"satisfactory" poems
•helping the kids with homework•
no one told you,
was part of the job description
paycheck earner a-ok,
gruff but tender lover,
knowing her special places,
building a tree swing,
a tree house safe and satisfactory,
one the neighbors envy
taking them to the hospital for
broken arms and chemotherapy,
part two of the non-routine but a very possible foreseeable,
going to school to give that principal a look
that will make him think twice before suspending
one of his for defending himself
you remember your daddy doing the same for you,
forgetting to repeat the tar and hiding that came later
the tucking in, the pretense ouch
when your end of day
scratchy beard ruffling the skin of babies,
carrying tissues in a toolbox,
never heard of, nevertheless done,
tho not a memory defining the future inclusive,
definitely a learning ability, a likeability
doing homework, nuh uh,
no way jose, don’t dare let them
know how you never got a gold star,
always sat in the back row, outta sight,
all day dreaming, chemistry rhymes with mystery,
and poetry is rhymes needing a big vocabulary
which means lots of words for a man who don’t talk much
ain’t exactly his strong suit
sure, heard of Shakespeare but never met him,
know where the on/off computer button hides,
the rest is up to them;
got no email address, but taught them sir and ma’am,
how to address humans with respect,
i’ll promise them anything
but not doing any homework,
unless it the kind that that makes
“a home work”
Jul 22, 2018
Jul 22, 2018 at 9:20 AM UTC
I whatsapped you through my nokia
And is it your existence I crave?
Or does my mind order
What is beyond the border
Unseen like the little light bulps in the sky
I whatsapped you through my nokia
And is it your fingertips I need?
Spending minutes on
Semantic and hours on our news feed
And high lights of our day
See my days are all the same
I ask myself questions and I find answers
In the shape of instant messages
Vibrating through my phone;
And as if it’s exhaling some deadly poison
It rings and rings and rings and rings and rings and rings and stops…
I whatsapped you through my nokia
Asking you
“you there?”
But you never answered
Because your iphone cannot show any whatsapp notifications
Coming from hopeless thinkers trying to figure out the typed mysteries of life….
Because your blackberry
Is too black to turn into a satisfactory vision
Of what your future should be;
Because your android
Is practically messy
And willingly complex
Like meteor showers hitting your phone
Every time the truth vibrates
In the shape of unanswered questions
For the answers are there…
But our phones are so smart they hide it;
I wahtsapped you through my nokia
Asking myself
Is my nokia a primitive technology?
A shameful scar on the scale of science
Like syringes ******* all the blood from the unstoppable sweet rush of statistical knowledge
I whatsapped you through my nokia…and all this comes out
Is it me being silly, or us being shallow?
Please do not whatsapp me the answer
For am tired of green screens
And boxed spaces
I need clean streams
Of fine faces
And eyes that glimmer
Rather than phones that shiver…
I shall remind my phone
To remind me
That I don’t need it anymore…
Apr 17, 2013
Apr 17, 2013 at 8:54 AM UTC
(for Christopher Isherwood)
Seated after breakfast
In this white-tiled cabin
Arabs call the House where
Everybody goes,
Even melancholics
Raise a cheer to Mrs.
Nature for the primal
Pleasure She bestows.
*** is but a dream to
Seventy-and-over,
But a joy proposed un-
-til we start to shave:
Mouth-delight depends on
Virtue in the cook, but
This She guarantees from
Cradle unto grave.
Lifted off the *****
Infants from their mothers
Hear their first impartial
Words of worldly praise:
Hence, to start the morning
With a satisfactory
Dump is a good omen
All our adult days.
Revelation came to
Luther in a privy
(Crosswords have been solved there)
Rodin was no fool
When he cast his Thinker,
Cogitating deeply,
Crouched in the position
Of a man at stool.
All the arts derive from
This ur-act of making,
Private to the artist:
Makers' lives are spent
Striving in their chosen
Medium to produce a
De-narcissus-ized en-
During excrement.
Freud did not invent the
Constipated miser:
Banks have letter boxes
Built in their façade
Marked For Night Deposits,
Stocks are firm or liquid,
Currencies of nations
Either soft or hard.
Global Mother, keep our
Bowels of compassion
Open through our lifetime,
Purge our minds as well:
Grant us a king ending,
Not a second childhood,
Petulant, weak-sphinctered,
In a cheap hotel.
Keep us in our station:
When we get pound-notish,
When we seem about to
Take up Higher Thought,
Send us some deflating
Image like the pained ex-
-pression on a Major
Prophet taken short.
(Orthodoxy ought to
Bless our modern plumbing:
Swift and St. Augustine
Lived in centuries
When a stench of sewage
Made a strong debating
Point for Manichees.)
Mind and Body run on
Different timetables:
Not until our morning
Visit here can we
Leave the dead concerns of
Yesterday behind us,
Face with all our courage
What is now to be.
