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C H Watson Jan 2015
Look through the fence, you see that beast there?
  That tense lump of muscle and mange-ridden hair?
That's old Scrapyard Spike, and this is his lair;
  Don't tread in his yard on adventure nor dare.

Old Scrapyard Spike, he's been a-weathered for years;
  In his chain-link domain, rain-soaked despair.
Unfed in the morning, watered only with tears;
  Unsheltered from squalls, corroded by glare.

Now poor Scrapyard Spike wasn't always so old,
  When he was a puppy, they told him they loved him;
But when he grew up, he had to make friends with the cold,
  For with the clink of a fence, he was thrown out on a whim

So Spike spent his days alone with his chain;
  He sweltered at noon and slept wet with the rain;
And all those who passed him discounted his pain:
  "He's just an old cur" was the daily refrain

And then one cold day, a girl found her way in;
  Her flesh on her bones, blood coursing unspilled.
Old Spike smelled her first, his chain went a-slitherin'
  And the lost child stood rooted, her every nerve chilled.

The silence of metal, broken plastic and glass,
  The beast came a-running, his chain length a ploy;
And jaws opened wide as he lunged for the lass;
  But when his head pressed her thigh, he whimpered with joy.

Old Spike raised the call with a manticore's thunder;
  A summoning cast with his lungs' every strain.
She petted him gently, whose care she was under,
  Though his poor heart convulsed as he looked back at his chain.

The clangor succeeded, a blue-clad protector
  Saw the beast at her heel, and he drew as he lept;
An ounce of hot metal found Scrapyard Spike's skull,
  And the last thing he heard was his friend as she wept.
douglas chesa Feb 2012
I have been drinking wine
To douse the burning tip of my mind
Worries chewing at my nerves
Like the filter end of a rich Havana cigar
Woes of this world turn my whiskers
Into drab willows of misery
My nights into endless nightmares
And my thoughts rattling and jarring
Like the business end of a mechanical hammer.

Dreams clad in limp loincloth
Revisit me from the dark
Urns of history
The salad days of our beings
And their neauseating euphoria
When in drunken trance we siezed
Conscience by her arms
And threw her on her back
Splayed her legs
And smacked our lips
As blood spurt out...
I wipe my mind with the back of my hand
Trying
To brush away the dregs of the sordid rituals
We once enshrined.

A plump shiny green bottle
Buzzes around my mind irritating
Reminding me of Death
Hanging mockingly
Like a pendulum over my mind seducing
''O Sweet Carrion
You are food for the elders!''
And my sins in their hordes shimmer
A deathly pale round the nooze
Suspended from blushing heaven's bottom
My mind's eyes shed crystal tears
Giving away bucketfuls of Chiyadzwa diamonds to regain
Long gone and lost innocence.

I shared a bottle of wine
With my new-found friend, Today
Clinking glasses and minds
Then a greenbottle in full flight
Was caught between the grinding bellies
Of our glasses and minds
Bloodied fleshrot bespattered our intelligence
And our minds rushed to the wash basins retching
A brush with the fetid breath of the past
Left the gums of my mind barren and obscene
And together with newfound friend, Today
We covered our private parts with our hands
Ashamed
At the ****** of our thoughts.

She knocked at the door of my mind
Eyes shadowed in wet grey paint
Lips smudged in scarlet smiled at me
A Good Morning
My palm hiding the discoloured teeth
Of my inner-self
I muffled a Good Mourning to her, but
I felt a warmth spreading
At the base of my belly
Her milky-white mouthful was inviting
A milkyway blaze trailing into deep future
''I will flirt with her'' my mind whispered
But then the rasping sandpaper touch of her lips
Bruised and bloodied my thoughts
And I saw red at the future.

I must have swooned
From the First Lady's fistkisses of philanthropy
Doling out sweet nothings and promises
At a ceremony sheathed in royal pomp and dignity
Where the guests dressed like Harlequins
Mesmerised us with the crablike dance
And flummoxed O poor we
With democratic mumbo-jumbo and lingo
And the Povo touched with feeling
Donated oceanfuls of diamond tears
And their sincere prayers a mutter flutter
Into the heavens for beloved leaders.

I broke Biltong , my past, into the ***
To give life to ailing friend, Today
With my fingernail I peeled off
The tomatoe's tough ruddy jacket
To make sauce
And I heard a rumble of objection
From the August House
And the Mujibhas and Chimbwidos' angry yawn
Gave a chilli spice to the dish
And the food touching Today 's lips
He sneezed and broke wind
Startling ghosts of old nostalgic memories
That had took seats at the kitchen table
To wing away to the scrapyard
Their home beyond the rusting horizon.

