los Angeles on repeat.
Insistent and purple, only
Sediment left in the
Bottles of night.
This third-world way
Causes Third World War
So I'm drinking at a
Tavern on the End.
The bus goes by, and
"Baseball's the worst sport."
Alliteration, allusion,
Colors, characters,
And metaphors.
Sobriety sending me
Searching for smoke.
Rehash, re-up, and "read the ****** thing." My world-view,
Out-maneuvering your
Upbringing.
(The memories I have are white and yellow.
Fogged, not angry, if even confused.
You'd call me, after finishing your nightly readings, to cry about the characters you'd loved, and castigate my inability to care.
Remember when you used "undermined" to describe the adaptation?
You meant that it was "assuming too much.")
"Brenda and Eddie," over here,
"Couldn't go back to the greasers" so they
Wound up at your family's tavern.
"You look like the fat kid,
On whom the popular girl was
Forced to settle."
Dear Man,
Woman's found you out. Or
Are we, justly, doomed to be
More juvenile?
Worn sole, soul-open, "so long,
Kid, I don't know you, but,
I can't help myself from
Destroying you."
(My upbringing: out-maneuvering
Your world-view.)
"You've always been the caretaker, Flagstaff."
The bait's in your brain.
You've simply been
Overlooking the barkeep.
(Dear Diary, could I just die already?
The Price is Life, and purgatory's a game show.
Anger, the color of your mother.
Skin, the shade of yard-work.
Staring at road maps of Virginia, stoic.
Trying to divine the diners we'd die in.)
Jul 8, 2015
Jul 8, 2015 at 3:41 AM UTC
Turns out,
of all the things
I’m addicted to,
you’re what
I’m addicted to the most.
May 16, 2016
May 16, 2016 at 9:05 AM UTC
Take the stones that break your bones
And build a house that is a home
Etch your eyes into the mirrors
So you can see yourself clearer
Drag your hands across the walls
Walk your paramore through the halls
Walk up to the attic and rehash old memories
Of adolescence, music, and psychedelic drugs
Run through the forest of trees that surround your house
and bring you to your knees
Take the stones that break your bones
and build a house, that makes you feel at home
Dec 26, 2013
Dec 26, 2013 at 2:05 AM UTC
Mighty the muscle of unmerciful momentum
Taking names, keeping pace, rhythmic with the arms of father time
Back to rehash an ancient scribe just moments away
You can taste it
The blood of the forsaken
Dying a thousands deaths
Ravished by the beast
Whilst storms blow in from the east
With messages of pale horses and unrelenting fate
Demanding blood to cleanse the land and to burn the stakes
Fear tantalizes
Exhilarates
All the kings men take their place
and prepare to battle the cycles history incessantly recreates
Jun 27, 2013
Jun 27, 2013 at 12:27 PM UTC
I don't sleep.
I pace.
I ponder.
I plan.
I plot.
I worry.
I wonder.
I wax.
I wane.
I relive.
I rethink.
I rehash.
I regret.
I contemplate.
I evaluate.
I deliberate.
I ruminate.
I analyze.
I strategise.
I dramatize.
I fantasize.
I brood.
I delude.
I stress.
I obsess.
I oppress.
I'm a mess..
& I don't sleep.
Aug 3, 2014
Aug 3, 2014 at 12:48 AM UTC
Stephen King said
that to be a writer
"the only real requirement
is the ability to remember every scar."
------------------------------------------------------
So my scars I'll remember,
my wounds I'll rehash,
my old burnt out fires
I'll pull from the ash.
Dec 29, 2011
Dec 29, 2011 at 3:11 AM UTC
They ask you again and again,
What happened? Tell me the whole story
And you repeat yourself
Each time thinking it’s been received
But then a new ear, a new clipboard,
And they make you tell it again.
“What happened” becomes more important
Than “what’s happening now?”
Because they care about the mechanism
More than the injury
So what will they do when you go radio silent?
When your heart breaks do you need to rehash how he hurt you,
Again and again for each secondary witness?
At what point does the sordid story end
And the sequel begin?
Or will the pursuit of healing,
The treating of trauma,
Forever be defined by
the mechanism of injury?
Sep 10, 2023
Sep 10, 2023 at 3:12 AM UTC
Goodnight dear friends who found a new…
And drink to old times we rehash when we’re back
And drive with convertible tops down and halter tops too.