13.9k
Engrossed in technology
We forget how to communicate
Not with our fingers on a screen
But with our mouths, with our minds
All the obsession with perfection
It makes reality seem satisfactory
Feb 19, 2019
Feb 19, 2019 at 7:54 PM UTC
As a bathtub lined with white porcelain,
When the hot water gives out or goes tepid,
So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion,
O my much praised but-not-altogether-satisfactory lady.
10.3k
ken not the
vive la différence!
entre les deux,
these two bed and head chambers,
for all poets are seducers,
regardless of *** race, creed or color
when first we employ our working, yeoman vocabulary,
we plain start,
to relate but not to regale,
the whom we are,
hoping our moments unique,
will breach the boundaries
of our collective commonality connectivity,
and find human receptivity
thus, the seduction of self commences
though every possible combination of words has somewhere been inscribed and committed, we ****** ourselves
(the seduction of poetry)
with potions of notions that we are and always be our
first, and now soon forever,
yours as well
of course, we are, it's true,
our very own first admirer & lover,
having conquered the hillock of self,
see the universe expanding and the
****** need to conceive
and prowess to please
beyond the beyond with
the poetry of seduction
do not want your body, heart or soul,
commitment, allegiance, vows,
sacred or profane,
all such in vain
crave your everything,
not even a legal nine-tenths satisfactory
dare not call me arrogant or presumptive,
gaze upon the mirror that cannot lie,
rereading thy words assemblage,
and deny to lie to yourself
want you, you want me,
my adoration,
we want to be in
a poem together,
lovers at the molecular level
where words dissected into letters, then again,
into guttural sounds where a simple outcry is an elegy,
a love poem, a wound, a denouement, a preface, a tear,
a welling, a heaving, a sigh, an exhalation, all,
an entrance to where the need for words
is long since past
the sin and crown of seduction completed,
unanimously
now breathe out
and then,
breathe in
Jul 3, 2017
Jul 3, 2017 at 3:54 PM UTC
when a lost muse is no excuse,
when the mundane and the profane
are away on summer holiday,
and you are currently on the divine’s
'u **** - no write list'
nonetheless the itch in the private
spaces is driving you crazy,
write a poem, write a poem,
in the way a grandmother
(or a mother to a grown child)
whiny nags,
*its a nice day, go outside and play
with a strange man*,
whatcha ya gonna do, the walls are all painted,
and the good bad boys are out of town, all with the
*other bad good girls,
who got there first,*
but we will write of
nipple-rings and
other crazy songs you sing
it is not important you the reader understand every verse,
like Patton said, "it only matters that I know,"
which line is a joke,
which around your neck is
your customized yoke,
which is why:
plaintive wail to no avail,
the regret that never can be sated,
the frustration cratering inside the chest,
which is just,
(and unjust)
just enough
to make a semi-satisfactory smile
upon the lips appear
whose lips?
who cares?
as long as you don't have to hear me sing my poetry
but hear me smiling at
the power of whimsy writing
and the return of
my no longer muzzy^
Ms. Minx A. Muse-me
<£>
2:13pm
Aug 19, 2017
Aug 19, 2017 at 2:32 PM UTC
It would seem the world has quietly fit the puzzle pieces into place over night ,
Like wet washing , crispy and dry from the radiators humming warmth , a satisfactory feeling , a job well done.
There is much beauty to be found on this journey home , moments where the heart is plummeting at a million miles a second , descending from the upper troposphere hurtling down , through clouds whipped up by a storm of ages – waiting for the conclusion – perpetual motion catches me
Elegant design,
Crooked lines make curves,
Spitting at the throat, holding those words,
vision of confusion eats up at the temple of love , bodies are walking shrines.
Taste my karma on sticky fingers.
Apr 7, 2014
Apr 7, 2014 at 12:30 AM UTC
Sometimes maybe the dreams should
go away
--What do you dream about?
Last night I dreamt I journeyed
into that dark part of the city
where even hard-armed truck drivers
refuse to unload alone.
It was late. Street lights knifed
the false dawn and wet sidewalks
shivered off shards of glass.
Perhaps I had come there for a pack
of cigarettes
or maybe I had a message to deliver.
It was dark. I was dreaming. I knew
I was dreaming. When they met me
outside
at the bottom of the long ramp
and told me all the stores were closed,
then I could see the bars across the door
and the sign that said, open at seven.
It all seemed too obvious
but I had found some friends
and they didn't seem to mind the
long walk back to my car.
This was only a dream, after all,
so it came as no surprise
how my blood drenched the dark pavement.
I waited for flowers to bloom or butterflies
to rise from the spot, but
nothing happened.
I think I killed them then,
but it's not clear how I
got to to the soft lights
of an all-night drugstore
and cuddled up between the rows
of witch hazel and staionary supplies.
