"sardonic" poems
she is outspoken and bold
bold like the sun
bolder than an army of boulders
falling from a hillside
she is an avalanche
when there is nowhere left to run
she is despised by some
and others wish to fill her
with some old fashioned whisky
i am sanctified by her ways
and returned to my former glory
as this poem has tasted far better days
she is a morning glory
her eyes are like the petals of a flower
she is the Wordsworth of the decade
a wordsmith dancing in her own decay
i am essentially a target
a lost projectile in the arrow's path
she has coaxed me back to sanity
with her sardonic gestures
and her sarcastic use of wit
i am a nitwit she said
so i laugh and pick the flowers from her hair
slowly and soporifically
i am seaweed adrift in her bonnet
sandpaper scattered along the shoreline
remove the blind spectacles
and eat the lines i’ve written
a poem is just a candle anyway
to spray the eyes of infinity with lightning
mars is retrograde regardless
so i’ll just sit here and pretend
that i’m not too much of a target for her beauty
Jul 23, 2018
Jul 23, 2018 at 3:05 PM UTC
a september bride her hollow sounds
fearfully echo on the leaf strewn trail
with intonations of a blushing bride to be
she makes a graceful vision
obscured only by her hamfisted collection
of undesirable father figures
who stand round the groom and brow beat
him with dire dreams
but his eyes are for her alone and
the tigers of her sensual rainforest
"lions, tigers and bears...oh my!" she whispers
into his eager ear with a sardonic grin
her hollow sounds both haunting and beautiful
they will stay with me as a soulsong
long after history has devoured her
namesake and words
a quick poet of the three line shoot from the hip haiku
pink glossy eyes all damp with remembered tears
she is the quintessential september bride
the long summer nights swayed her
the longer cold winter may undo her
but it is a girlhood dream that
she knits with papier-mâché knights and
bubblegum queens
she waits for me there
to officiate the proceedings
with a bottle of red wine and single red rose
wrapped in the tender notions of
loves sweetest kiss
Aug 25, 2014
Aug 25, 2014 at 4:55 PM UTC
“Congratulations
You managed being five feet above the ground”
Said a man who
Can’t contain a slight, sardonic sound
The situation:
He’s reading eating magazines from the coast of Spain
And yelling himself blue
For the jeepney won’t hurry in the pouring rain
He smashed his head on the glass
Wishing for a train
It nearly cracked / but his
New cadence sounded quite sane
“Congratulations
You took five before you smoked the first one down”
Said a man who
Complimented me for sinking above the ground
“It’s estimation
I might trip before a wheel enters our lane”
I yelled the truth
At this moment, his presence started to stain
A boat that had already passed us
Yelled, “All aboard!”
We weren’t sure it would float
But it had a great deal of cords
Then we clambered on
There was a myriad of golden spades
Two for every buried fool
That was forced to stay
The stench was concealed
By the satisfied old man
A woman muttered
That she was headed to Queensland
A driver viciously flung his arms
Into the air, in apt alarm
The intersection’s volley
Aimed for the starboard
Everyone reached for the mast,
Hoping to soar
“Congratulations
You nodded off before the lights started to blare”
Said a man who
Lied, ostentatiously impaired
I’m at the station
Then, I noticed to my side was a golden *****
I dug myself through
The mahogany and got on with my day
In the rain
Oct 8, 2018
Oct 8, 2018 at 2:34 PM UTC
Control
Like love
Is indifferent
To race, color or age
I see upright monkeys
With honed, lunatic, pestilent
Expressions
Around endless corners
living out-
and hosing down somberly-
Frequency dreams
Battery life sputter drains
that whip with sardonic torment-
Beat with blood-bathed smiles
Laughing to slow vertiginous rhythm
in captivating faces
Take, take, take-
To receive such
an empty promise
And I've lost interest
in this silent war
We've constructed
so dizzily
Feb 18, 2015
Feb 18, 2015 at 4:22 PM UTC
Checkered choices rise some nights,
play chess with all my frightful failings.
Queen's Pawn to Rook 5.
