"residuals" poems
You will rise again
You have been beaten down
You have been abused
You have been torn down
You have been told you were nothing
You have been told you can’t do it
You are plagued by residuals
You are tormented by demons
You are tortured by nightmares
You are attacked by PTSD daily
You are reminded of it all by your scares
You are so tired of it all
Yet you survived all of it
You continue to live each day
You continue to smile
You continue to thrive
You continue to overcome
You continue to be strong
You continue to rise
© Seductive Poetry
Spoken Word Version :: https://youtu.be/xGzGQ-8tSGM
Jan 21, 2021
Jan 21, 2021 at 2:26 PM UTC
My Prize for Waiting
~
*tucked in all by myself,
resting dark and quiet
in the thin place^
where the distance between
this world and the next,
is no distance at all,
but a few inches separating,
easily fordable, back and forth-able
my palms, hands down,
come to rest on my *******
and the two thumbs in unison,
begin to sweep the streaming space of their in-between,
conducting a radar sweep-search for the precise point
passageway to poetic mystical places,
hoping to snag any residuals for safekeeping
no hurry to either arrive or depart,
in patient attendance for
rhythms of woven word arrivistes,
coming in no particular order,
asking to be seized, greedy to be
nominated and recognized, immortalized,
as great poetry, prize worthy,
kept for all time inside others poetry chests
but in the thin place,
dream records are not kept,
hazy scraps at best retained,
a recipe for a witnessed totality,
is only a soupy reduction of a
few seconds of hazed video,
that can neither give nor get
no satisfaction
the plastic surgeons attempt to reconstruct
the body of the meal, the real deal,
alas, there are no prizes either
for botched surgeries and pretty but meaningless
poetry scraps
the only evidence of my travels,
a flushing, blushing residual flow,
slow to dissipate, a hangover makers mark
of a sojourn best described as unsatisfying,
my blush, a prize for waiting but failing,
“the most peculiar and most human of all expressions”^^
woe to me when returned in ignominy,
medaled in only base irony,
me and philosopher Pliny,^^^
both dying while recording our own private Vesuvius,
our bodies preserved by voluminous volcanic ash,
but alas, you cannot recite the ash of poetry
so one waits, cut and pasting brown edged
burnt photographs epistles,
that are clinging and clung to the distaff spindle,
insufficient to weave a flax complete
and yet we return perforce twenty four hours from now,
to snag another prized piece of meaningless,
my prize for waiting
in the solitude of the thin place*
3:35am Saturday April 6th, 2019
~
last nights scrap
***cease your whining,
seize your waiting,
therein is your own paid price
for the prize of inspiration***
inspired by Jean Fisher,
a real prize winning poet
Apr 6, 2019
Apr 6, 2019 at 4:26 AM UTC
Under the bluish yellow marble sky
I introduce my soul;
to the demon & the angels
By the lemons tree, I've unleashed my hair and unbutton my blouse
Then cried
as if my teacher called me the black girl
I will call to the 1st passing girl:
"Slow down, please wait for me;
Rise me up by my arms
like a little girl.
I wanted her to Plait 2 branches;
of hair for me
To walk over the world's cold grass
And lie down in front of the sea
Forget the stars - she said
Forget the sea - I said
We left the world coughing its smoke;
of poisoned kids' toys,
cast the residuals of cosmetics and tore bras
Into this sacred sea
So come with me my friend
Delete all of my contacts
smash my mobile phone by your shoe's heel
And let's vanish
from this world
Toward shiny white space
Toward inky smell books
Toward white skies and pink kisses
infinite daylight
For you and for me.
- Sally S. Ali
Jan 21, 2019
Jan 21, 2019 at 6:00 PM UTC
I'm a rap game prodigy
irony like Socrates
that I could spit this philosophy
so flawlessly.
Unmatched like I'm scalene-
scaling my way to the top
so high like I'm a scaffolding
go ahead fold and scowl at me
and watch me cackle sarcastically-
while I tell the masses to become appealing
the apple of my eye is hip-hop do you feel me?