--Is this what you dream?
This is what I dream. I have yet to find
a satisfactory substitute for the warmth
of sleep, so I dream.
Jul 21, 2018
Jul 21, 2018 at 2:08 PM UTC
There is a snack size container of peanut butter sitting in the pantry
And I'm sitting across the room but I can feel it's weight as acutely as my own
I checked the package three times, hoping the numbers would change when i returned
282
282
282 calories
I'm having a panic attack over a snack because the one thing I crave more than anything else in the world is the sticky, nutty taste of JIF brand peanut butter of which I am undeserving
My grandmother loved peanut butter
So much that they had to hide it from her if they wanted any hope of a satisfactory sandwich
My mom hid food too
Stole it like kiss after kiss
Sneaking cookies from the houses where she babysat
Getting crumbs on her swelling chest in the dark embrace of her teenage bedroom
A buffet for one
And now I'm in my grandmothers house
Hoping that there's peanut butter in heaven
Because here there's just photographs and the lingering scent of her Chanel number 5 perfume
Like mother, like daughter, like granddaughter they say
You can trace my family line as easily as the stretch marks that litter our bodies
But I am breaking the cycle by falling into my own
I have learned that hunger pangs are better than the climbing figures on the scale
So I lift a glass of water to my lips
And I leave the peanut butter in the pantry so no one will ever have to hide food from me
Jan 24, 2015
Jan 24, 2015 at 11:29 AM UTC
A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages ***** and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
Jun 13, 2016
Jun 13, 2016 at 11:31 AM UTC
Not many things are as satisfying
As peeing when you're drunk.
What a rush.
I always realize how lightheaded I am
And that makes me laugh.
Then it's back to the kitchen to replenish
My body's alcohol supply.
May 2, 2014
May 2, 2014 at 5:13 PM UTC
if words are food for the mind,
then here is a glimpse of mine
if words are drugs for the brain,
then here is why i'm so pained.
abandoned, abhorrent
abnormal, absent
abstract, abuse
addicted, anxious
betray, bitterly
blank, blasphemy
bloodless, breakdown
breathless, brutal
captive, casually
catastrophe, cautiously
change, cigarettes
crucial, clueless
damaged, dangerous
deadly, disastrous
disheartened, disconcerting
dramatic, dreading
eager, eccentric
ecstasy, eerie
effete, effortless
embittered, excess
faded, failure
faintly, fallacy
faltering, fatally
fearfully, finally
garbage, gawky
gibberish, gloomy
gone, goodbye
graphic, gratify
hallucinate, harshly
hazy, heartless
hectic, helpless
hesitant, hit-and-miss
idiotic, idly
ignorant, intimacy
illogical, imaginative
infatuated, intoxicated
jealousy, jittery
journey, journal
joylessly, judicial
junk, juvenile
keen, killing
knavish, knocking
knockout, knotty
knowingly, knowledge
laborious, lacking
lame, languishing
lifeless, literature
lovelorn, lugubrious
madness, maintenance
make-believe, malaise
mean, melancholic
mellow, melodramatic
naff, naivety
nameless, naturally
nauseous, nebulous
neglected, nervous
oasis, objectionable
obliged, obliterate
oblivion, obscurity
obsolete, one-and-only
pacifist, pained
pale, panicky
paradise, paralyze
passionately, passively
raging, ranting
rationalize, raving
realistic, reasonable
rebellious, reckless
saboteur, sadness
sake, sameness
sanity, satisfactory
scar, steady
taint, tangled
tasteless, tearful
telling, temperamental
terror, theoretical
unaffected, uncanny
uncommon, unconsciously
undesirable, uneasy
unfortunate, untidy
vaguely, vanish
vanity, vanquish
versatile, vicious
violence, voracious
waiting, waking
walkout, wanting
wasteful, weary
withering, wrecking
if words are food for the mind,
then you've seen a glimpse of mine
if words are drugs for the brain,
then no wonder i'm so pained.
-djs
Aug 5, 2013
Aug 5, 2013 at 11:21 PM UTC
I can’t do boring
I need the chaos,
the strange,
the passionate,
the irrational.
I need the adventure.
It fuels me.
Nothing else is
satisfactory.
Jul 8, 2015
Jul 8, 2015 at 3:39 PM UTC
The king of the castle sits,
His back paw scratching his head,
Ruminating.
The aging cat wonders if he'll ever lose
the itch.
Then, apparently having reached a satisfactory conclusion
The furry statesmen curls up by the fire
Drifting....
...off
to...
sleep...
he purrs softly to himself:
The rumble of unfathomable ponderings.
