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An upright abutment in the mouth
of the Willis Avenue bridge
a beige Honda leaps the divider
like a steel gazelle inescapable
sleek leather boots on the pavement
rat-a-tat-tat best intentions
going down for the third time
stuck in the particular

You cannot make love to concrete
if you care about being
non-essential wrong or worn thin
if you fear ever becoming
diamonds or lard
you cannot make love to concrete
if you cannot pretend
concrete needs your loving

To make love to concrete
you need an indelible feather
white dresses before you are ten
a confirmation lace veil milk-large bones
and air raid drills in your nightmares
no stars till you go to the country
and one summer when you are twelve
Con Edison pulls the plug
on the street-corner moons     Walpurgisnacht
and there are sudden new lights in the sky
stone chips that forget you need
to become a light rope a hammer
a repeatable bridge
garden-fresh broccoli two dozen dropped eggs
and a hint of you
caught up between my fingers
the lesson of a wooden beam
propped up on barrels
across a mined terrain

between forgiving too easily
and never giving at all.
Pennsylvania, 1948-1949

The garden of Nature opens.
The grass at the threshold is green.
And an almond tree begins to bloom.

Sunt mihi Dei Acherontis propitii!
Valeat numen triplex Jehovae!
Ignis, aeris, aquae, terrae spiritus,
Salvete!—says the entering guest.

Ariel lives in the palace of an apple tree,
But will not appear, vibrating like a wasp’s wing,
And Mephistopheles, disguised as an abbot
Of the Dominicans or the Franciscans,
Will not descend from a mulberry bush
Onto a pentagram drawn in the black loam of the path.


But a rhododendron walks among the rocks
Shod in leathery leaves and ringing a pink bell.
A hummingbird, a child’s top in the air,
Hovers in one spot, the beating heart of motion.
Impaled on the nail of a black thorn, a grasshopper
Leaks brown fluid from its twitching snout.
And what can he do, the phantom-in-chief,
As he’s been called, more than a magician,
The Socrates of snails, as he’s been called,
Musician of pears, arbiter of orioles, man?
In sculptures and canvases our individuality
Manages to survive. In Nature it perishes.
Let him accompany the coffin of the woodsman
Pushed from a cliff by a mountain demon,
The he-goat with its jutting curl of horn.
Let him visit the graveyard of the whalers
Who drove spears into the flesh of leviathan
And looked for the secret in guts and blubber.
The thrashing subsided, quieted to waves.
Let him unroll the textbooks of alchemists
Who almost found the cipher, thus the scepter.
Then passed away without hands, eyes, or elixir.


Here there is sun. And whoever, as a child,
Believed he could break the repeatable pattern
Of things, if only he understood the pattern,
Is cast down, rots in the skin of others,
Looks with wonder at the colors of the butterfly,
Inexpressible wonder, formless, hostile to art.


To keep the oars from squeaking in their locks,
He binds them with a handkerchief. The dark
Had rushed east from the Rocky Mountains
And settled in the forests of the continent:
Sky full of embers reflected in a cloud,
Flight of herons, trees above a marsh,
The dry stalks in water, livid, black. My boat
Divides the aerial utopias of the mosquitoes
Which rebuild their glowing castles instantly.
A water lily sinks, fizzing, under the boat’s bow.


Now it is night only. The water is ash-gray.
Play, music, but inaudibly! I wait an hour
In the silence, senses tuned to a ******’s lodge.
Then suddenly, a crease in the water, a beast’s
black moon, rounded, ploughing up quickly
from the pond-dark, from the bubbling methanes.
I am not immaterial and never will be.
My scent in the air, my animal smell,
Spreads, rainbow-like, scares the ******:
A sudden splat.
I remained where I was
In the high, soft coffer of the night’s velvet,
Mastering what had come to my senses:
How the four-toed paws worked, how the hair
Shook off water in the muddy tunnel.
It does not know time, hasn’t heard of death,
Is submitted to me because I know I’ll die.


I remember everything. That wedding in Basel,
A touch to the strings of a viola and fruit
In silver bowls. As was the custom in Savoy,
An overturned cup for three pairs of lips,
And the wine spilled. The flames of the candles
Wavery and frail in a breeze from the Rhine.
Her fingers, bones shining through the skin,
Felt out the hooks and clasps of the silk
And the dress opened like a nutshell,
Fell from the turned graininess of the belly.
A chain for the neck rustled without epoch,
In pits where the arms of various creeds
Mingle with bird cries and the red hair of caesars.