Massive attacks while the males become *****
and subject to the ways of misogyny
oh **** here we go again, this bothers me
what? equality?
Misuse the muse and move through your mind
makeshift mammals mimmicking media monkeys
no wonder half the world's a ******
like you when you see-
the way I spit so fluently
second language, feel the anguish
anger within me resentment
followed by residuals
the world is red and we're all cruel
consumed by corporate corruption
no function left to the fiction of fascism
so fasten your seat-belts and see me belt
way more than 16sixteens, it's sickening
how sick this flow can be so ambiguous
hip-hop is bigger than us-
it's luck, it's lust-
it's a **** you when there's a lack of trust-
it's **** it's love
it's touch, it's ****
it's drugs and grudges
and beef and *******
it's empowerment, cowards
and records strictly to deflower.
it's appreciation and admiration
and it at one point shook the entire nation-
i'm complacent at the placement of this prophecy
that hip-hop has engrained into me
I'm grateful for the grandfather's
and the sons and the daughters
the step-fathers and mother *******
cut throat music industry
if you don't **** with hip-hop you don't **** with me.
*****
Jul 22, 2015
Jul 22, 2015 at 11:31 AM UTC
Transactions have redundant residuals
The remnants of commerce and trade
In pockets the small dust of currency
The left over cash of price paid
The clinking froth of things purchased
The metal remains of exchange
the leavings of costs and desire
the chinking bulk of loose change
It fits in you grasp like genitals
Warm, round with a vague sense of sin
What used to be golden and silver
Is now mainly nickel and tin
We are tired of the weight in our pockets
We are shamed by the drag of its need
For if it should fall from our fingers
We forsake our grace for our greed
For there is something quite reassuring
When you empty your pockets at night
You glimpse a glance of old memories
The sixpence of childhood’s delight
Jul 4, 2014
Jul 4, 2014 at 1:48 AM UTC
here is something that is easy to forget
yet somehow so difficult
to find and recognize
the lights of the brightest stars you've met
are sometimes mere residuals
of unsaid goodbyes
Nov 8, 2021
Nov 8, 2021 at 5:40 PM UTC
Ah yes,
fresh starts,
like
fresh white sheets meeting
fresh black newspapers,
doomed to the inevitability,
groomed for the probability,
that their intersection
will be
newsprint contamination,
a black and white
condemnation,
So, a clarification:
this poem,
just like this moment,
a black and white surrogation,
a seventh day progeny
a sabbath moment,
must and will
and by definition,
be explained as an
interlocutory.^
fated to be
jubilee ended,
a pre and post
sabbatical
of but a
minute,
by law and custom,
destined to go up
in a smoking trinity of
white flame,
red wine,
and a cloud of
myrrh and salt incense.
Sigh with me.
Join in and
inhabit my eyes,
enjoy the unsullied
white blanket
of fresh snow
that humanizes my insights,
and for this moment,
share my peace,
my unedged relief that
the levees have broken
and I am awash in
waves of drifted snowflakes composed
of salt sanctified water
I may be thin and
clarified,
but my visions are still
less than limitless,
my sabbath poems
are but
momentary evaporated residuals of melted snowflakes, heretofore, salty tears, that become
rivers
that become
oceans,
upon which no
Poet-Envisionary
can truly walk,
see his tomorrows,
or even,
especially even,
his past days,
with perfect
clarity
Nov 16, 2013
Nov 16, 2013 at 10:01 AM UTC
Like blades of grass
Each is unique
Despite differences in appearance
Each does, important words, speak...
The assembly of the parts
Makes up a whole object
Whose abilities reach beyond
What one might expect
By observing each part seperately...
Thus, the lawn health and pleasing
Tensions and concerns, easing
Each blade performs its duty
To enhance the lawn's enduring beauty...
Each of us in the human breed
Helps fulfill the every need
Of a world of unique individuals
Finding great residuals
Like the lawn.
