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Nuha Fariha Oct 2015
The smell lingered long after she had called the ambulance, after she had scrubbed the bathroom tiles back to a pristine white, after she had thrown out the ******* mangoes he had hid in the closet. For days afterward, she avoided the bathroom, showering the best she could in the old porcelain sink they had installed in the spring when he was able to keep fresh flowers in the kitchen vase. Those days, she would come home to jasmine and broken plates, marigolds and burnt biryani, pigeon wings and torn paper. Some days he was snake-quiet. Other days, his skin was fever hot, his limbs flailing to an alien language, his head tilting back, ululating.
Every day she would carry his soiled clothes into the laundry room, ignoring the thousands of whispered comments that trailed behind her. “Look how outgrown her eyebrows have become” as she strangled the hardened blood out of his blue longyi. “Look how her fingernails are yellow with grease,” as she beat the sweat out of his white wife beaters. “Look how curved her back is” as she hung his tattered briefs to dry in the small courtyard. The sultry wind picked up the comments as it breezed by her, carrying them down the road to the chai stand where they conversed until the wee hours.
Today, there is no wind. The coarse sun has left the mango tree in the back corner of the courtyard too dry, the leaves coiling inward. She picks up the green watering can filled with gasoline. The rusted mouth leaves spots on the worn parchment ground as she shuffles over. Her chapped sandals leave no impression. The trunk still has their initials, his loping R and V balancing her mechanical S and T. They had done it with a sharp Swiss Army knife, its blade sinking into the soft wooded flesh. “Let’s do it together,” he urged, his large hand dwarfing hers. A cheap glass bangle, pressed too hard against her bony wrist, shattered.  
Now, her arthritic finger traces the letters slowly, falling into grooves and furrows as predictable as they were not. When had they bought it? Was it when he had received the big promotion, the big firing or the big diagnosis? Or was it farther back, when he had received the little diploma, the little child or the little death? There was no in-between for him, everything was either big or little. Was it an apology tree or an appeasement tree? Did it matter? The tree was dying.
Her ring gets stuck in the top part of the T. He had been so careful when he proposed. Timing was sunset. Dinner was hot rice, cold milk and smashed mangos, her favorite. Setting was a lakeside gazebo surrounded by fragrant papaya trees. She had said yes because the blue on her sari matched the blue of the lake. She had said yes because his hands trembled just right. She had said yes because she had always indulged in his self-indulgences. She slips her finger out, leaving the gold as an offering to the small tree that never grew.    
She pours gasoline over the tree, rechristening it. Light the math, throw the match, step back, mechanical steps. She shuffles back through the courtyard as the heat from the tree greets the heat from the sun. She doesn’t look back. Instead, she is going up one step at a time on the red staircase, through the blue hallway, to the daal-yellow door. These were the colors he said would be on the cover of his bestseller as he hunched over the typewriter for days on end. Those were the days he had subsisted only on chai and biscuits, reducing his frame to an emaciated exclamation mark. His words were sharp pieces of broken glass leaving white scars all over her body.  
She remembers his voice, the deep boom narrating fairytales. Once upon a time, she had taken a rickshaw for four hours to a bakery to get a special cake for his birthday. Once upon a time, she had skipped sitting in on her final exams for him. Once upon a time, she had danced in the middle of an empty road at three in the morning for him. Once upon a time, she had been a character in a madman’s tale.
Inside, she takes off the sandals, leaving them in the dark corner under the jackets they had brought for a trip to Europe, never taken. Across the red tiled floor, she tiptoes silently, out of habit. From the empty pantry, she scrounges up the last tea leaf. Put water in the black kettle, put the kettle on the stove, put tea leaf in water, wait. On the opposite wall, her Indian Institute of Technology degree hangs under years of dust and misuse.