So that when we pass Christian Hill, and Katrina’s Aunt Jane’s house
We shriek so loud the elementary school librarian turns on the lights
Of the 19th century green high roofed home, with that neat front porch
Where the last family decorated the wicker swing
Goodnight my high school where fondness lurks and relationships rest.
Never will we go back, as much as you like that.
And these are the things, the forgotten things, I dread.
As you like it, I shall dread it.
Dec 5, 2011
Dec 5, 2011 at 1:11 PM UTC
Today is a day,
for nostalgia;
For the reaper to finally and momentarily be
beaten.
Even in all of his infinite wisdom,
in which the past becomes just a laugh,
and the lurid poisons of our love,
have the shallow touch of a feather.
When the snow begins,
we relive all those duldroms,
all those meaningless nothings
seemingly so meaningful and wrong,
long ago.
We retell our stories,
silently,
to ourselves,
feeling less bitter as the words
litter our minds,
powdering the pain,
and covering with joy,
our sorrow.
In dementia,
they say,
our love goes stronger every day.
Grows newer
in old ways.
I hope to be like you someday.
Today,
we will beat the bitter sandpaper of tomorrow,
that which rubs away our definition with every brutal blow,
with the soft tapping of our fingers
against our skulls.
Puzzling over what made us beautiful and purposeful,
instead of what crowds against us like a box,
instead of what destroys us like a skipping cd,
instead of what sings against our mind like a harpy
with it's constant verses of regretfulness
that grow stronger with every fatal flaw
we rehash in ourselves.
once more,
you will be as beautiful to me today,
as that swirling suffocation.
I watch you fall outside my window,
covering each and every lichened rock,
in a linen of newness.
In silence,
I stop listening for the return of your love,
and instead marvel in the present satisfaction,
that you are,
and were.
I revel in your presentness,
in the swiftness of your presentation.
In the delicacy of your touch,
and the humility you drive me too,
as you take me too my knees with
each
quiet
drop.
And yes,
you will melt.
And yes,
I will remember.
And yes,
I will see the snow melt,
driven away by the erosion of the sun.
Feb 12, 2014
Feb 12, 2014 at 7:10 PM UTC
She was called a pollyanna.
Positive exclamation addicted
she high-stepped and varied her pace
through life's shifting textures.
Retrieving sea glass and a scallop-cut piece of shell
from the day's foam ruffled waves
at the edge of iridescent aquamarine.
She lived as a greeter.
Always expectant, rounding each corner
to meet until-now unfound friends or catch
a coin's shiny glint from the sidewalk's crevasse.
A collector too, she gathered smiles as she
walked past and sometimes toward faces
moving to their meeting places for the day.
She said regrets lead backward.
Ruminations rehash long ago or too current
memories looking for what-ifs and what-thens
not in her mind the stuff of collectibles.
She chose to live today
and dream tomorrow
always loving forward.
May 14, 2015
May 14, 2015 at 8:44 AM UTC
Our quickening breath,
the screeching of tires,
the smashing of metals,
the car has crashed.
There's nothing to do,
nothing to see.
It's all over now,
just let it be.
I walk away slowly,
away from their screams.
I close my eyes tight,
"Awake me from these dreams!"
I hear their calls,
deep in the night.
"Why didn't you save us?
You could have made things right!"
I cover my face, and feel something wet.
The sight of blood, I know I have met.
Bile rises in my throat,
I run to the door and grab my coat.
I go to the police station to rehash my story,
the detective squirms because it's too gory.
I leave the dark building,
lost in my terrors.
I missed the bus,
I'm so full of errors.
I walk in the rain,
past the old road that has caused me so much pain.
I see a figure in the distant pier,
"Is that you my dear?"
"Daddy daddy help me I'm stuck in my seat.
Don't be a coward, get on your feet!"
The pain the pain, so much pain.
By staying here I have nothing to gain.
I know what I must do;
I must get there quick,
before too long they will discover my trick.
In the cupboard there lays a gun,
calling to me, "I am so much fun."
I pick it up and lock in a bullet,
put it to my head and know I can show it.
One, two, three, four.
There's a knock at the door.
Maybe next time my friend,
we've been caught once again.