Nail my footsteps
to the concrete season.
I'm losing pieces it seems.
I'm a sardonic grinner
and under these eyebrows, it's nuclear winter.
Wending my way through the last
three years, I find no release valve.
The pressure will build and place
its long arm along my shoulder,
pull me far from my friends.
One.
Two.
One.
Two.
Step
by step
by hammer blow step
a story is crafted, installed with a lock
in a circular book.
Queen's Pawn to Ryman Street
1:45 a.m.
simmering skin over ice armored innards,
the freezing rain sends up my curses
like steam
clouding off of my shoulders
and into the skyline.
I've castled my way out of checkmate questions.
Not my move to make,
so I won't life a finger.
Queen's Pawn to front doorstep,
then straight on to bed.
Mar 2, 2015
Mar 2, 2015 at 11:22 PM UTC
When it comes to sadness,
let yourself cry.
Lock yourself in your room
and let no one hear you.
You only get a day.
When you've finally worn your heart out
to a state of excruciating numbness,
Stop.
stop. ******* crying.
Now act like your heart
is only used for pumping blood.
It demands to be felt.
Ignore it.
Act like a *****
Act as though nothing gets to you.
Sardonic smiles are your armour.
Sarcastic replies are your weapon.
Wield it without care.
Wield it as thought you don't give a ****
about who you hurt.
You care too much, and that is your flaw.
Flaws were meant to be hidden.
Dec 9, 2014
Dec 9, 2014 at 10:14 AM UTC
I notice you the moment I walk in
You, however, don't give a ****
Looking at your pretty little associates
Giggling over some inane matter
While you sit like you are
Some kind of holy,
With a shit-eating grin
On your face. Your attention
Doesn't waver from them
I walk inside, intensely tired
Gone insane with all the fake-
grins and the somewhat awkward
Fun we all had. Your attention
Doesn't waver from your papers
Your precious little papers
I note, with a sardonic grin
I close my eyes and simply
Don't care any more as I
Strip out of my clothes
Chuck off my stupid heels
And fall on the bed, letting
Out a sigh of relief, comfort
Finally, I get to relax
My spine relaxes but it tingles
With awareness of the
Audience. I open my eyes
My vision blurry from over-use
I meet his gaze across the room
He keeps staring
Disconcerted and too weary to deal
With his mood-swings, I close my eyes
And bury my face in the pillow
My head is hurting, it is pounding
And I am at the end of my rope
He comes with slow, languid strides
Makes me sit-up, hands over the flask
Filled with water, my name engraved
On the cap, and a pamphlet of Aspirin
I praise the medical wonders
As I knock it down and lie on the bed again
I can feel it acting its magic
My nerves are loosening out
My head is being quietened bit by bit
As my vision blackens, I notice his
Face, eyes, expression
Strangely, something looks
Like longing on his face
Oct 14, 2012
Oct 14, 2012 at 10:16 AM UTC
It feels good first
That punch you throw
Powered with adrenalin
Triumph! you crow
Losing control
Each threat you shout
Driving Emotion prevails
Anger has clout
Primal howling
I cannot speak
A volatile Damnation
Beneath my feet
A fiend unleashed
A dark winged thing
Wrenching the curtain aside
Madness is king
You’ve crossed the line
There is no doubt
Dimensions of cruelty
Madness wins out
No forgiveness
The devil cheers
Waylaid in selfish desires
Demonic fears
Fear holds its breath
Sardonic gloom
Too turbulent to control
Foreboding doom
Peace is exiled
No looking back
Thrusts of heartless violence
Repression hacked
Paradise lost
Cherished hatred
Surging over boundaries
Nothing sacred
Stuff of nightmares
Robs me of sleep
Letting go with a vengeance
Monster’s relief
I cannot bear
This heavy weight
Id’s inner realm
Desolate hate
Transcendence shows
All states of thought
Each a world unto itself
Not shaken off
Silence that grudge
Revenge aint sweet
It turns back on you like a
Missile seeks heat
Nov 10, 2018
Nov 10, 2018 at 2:50 PM UTC
There are many things that I am
Cynical and sarcastic
Sardonic and witty
Lazy and nostalgic
But one thing that I am not
Is yours
Sep 23, 2013
Sep 23, 2013 at 6:05 PM UTC
I stepped out,
finally, a terrestrial in Istanbul.