Nov 11, 2010
Nov 11, 2010 at 8:10 AM UTC
a human tool, a drawing pencil, shedding snakeskin cells as
lead from no. 2 pencil
am **** and blood, skin and hairless,
all-to-come-to-go,
return retuned, at their own chosen speed,
gen of regeneration of disrupted oils and heavenly blessings,
morning cracks and orifices, filling and emptying obediently,
to the tidings of the grieving gravity of my moon’s decisions
that govern the lunatic cycle
you may kiss me with all your heart unto a robust welcoming,
scorn with spittle and deem unfit,
I know the difference and it is inconsequential
see me as combustible or flat, airless and empty,
as a new or a two day old leaking birthday balloon, or a haiku
that makes the reader gasp for the reasoning for breathing
think of me as a meme who responds to the touch of
your nippled forefinger, but my powers are unlisted,
therefore unlimited
for I am neither cyber or cypher though aesthetically they
appear as parts of my humanity, a human machine
forever reprogramming to new stimuli sensating,
the temperature of your breath, the many odors of you
as inputs that bear newborn children notions in
my chested gas chambers, the belligerent bellum bellies of my brain
my digital describe in thousands of computers do hide,
but to comprehend the interacting calculations that are
my constancy and my inconsistencies, you must make a tour
if you are awake between midnight and dawn when from
wells the visions, the fluids - the words are drawn
they, the residuals of a man’s *********** with
other humans, kin akin, and the thriving discourse between l,
man and parental gods of invisible powers, that offers insanity
as a viable solution, to cracking the codex human DNA
in the vial labelled Medusa
Who else?
Dec 18, 2017
Dec 18, 2017 at 10:24 PM UTC
human revelations in our sleep poses
she sleeps with both arms back, murmuring,
flung over her hearing head,
as if she is surrendering
nightly
me slip away for a few, only to find
her left hand ****** by her arm crook'd,
fit to her temple, as if to bear the weighty weight
of a heavy head plein des thoughts, dream-mares, tales and talks,
too dense to contemplate
without assistance,
armed support to hold on, hold up,
fighting/ accepting as a unwanted outcomes
or retrying old misdeeds
(no, no, oops, that’s me)
stirring,
she swift motions/crisscrosses her arms into an X,
a human parts tiara atop, on blond tresses, that fully messes
any remaining daytime efforts and her nighttime wild dancing^
no one reveals me,
none inform on me what positions
my containership adapts, adopts when my woke-guards
are dismissed/released and
lay unprepared to disguise my innermosts exposures
ow, early am resting comfortable with a six poem-pack of
slept hours on my tool belt,
so far this weekend one shot fired before the day officially
is belle rung and these poses thoughts
are upon what my eyes alight
can’t decide if knowing how I dance in the bed at night,
reflationary, deflationary, worth fact facing,
for this is no secret
*my sleep hours are colored,
admixture of moving pictures,
punctuated with
stills of past and future,
the poses
of how to greet, were greeted,
withstood upheld ran from wept, murdered,
faced up, faced down, go unrecorded
and the
poems residuals
and the
poem prophesying-
both!