Perhaps this is only my own love speaking
Beyond the seventh river. Grit of subjectivity,
Obsession, bar the way to it.
Until a window shutter, dogs in the cold garden,
The whistle of a train, an owl in the firs
Are spared the distortions of memory.
And the grass says: how it was I don’t know.


Splash of a ****** in the American night.
The memory grows larger than my life.
A tin plate, dropped on the irregular red bricks
Of a floor, rattles tinnily forever.
Belinda of the big foot, Julia, Thaïs,
The tufts of their *** shadowed by ribbon.


Peace to the princesses under the tamarisks.
Desert winds beat against their painted eyelids.
Before the body was wrapped in bandelettes,
Before wheat fell asleep in the tomb,
Before stone fell silent, and there was only pity.


Yesterday a snake crossed the road at dusk.
Crushed by a tire, it writhed on the asphalt.
We are both the snake and the wheel.
There are two dimensions. Here is the unattainable
Truth of being, here, at the edge of lasting
and not lasting. Where the parallel lines intersect,
Time lifted above time by time.


Before the butterfly and its color, he, numb,
Formless, feels his fear, he, unattainable.
For what is a butterfly without Julia and Thaïs?
And what is Julia without a butterfly’s down
In her eyes, her hair, the smooth grain of her belly?
The kingdom, you say. We do not belong to it,
And still, in the same instant, we belong.
For how long will a nonsensical Poland
Where poets write of their emotions as if
They had a contract of limited liability
Suffice? I want not poetry, but a new diction,
Because only it might allow us to express
A new tenderness and save us from a law
That is not our law, from necessity
Which is not ours, even if we take its name.


From broken armor, from eyes stricken
By the command of time and taken back
Into the jurisdiction of mold and fermentation,
We draw our hope. Yes, to gather in an image
The furriness of the ******, the smell of rushes,
And the wrinkles of a hand holding a pitcher
From which wine trickles. Why cry out
That a sense of history destroys our substance
If it, precisely, is offered to our powers,
A muse of our gray-haired father, Herodotus,
As our arm and our instrument, though
It is not easy to use it, to strengthen it
So that, like a plumb with a pure gold center,
It will serve again to rescue human beings.


With such reflections I pushed a rowboat,
In the middle of the continent, through tangled stalks,
In my mind an image of the waves of two oceans
And the slow rocking of a guard-ship’s lantern.
Aware that at this moment I—and not only I—
Keep, as in a seed, the unnamed future.
And then a rhythmic appeal composed itself,
Alien to the moth with its whirring of silk:


O City, O Society, O Capital,
We have seen your steaming entrails.
You will no longer be what you have been.
Your songs no longer gratify our hearts.


Steel, cement, lime, law, ordinance,
We have worshipped you too long,
You were for us a goal and a defense,
Ours was your glory and your shame.


And where was the covenant broken?
Was it in the fires of war, the incandescent sky?
Or at twilight, as the towers fly past, when one looked
From the train across a desert of tracks

To a window out past the maneuvering locomotives
Where a girl examines her narrow, moody face
In a mirror and ties a ribbon to her hair
Pierced by the sparks of curling papers?


Those walls of yours are shadows of walls,
And your light disappeared forever.
Not the world's monument anymore, an oeuvre of your own
Stands beneath the sun in an altered space.


From stucco and mirrors, glass and paintings,
Tearing aside curtains of silver and cotton,
Comes man, naked and mortal,
Ready for truth, for speech, for wings.


Lament, Republic! Fall to your knees!
The loudspeaker’s spell is discontinued.
Listen! You can hear the clocks ticking.
Your death approaches by his hand.


An oar over my shoulder, I walked from the woods.
A porcupine scolded from the fork of a tree,
A horned owl, not changed by the century,
Not changed by place or time, looked down.
Bubo maximus, from the work of Linnaeus.


