"reliably" poems
Doom train hurtling along
Through the fog in my mind
Towing freight, rectangular and oblong
Dim headlights, you're travelling blind
Five carriages long, excluding engine and caboose
Metal against metal, spitting sparks on steel
Undetermined path, rails will choose
Chugging along on dirt covered wheels
In the cabin, I see the light
Emanating from your furnace
Swallowing up coals in your gaping bite
Tongues of flames licking the surface
Fire breathing, spewing thick black smoke
Almost unseen, against the dark of night
A long plumy arm as if extending to choke
And plug the remaining sources of light
Meandering precariously on tracks that weave
Over uncharted, unfathomable terrain
Your store, so reliably you heave
Worming your way through my brain
What's in that cargo of yours?
What lies within those boxcars?
What drives you to diligently run your course?
What fuels you to travel near and far?
Loads of self pity, self loathing and self reproach
Snaking your way to an unknown destination
Screeching brakes as if a stop you approach
Herald the train of dubious intentions
Light is upon you, dark will dissipate
Your plumes starting to lessen from your stack
The dawn breaking horizon you didn't anticipate
To see another charging towards you on this very same track...
Sep 27, 2014
Sep 27, 2014 at 4:16 AM UTC
Is
For
Skiing in
Winter and
Hillwalking in
Summer, but for
Having fun anytime
Like a nearly impossible
Challenge on the six minute
Planpratz ski-lift requiring you
And your best friend to shed your
Gear and join the mile high club while
Claiming she had the best 30 seconds of
Her life
Or so
I am
Reliably informed.
Aug 8, 2015
Aug 8, 2015 at 7:19 PM UTC
the excellence is evident in the credulous eminence
blessedness in the discipline of relevant emphasis
intelligence, if directionless, can lead to arrogance
purposeless over-confidence of pendulous relevance
defiantly, yet reliably, calliope waiting quietly
a variety of society that finds height in irony
i solemnly and politely will happily sit silently
finally facing the gravity patiently and privately
Sep 19, 2015
Sep 19, 2015 at 7:06 PM UTC
I've never been a sentimental person
but too soon did the
smell of salty air,
the sound of waves gaining
and receding
endlessly, reliably
become dear to me.
My memory betrays me
long enough to drag up the
sound of your laugh
(the unintentionally honest kind
that still raises goosebumps
on my skin)
along with the feeling of
Normandy sand beneath my toes.
No matter how much I want to let go,
I'll keep the jar of sand
on my dresser
and the image of you
with your arm around me,
our hair and our hearts wild,
in my mind forever.
Jul 24, 2014
Jul 24, 2014 at 11:51 PM UTC
~
Bala^ comments:
"alignment - any which way one can if possible to make
****** and *********** simultaneously happen,
without any best position plan"
~
*may all the gods bless you, Bala,
for waking me at 4:33 with this poetic induction
coaxed from my spinal fluid sanity
with perfected clarity
my own circadian rhythm masters internal,
the most reliably unreliable human container technology teachers,
semi-skilled in the entrainment arts for this impoverished body mine,
deem it appropriate that early morn messages of
propitious possibility be greeted immediately
entrapped, awaken me at four AM with great glee,
because these elusives^^ know exactly what stirs
this being's cochlear cockles into birthing a
poetic cookie ******** ***********
your message meme provoking, inducing,
be honest man - simply seducing, my within
by your teasing words from without*
"without any best position plan"
*not to confuse the mere appearance of a routine
as worthy of the entitlement of "plan,"
much as the poem's own vanity chooses it own alignment
the relationship, the relativity -
always the
flexing flummoxing freaking insatiable pleasuring
when your thrusting unplanned message
****** and bests my brain,
releasing a fully formed, instantaneous parrying poem
from an aroused, passing, unsanitized, second of sanity
for no better *** than this...
as per the unplan?