Oct 14, 2014
Oct 14, 2014 at 12:41 AM UTC
don't fall for their tales,
their trapping words
intended to capture all manner of
literary loving girls...
while they, these mopoets^ are perfectly content
to keep on looking
"for the perfect one..."
to write about,
the greatest love affair in all of
his-story
but only after getting first
a close dose of,
a teeming taste of<
her
*"inspiration"
He tells them that
after the first date,
he'll go home thinking:
"I could drink a case of you"
but usually but a glass,
at most,
a bottle, a month,
a satisfactory suffice,
and it's onto the next write
that's why the FBI labelled him,
a dangerous serial poet,
his mot
to be trusted,
not, no, no...no!
Ah men! Ah poets!
somebody should pass a law....
4:03am
Apr 30, 2014
Apr 30, 2014 at 4:10 AM UTC
The world spins in reverse in light of the sun burning out
Slowly spinning, slipping into a state of satisfactory self destruction
No one to let it know it's waiting on doom
Or make it feel like the end is coming sooner than what is already planned
The moon continues to fade
The sea is still wading, bringing in the wait upon the sands
Not wanting, or needing, being it simply does
And everything that burns it's little light inside lives and recycles and breathes an air of infinity
Dec 22, 2015
Dec 22, 2015 at 9:44 PM UTC
Why do I love to
Peel the skin off my sunburn?
Such satisfaction!
Gross it is I know.
But it is like when you start
Healing: chuck the past.
The dead skin itches.
It's annoying and useless.
Peel it off--new skin.
Old wounds--offenses--
Keep us irritated, mad,
Instead of thriving.
Peeling dead skin is
Satisfactory because
Then I get new skin.
Jun 13, 2014
Jun 13, 2014 at 1:22 PM UTC
‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, sore-footed,
refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the
terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and
grumbling
And running away, and wanting their
liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the
lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns
unfriendly
And the villages ***** and charging high
prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all
night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears,
saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a
temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of
vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill
beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped in
away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with
vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for
pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no imformation, and so
we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment
too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say)
satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I
remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth,
certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had
seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different;
this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like
Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these
Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old
dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their
gods.
I should be glad of another death.
2.9k
She's a clumsy little human.
Broken beakers, test tubes,
Plates, glassware, door handles,
The antlers of that showpiece deer,
Her bed, her favourite pencil.
Through seventeen (and a half) years of clumsiness
The universe, it's always whispered to her
"However careful you might try to be
Sometimes things, they'll fall out of your clumsy hands
Never on purpose, no satisfactory reason
Leaving you with melancholy ruins.
Sometimes things, they can be fixed
With a little glue and a lot of patience
So fix them before they're lost and
Be ever more careful thereon.
But sometimes things, they can't be fixed
Not with glue nor with patience
And broken they will forever be
So sweep up the pieces gently and
Cast them away sans regret."
She's a clumsy little human.
Broken beakers, test tubes,
Plates, glassware, door handles,
The antlers of that showpiece deer,
Her bed, her favourite pencil,
Trust, hearts and friendships.
Feb 7, 2015
Feb 7, 2015 at 6:35 AM UTC
Where does it lead?
That's always the question
Isn't it?
The conundrum
That befuddles us all
Where does it all lead
We all go about
Wandering till days end
Never finding a satisfactory conclusion
You'll go your whole life
Looking for one answer
All for one question
Where does it lead?
This choice
That choice
What's the consiquence?
All for such a simple
...curiosity
The one solution
The one demise
Good to see cats aren't the only ones
Who are slaves to its will
Curiosity
It seems we're all slaves to its twisted will
Oct 26, 2010
Oct 26, 2010 at 6:22 PM UTC
solitary soul in the sea
slovenly storks slide
(against a grey sky)
seeking satisfactory sensations
solidifying
soul searching solutions
Nov 28, 2010
Nov 28, 2010 at 9:52 PM UTC
From the dock,
I saw the wheel turn.
I wonder,
when is it my turn?
My turn at turning.
Being stationary
isn't satisfactory
I want to go,
even if the turning is slow.
Makes no difference to me.
What I love to be
is to turn above the sea.
Soaring high and free.
Sep 10, 2014
Sep 10, 2014 at 3:24 PM UTC
Simplicity, complexity,
Simplicity causes
Only simple pain, but only simple pleasure
Safe but not satisfactory
Complexity causes
A complex pain and the best pleasure
A pain far too great, a pleasure far too good,
But is it worth the risk?
Feb 13, 2016
Feb 13, 2016 at 9:38 PM UTC
she
is what she is meant to be,
she is the sensuality
of her femininity,
she
seeks beauty in all
she sees,
her essence is complex simplicity,
she
is contradictory,
she is all
that's satisfactory,
in her days
and in her dreams,
she
is lovely,
loving me,
she
is everything,
woman,
perfectly
a precious, priceless,
part of
me
that is
she.
_______
Femininity
http://beautyineverything.com/4618419981
Oct 27, 2010
Oct 27, 2010 at 2:54 AM UTC