My leveled shoulders carried
an empty satchel of undone buckles
To let every fresh sip of raw experience
tumble inside,
my adventures impatiently plucked
from the closest branch
of a banyan tree bearing
a crisscross of endless tales.
I rescued my lungs with air,
thick with resentment while
swallowing astringent flavored symphonies
and ballads of orchestrated ruckus as
women deflated their lungs
blowing out antipathy, through high pitched whistles -
A forgotten kettle blowing off steam.
Adorned in scorn, sardonic welcoming mats lined the airport.
Women pushed at their car horns as if the dragging sound,
like a severing saw can cut through
the tenacity of the ones with innate ear plugs.
They have become obsolete traffic signals -
First, their green light diminishes - like their wages
Then, their red light is dimmed -
it stops too many people in their footsteps.
And thus the world just races past them,
And they are left only with yellow -
Telling them to slow down.
They said it was an act of love.
That their plumped crimson lips,
Glossily complimented with nails
that matched the tails,
of the so-called mile high club
was just too much to handle.
Priming for work meant neglecting their love
for the perfect shade of watermelon lipstick,
No more sweet ketchup fingertips
Showing you the emergency exits. No more,
lipstick stained glasses
of a self made woman.
These cumulating lip kissed glasses
stack up like trophies,
that sway in the heavy panting
of the ones who can’t keep up with this generation.
So the women gracefully conducted the orchestra
and through lipstick stained whistles,
They tried to drown out the dogmatic policies
And with unrelenting strife,
they passed on some advide
stop shattering our liberties
And underminining our abilities for
Endless possibilities.
Because we are the ones
Who fly high and soar
And we will always
look fabulous
while doing it.
Aug 5, 2013
Aug 5, 2013 at 7:45 AM UTC
The yucca plant from my mother’s garden sits
unattended and on the verge of death next to her
eldest rose bush, now wildly overgrown and lightly
blushing in the cosset of the midmourning sun. Its
withered rosettes droop down to its bed of maroon-stained stones
in crisp, harum-scarum patterns as if the plant is spending its life
like currency trying to touch its toes. I oftentimes
find myself wondering if the reason behind this
slow rotting of mother dearest’s garden is hidden within her
five-year absence. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say
her nursery missed the d
i
g
g
i
n
g
of her weathered hands.
She was the biosphere of my world; I suppose that
it only makes sense for the earth to match my thirst. We
sit side by side, that yucca plant and I, as we struggle to
nod our heads towards daylight while we rise on
the side of the house that is more or less
cloaked in shadow; the side that she would sunbathe
on during scorching late afternoons. Perhaps without her
body giving shelter, all her garden is doomed to
atrophy like muscle in the sunlight.
I find irony in the way that my mother’s favored plant
was the “ghost in the graveyard;” a perverted parallel
to the game that she never wanted us to play. I think it to be
sort of sardonic that her pride swallowed the possibility of
a cure being found within that ****** plant’s roots. She,
a third generation American girl,
had blood as muddled as the mud
that buried that yucca’s heart.
The boundary line between Mother and
nature coalesces into one:
Gaea
six feet under
melting into soil
I hope she becomes seawater.
Apr 5, 2014
Apr 5, 2014 at 1:41 AM UTC
The chorus of Katy Perry's song "unconditionally" is written in the future tense. "I will love you unconditionally." This implies that current circumstances preclude love. In other words, her love is subject to conditions.
She goes on to suggest "open up your heart and let it begin."
In other words, her love will become available if and when the subject decides to receive and/or reciprocate it. This sounds like the opposite of unconditional love.