this tissued life,
this in and out
of punching and counterpunching continuous,
but rarely contiguous,
for we are never aligned for more than a moment,
the moment that almost always goes unnoticed,
for the heart's ***** tissues,
are mostly torn by how life
uses us roughly
so here is an aligned confession fecundity
this poetry gig, my salve,
to tenderize the daily redness,
the irritation residual of having no plan
however these fingerprints decided for you,
to present, upon completion,
this soft-spoken loud ***********
a peaking, not a leaking,
** ** ** - a screaming
hallelujah, i'm aligned!
the man found albeit briefly
a beat, a plan and its verbal, herbal,
best solution
may all the gods bless you, Bala,
for waking me at 4:33 with this poetic induction
coaxed from my spinal fluid sanity
with perfected clarity
the man and his plan, for a mega-second
his best,
unplanned but got and given,
in poetic planetary alignment
positioned
as are you and I -
the thousands of miles of distance tween us
as you read this
collage collapse
into a singular synapse
of ****** and ***********
hallelujah, we are aligned!
~
**disclaimer:
anything you say to me, can and will be used
for a poem**
~
5:55am
April 1, 2017
Apr 3, 2017
Apr 3, 2017 at 4:16 PM UTC
*Some of my best friends are
The tiny grey cells in my head
For, without these tireless givers
I should sorely want*.....
For I've had.....
The power to recognise the nurturer
Who saved me countless times
Who sewed my confidence at valedictory
Gratitude to Mother...granting me first wings.
The help of a few friends with proffered lifts
Not many, but enough to light the way
Takes but one spark to lead the lost
Cannot discount the value of true goodwill.
The sweet taste of that first, deep love
Who showed the path to discovered delights
Easy mem'ries...looking back, but ****** ahead
Sighs painted on the ceiling in dreamy webs.
The awkward trip down that rabbit hole
Blue lady hanging pretty in the corner
Flies trapped flimsy, on some terylene
Many padlocks loom....to get gasping to you!
The chance to slough off onerous habits
Dive wholehearted into the universe's sea
Gaps to kickstart joy and spearhead cheer
Mentors pass the torch and believe in me!
Yes, some of my best friends are NOT seen
Most reliably spun inside this osseous shell
They answer things and help me find my truth
Thank heavens....selfless amity equals mercy.
S T, 29 June
Jun 29, 2013
Jun 29, 2013 at 10:15 AM UTC
I am not reliably informed whether it were
hearsays or rumours, but it feels like an
apocalypse.
I neither relate to gauche nor belligerence
Connoisseur not cynical but I've been made an
adjective,described as a Curmudgeon.
See I have enemies, camouflage had to I, but
then it seems to cloud my judgement like an
eclipse.
These people are all schoolbags
because they said this behind my back.
Unbeknownst to me
I am a Curmudgeon.
Aug 14, 2015
Aug 14, 2015 at 9:02 PM UTC
My tailpipe spewing acid rain
I am M-i . . . on my way
To s-s-i-s-s and be ******
What I say . . . i-p-p-i
Memphis coming home
Crossing state line is heaven's door
I'm released now hit the floor
Old lead foot is on his way
You'd better believe it
I'm Memphis coming home
Coffee and whiskey my mainstay
Haul'n fast and reliably
No matter what my dispatcher say
Memphis coming home
Tupelo . . . past it's gates
New Albany approaching , now it's gone
Holly springs was a pleasure passing
I'm Memphis coming home
Cotton dust
Taste bud stuff
You can call them hills
Now if you must
Pine or oak , whatever's your choice
Tunica technically kicked your dust
Ole snake eyes soiled your luck
Broke , Memphis coming home
78 or 55
No matter I feel alive
Inside I'm outside myself
As I glide between the white lines . . .
I'm Memphis coming home
Jan 11, 2015
Jan 11, 2015 at 8:33 AM UTC
Blurry regrets of stumbling nights
And entangled intrigues
Lifelong sparks and crisp clean elation
A love affair for risk-seeking souls
And a haven for the lost
that seek something
To satiate the raw, raw emptiness
Of our hearts.