fearful confessions for acts
committed and foretold*
Decision: I don’t want to know
May 26, 2018
May 26, 2018 at 12:35 PM UTC
for my dad
I crack myself up,
twice
once, at the doctor's office,
a steady stream of me~repartee
made the waiting room, the warring harried receptionist,
and ultimately herr doktor, his royal himself, as well,
somewhere combobulated, somewhere beware and between chuckling to uproarious clutching their sides,
and many stations/gradations in between
finally the teary eyed doc inquired not how
but why I do it,
well, replied I,
somewhat of a family tradition,
doing waiting room shtick,
because the sound of infectious laughter,
fills in the cracks quite nicely
where you cut me open, and also drains away
the deposits of chemotherapy poisoned sinful residuals
just a tad quicker,
and that is why I crack myself up first,
when I boldly look in the mirror and
laugh at the silly scarecrow I have become
Jul 18, 2017
Jul 18, 2017 at 6:44 PM UTC
This isn’t so much giving up
As it is the shedding of weight
He kneels down in a bedroom that isn’t his
He sleeps on borrowed furniture
Elbows on the edge of a twin bed
He wishes there was a body there
Any body
There are some things he needs to let go
There is always going to be a girl with your heart
And your veins wrapped around her fingers
Curling up her arms
Like vines on a trellis
Let her go
He knows that being good looking is 20 percent physical
The rest is all you
Sometimes weird things make him sad
That’s cool
Anything your body does without your permission
Is natural
You’re human
Get over it
Get over
The cancerous residuals
And the fear of silence
Between two people
When all you want to do is stare
Stare if you want to
Be charming
He knows he can be charming
If he smiles right
If remembers to be honest
Be honest with me
Lonely boy
Fearful stranger to self
Little lover of the things that get left behind
Admire the broken patchwork of your poetry
You are not a naysayer
You are a yes man
Yes
Hesitant kisses
Yes
Knee buckle trembles
Yes
Loving with the lights on
With the fire burning
Say yes to the breaking
You are not being broken
You are refining your badly built artwork
Molding your eyes less somber
Do not be somber sweet child
Stand like gravity is your slave
Bow down to nothing
Unless you want to
There are some things that require kneeling
Your knees are sacred
Use them only to make things better
To show honor
To shed weight
He knows this is not giving up
As much as it is shedding enough weight
So he can stand again
Mar 5, 2012
Mar 5, 2012 at 4:40 PM UTC
Losing your mind
a molecule at a time ?
Or are we just part of the God brain
and maybe part maker
of his omnipotent thought .
Maybe we are partial sums
in a gigantic cosmic particle bank .
Maybe we are residuals
of a burned out atomic sun
on perpetual percentages
ever since we have begun .
We dare to dream dreams
that can never come true .
So we pick up the pieces of our dreams
and say ,"Oh well , reality will have to do ."
Jan 25, 2015
Jan 25, 2015 at 8:06 PM UTC
The most enchanting of views grasped my conscience by simultaneous never-ending palpitations that slowly but surely circulated through the darkest & most deepest of gardens...
Far and away within those unique datum of charming beats...thousands of charms began to reveal like fireworks in the Sky...
It is an essence that travels so deeply into the air, that the air itself can't help but consume the remaining of the trace it leaves behind with each stroke...
That's the energy that wonders in the air for so long that I can't help myself but not captivate the residuals of the purity of its existence...
It is what it does to me day in...between...and out....
Aug 28, 2017
Aug 28, 2017 at 12:32 AM UTC
The Lost Letter of Love-
The thunder of the busy street makes love to the vicious voices that plague my mind. Reminisce of a forgotten love still shower my inner most thoughts. Passion that once overwhelmed my life is now my reason for exhaust. The shimmers that once lit my ambition and drive now hang lightless, darker than the deepest secret. Yet the frequency of lost desire still induces the most intoxicating substance. Arms grow weary caressing forgotten times, the tears that once grew a river, are now dry beds of torment. The beautiful dawn plays in coalition with the residuals of a distant song. “Goodbye my lover” plays in harmony with the neglect of reality. Not facing demons yet displaying affection to them. Indulging in virtues once restricted by political propaganda. I am her vicious vendetta, her thoughtlessness, her absence. I lay on a bed of needles enjoying the aguish, suffering in satisfaction. The destructive thought of deserving such a decisive decision allows my mind to become a rag of lost emotion, wiping tears from the concaved steps that once bread a whirlwind of radical love. A canvas stained recklessness paints a picture of a destined solitude. No regret orchestrates a symphony of percussions, streaming beautiful sound through the hills of total regret. Awake becomes second nature, slumber slumbers with the lack of motivation to ignite the calm. Insomnia hums in a melody so righteous that the religion becomes the man. A hollow shell of broken ambition sway in the wind of self desire. The cries of the night become intoned with the cries of truth. Instinct maps the course of self-withered illusion, illuminating the “why us” cause. A foundation of happiness holds the weight of a pessimistic engagement. While optimistic scavengers prey on the depths of endless souls. Disappointment rectifies all signatures of a so-called love. Remembering a once forgotten future claims its stakes as the eternal right. The moon holds desperate for the fortune of the unfortunate son. Unsettled disputes, take a toll on broken bodies. Broken wills dance in the limelight ignoring the forgotten pain, a laugh of retribution becomes one with inexplicit content. While saying “I love you” becomes that of explicit context, searching for the meaning between the lines. The lost letter of love shapes like the clouds in the sky only resembling something it never can be.