Perched on the anthill of anticipation
I roll my thoughts
Into a big joint of mbanje
I **** and grey fading puffs
Of wishes spiral into the bored sky
Each a crippled dream
That was bulldozed at Churu Farm
An ambitious dream that was displaced
By the Operation Murambatsvina
A dream that lost an eye and limb in the food riots
A dream that lost its ***** at university
A dream that fell from the 11th floor at the Towers
Into the Taxman's hat
A dream that drowned in the opaque beer tank
At the Uhuru celebrations
A dream that lost its breath
On top of another man's wife in Mbare
A dream dumped and disowned
Only to find home at the bottom of the Blair toilet...
To find home in the sympathetic clicks
Of poets who have lost their voices.

The stub is burning my fingers
Minds run out of fuel and fire
The angry verbal lash
Of the emotionally wounded
Is a stub licking back at the wielder
To be snuffed out and discarded
On the ash tray of hopelessness
The grave yard that houses all
Once active minds.

-dougwa-
Today, I want to sink my chest into yours.
Your heart pumping blood through my veins for a bit, mine doesn't want to anymore.
Let's trade.
I'll put my brain on ice.
Wash this skull cavity with some minty fresh chemical while my wrinkled pink mother board discovers cryogenics.
When I place it back Into my tingly, almost numb now, chemical washed head
I will still feel heavy.
I want to turn to a whisp.
Like the Night Elves in World of Warcraft.
A floating blue orb of energy
Just a spirit, weightless.
Let me live as electricity, like that spark you felt .
Like that spark they all felt.
Place me in the power lines so I can power houselights and televisions.
Let me be usefull for something again.
Don't convert my head though.
Keep that on Ice.
Better still, creamate
everything but my heart.
Let the ashes get caught
in carpets and drain pipes
Kept in little ziplock baggies,
Tucked in a wooden box,
Kept back seat of my mothers car,
So she can hold it once in awhile.
Until she parks her car in a bad part of town
And a homeless man breaks in
Doesn't steal the gps, or her wallet on the front seat,
But snorts me three hours later
Thinking he just hit the jack ***.
That's where I want to be.

In the lungs of some car burglar
Where his addiction should have been,
coughing on my ashes.

He won't get my heart though.
Keep that frozen in a white room.
Smelling of copper, by a tray of tools,
Latex gloves and paper masks.

One day, thaw it out
bring life to someone.
GaryFairy Sep 2016
this place is a scrapyard for humans
broken, beaten, barren souls
a dull pale loneliness is looming
in the hearts of burnt out coals

logging in to the hopes and desires
a jaded and solitary heart
rubbing two sticks to start fires
hoping for the flames to start
JB Claywell Nov 2018
The car and I,
we made our way
into the downtown
portion of this Midwest
mini-metropolis.

The sun was out,
snow melting,
and it sounded a lot
like rain as everything,
everywhere
dripped and plopped
creating a slurry of
grey road juice
that hissed under
the tires as we
passed by.

At the intersection
nearest to my friend’s
shop,
there was a refrigerator
box that had been
tossed in the street.

It,
like most things,
was on its way
to disintegration.

The red letters
that were inked to
the sides of the box
had started to run,
making the box look
to be some kind
of suburban roadkill.

I wondered briefly,
as the next holiday
rounded the corner
if the contents of the box
might be a gift.

Or…

Maybe a:
“*******! The fridge is shot!”
kind of unexpected
expense.

Either way,
the car and I
had other destinations
to reach.

So, I let my thoughts
wander still
as the tires turned
underneath.

“What would it be like to climb the steel stairs
on the sides of those buildings nearest
the scrapyard?”

Someday,
I’ll find out.

Surrounded by the steam
that comes from those buildings
doing whatever it is that they
might do,

I’ll smoke a cigarette,
count the pigeons that land nearby,
and think of the best way
to tell you all
about it.
*

-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2018
Paul Butters May 2017
I was brought up in Western Leeds,
Almost two miles from the nearest cow or sheep.
In sprawling suburbs:
Row after row of smoke stained redbrick slums.
We had our fields:
Jungles of Rose Bay Willow Herb
(Fireweed to the Americans)
On former demolition sites.
Our childhood spears were honed
From fireweed spears.

Our house was in a terrace
On “School Street”,
Where we took baths in the sink
And crept to outside toilets
In the dark of the “back yard”.

Those days were punctuated
By the “Yie Yie” blare
From the local factory siren.
A deafening sound.
And by endless hammering
From the scrapyard nearby.