You're chaos, my own version of order
filthy but magnificent
Reliably unpredictable
Escape and anchor intertwined.
And Yet,
I choose you
My sanctuary,
my crucible--
&I; love your imperfections;
For the mess of what you are
Is exactly what I see in me
And so I am yours as you are mine
And in your embrace
I feel whole and alive.
Aug 30, 2014
Aug 30, 2014 at 10:45 AM UTC
Retro Morn: Re-Reading Jenny (1.) and Her Purple Hat, (2.), Listening to Vonda Shepard
I am a beautiful woman, and reliably informed so,
by handsome. men, lustful fools, and one too many
sideward glances
in a difference place, musical needs call me out to retro smooth me
away from the waves of nausea of news repeats ingested, the lesser
qualities of human beings basic basest nature, I inhale subdued
Jenny’s defiance of life’s expectations and Vonda’s voice
smooth my discordant emotive candles that won’t stay lit,
add in a touch of melting Joni & Divine Ms. Bette,
gets me slow kickstarting
and I have not reached
the lofty plateau of
twenty five years of age
*but my mom, the Queen Regent, reminds me royalty possesses
very old souls, which Is why I’m caught out listening, dancing
awake to the music of her youth* and hear her discreetly humming the tunes, even though the phone connection broken minutes earlier
she signed off with a practised Elizabethan airy disturbance royal wave of her hand, instructing this raining (no, not reigning)
Queen to “darling go write a poem…”
don’t we all listen to our mothers?*
my name is brandychanning
music inhale subdued kickstarting a poem
Dec 13, 2023
Dec 13, 2023 at 12:35 PM UTC
I'm very grateful for
The progress I've made
And that I can realize now
Just how much
I allowed people to use me
Without seeing them
Doing anything wrong
It was always an issue with me
I either wasn't enough or
I was everything
Used only one way
She acted like she loved me
But ever since high school
All I was to her
Was a good **** and
A solid support system
Reliably there when she needed me
A schedule she chose herself
Said I was the one who got away
I was probably just the safe choice
As she always came back
Trying to get in bed with me
Even when we both had boyfriends
And after rejecting her then
Radio silence
Or another one
She was never real with me
I don't think she knew herself
So she'd change per person
And she moved in with me
Fully knowing it was a bad idea
To her I was a nice guy
Which allowed her to use me
Manipulating my mentality
And trying to fit in everywhere
Using anything to get her way
Lying to everyone constantly
But if you're not being real
You're a piece in the wrong puzzle
And I really don't want to
Hold onto the past at all
So before you think I'm not over it
Please understand that
This is just reflection
Of my own mistakes too
In a way that helps me grow
Because I sure as hell
Will not let this happen again
I am worth so much more
Than what I can give to others
I am a person too
My feelings, thoughts, and choices
They're entirely my own
No one else can control them
Not anymore
Oct 22, 2018
Oct 22, 2018 at 3:47 AM UTC
"My home life isn't the best," I said.
"It doesn't have to be," she said.
BADLANDS BLEAT
Okay, I said it again. Getting out of bed was the worst part of the day. To begin, the marijuana haze from the night before never went away and left me sore. Sure it was likely enough to ease some of the pain, but in the morning my body stood and got to working slowly like it wasn't eager at all. Only the thought of fast food coffee got me pumped up, not even half-mast at that. If the **** I called erotica to save face couldn't bribe a competent rise out of me, the daily grind certainly couldn't get it done. Impetus again, every time in two week increments. Sure, I had money in the pockets of my sweat pants for the coffee and treats that I charged on a credit card years ago when I had the means -- but I was living with family. A prison sentence delivered by a cruel twist of fate that I caused myself in the first place. Nothing to blame but the errors in my own transactions. Much better than before, still not in charge of anything more than my mistakes. I didn't talk much. Who needed to know? I fulfilled the bare basic requirements of my peers so I could stay stealth. I had pills to eat. I ate them at home. I had meals to eat, and I ate them alone. Company was always safer to keep in a cigarette. Lucky me, when I ran into other smokers you would think they spoke for a need to keep their lips wet. There was a freedom in the chance to sit around a circle taking in information without the pressure to reciprocate. Four years running, I'd made choices in the Fall that brought all my work down. The scribbles and notes attached to cork board, reliably lost in a pile of clothes, paper and thumb tacks. Living with no other luggage made the journey more bearable during the dark days. It helped practice ignorance of others when I barely kept myself well.