Cup of bitter tea in hand, she sits on the woven chair, elbows hanging off the sides, back straight. Moments she had shot now hang around her as trophy heads on cheap plastic frames. A picture of them on their wedding day, her eyes kohl-lined and his arm wrapped around her. A picture of them in Kashmir, her eyes full of bags and his arm limp. A picture of them last year, her eyes bespectacled and his arm wrapped around an IV pole. The last picture at her feet, her eyes closed and his arm is burning in the funeral pyre. No one had wanted to take that picture.      
A half hour later, a phone call from her daughter abroad. Another hour, a shower in the porcelain sink. Another hour, dinner, rice and beans over the stove. Another hour and the sun creeps away for good. It leaves her momentarily off guard, like when she had walked home to find him head cracked on the bathroom tub. The medics had assured her it was just a fall. Finding her bearings, she walks down the dark corridor to their, no, her bedroom.
She sits down now on the hard mattress, low to the ground, as he wanted it to be. She takes off her sari, a yellow pattern he liked. She takes off her necklace, a series of jade stones he thought was sophisticated. She takes off the earrings he had gotten her for her fortieth, still too heavy for her ears. She places her hands over eyes, closing them like she had closed his when she had found him sleeping in the tub, before she had smashed his head against the bathtub.  
In her dreams, she walks in a mango orchard. She picks one, only to find its skin is puckered and bruised. She bites it only to taste bitterness. She pours the gallon of gasoline on the ground. She sets the orchard on fire and smiles.
Amy Perry Mar 2021
My dad taught me
that placement in society
is ultimately irrelevant.
He taught me you can find
your eager slice of happy
anywhere, not just in between
four familiar walls.
I used to think
that if only he had access
to a mattress and a ceiling
he'd find his happiness.
But, I realized -
Who am I
to dictate what makes
another feel complete?
Here, by the park benches,
His heart blooms like
a grandmother's rose bush.
He lives moment to moment.
Cares not for possessions,
Has no schedule,
No place to be.
Has no bills, no debts,
no credit, no ID.
Scrounges the ground
and kind strangers' gestures
for everything he owns.
But oh, his cold, tired bones!
I worry how long a journey lasts
for a lone vagabond.
Envigorated by the sounds
of the sea
and chance encounters
whether they be familiar
friends or family
or the palpable presence
of all that's imaginary.
It all lurches to him
in a grand symphonic dance,
Linking his hours to days,
and days to weeks,
extending outward and upward
to take the heavens
in his grasp.
A pigeon dove lands
on his tattooed finger.
He laughs, and it flocks
to another's perch.
A tree branch this time.
The animals and children
look into his eyes
and wonder about the stranger.
Alone, raggedy, down on luck
but up in spirits,
and they recognize
a body brimming with
presence.
My dad taught me you can be
nobody and still have everything.
abp
Causticji May 2015
Deconstructing a Kafkaesque
amphitheatre of the absurd,
Easy wallows she in their hypocrisy,
Son of a gun grabbed on
to the gold that fed his infant
self, doesn't dare let go, won't ever,
Dev breaks the bottle he hits,
scrounges, discards the last scrap,
the rat scurries in, devours, heads
back into the smoked corridor,
the auction goes on, so does he
showering petals and pity upon the
middle road more travelled, bumpy,
potholes full of acid and bile,
the stupidity of the tyrannical majority
and an underwater civilisation consumed
by mind-numbing, mildly shocking TV,
undercurrents of power drowned under.
Uppercase Him, uppercase He,
they hoist a red flag, set it afire,
stomp out the flames, wave a black
rag till the ashes turn to naught,
the Dionysian petit bourgeoisie proceed,
spew, *****, spew, repeat.
The voyeuristic rat has front row seats
gaze fixed, piercing centrestage
auction-house by day, amphitheatre by night,
the bids shall resume when
the morning bells toll, till then,
Dev's hungry for more,
the rat enjoys the show.
Samuel Aug 2013
Magnolia leaves, the
thick wax coating