America for me has the pelt of a raccoon,
Its eyes are a raccoon’s black binoculars.
A chipmunk flickers in a litter of dry bark
Where ivy and vines tangle in the red soil
At the roots of an arcade of tulip trees.
America’s wings are the color of a cardinal,
Its beak is half-open and a mockingbird trills
From a leafy bush in the sweat-bath of the air.
Its line is the wavy body of a water moccasin
Crossing a river with a grass-like motion,
A rattlesnake, a rubble of dots and speckles,
Coiling under the bloom of a yucca plant.


America is for me the illustrated version
Of childhood tales about the heart of tanglewood,
Told in the evening to the spinning wheel’s hum.
And a violin, shivvying up a square dance,
Plays the fiddles of Lithuania or Flanders.
My dancing partner’s name is Birute Swenson.
She married a Swede, but was born in Kaunas.
Then from the night window a moth flies in
As big as the joined palms of the hands,
With a hue like the transparency of emeralds.


Why not establish a home in the neon heat
Of Nature? Is it not enough, the labor of autumn,
Of winter and spring and withering summer?
You will hear not one word spoken of the court
of Sigismund Augustus on the banks of the Delaware River.
The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys is not needed.
Herodotus will repose on his shelf, uncut.
And the rose only, a ****** symbol,
Symbol of love and superterrestrial beauty,
Will open a chasm deeper than your knowledge.
About it we find a song in a dream:


Inside the rose
Are houses of gold,
black isobars, streams of cold.
Dawn touches her finger to the edge of the Alps
And evening streams down to the bays of the sea.


If anyone dies inside the rose,
They carry him down the purple-red road
In a procession of clocks all wrapped in folds.
They light up the petals of grottoes with torches.
They bury him there where color begins,
At the source of the sighing,
Inside the rose.


Let names of months mean only what they mean.
Let the Aurora’s cannons be heard in none
Of them, or the tread of young rebels marching.
We might, at best, keep some kind of souvenir,
Preserved like a fan in a garret. Why not
Sit down at a rough country table and compose
An ode in the old manner, as in the old times
Chasing a beetle with the nib of our pen?
Simon Nov 2019
Consciousness is tailored for everyone’s efforts. The software, which includes the hardware it’s circumvented towards in order to specialize the countering of what makes it special in its tip top shape that won’t be the downfall of order itself. But the countering of how one tailors our operating systems day in and day out. Like computers and their operating systems. All are specialized with there own software that makes calculations after calculations day in and day out. Sort of a repeatable process for everyone’s pleasures to invoke upon. Circumventing the hardware that mounts an all-out assault of processes exchanging daily operations both inside and out. Guess you can say a operating system is a computers consciousness. Doesn’t matter how advanced one is to claim by performance alone. Sooner or later, the obvious is in its performance through actions alone. Performance is never equal, until you have a operating system that’s proud to be awake and functioning! Now what’s this about tailoring consciousness…? Nothing… Well, not really anyways. Were all tailored ever since birth. Natural inclinations among our living conditions pits us against rougher life styles then what our own kind is actually going through on the other side of there own spectrum. Spectrum's including a posher life style. Tailoring our consciousnesses proudly without guilt or suffering paying the wages in a more illusional priority to what truly counts for something being a one-sided treating operating system. Operating systems are just that…functioning platforms for our waking states to conjure up on a daily basis. Removing this operating system, would be like removing ourselves. Seizing to exist in our fully established biological states completely! Whatever state your consciousness is divided by, don’t tear it away because yours just seems to not function up to the claims of what lifestyle you (THINK) you should be tailored by. Whether you asked or not. Thou understandably it’s not your fault to what lifestyle you were brought up by. And the poverty that produces those brims full of guilt or suffering pays more wages to what is the true operating lengths of what the world is truly founded upon. Operating systems in computers are safe because there functioning. Tailored to be the tip top and posh lifestyle that one was engineered when sold separately. Which in tune was given to a higher base operating system that’s now channeling the wills and wants of what this engineered system is occupied to function with. More priorities in all! WOOT! Our consciousness sits back while judging harshly based on not feeling, because feeling is made more then just a waking state system. Its functionality isn’t important because it’s drawn out to be a system. Hence a somebody to tailor your own self importance’s up because your awake and functioning. Consciousness is tailored to exist because it’s there to see how the vessel that binds us all together, gives us our self importance in the first place. (Snapping of someone’s functioning width gives rise to friction counting for something jaw-dropping!) Achieving the snapping mechanism in one go. Thou many services kept trying with processes battling for perfection. Forwarding the plan to notion the regards of…what…exactly, pray tell?? They say we mirror our believe system out into the world. We make mistakes which spawn greater examples for the self importance eliciting the lesson of forgone truths straight from our focused conscious could elaborate on. Just like how apparently consciousness could reflect the universes true purpose in (WHY) the operating system acts the way it does. Hiding its true tailoring arts in such a twisting bind, it’s unaffordable to even speculate on. It’s simply beyond our pray tell minds to operate on. Yet we interact with it on a daily basis. Twisting, while binding something isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Not forgetting to include the involuntary postures shooting out the benefits to this natural, possibly biased claim. (What riches foretold such events to come…?) Obviously, nothing to what tailored these operating systems of ours. Electronic computers. Bioelectrochemical humans. Creations or creator. Tailoring their computations and biological processes to the highest degree. Everyone has a operating system that lets you consciously interact with the software that permeates the hardware holding it all together. Just like how a skull holds a brain. Which holds the nestles of mind. And mind carrying out the calculations of software bounded to the hardware that mind is also bounded by the brain. The universe is massive, yes! But a network in itself once said, (that no matter how big or massive your typical construct might seem to absolve all constraints of triumph! You need to look a little closer.) Humans dedication towards operating systems? Tailoring conscious properties?! Computers being creations of advanced operable, functioning exercises which circumvent those daily practices are too beneficiary to the thing that bounces back to a functioning mirroring mechanism playing for keeps with the lifestyle we all play ourselves in our own nestled corners. The universe is no different. But it’s not as big as you truly give it credit for. (Tailoring consciousness hears a snapping of someone’s functioning width giving rise to the friction counting for something without jaw-dropping results!) Maybe tomorrow when your operating system is all deemed redeemable by no good lucky efforts. You might start to benefit yourself among close surroundings that play you to look too far ahead of what is already tailoring you up to play the part directly towards.
Tailoring one's own awareness with the operating system that bodes well with everyday riches, produces harm to the rightful of places.
Joseph John Nov 2013
Red roses, red ribbons, and war.
I’ll fill you up and leave you wanting more.
White wine, white lies, and dust.
I’ll turn your “might” into a “must”.
Dark eyes, dark nights, and a game.
I’ll be the winner, you’ll bear the pain.
Clear head, clear heart, and hope
I’ll hang by your feet at the end of my rope.