Oct 13, 2015
Oct 13, 2015 at 5:26 AM UTC
I REACH OUT TO THE GREAT UNKOWN
with the natural hesitance of a child
nursed on plastic american protestantism,
always prosperity gospel or pariah,
answers just hidden behind a preacher's palm;
in retrospect i wonder what questions those
republican suburbanites crippled in their hatred
came to submit at the foot of the cross.
saccharine and soulless every sunday,
the rot reliably festering under the church stage,
brimstone traded for the wasteland of undecaying concrete.
i was baptized by a stranger in stagnant water,
now swaddled in the arms of a man who is not my Father.
i'm always the cold one. bad circulation when i'm turning away.
that abattoir left a pulsating wound at the
center of my chest— starved weeping
sickly and red.
every sunday, the worst thing i could do was be honest.
i worship with my hands,
i falter for words;
i never got to know the Lord in my youth
because He never called me back.
i find fragments of Him in lovers' eyes—
fingertips glancing over flesh as if
forbidden fruit, sweet real and warmed by sunlight.
i think God was always this;
physicality, connection,
the simple intimacy of making someone else laugh.
the only time i ever felt devout
was when i was walking to get an arizona tea
at the gas station next to the church with my friends.
stumbling over asphalt still sincere in my vulnerability.
Mar 5, 2022
Mar 5, 2022 at 8:05 PM UTC
I know I'm nothing, to you and to me
In fact if you did an X-ray you'd probably find a tombstone in my cold and dead chest cavity
I have tried resting but I can't do that reliably
Because my brain, while my most valuable ***** is sometimes, if not almost all the time
My biggest liability
My inability to remember is very hard to forget
Forged in foggiest messes is maybe where my head is currently set
I'd go to my own world but I'd be driven mad by being alone
I don't know what to do and what to look for in my own zone...
Jun 26, 2016
Jun 26, 2016 at 1:32 PM UTC
The camp fire burned brightly in the cool air
Flames leaping to touch the sky
Our eyes transfixed as we sit entwined
Watching the little sprites dancing around
The yellow glow of phosphorescence
Bathes our faces and gives a strange
But healthy brightness, eyes sparkling
Lips drawn back in a grin, watching
Many times the central flames danced in unison
Then on their own, looking to be the best
The tallest, the most active, the restful
Flicker in the night then streak upwards
Competing with the stars yet such a new light
An old light, primeval and reliably warm
Protective, dissuasive to wildlife, they too
Enthralled by the crackle of the hot licking flames
Three feet away our toes curl, enjoying the heat
The comfort of the enveloping energy
Every element a paradox of danger versus cosiness
Gripping our fingers, soaking up the radiated waves
Hands stretched out at arms length, spread fingers
Rubbing together and pushing back the hair in our faces
Cheeks rosy, clothes giving that just ironed smell
Evocative and basic, life-giving and wondrous
Feb 2, 2012
Feb 2, 2012 at 6:48 PM UTC
On days like these, I look to the west,
seeing the dusky mountains, reliably in formation,
and my mind drifts skyward like hawks possessed;
I start to daydream of the wild midwest.
I sit atop my stallion, whiskey on my saddle,
surrounded by solitude as I dash through the trees
while the sunlit wind plays with my hair as I straddle
through the untamed lands catching outlaw disease.
Whirlwinds brush the dirt off my brim of my hat,
riding through nameless territories void of borders,
happy, nay, blissful to explore the wide open space,
who could wake up while riding at this pace?