(this was always meant to be sweeping, the kind that
rips apart continents, scrounges
mountains from crumbs)

always meant to borrow your breath, stolen away like
fingerprints on eager skin and then brought back,
wondering where hearts fell in, the
luster of warmth

meant to learn the
magnetism from colors and
preserve proximity, stretch
away solitude

(and I have found none of this to be
anything short of a miracle)
Jamie Mar 2019
They weigh me down with each step
And I don't mean physically.
They're small enough I can get away with a sweatshirt and nothing else.
People tell me I'm lucky.
But it's funny because I don't feel lucky,
And when my laugh trips off my tongue and stutters to the floor
between the tips of my sneakers,
I don't feel lucky,
When my thank you's sound hollow like drums in my ears
After someone compliments my style and tells me I should consider
modeling
Because "women with my interesting look" are in high demand,
And I don't want to be in high demand,
I don't feel lucky,
When the man next to me at the bus stop
Scrounges inside for some semblance of modern day chivalry and
accompanies his phrase
"Lady's first"
With a wink
I don't feel lucky,
As a squeeze them,
Twin loathsome mountains of fat on my chest,
Into my binder each morning just so I
Don't have a panic attack as soon as I leave the room,
I don't feel lucky,
Every time I hesitate when I reach the bathroom doors with those
stick figure signs and I have to decide which one I want to BE today
Or be stared at in today,
And ultimately it doesn't matter because I always make sure I'm
alone when I wash my hands,
Lying on my side or my stomach and feeling the weight of that tissue
on my sternum,
I don't feel lucky,
When I walk down the claustrophobic grocery store isles looking for
the right brand of tampons and pads to stop my unwanted ******
from bleeding everywhere
And I flush beet red because I know
Above my head is a neon sign loudly proclaiming that I am shopping
for
"Feminine hygiene products"
And so sometimes I walk out with nothing and
Wake up to red sheets just to feel even worse,
I don't feel lucky,
Each time I release my bonds in the shower,
Washing away whatever dirt that day
may have thrown on my skin,
And I glance down at the scalding water cascading over my sternum,
Along my uneven collarbones,
Between the caverns of my *******,
And I realize even naked I am not myself
Am I ever myself?
I don't feel lucky.
Jogging up stairs or walking quickly to class
And feeling my rib cage strain to get enough oxygen against
The binder I subject it to,
Or massaging my back as best I can as it screams at me
Resisting the tight fabric I have pulled against it all day,
But shedding that binding feels so wrong so
Sometimes I leave it on all night and wake up in the morning and
take Tylenol
So I can function,
I don't feel lucky.
And it makes me sad because I don't want to hate myself
But I don't know how to love myself like this.
Jessica Jones Jul 2014
Inconsiderate amusement scrounges blistering bubbles to froth and churn.
Burning, sizzling, lighting afire with inconsistent bursts of rage.
Random explosions
strike terror into hearts.

Beating down with each blast.
Beating sense into you.
Relentlessly
beating

you

unconscious.

Crouched into a fetal position.
Pleas are ignored and scorned.

Say anything.
Tell anyone.
Ask for help and the load will double.
Triple.
Multiply.
Continuously.
Until you curse yourself for considering such a thing.

Every moment.
In every day.

Every.
F-ing.
Day.

Pity blossoms amidst decaying gardens.
Ensnaring any last trickle of light with starved fingers.
Silently mourning.
What used to be.

What I used to be.
PrttyBrd Dec 2018
kept to myself on silent hill
where grasshoppers used to frolic

eyes that spy don't realize
like-minds in wooden boxes
read their own would be actions

can't rationalize honesty
different strokes in choices projected
pandering in placating platitudes

never did learn how to turn polite
into untruths earning respect
through coddling flattery

backscratchers are unnecessary
when you don't count numbers
to feel worth a ****

broken beautiful even in cracked truth
taken as is wholeheartedly
but wholeheartedly never fit
into wooden boxes

where people polish egos
and truth reads like what you want to hear
unspoken expectations cultivate disappointment

caring is never pretty when it's real
honesty, with no lies, is hard to look at
in reflections of things one tries to bury

it's the beginning of trust that scrounges
for reasons to doubt
running into cradling arms