But we loved our dripping and bread,
And our walks to the sweet shop.
Playing hopscotch on those stone “flags”
Along the sides of the cobbled street
Under old Victorian gas lamps
Straight from Narnia.

I recall crying on our return from the coast
At a dismal scene
Of soot shrouded trains
On tortured railway lines.

But I also feel nostalgia
For those heady days
Of childhood innocence.
Wearing a cardboard box as a space suit,
And running around
During a “New Year’s Revolution”.
Happy Days.

Paul Butters
This maybe explains a lot.
I loved it,
whitewater rafting
in the Adirondacks,
sleeping in tents
cooking on woodsmoke
having a joke with
the
New Yorker yokels
known locally as the locals.

It was Yellowstone that stole my heart,
rings of fire on the end of a rainbow
dreams that we lived and
we lived for the dream,

all the rest is just history
and most of that went to the scrapyard.
rained-on parade Sep 2017
You fall out of love like a habit.
Nobody told you that even when they say
'there are no wrong answers',
there's always one that rings all the wrong bells.
You say, 'Maybe strawberry ice cream is my favourite',
and suddenly alarms go off in his head
'How? What? Nobody likes strawberry icecream!
This one is defective! Return to Sender!'


This one is defective.
You were mass produced
on a supply line for antsy, lonely nineteen-year olds.
This was their best year yet; the whole world is aching
but we're sorry to inform you but
Models made after 1995 are no longer supported.

To the scrapyard, then.
You fall and tumble and crawl out of love
like it's out to get you.
Like it's got its teeth in you,
nails tearing into flesh,
holding your ankles and begging you
to stay.
4/25/17

I don't quite remember myself, or you, anymore.
ME Oct 2013
The scrapyard shouts a sneering hiss, as the metal meets its maker and get put to the ground
in a murky sight, the seer digress, noting the constant vacuum of light, setting the scene as the dead turns to the stage in the theater of life
A staggering cold got him clacking his teeth, the mood of the weather reflected the street, as the rain dropped, people disappeared gradually, not unlike a serenade by those weakened, sitting isolated in a room blinded by a thought as it left a raindrop on his heart
By the curb, you leave it all behind, and by that same curb, you choose a new wine
There is no constant in time, but time itself, a figment of a man's vivid and mad imagination
Set to alarm, to dictate and date, small and big events, it pinpoints effects on the interior and exterior
the changes fade to disappear and all that is left is the shadow of the heart, we carved in the tree behind the yard, bright skies flew by the moonlight, as you gave me your heart, on that dimly lit October night.
Zero Nine Mar 2017
You've made your suffer very clear
In anguish's cutting headlights
You are a fragile deer
Glass organs pop under foot
Your psyche crumbles into dirt
Glass murks reading worse
Than it ever has
It ever has
In this one bedroom den, I'm the wolf
Once I was a scrapyard mongrel
Once you were my wide world
Presently avatar of indifference
You've become a cyclone fence
Every dawn sweet music cedes
Every dusk, must evade sleep
Evade sleep
...
Reasons to live?
give me one.
Go on,
tell me how good this life can be
tell me some lies and please set me free
from these feelings I get
and let me believe
breathe into me hope
show me then how to cope with the stress.

I'm a mess
that's not new
I don't know what to do or
how to do if I did and tell me your secret
I will do as you bid.
Let me stand on the verge
purged of despair
surging with get up and go.

On the verges where go only sad men,I know quite a few
when the life that they knew came a falling apart and the plans that they had became dreams that went bad
ending up on the heap in the scrapyard they keep one foot on the edge of insanity because that's one of the ways they can jump in and out of the haze that fills their hearts with such longing for what was once long ago
On the verges, I know quite a few.

So breathe into me something more than I've got
just give me one more little shot
at the bullseye
I
want to go on with a heart filled with something so strong they'll hear it beat in the Islands which are my lands where my ancestors live
give me one breath.

One lesson to learn
don't burn all your bridges unless you can swim
don't jump off tall buildings you know you can't win and it's one down and all down or we all drown in apathy.
I don't want your sympathy
don't want your largesse
I have no need to impress you or dress you in compliments embellished non sentiments
just give me a lead
give the poor boy a hand at the trough let me feed
give me breath
let me breathe
It's fresh air and a vision I need
and the ability
to swim.
Gabrielle F May 2010
Dad
hes in good with the junkyard owner
and he likes that

they are both old men
trying to patch up their fractures
beer bellies coming along nicely
hands lacquered with paint
and modest discretion
and cigarette
blazing yellow