Setting my spurred boots upon the wooden chest
I stoke the fire and the cabin smells of leather,
my tired cowboy soul sleeps through the stormy weather,
ready to again race into the western sunset.
Jun 4, 2010
Jun 4, 2010 at 12:16 PM UTC
Your alarm is ringing.
Did you hear me?
It's ringing, no chiming, maybe beeping,
just get up and turn it off.
But it's warm in here.
But I'm kind of wrapped up and sweaty.
But I really didn't sleep that well.
But last night, when I fell asleep,
I thought tomorrow would take an eternity to arrive.
I thought 'this time, I'll close my eyes, and really get lost"
This time the swarm of warm blankets will swallow me, right down into the center of the Earth.
It's warm there too isn't it?
I don't want to wake up,
and be 'just me'.
I'm so plain and mediocre.
So tired of feeling sorry for myself and to weak to do much about it.
I thought last night, that maybe if I had a 'you',
I'd feel a little stronger and a little less scared.
I thought that just as the covers tried to swallow me,
I'd stick out an arm, and you'd keep me from being ****** in.
That maybe even if you were sleeping,
I could just put my hand on your shoulder,
or my pinky around yours, and you'd keep me there.
I think if I could just have a 'you',
a whoever 'you' are,
the morning wouldn't hurt so badly, and the night
wouldn't be an anticipation of morning,
and the day not a long and convoluted path to the night.
I though last night, this morning would feel different.
I thought for once I wouldn't get swallowed, and sweaty, and scared.
I hoped for something to hold onto, and as those hope reliably failed,
as those hopes always do,
I hoped this morning wouldn't come.
Sep 16, 2012
Sep 16, 2012 at 6:36 PM UTC
You're right, let's
see where this will lead
and in an hour I'll concede to
spending all my afternoons the
sun rising and setting with you
reliably
like after-hours swimming pools, we
lead the way and make our own rules
******** to the ordinary, bring on
hula hoops and sherry
I'll send my heart wrapped in a letter,
hope that it will get there over shimm'ring
sails and stormy weather, hope that it
will find its way to you
May 21, 2012
May 21, 2012 at 6:18 PM UTC
Life is so friggin' weird, I'll tell ya.
The older you get, the weirder it gets,
and it just keeps on getting weirderer.
Grossly weird.
Wrongly and disturbingly weird.
Upsettingly weird.
But then, now and again,
pleasantly weird.
Delightfully, excitingly weird.
Weirdly endearingly weird.
Then weirder still.
Off-puttingly weirder.
Over-sweetly weirdly weirder.
Understatedly, low-key weirder to the highest degree contradictory weird.
Maybe weird isn't so weird after all.
When it's the only constant in life,
then weirdness becomes the only reliably normal thing, oddly enough.
Sep 26, 2020
Sep 26, 2020 at 4:26 AM UTC
As i shape stanzas, Adam Lanzas **** the cameras, in glamorous stands up, against the manners of actors, in the matters of forgotten factors, in a world gone bananas, I still cant stand us, even when we are dead.
I have tried every side of the bed to no diligence unchecked, in a nervous wreck of annoyance coining in and destroying it, for a bonus, its bogus to know us, but i'm owning it yet, with no regrets and loose concepts to be swept to ***** and on my feet.
I'm obsolete, and my talk is cheaper than most, as i host my feats in a single page, post heathen faze incomplete, as it is only so lonely in the frozen face of flattery, where i may fill my battery, but nothing more, in boring affordability, storing dreams for safe keeping to a later day that may never be, but hey, what does it matter anyway, i will either be, or not be.
I may be just lapsing in luxury, rupturing the subtlety of my structuring around the scars of brain parts too far to reach.
Lets meet on middle grounds with silent screams and loose eyes, fiddling the sounds and singing for the criers, expiring behind less than inspiring doors.
I am just bored, praising the lords of a more recordable source, reliably on course, with a deplorable force, endorsing the chores of servitude, never meaning to be rude, as i enjoy my solitude, while in the employ of the gratitude for what i got, but im not...