You’ll dance on my fiddle,
and seek my acquittal,
as I stand, non-committal
and feed you love’s riddle.

One hit, one kiss, and a hook.
I’ll script the ending to your repeatable book.
Two more, too much, then again, more
I’ll be the curse you long to endure.
Three hopes, three ghosts, and a ****’s crow.
I’ll write the only truth you’ll choose to know.
For what? For whom? You’ll plead.
I’ll offer a reminder: you exist for me.

I’ll act as gravity,
a pull towards depravity,
and at the brink of insanity,
I’ll walk away, earth-shattering.
"MINUS, (-)
n.
On the quantitative potency scale (-, ±, +, ++, +++), there were no effects observed.

PLUS/MINUS, (±)
n.
The level of effectiveness of a drug that indicates a threshold action. If a higher dosage produces a greater response, then the plus/minus (±) was valid. If a higher dosage produces nothing, then this was a false positive.

PLUS ONE, (+)
n.
The drug is quite certainly active. The chronology can be determined with some accuracy, but the nature of the drug's effects are not yet apparent.

PLUS TWO, (++)
n.
Both the chronology and the nature of the action of a drug are unmistakably apparent. But you still have some choice as to whether you will accept the adventure, or rather just continue with your ordinary day's plans (if you are an experienced researcher, that is). The effects can be allowed a predominant role, or they may be repressible and made secondary to other chosen activities.

PLUS THREE, (+++)
n.
Not only are the chronology and the nature of a drug's action quite clear, but ignoring its action is no longer an option. The subject is totally engaged in the experience, for better or worse.