She also repeats many times "there is no fear now." Irregardless of whether she is referring to herself or the subject of her affection, it sounds like there is in fact a lot of fear insecurity and reluctance on both sides. Perhaps this was supposed to highlight the wishful thinking of a person in this situation. Perhaps this whole song is a sardonic analysis of unhealthy, obsessive, unrequited love and how difficult it is to be objective under these conditions. Or maybe Katy Perry doesn't care that her young female fan base will listen to this song and see nothing unreasonable about it. Or maybe it's like the movie Shrek where it's fun for the kids but also has some elements that only adults will understand. Maybe Katy Perry is a gifted lyricist allowing millions of people with different amounts of life experience to listen to her songs and all hear a different message. Maybe the apparent banality of her music actually allows it to function as a sort of mental mirror, forcing people to confront their inner most thoughts. Maybe that's why her music is so popular, because everyone hears it as a harmonious duet between Katy Perry and themselves. Maybe Katy Perry is like a cool kid that's introducing us to ourselves, telling us that we're cool too. Maybe, all of her listeners, whether fans or not, have been enriched by her music.
Or maybe it's just ****** pop that has been marketed very effectively.
Oct 24, 2013
Oct 24, 2013 at 10:26 PM UTC
We're washing in
On waves we ride
on the Crimson Tide
Washing up
Drying out
it'll be alright--
Six pack Pacifico, it's all sympatico
and copasetic
but it's so pathetic
you're living hermetic
You can't even smell the trees.
It's an age--or it's becoming--
one of reckless living
and sin forgiving
Finding time to be alone
I'm not alone
I know
Just one out of millions
Cover streets and subjects and bare midriffs
pull sardonic smiles tight
Disagreements turn to fights
but not on my watch
not on my watch
not on my
WATCH WHAT I CAN DO!
The Stupendous Calamari,
that is what they call me
'cause just
watch what I can't do!--
Got eight long arms
And no axe to grind
Six-pack Pacifico, that still leaves two, you know
One to pick up
One to dial
Tell you you were right
Five to put away the empties
One to save one for tomorrow,
For the Crimson Tide
But you never liked
Never liked that movie much.
And anyway
Time to take some time to
take some time
I got some time for drying out.
Nov 5, 2012
Nov 5, 2012 at 7:34 PM UTC
Settle down
I'm sinking in
to this dingy motel tub.
Stain the water
with the paint
from my sardonic, smiling face
now, babe, I got a flower in my hatband and
a sloshing bottle in my white gloved hand.
Do you think we'll still be laughing
in the morning...?
Blinking lights and bleary eyes
in a neon wash for a bloodshot lifetime,
and a swallow
is all I wanna take.
Besides, I'm still holding the bag.
Puddle up
pull the plug
colors circle 'round the drain
Pollute the night
with a laugh
from inside this facepaint bath.
And, babe, I been swirled 'round the world's full glass
and, for a bit, I guess, it was a helluva gas
but, ya know,
nobody makes it in the end...
so where's the joke end or begin?
Reddened nose and ***** jokes.
Life's a vacation, I'm a pig in a poke
and a mouthful
is all I need to take...
We all get left holding the bag.
Mar 26, 2015
Mar 26, 2015 at 8:49 PM UTC
With the piquant poignancy of lurid allusion
I create a dynamically progressive matrix of collusion
Whose apex crux axis is beyond finite solution
And the endergonicaly adhesive pragmatics imbue a cohesively coercive illusion
For the inveterate hypotaxis of livid elusions
I portray a protensive conjunction of latent confusions
Whose effervescent effluence is vagile laconic effusions
And the sardonic impending preponderance conveys sabbat consortium delusions
From the endemic puissance of eclectic synectics
I derive a dialectically semantic sorcery of syntactics
Whose apothegm aphorisms are levity terse synaptics
And the lucidly collusive illuminism educes the aesthetics of geomancy's fatidic
Through the viable salience of kithe’s intrinsics
I exude a portentous pervasion acuity of linguistics
Whose apomixis anabolics are irrefragably felicitous orotund acoustics
And the aural auspice austerities infer axioms of manumission’s eidetics
By the hypercritical mitigations of anachronistic sociology
I purvey rampart ransack oblations of epistemology
Whose azure opulence articulations are futurity ostensive ontology
And the evolutional ontogeny metamorphisms incur a homogeny epiphany deontology
Oct 20, 2016
Oct 20, 2016 at 10:30 PM UTC
We hobble along with outrage fatigue
And watch as nothing ever exhausts
Our Machiavellian leaders' use
Of the media to win at all costs.