That boy anymore, my wonder turned wandering and i will never be that baby again, nor alone, so let go, in knowing the flow can be trusted in showing us something more, said the slave to his ***** before a morbid torrent to show her core to the floor of a showroom, vacuumed into space, awakening to the fate, of monotonous finality, praying to randomly generated gods, for the fogs of war... or anthing more, than this.
Dec 26, 2012
Dec 26, 2012 at 1:46 PM UTC
I’d rather be wonderfully wicked
And frightfully fascinating
Than be piously perfect
And dreadfully dull
I could be reliably righteous
And boringly bland
But why? when I’m daringly devious
And curiously captivating
To be goodly godly
Or delightfully devilish
How about moaning monotony
To my sensuous ****
Never curiously kind
Without poorly plain
Always sweetly sinister
And always attractive
To be good, one must
Want to be good
But why be good
When you can be bad?
Dec 3, 2013
Dec 3, 2013 at 1:14 AM UTC
I never thought the human heart was a beautiful thing until my youngest son did.
It has always seemed clumsy, relatively simple,and a somewhat gross *****
Muscle-ligament-electricity
I have always been bewitched by the brain and its nerves.
it's mystery, complexity and resilience.
He loves blood the way I love nerves,
he begs me to re read the heart and blood pages in his children anatomy books.
He knew all kinds of facts about blood and the heart at 2.
He never drew the traditional valentine days hearts he draws, to the best of his ability, anatomically correct hearts.
He loves it's rhythm ,
he loves it's simplicity,
and he finds it above all else, beautiful.
he loves it for its tangible nature,
the way it is reliably one way and one way only.
Oct 20, 2015
Oct 20, 2015 at 11:28 PM UTC
*she knows. I'm sure she knows.
every day of the week,
I'm there for her, so to speak.
my order consistent, my appearance reliably persistent.
her compatriots behind the counter
even made up a name for me and my order!
"senor dos cubanos, por favor,"
i wait till she is free, always, before ordering.
they all sly smile at the foolish old man,
who requires only a certain young lady from Cuba,
to make his daily shots, just so, so fussy he.
please! no sugar needed,
her demure mouth,
sweet plenty.
they know. i'm sure they all know.
the olive complexion,
the hair pulled back so tight,
beneath a ridiculous uniform hat,
the slender frame radiating pride
all of which she wears so well,
with a modest hint of self made pride.
working her way up in America.
two coffees, extra milk, in a plastic bag
to travel with me, back to my imprisoning day desk.
she hands me the bag oh so carefully.
our fingers touch. our fingers much touch,
with the oft, quick but sensitive precision
of a baton passing
in an Olympic relay race.
she smiles. always.
it's ridiculous. i'm ridiculous. who cares.
that one contactual second is a gift,
the thrill is not gone.*
and that is why he writes
only love poetry
Mar 22, 2017
Mar 22, 2017 at 11:02 PM UTC
It is cherry blossom season
the white dust is settling into
petals decorated with boot prints.
Spring brings nothing new.
The same old worn out truths,
my doubt in all of you
lingers as clear as distilled water
pure and bitter as Russian *****
no matter how much I love someone
trusting them is not an option.
This is not a crisis of faith,
it is Springtime again, as it always will be.
Reliably.
The seasons never change.
They will never disappoint
so triumphantly.
I dug the grave, my friends
just threw the dirt to cover me.
Mar 7, 2013
Mar 7, 2013 at 9:08 AM UTC
It all starts with you
You, in sun's rays
reliably became a haunting ground
Somehow
under mother dusk
You, bathed in moon
became the cradling arms,
somehow,
that nurtured the hurt
endured in living
Injured in living. . .
With our small moves
We move the hour hand
When we return
Rust catches up
It all ends with you
and in the ending
Grown,
We come home to flame
I thought you were stone
When you were nothing
I know this: we sleep in ash beds
Our retreat was no
garden but fostered flowers
And now you are
bones
Jan 21, 2014
Jan 21, 2014 at 2:51 AM UTC