ABSOLUTELY NO SMOKING IN THE SCRAPYARD!
but he does.
killing time.
he does, fat eyes laughing
at blood on dashboards
metallic toe jam
and irony only he
finds
evident

he knows he can
stroke his vices
wherever
he so chooses
around here

the owner,
Dave
says so

and he makes sure he tells me
as he lights up
halfway out the door
Dave staring me down
with grease in his eyes

that 'not just ANYBODY
gets these
kind of privileges'

i know dad
i know
Jay 1988 Sep 2016
There's a snowflake drifting down the alley
And it lands In a puddle of rain
The puddle freezes over, the snowflakes growing it will, never fly again
Well, way above the alley there's a flat with a bedroom light on
In the corner of the room was a baby's crib surrounded by a newborn, dad and mom
I lay in the next room, listening to all of your cries,  
my daddy scooped me up in his big strong arms and rested me right by your side
From that moment, we were bonded by more than just blood,
there's some magic tonight in this endless night, you know it's my job to teach you good
I watched you growing faster than that snowflake ever did
We would mess around in the scrapyard ground and you would mimic all i did
I was the biggest giant you were David, you cut me down
Then you'd pull me up with your tiny palms from that ***** little scrapyard town
Out in the street, sometimes I'd catch you looking at me,
I was the hero of a.child who looked up to his brother, that brother was me
It wasn't all easy, you my brother were never all good
But whenever we'd fall out I'd lift the hair from your ear and whisper softly were more than just blood
Do you remember those dark nights when the world was asleep
Pull out a picnic blanket in the middle of our room and make this night, our own to keep
Talking, for hours you asked me how do I make my way in this world
I said I don't know yet but when I figure it out I promise I'll tell you
On your first day of school I sat and watched in the window on the alley top
I watch you walk on by with pride in your step you looked back to me but you never stopped
In my mind you were always one of a kind smiling each and every step of the way
I always hoped that those lessons I thought you, you could teach your own one day
There's a snowflake drifting down the street and it lands on the tip of my tongue
There's some radio playing from the alley flats and it's playing our fun song
There's two boys running down the street chasing around rolling in the mud
One of those boys pulls the other one down and I hear him whisper ... it's more than just blood
Malik Maxwell: The leader of the Black Crime Syndicate.  Malik owns a scrapyard.  He is the love interest for Kenya.

The Black Crime Syndicate: A black criminal organization led by Malik.  They are allies with the Jade Dragons.

Kenya Ayanna Night: An employee at the BNB Bank.  Kenya is best friends with Jewel.

Jade: The leader of the Jade Dragons.

The Jade Dragons: A criminal organization.  The Jade Dragons are allies with the Black Crime Syndicate.

Jewel Stonewall: She is best friends with Kenya.  Jewel is the owner of The Golden Scissors hair salon.

The Golden Scissors: A hair salon owned by Jewel Stonewall.

BNB Bank: The bank where Kenya is employed at.

Edward: The owner of Club Envy.

Club Envy: A ******* owned by Edward.

Amber: The second in command of the Black Crime Syndicate.

Mecca: A high ranking member of the Black Crime Syndicate.

Phil: A high ranking member of the Black Crime Syndicate.  Phil is a dog *******.

Cherish City: The name of the city where the story takes place.

written by Keith Edward Baucum
I S A A C Aug 2021
aside from my asides and internal divides
I stand in my prime, converging with the divine
plucking daisies in my backyard
doing backflips in my backyard
tired of trying to find gold in a scrapyard
denied due to pride and internal divides
he stands in his shame, colliding with the divine
doing abstract art and failing to put a finger on
the very thing converging all along
the growth not seen, he daydreams
but can never put it into action
stagnant dissatisfaction
ManVsYard Oct 2014
I yawn and raise my arms up high
awaken from my rest.
I think about a dream I had
a-bout a little test.

A test in life, a guage of how
asleep I was and for how long
an hour, a day, some months or years?
Someone must have banged a gong

I did not search for time clues
but I found then anyway
scrapyard reciepts, swarthy rhyming tweets
no hint that I would hit the hay

A plan to set a few things right
clean up my crowded cluttered life
I must have made too much progress
or
maybe I just flunked the test