far from the unknown feeling of acceptance
where bones are broken beautiful
and scars are proof you won the battle
121118
158w
Julian Aug 2022
Prayers 830/2022
The findrompscar of egintoch kilmarge verdure veraciloquence bemoaning with pleionosis and sharpened vesicles of the seminative enthralled belletrist of novalia conquered by fallow vestiges of revalorized conations of orchestras of mathesis girdled by the hebephrenia of ecphonesis debauched in flombricks of the macadamized pathway of alloreck demand an invictive supercherie of skelder never a pilgarlick of pisteology deturpated by delitescent romage and gadarene gadabouts of the frigoric scaramouches of ruffianized kenodoxy blaring with semaphores of megalography in the sondage of plebeian reboant rebuses of qwasthink ennobled by the noema of the noosphere glorified by roundabout circumlocution because the reiterative gabble of those who neglect the omphalos of the noosphere always reticulate false cantered pretense because of constative uncertainties always asterongue in their longiniquity from the gangues of the heapstead of the realistic tropes of surreal tropology. We geck our way from gentilian fewterers of stirpiculture and the silvics of the gammon of gamines suborning fideicide in leveraged largesse countermanding with a calenture of colposiquanomian quozian fravvel the retromorphosis of profaned lascivious fossarian debouched and crass vibronic alopecia of anatocism surging never with rhipidate deflexure in the pleonexia of the pleroma of supercalendar frimples of deskandent cloveryield only partial to nebbich fortuitism rather than the spargosis of the counterphobic rintinole of earwigs of pronounced ebriection sparking the geotaxis of high larceny dragooning with imperium in aleatory passiuncles of ideoprone thermolysis of the abyssopelagic depths of stygiophobia rancid in bromides of gnomic rancor of gnomonic kurgans of gerdoying intorgurence that brannigans walm with the weirdward ascendancy of blackguarded illation circumspect in its picaresque hues of oligochrome that the laxism of pericope will not permit the greater sacrilege and tribune of frackling flarmey whadronque mendaciloquence of the kenspeckel notoriety of operose syndicalism in the dumose formative bushwhacking license and licentiousness of the Cambristry of foutered and flictitious frankquibber neoteny, this is precisely because the counterphobes that demand the syndicalism of serfdom are always hibernating on their own outrecuidance rather than bemoaning the depths of the reversal of the minimasque because of the terminus of the diestrus of denostram. We belong, however, to an age of ergotall rhipidate ragmatical perendination by the intrepid galvanization of the tremendum of rogation sizzling in dashpot acrimony that the subsultus of engorged modernity crafts in knackish knavery the lucifuguous but lucriferous fangast flannel of fanfaronade rather than fandangled cagophilists of callisteia alone never the gezellig of belgards of bronteum can empower the chandlers to reast of bibliopolist rarissima of enervated existentialism becoming the apagoge for the minimism of doctrinaire dogmatic serfdom simultaneous to the isorropic ravenous ravellin of the ratten bewrayed swirk jaunty in spellbound subversion but always recursive in the ingemination of illecebrous forsifamiliation that the rackrent of prurience demephitises only to funnel the effluvia of squalor and squandermania into a chockablock fumiduct of erasure rather than revalorized redintegration of lypemania offered at the outrance of lythcoop in phylactic manners so that the lientery of gravid supercherie of the semese ditokous radicalism of  ravelins of symposiarch syndaysmia might become enhanced by reckoning rather than diminished by crucibles of the antithesis of ataraxia at the penultimate scribacious saxifragous liturgy of sempervirent immortelles of the remontant opportunism of malingered tropoclastics of curved naivety and synclastic realism amasthenic because of prismatic surrealism. Amen

B. The whyern of the lazaretta of oxyholotrons of ghallitosis recumbent upon tisicky sockdolagers of loimic pestilence of limosis that cravenly bends all reticulation and resofincular singularities of the promontory of gadarene genius that the refracturism of liturgicide might demigrate with the demegorics of picine elapid pigarsconce phylarchy always contramanded by cowcatcher counterphobic babeldom that roils in sublimity manufactured by arrivistes of eclat that we might marvel at the majestic gauleiter in his engastrimyth porlocking purpresture of the purview of the noxal demiurge of gelogenic denouement that fewer spanerias cornered by the pogonips of suspended hebephrenia in the waning gloaming improvidence of importunate ludibund finifugal travesty that it might find recurrence in its attempted regelation of the wamzel impetus strengthened by eumoireity and the encraty that becomes the balderdash of egintoch fortitude that they might never mammer at the picaresque librations of the selenic bromidrosis that endangers by deliberate degrees of bromidrosis of frustraneous faffle that the fangasts might use the invictive turnverein of orthotropism in gallantry belonging to the gammerstangs of hylozoism even as an outgrowth of figurative thanatousia repining on its euhemerism and decrying its normalism of nocicepty in aspheterism that the eventual acme demolishes the ragtagger wreggled freggets of popinjay ventose conceit that breems of albatross dart in zugzwang rather than expedite in eupraxia of the idiolect of the grambouncers of scopophilia enamored so much of amasthenic and synclastic reboant phonophorous lurid triumph that never a crucible of laterad denouement of the raissoneurs of genius might find any crambazzled prurience in arrogation a detest of gammadions never belonging to the proper tribance of the rengall shibboleths of people that scowl in delitescent objurgation renowned for sublime rendavation that fewer may alienavesce by graklongeur and that more jongleurs of festive callithumpian imperseverant temerity might jow the tachymetry of the noosphere to the pinnacle of civilized eudaemonism never curtailed by the ballicatter of killcows blackguarding their own grapnels of possessive intorgurence and faineant psychosophy that all might denounce the rindstretch of alloreck because of ineradicable estoppage as the deturpation of the placomania and dacoitage of lewd larceny and never provident tribunes of humane orthotropism in orthobiosis. Amen