PLUS FOUR, (++++)
n.
A rare and precious transcendental state, which has been called a "peak experience," a "religious experience," "divine transformation," a "state of Samadhi" and many other names in other cultures. It is not connected to the +1, +2, and +3 of the measuring of a drug's intensity. It is a state of bliss, a participation mystique, a connectedness with both the interior and exterior universes, which has come about after the ingestion of a psychedelic drug, but which is not necessarily repeatable with a subsequent ingestion of that same drug. If a drug (or technique or process) were ever to be discovered which would consistently produce a plus four experience in all human beings, it is conceivable that it would signal the ultimate evolution, and perhaps the end, of the human experiment."
-Sasha
From PiHKAL by Alexander T. Shulgin, pp. 963–965
Lee Jan 2013
Swaying drunk in a friendly kitchen,
I look
and see
a pretty
white
plastic handled
pearing knife.
I reach and grab
and cut
accidental slice
of a left palm.
Nothing
felt
a coincidence?
of drunkenness
and
shock?
or
a repeatable
pattern.
7 & 7
sits down on the
stoop
so i can test
my hypothesis.
I punch in at the edge
and feel the skin pop
like a warm water balloon
thicker
oozing like pancake syrup
nostalgia
the sharp steel
drags across
unrestrained
by the remaining flesh.
It's always easiest
to peel an orange
once you
stab
through
the
rind.
I've heard it described
as ******
or exhilarating
but I'm cold
and numb.
So I thin myself
with 7 & 7
to help it leak down
to my cigarette tip
and stain
my pretty
white
plastic
pearing knife.
jeffrey robin Jul 2011
and then again:
out against the "tide!"
the killings that go on and on
while we weep
while we "sleep it off"
while we wonder why
all love has died.

and then again:
where are we really?
i mean
really
what are we doing
as the killings go on?

the "peace within"
the final escape
the spiritual escapade with its
own endearingly repeatable stories
hiding our most treasured vulnerability

and then again:
and we
again
resume our truthfulness

hopefully

well anyway
that is the best of endings
we might find

within the nature
of the story
Philip Warwick Oct 2017
The poet sees the line,
Before it’s been read.
It has already been written,
Somewhere in his head.
An idea that settles,
To shape and to mould.
Something reused,
That is no longer old.
Repeatable rhyme,
Or overworked verse.
Through low timbre tones,
Let critics converse.
Discounting so many,
Is judgement a whim?
Tell me dear poet,
When did you begin?
In answer unknowing,
Thought, though not sure.
This is not the first time,
I have written before.
On deeper reflection,
All ages, all minds.
There is no criteria,
All patterns, all kinds.
So why do I bother?
I have need to say more.
I think, so I am,
And I am, so therefore.
I've ceased my habit of cigarette smoking;
I can smell sun rays melting the tar within streets we've been driving on.
Accumulating debris line the sides of city streets,
Leftovers from a thunderstorm's retreat.

Valleys and mountains seem to have undried green
Patches and dry rivers run temporarily exhilarated;
A swelling rush through landlocked zone,
Becoming such a secretive and succulent oasis.

A Summer season like this symbolically:
Within harsh desolate heat,
Air is voraciously evaporating liquids of life,
Creatures adapted for unpredictability;
Schemes for overcoming, constantly changing.

Somewhat repeatable patterns of Summer downpour seems like a blessing.
A rather rash and quick burst, calling to attention
A reminder that it will soon pass.
Advising to allow any present moment to fully consume your consciousness;
Savoring every solitary drop.
When we smile at each other every day.
I remember it happened in the month of may.
It all started with our loveable duende.
I can only imagine geting to know you today.
Love is near, but we know its far away.

Our charms we're like a lukewarm alarm.
We we're both alert by the loud sound.
We knew by chatting that love will be found.
We we're both alert.
In the past we were both hurt.

The colour of red is not dead.
It gave us a chance to hear the extrinsic music.
Like a repeatable sound of hope and determination.
The creation is ingrained in our minds.

When we write and speak.
Our empty hearts we're refueled by a leak.
We we're stuck oil, but we toiled.
Our love is unbind from the trap.
Our love and future will intertwine one day.

We understand the repeatable beeping.
We want to bandage the bleeding.
We hold our hands to cover up the wounds.
We will recover, and we will see each other soon.

Our ears are listenting.
Our hearts are beating.
Our minds are thinking.
Our hands and our mouths are speaking.

Even if we're far.
Even if we're a mess.
Even if we're busy.
This is the true message the alarm conveys to you, and me.