Round 73

I yanw and raise my arms.....
Alex Huezo Jul 2014
Your love was the foggy, soot-filled landscape. The dawn overlooking the scene. The light piercing through the smog. The hot, smothering air with a dry powder texture that cakes my lungs. Infects me.
     Your love was desolate; with only the sound of your voice tethering it to the rest of the world. The sound of the fastidious, yet somewhat, saturnine emotion was enough to keep me interested. You are the background noise that emanates from a television in an empty room that keeps me company. Your love is the remains of a scrapyard, landfill, or the outskirts of a factory. It is busy yet barren. Occupied but lonely. Near but never there.
   Your love was a pile of dirt, trash, and soot. Your love did nothing but overlook the melancholy of me. As if it was the eyes of god, they judged the corruption and pollution of my greed and desire with not anger or hate, but instead, with regret and sadness. It was always watching; always judging. And I was cursed. Never able to look away.
All feedback appreciated. The harsher the better.
There is an ocean in this scrapyard
that is laughingly called me
and I'm wading through this fractured hulk
somewhere all at sea,
but even junkyards have their uses
though they're difficult to find,
I have lots of time to waste and
really,
no really 
I don't mind.

A souvenir shop by a cafe
who would place it there?
another laugh and that's
the way it's going to be,
somewhere in the scrapyard
always all at sea.
J J Sep 2019
We found a cosy enough scene amongst the chaos,
Two strangers connecting among a crowd
like anxious magnets in a scrapyard
And it felt
A first encounter with a lifetime lover from some other dimension;
my self in a sense, caught to the reflection of an opposite ***.

We were the 'quiet ones' in our own regard
Prone to panic attacks and sudden unruly suggestion of madness and lengthy times of introvert
And although there was a lifesworth we never knew
There was enough of an understanding to
Make conversation. I mostly listened,
Lost in your voice. I don't think I'd ever gotten on with
Someone so quick
                            but
   There are some beautiful people in the world that do that:
By the end of a conversation you're ready to hold them
A million years
                     Or more.

The second conversation came later in the night,
Listening to the flowery clock locked to her chest
her mouth stirring cockerel shells and laughing honey teeth
liltly blind; oceanblue irises circumference marble black
            pupils, puffy cheeks and half moon lips
                            curled and split in a caring smirk;

it seems impossible
to imagine being you and not thinking myself beautiful
Yet you say that's the case,
And like my expression was open to telepathy
She said the very same thing back to me and we both thought
I love you
but neither could say it.

There probably wasnt enough similarities to make up
For the differences.
It's copper pipe or copper plate, eight quid a crate down the scrapyard.
pinching lead off the church roof was the nearest I got to a God,

the lightning rod was made of iron, no one in their right mind would buy one, but it looked good on my bedroom wall.

These days you need documentation
handshakes won't do,
everything's totted up and written down,
even to the last half-crown,

how's a spiv supposed to live?
Doll Spaghetti Feb 2018
if my car breaks down, i go out and look for some parts to fix it

if my relationship breaks down, i look for another person to replace it

i was the headlights you had been chasing for a few yearz

but within a month you had me replaced

the transmission was broke

and you blamed me

after the g6 was totaled,

you sold me out to the scrapyard

crying for a minute,

then throwing me away

you blocked all contact

refusing to hear the answer

to the questions you asked

back in december

-

so here we are

that month later

you did what i knew you would do

and i didnt act to stop it

because you never stopped to see

my oncoming traffic.
passion never makes a good relationship.
Walter Alter Aug 2023
can't even **** anymore
without kicking up a hurricane
halfway around the Earth
according to reports this has occurred
at a great loss of life and mind
within minutes of the methane
the dominoes began to rumble
and poor Flash who was
merely greeting the morning sun
became history's first flatomaniac
Flash was burly with hair
up and down his back like
a mink in a 5th Avenue perfumery
he had always been a cartoon
playing the 3 color hope card
in a séance with the laboring masses
at the Union of Opposites hiring hall
I was merely giving the citizens
an anatomy lesson your Honor
I should be given a cash stipend
for ennabling public elucidation
fortunately no witness has come forward
his only defense was the tenuous claim
that he saw the ancient god Apollo
leaping out of a moving taxi
the effect was so dramatic
that his legs had to leap too
they haven't stopped since
his testimony was a monstrosity of detail
in conclusion my rebuttal established
several seemingly salient selections
I am a dissector by trade your Worship
and a taxpaying asset to any community
Flash was sentenced with stern admonishment
you will henceforth exercise your libido
within the confines of spherical propriety
to which Flash meekly assented
without the slightest ******* er objection
and somehow strangely unafraid
the Flasher of Costa del Mar
disappeared one star sprinkled night
****** into the belly of an alien craft
over the cattle lip badlands of Montana
they commenced their hideous experiments
as Flash mused without anesthesia
on the incalculable immensity
of the scrapyard Universe
and watched a mobile home run amok
across 9 lanes of traffic

From "Pageant of Naked Mischief" available on Amazon

— The End —