RICHARD ITSKOVICH
Jul 28, 2010
Jul 28, 2010 at 2:05 PM UTC
i'm just angry that you
made me bitter about love
Dec 23, 2016
Dec 23, 2016 at 8:56 PM UTC
not a hurried act,
but a bloodied one,
nonetheless...
yes,
the residuals
are two bodies,
for the price of one(!),
that once, twice
exhumed,
give off
no trace of human
fume
what you don't know can't hurt you...
what?
that is a summary of the case;
the motive, the weapon, and
the scene of the crime, all the sane
the raison d'être...or not to be...
that is the
question,
and the answer..
the why, the how
passion was murdered,
ease on down, each other...
daily,
they ****** each other
to the death,
on crosses,
side by side,
like a semi-detached house,
with holes aplenty bleeding into
each other, their only
diminished capacity attachment
you still don't get it? ****
look at your parent's marriage
now you get it?
a twenty year, slow bloodletting
each day a drop dripped from
a nail hole just a millimeter inserted deeper
passion is a slow dying
thing,
that two do
to each other
a sanguine sang-froid slow motion
killing,
that stretches out over the years
like black nylons used as a ski mask
pretty, and ugly and
disguising
and disgusting
and all at once,
a dissipation
a dissolving
a double homicide
by languid immolation
**a crucification of a fiction,
a crucifixion of passion**
Mar 3, 2015
Mar 3, 2015 at 11:55 PM UTC
As the sunlight makes it way
Around the window shades
I tell myself it’s just a dream
And I can’t let it haunt me.
I have to be the one you see
To prove I’m not that nightmare
That echos in my deepest mind
And poisons yet another day.
ljm
Mar 17, 2023
Mar 17, 2023 at 1:27 PM UTC
you’re a shy hiss
her voice echoes, whispers through the
stringy hair of green overgrown grass
I’m not the sister you knew all those years ago
the gods have been dangerous to me
in the city of root rot in between the cashmere sweaters
you stole from heaven, from shopping windows
the harvest is unfinished, as the gladiolas bow in prayers
for the follies underneath my petticoat
you wanted the birds to sing but now they scream
for the arrival of summer in the veins I consider
abused blue but have always been crimson sugar
I want to reach out and hold your hand
but it’s foreign now, the youth like creeping vines
that we clung to have vanished
leaving residuals of a wasteland that we once considered
home, manicured to remind you the letters you
threw out of your mouth from the roofs of
sunset apartments
the drugs you hid in the eye sockets of boys
that would eventually be murdered in ally streets
in downtown LA
adulthood didn’t come in a red box
it came as mother death, knocking her meaty hand
on the door, uninvited and unintentional
as she rubs her temples with the bones of
the misguided
I’m grown don’t you know, you exclaim
I know the difference between the red rose
and the sick serpent underneath it
sure the children would think you crazy before
but when you talk about the rats always clawing
at night at the ceiling of your mouth
you know to laugh, you know that the wallpaper isn’t
shifting for everyone but it’s the gift of
knowing that there’s always two sides of things
that keeps you grounded
in the ever shifting quicksand of this moderate
temperature room for the easy living
Jun 7, 2017
Jun 7, 2017 at 4:33 PM UTC
We Are So Lightly Here
“So come, my friends, be not afraid, we are so lightly here
It is in love that we are made, in love we disappear
Though all the maps of blood and flesh are posted on the door
There’s no one who has told us yet what Boogie Street is for”
Leonard Cohen “Boogie Street”
<~>
my body, my eyes, my entirety, tattooed, with a city map,
here, at this exact place, our eyes glanced, our eyes closed,
who among us does not possess such a living guide,
memories presented in a 3-D versions, constantly edited.
placed your hand on my privacy, bid you enter, not a dare,
more an invitation to risk, become a true love of mine,
share exhilaration, desert valleys that pockmark unexpectedly,
changes us to we, regresses, you and me, post-survivalists cut.