The sound of the alarm can be good and wrong.
It's on everyday like our favourite song.
Like a beautiful siren singing to me.
The love we can feel it even overseas.
I want us to be together in the future, always and forever.
Sleepy Sigh Aug 2011
High school was always mewing
Quietly at the window
As the window filled with rain;
High school had matted fur,
It purred and gazed attentively.

High school was constant prodding,
Poking, miniscule thefts of attention
Piled into mountains.
High school was false and sweet -
Saccharine and lemon-sour.

My friends:
The lost, the needy, the distressed,
The empty, the hungry
With open mouths stuttering
Repeatable predictable rhythms.

My friends:
The quiet, the wise, the brave,
The knights of an emaciated kingdom -
Boys with wooden swords
Defending me from the world.

High school was always shallow water,
Too loud laughter, music blasting:
A cacophony of nothing, three feet deep.
Dancing on the head of a drunken giant
Who for too long had been asleep.
Ylzm Aug 4
For millennia awaited when appeared crucified
For millennia warned when appeared worshipped
The voice of history, prophetic truths, if perceived
Past and Future, symmetrical, and mutually imaged
A thing and an anti-thing, similar but opposed
Not repeatable science nor philosophical dialecticism
But a reversal of time, a humanly difficult reality
As we look only ahead as we walk the same way
Forward and backward, each way different to the eyes
Michael Ryan Oct 2018
You take pictures of books you'll never read
write words you'll never truly know
and speak ideas taken from people that did.

But it's so common
and you're not the only one doing it
it's a whole spectrum of people
creating nothing
but consuming everything.

They may be just words,
but those words belong to someone
and without the person
they act without purpose--
repeatable, but with no meaning.

So few take what they have
to mold reality into new creations
that eventually the consuming will be consumed.
Leaving only an echo of what used to be
the cacophony of life--
it will become a mass of sounds
unrecognizable to the words we used to know.
If you repeat things long enough they'll lose whatever impact/meaning they had in the first place.  Sometimes you don't need to be clever, instead it's best to be cleverless and just take a risk to invent something new.
The point is people.
although I'm run down from time to time.
I know there is no answer in some steeple,
some book.
And I'm sure I'm missing something like all the beautiful creatures out there.
But right now, with the amount of evil.
The point is people.
There is far too much to be done, so I'm not concerned with personal accomplishment, because they are repeatable, but to experience your smile your laugh. your dreams, your love! that is something I will not find anywhere else.

I don't know how long this movie is,
but I'm already late to the show and I can't be bothered to pick up the details I missed and distract someone else.
So just know, while I'm not bootlegging any of this, every time I think of you all of this will play across my screen.
And I can't think of anything else worth my time.
Tony Luxton Dec 2015
A small particle in a vast
universe, I accelerate
towards my collision
with my mortality.

A fragile loop, a wormhole,
a twisting bending journey,
picking up splintered experiences
through the pale lattice of my senses.

A repeatable experiment
with life, replicated throughout
generations of individuals,
trying to understand their collisions.
Thomas Jul 2016
Society is but a continuous cycle we are born, we live our lives, born others, raise them, and then we die. It happens repeatedly over and over again in an unending predictable cycle. But sometimes this predictable cycle is broken an earthquake happens and the pattern is broken in the affected area. But then in a few years it just goes back to the unending cycle.
See society does not function without a repeatable pattern that's just how we work. When you learn something new like riding a bike a step out of the pattern, but eventually you start going on it more and more then it becomes a pattern. But why continue in this pattern. Is it as easy as asking for something different at a restaurant. Wrong after you do that once then you'll try it again and then you'll try it another time, eventually it becomes a full blown pattern.
A theory
PrinceAlexander Apr 2016
Mosaic-like fragile illusions of the youth are shattered, lying in the dust.
Their recollections settled in the gloomy asylum of murky, distant past.
Sea foam of dreams dried up, the wind of hope died down,
Faded red colors of the sails into love's funeral white gown.
The ship of love is anchored in the bay of gray weekdays life's press,
The dullness of the real world prevails in its routine repeatable duress.
Jason Margraves Mar 2018
Time is ruthless, uncaring and set to its course,
grit your teeth, relax, hold on let’s not use force.

Just like that - the blink of an eye, the shift of our feet,
unwavering and settled in, now is not the time for peace.