Dec 5, 2012
Dec 5, 2012 at 10:53 PM UTC
Our love is like
An exaggerated metaphor-
Good, but I can't take it anymore.
I love you,
You don't love me too.
You love me,
I am free.
(Rhyming scheme AA, BB)
Time to rehash that metaphor,
now that you are sleeping on my floor;
Each day I love you more and more.
Please stop writing things like this?
You terrible bore.
Aug 9, 2014
Aug 9, 2014 at 9:14 AM UTC
Hard Fall
Dead Winter
Soft Spring
Suddenly Summer
Rehash
All the needles on the ground I found
and cigarette butts
Create the frame of this city-town
and liberate us
Liberate?
Indenture
Is a better descriptor
Should you beat elitism
Peace and Love?
Progressive?
Truth is lost to history
Should you read you see schism
From one bridge looking North
I see at least five more bridges
Westside and East split by a river
This is a long, long division
And it's not stopped
Jan 28, 2014
Jan 28, 2014 at 7:48 AM UTC
Not down with all traditions
Man or woman
Who i should be kissing
Whats on television.
Trans feminine
drugs in retrovision
what did we invision.
Listen crystal clear
ntentions realistic.
Misogynistic ******
Lets get with it
women talk.... you gotta listen.
Its funny to st in rehash this
How these women had me
Bitter sadly.
They watch me change
Too trans queen...
Hard for saturated trans fat in ******* black jeans.
With my **** fleek. *** cheeks..
last week
Rolled through black clouds.
Ominous.
Prominently rap sound
Dark brown black pound
******* him up in the back ground
Tell me what the **** you think of that
Clown
Listen to the Christians
*** they know the promise we
Yet somehow
Some astonish me
Hate the pride scene...
Just like God decreed
somehow there's no God for me
They'll call em ******* man
Acknowledge me
The actually bothering
Treatment of
those in
poverty
With out apology
Apostrophe
Here's an idea
To start a following
Start a performing trip
Lead with Vietnam War vets
Get the Porsche chipped....
And divorce yourself from
Forcing it
Klue Klux **** with groupies
You the goof performing ****
No klue in who be
Taking this **** before I force it in
*** hatreds ******
I ain't supporting it...
Oct 21, 2020
Oct 21, 2020 at 4:58 PM UTC
It's like
When I miss you
I feel like I'm being clingy
Or I care too much
It's like
When I don't care
I get worried
That I'll hurt someone
It's like
When I think about the future
I never see what could go right
Only the many
Many things
That could go wrong
It's like I have to deal
With the burden of all these failures
That haven't even happened
It's like when I close my eyes
Scenarios play out
In my head
Scenarios in which
All the bad thing happen
And none of the good
Scenarios
Where I lose everyone
Scenarios where
Everyone realizes
Just how awful I am
I can't help but know
All of my worst fears
I rehash them every night
Just in case I forget
A quick seminar
And make sure to take notes
It's like
I can't sleep sometimes
Because my body just
fills
With paranoia
And so far
I haven't found a way
To empty it
Jan 3, 2018
Jan 3, 2018 at 2:51 AM UTC
We sat in an awkward silence
your eyes nudging my mind
and there was nothing
but a wounded dieing desire
I simply exsisted beside you
and the look turned into despair
almost unforgiving
as you strummed a few notes
to cut the air
and I wanted to be more in that moment
to rehash a moment of counterfeit joy
just to fake you
to make you smile
I know you've been working at
this tension for months
but I was blank and breathless
while your stare coasted down to the floor
In a way dismissing me
so I walked off
alone I left you
on Christmas morn
Dec 25, 2012
Dec 25, 2012 at 11:58 PM UTC
Out of minds
of today
The old haunts
Slip away
Fitting into place
No longer a dread
Nor dismay
Behind the old walls
Where the laughter
Once stalled
A light of luminous minds
Bright and brilliant decline
To rehash the deviation
Of function
And so the shadow
On time remains...
Apr 14, 2015
Apr 14, 2015 at 3:57 PM UTC
the champagne starts to taste like ash
as you fast crash, burn and start to rain like dust and soot.
quick, backtrack and rehash where it went wrong.
the vents, did they pop? did they bleed? did they clot?
plunder your gut, misplace your trust and start to let it rot.
Apr 29, 2018
Apr 29, 2018 at 8:46 AM UTC