False story lines prevail.
To hell with accuracy and precision.
Sowing distrust of higher learning
Solidifies their paranoid vision.
Watch how their destructive disdain
For expertise gains vitality
As people's opinions and feelings stomp
On any form of objective reality.
Watch as they rewrite history;
Notice how data can be erased
As they become suspicious of much
Information that's science-based.
Language becomes weaponized:
Hyperbole, salacious lies,
And slippery superlatives
Celebrate truth's demise.
Party loyalty: that is key.
All that matters is the sale.
Hijacking democracy
Becomes the goal: the holy grail.
Mobilized by grievance, they
Inflame fear and anger. They hope
That we will find scapegoats to blame
When we are at the end of our rope.
A general illiteracy
On issues that affect our lives
Keeps us all in doubt while they
Create fake news and sharpen their knives.
Ah, how they want you to fear
Government, which is ironic,
For they themselves are government.
Look at their smiles, cold and sardonic.
Give equal weight to both
Sides of arguments, they say.
That's how they can justify
Bigotry and lead us astray.
While extremist views go mainstream,
Blurred lines make life hazy.
Keep watering narcissism,
And you will see it grow like crazy.
Their careful manipulation of language
Proves how much their rhetoric's swollen.
The people find it hard to accept
That basic freedoms are being stolen.
As we lament the death of truth
And wonder how it came to pass,
Before we cast blame we must
Peer into the looking glass.
-by Bob B (9-28-18)
°Inspired by "The Death of Truth" by Michiko Kakutani
Sep 28, 2018
Sep 28, 2018 at 11:37 AM UTC
It's stories above where the butterflies rustled,
Whirring between the lights in aeolian bustle.
I'm smiling spritely at a neon halo,
While my organs writhe in jacqueminot El Niño.
Wading the nightscape with a glitched simper,
I could not change nor attempt to tinker,
Just breaching the moments passing to linger.
Fingers, then palms, then lips, then black,
Then for a few seconds the world collapsed.
A breath, a sip, some wit, I'm back.
Shed the murky vision of captive cataracts.
And now,
The sylph saunters in epitomized elegance,
And I've buckled on the inside to the resonant reverence.
I follow the fragrance in her wake as paralyzed sedatives,
And anything I might say could only lack eloquence.
Then magnanimous mantras attract exact,
It seems way down the rabbit hole I've finally met my match.
There's a mesh of flesh, a smooth caress,
Then I wake and realize these were not visions yonder death.
Particles of my brain erupt,
I can't explain away the unfading elation of touch.
Every pose palatial down to the pixels,
I'd gaze deep in the sheen of her mind gleaming as crystals.
Her eyes open like daybreak in flashes,
Sunstreaks glint over the horizon of her lashes.
There's morning songbirds behind the taste of coffee,
I think she's figured I'm just a well decorated softy.
Unveiling my most human of contentions stripped to the eclipse of logic,
My former self laughs in tones pitched sardonic.
Euphorically strumming at gossamer heartstrings,
Etched in the fabric as sakura carvings.
Oct 31, 2017
Oct 31, 2017 at 8:48 PM UTC
Not quite enough light
as I rounded the corner;
distinguishing, at first,
a glint of kindness, then it's absence.
If I had danced a bit longer on the edge of your sardonic stage
I would've stumbled on a steady beat of naiveté,
always one note behind your calculating symphony.
The shallow beams from the timeworn ghostlight
cast elucidation on your conductorial robes;
it is not often that one sees
so well in the dimness of love's sweet fog.
Alas, the savage cadenza reverberates
as if a prophetic whisper, illuminated my secret fortitude.
I turned back, fierce with indignation.
Aug 19, 2011
Aug 19, 2011 at 3:06 PM UTC