2 gather, modify highs/lows, meet & peaking@peculiar tunes,
ever embraces residuals a sour film upon our lips, a puzzling,
what excites, pacifies, returns us street corner, X’d our map,
glances exchanged across an empty street, seeing each, not.
Jun 28, 2021
Jun 28, 2021 at 10:48 AM UTC
The neon sign spills its gawdy giggle
Into the city’s dark inclination,
piercing sometimes but more often creating
rainbow shadows hiding and highlighting the ***** street.
casting an embrace on dross strewn
of the day’s measure ended,
a smirk, a smile, a guffaw.
The ***** of the city’s life, residuals cast, spent
Nursed by the light’s smile
The ***** street humors, suckled
Tis morrows sunrise’s offerings.
Feb 25, 2017
Feb 25, 2017 at 8:23 PM UTC
Sinking,
the drifting ceiling of blue and grey light
illuminating the ride.
Suffocating,
grasping for something, anything,
A light in the dark,
the eternal fading,
the last residuals of the cold falling away,
And then the transitory returns.
The golden sun, wind kissed waves,
and a weather beaten hand catching yours,
a call, joyful, echoed the gull high above,
as safety brings the glow of liberty.
Jun 18, 2018
Jun 18, 2018 at 2:38 PM UTC
Last night, they tried to teach me
to tango and waltz
at the YMHA
on 92nd Street and Lex.
Am here to report
made it out alive,
creaks and internal croaking
are the residuals
I'm getting, in spades, paid.
why they tried,
why they let me in,
a wonder opus mystery,
but someone must be the
teacher's ****
and my mounded ****
a wonder opus de la o'pus.
did not they know
I leap,
make crazy eights,
two-step fly unbridled,
make mouths open gape,
when flying round,
box step, shift weight,
en trance Viennese high society,
when ten dancing writing fingers
pen these little voyeuristic recipes for
noodling cup-of-poem soups.
besides, the YM in YMHA
stands for young men's
and everybody knows,
I am just a
big baby.
Apr 11, 2014
Apr 11, 2014 at 12:17 AM UTC
am a human tool, a drawing pencil, shedding skin cells and lead from the no. 2 pencil in my saliva
am **** and blood, skin and hair, all come-go, return re-tuned,
at their own chosen speed, gen of regeneration
am cracks and orifices, filling and emptying obediently,
to the tidings of the grieving gravity of my moon's decisions
that govern the lunatic cycle
you may kiss me with all your heart into a robust welcoming,
scorn me with spittle and deem unfit, I know the difference
and it is inconsequential
am, see me as combustible or flat, airless and empty,
as a new or a two day old birthday balloon, or an abbreviated haiku, that makes the reader gasp for the reasoning for breathing
think of me as a meme who responds to the touch of your
nippled forefinger, but my powers are unlisted, therefore unlimited
for I am neither cyber or cypher though aesthetically they
appear as parts of my humanity, a human machine
forever reprogramming to new stimuli sensulating, such as
the temperature of your breath, the many disparate odors of you,
the curve of your eyes, the wetness of moist places
inputs that bear emergent newborn children notions in my
chested cavernous gas chambers, the bellum bellies of my brain
my digital describe in thousands of computers do hide,
but to comprehend the interacting calculations that are
my constancy and my inconsistencies, you must make a tour
if you are awake between midnight ~ dawn when from wells,
the visions, the fluids and the words are drawn
they,
the residuals of a man's *********** between
other humans, akin, and the thriving discourse between
man and gods of invisible powers,
that offers insanity
as a viable solution, to cracking the coded human DNA,
we exchange in silence from need,
to translate ourselves
to each other
Feb 2, 2019
Feb 2, 2019 at 8:48 AM UTC