Grow through the pain and remember the rage,
you flip to the end of the story, no more ink for this page.

Stand still, remain calm, now is far too late,
mixed signals, invisible interest, all I have is time to wait.

You my mirage, a lie that I need to believe,
I’m alive and maybe that’s the reason you grieve.

We mimic moments that are repeatable but break with a squeeze,
I am your mountain broken to pieces but your whisper, its breeze.

Chase me, reel me in until you plant your discretion in my bones,
I buckle down, dig in, you’re all I wanted except for the unknowns.

There’s a soft spot hidden in the depths of this soul,
living lies and question truth as our discretion takes its toll.

We’re lit now, the wick, dynamite set to explode,
we missed the target, we’ll try again, empty clip, let’s just reload?

Take your time, there’s only forever that’s left now,
we crossed our hearts and begged time to see what it will allow.
WickedHope Aug 2021
I feel like my heart is breaking more than it ever has
And I'm afraid somehow I'll forget you
And I won't be able to fix it
And I don't know how to fix this
I was so foolish
But I don't want a do over
Because then it will really be over
Or it won't have ever started
Is it really better to have loved and lost
How many breaks can a heart take
Shattering shouldn't be a repeatable phenomenon
But with you it is
Everything with you destroys me
I am utterly demolished
And it is so lovely to be wrecked by you
I just hope you never stop bringing me pain
Because the day I stop hurting
Will be the day I know I've died
Idk man. This is just getting more insane and I don't know how to handle it/I'm terrified of mishandling it.
Barton D Smock Dec 2016
this repeatable body, these monologues for echo



suicide’s mother, parole’s father…



snow a cemetery with mascot christ
Anna Banasiak Sep 2019
He saved her life. But it was a long time ago…

People were just shadows. Every moment was filled with longing for the lost presence. She has always wanted to stop time. Everything was just a mirage of a changing consciousness. She wasn't sure whether the surrounding reality exists. She felt like a spider tangling a net of events. Among whispers, glances and voices she created fictitious worlds. Every word was a story. The moment reminded her of a river of childhood. She waded in the water like a heron. The water was calm, clear as a mirror. Everything was possible. The boundary between childhood and adulthood did not exist. She has always lived in a world of dreams. Mother told her to keep her feet on the ground.
-Life is a way-she remembered her mother saying it-people can change it and make You happy-there are many ways that You can choose, but it’s not always Your way of life, sometimes You can wander and return, the way can be far away, but it’s worth to fight for Your dreams, always cherish yourself and don’t give up.
She liked to listen to the sounds of life. Existence seen through the mirror was falling apart to pieces. The shapes seemed unreal, immersed in a pure form, without beginning and end. It was closed in the microcosm of her visions.
She wanted to spread out wings and fly away, look at life from a distance. Mother, father, family, it was the world that ensures peace, time was playing her like a doll in spite of passing…
She has always wanted to see him once again and thank him for everything: a new life, friends, family and a helping hand…
Suddenly she saw the light. She listened intently to the melodies of existence woven of the finest matter and dreams. Place where you can immerse yourself and observe the surrounding reality. Light and darkness, colour and sound, everything was repeatable, reflecting the circle of life.
She met him again.
-J. is that You?
The cry of her son has interrupted her musings. Everything has come back to normal. She started a new life.

Anna Banasiak
(alternately titled no particular reason:
bring unto “fake” trumpeting Caesar
seven salad dressings from deep freezer
and lettuce deign at your plea azure.)

Graced with boyish good looks,
innocence and naiveté to boot,
an especial loathing toward me
chicken legs re: spindleshanks

(which serve as laughingstock
of dis hair reed ole coot)
oft times clad with deep purple
polka dotted sweatpants
don this nontrumpeting galoot

Asian old wise owl chimes utters
embarrassing non repeatable hoot
thus even bestowed with ample loot
to purchase peloton bike
would be laudatory suggestion,

nevertheless vigorous exercise point iz moot
cuz said skinny limb foregone conclusion
impossible mission anatomical feature aye
(nor anyone else could ever troubleshoot).

See them dang toothpick
aforementioned limbs used walking
permanently stunted courtesy anorexia nervosa,
I experienced during prepubescence
comprises subject of mooch talking
especially if yours truly wore shorts,
or even daresay skivvies out in public.

Both above listed portion of poem I write
surprisingly, truthfully, and
aye preferably, and uncomfortably uninvite
today (night) May 12th, actually tonight
electronically date/time stamped
05/12/20  10:06:21 PM

presented scary sight
regarding every other
regular instance I showered
as occurred earlier... quite
lamentable, these twiggy
body parts give Lesley Hornby

Dame Lesley Lawson DBE
blink to fast, and she becomes an oversight
born September 19, 1949
still going strong, flitting light
to and fro, hither and yon
an English model, actress, and singer,

renown during the nineteen sixties
approximately 5′ 6″ in height
widely known by the nickname Twiggy
get a serious a run for her money
totally unbeknownst to her
if so, she would serious take flight.

Matthew Scott Harris bejesus, he tried
(think self starvation)
nearly successful being unseen,
yours truly set his permanent physique
as one wimpy, scraggly, and nerdy teen

unlike above faded former star
regaled as Twiggy on silver screen,
yet his posthumous fifteen
minutes of fame encompasses
poetic style like (like for real) never seen

arose during 2020 pandemic
i.e. coronavirus CPVID-19 quarantine
and commenced quirky endeavor
crafting slapdash poetaster philistine

nonsensical, heretical (rather hair reticle),
and atypical ridiculous rhyme
wondering if ye keen
find any redeeming quality
courtesy this human haz been.
Caroline Shank Apr 2022
I have seen the moments of my
lifetime flicker and I was afraid.
I have won at love. My hair fell
long on your shoulders and I
laughed to see such a sport.

I have seen rhe souls of loved
ones shivver but I was young
then. I did not know your
Pain. I never knew you in your
lighter days. My heart pumped and
yet I sang then in my ununderstanding.
You were plaid in your dimensions
and red were the heartbeats
of our shared misunderstanding.

My feet then, a true size 8, were
made for dancing. I stepped softly
on your shoes and we were sway
and music.  The night's of our
repeatable dance's reps. Holy
in the church of our souls.

You didn't die then though I wish
you had. A million little deaths
over the years of sadness.

You were erased on a Sunday
morning
by the ink of yesterday's

Betrayal

Caroline Shank
April 17.2022
Anna Banasiak May 2018
He saved her life. But it was a long time ago…
People were just shadows. Every moment was filled with longing for the lost presence. She has always wanted to stop time. Everything was just a mirage of a changing consciousness. She wasn't sure whether the surrounding reality exists. She felt like a spider tangling a net of events. Among whispers, glances and voices she created fictitious worlds. Every word was a story. The moment reminded her of a river of childhood. She waded in the water like a heron. The water was calm, clear as a mirror. Everything was possible. The boundary between childhood and adulthood did not exist. She has always lived in a world of dreams. Mother told her to keep her feet on the ground.
-Life is a way-she remembered her mother saying it-people can change it and make You happy-there are many ways that You can choose, but it’s not always Your way of life, sometimes You can wander and return, the way can be far away, but it’s worth to fight for Your dreams, always cherish yourself and don’t give up
She liked to listen to the sounds of life. Existence seen through the mirror was falling apart to pieces. The shapes seemed unreal, immersed in a pure form, without beginning and end. It was closed in the microcosm of her visions.
She wanted to spread out wings and fly away, look at life from a distance. Mother, father, family, it was the world that ensures peace, time was playing her like a doll in spite of passing…
She has always wanted to see him once again and thank him for everything: a new life, friends, family and a helping hand…
Suddenly she saw the light. She listened intently to the melodies of existence woven of the finest matter and dreams. Place where you can immerse yourself and observe the surrounding reality. Light and darkness, colour and sound, everything was repeatable, reflecting the circle of life.
She met him again.
-J. is that You?
The cry of her son has interrupted her musings. Life has come back to normal.
She was happy.
*****

Repeatable or just once.
Another victim.
People will never know your journey.
Each day passes until it’s numb enough and fades.
Don’t let them take your soul
                                  -you deserve a good life
                                  -just like anyone else
                                  -your stronger than you know
                                  -you can make a comeback
                                  -but it will take time and work to rebuild
                                  -be kind to yourself.

© By HF-Whisper
23/4/2020

— The End —