C. The raisonneur of pleionosis in the pleroma of refocillated recalcitrance emboldened into jaunty statures of refrain in the fescennine quarters of cartography bedizened by majestic megalography that simpers in the wangermist of junctition never a frackling seraglio of denatured ravellin in the skerries of skeumorph can contradict with the eupraxia rather than the dystocia of primiparas of a rhipidate fashion of patibulary treony diminutive in its trillom of flarium regarded never as faffle but always as fanfaronade that the smartest ideoprone nebbich pataphysics of modernity might quarrel with collieshangies of rapid repute opining because of quidlibertarian opiniasters of ophiuran bolides of meteoric whyern that they might all stagger davering away from the dwale of the blemished steganography of dengonin that the otarine aspergillum of ghoulish mandriarchs against an omphalism only tendentious with the full warble of tachymetry of falsehood rather than perdurable in the pasilaly of patience percutient in its force of rancor and acrimony that the ultrageous outrage always meets the favor of the tribunes of certainty rather than the delirifacient qualms of quacksalvers of martexture in the wrathcheque wartle of the renegade alone rather than the audacity of jongleurs to sway the real silviculture of sertivine and herculean geotechnics always transcendent rather than regelated only for the reflationary illusions of the revet and chaffer of broches of sanctified purpresture never the peaceful ponkoss of the pleckigger of the condign allotment. We stagger through the motatory mobilism of the diutiurnal demephitised dephlogisticated refocillation that renounces the frottage of ******* in all septuagint referendum of popular renown rather than gaumless numquids of rhizogenic rhabdomania in this heyday of providence rather than the naysayers who become the quilombo questmongers of irreption only because of the radicolous typhlophilia that scrounges pestilence and in scurrilous internecine balkanization of the avenue of truth and the highways of deceitful and disreputable phanerolagnia that they might always see the malison of the malism of the azimuth and avizandum of tziganology in shibboleth rather than in the rapidfire patibulary renown of the bowdlerized margaric and maricolous denouement of the tributaries of sempirvirence never in luxury but always in chiminage. Amen

D. Rhadbomania of the rhombos of tauricide ennobles the chiliarchy into the sederunt lancination of privilege becoming the crotaline demeanor of raffish runagate rampicks of ramellose radiciform bloviation that owes its coherence never to the  crucible of the epigones that boast in the steganography of wravvel but always evade their corporate responsibility to the anemocracy of never an anneabil gezellig of only the goliardy of dementia but that they always sustain an opiniaster flargent and deskandent impavid resofincular destination as the terminus of their finitism of consideration. May we always absolve the finicky albatross rather than the flocking jackals braying in the winterkill of subterfuge that they might with the magomancy of dragonnade rather than the imperium of honest cadence may their blarney and bletherskate impudence become to them a greater curse than the blessings of the avizandum of only a chrestomathic but outnumbered foe of the realism of a scandent scaramouch demisang of portreeves of hatred fomenting all spumid spindrifts and snirtles of disdain that they might bemoan their own intorgurence of refractory putanism as they scrimshank themselves only on meteoric pride rather than honest recidivism back into the heyday of truth rather than the matroclinic lies of bluestocking matriarchs of mandarism and omphalism contempered into raches that lack the oxyblepsia of ratomorphism ennobled rather than deturpated by both slaughter and laughter. Amen

E. Raffish runagates that enervate themselves of any oxyacaesthesia that they might belong to the demephitised bowery of their own supercilious provincial randan that the ranarian liposuction of their travesty becomes apparent in the kenspeckel of belletrist aimed against their magpiety of mafficking magomancies of false pretense rather than the sockdolagers of majestic genarchs above their littoral swank and alluvions of combustible antebellum swasivious larceny of the common forum against the lyceum of the promethean that by definition becomes radicalized by the rhipidate martexture of their profound deceit. We might never forsifamiliate or defiliate ourselves from nuclear truths rather than raffish lies of ruffianized vandalism of sacerdotalism and the triumphs of rogation above the pother of their outmantled owleries of recidivism in bloodthirst and graft. We might always overhaile without a hint of isorropic irony or the patibulary dudmans of the dringles of dwizzened wonderworks overwrought by rainshod oppression by the gullywashers of modernized tarnish hermalloping the best truths with sempervirent fictions that gadarene gadabouts prance with frantling and pavonine debellation that never provokes capitulation but only a talionic clarigation of the wartle of deceit disguised as the meteoric triumph of the hypertrophy of the hyperborean and thereby selenic invictive force of promethean millitasters emboldened into combat but never rescinded into a Miss Congeniality pageantry that shroffs by incorrect baragnosis of brassage a radical impotence rather than a plenipotentiary pantagamy of pantoglots that surf the alluvion rather than become infumated by the insolation of vesuviated hatred only countermanded by counterclock ratiocination always hobbled by the spancules of ridicule. Time is the behest of eternal alveolate synergies rather than the turgid muck of the jabberwocky of sublime elitism that is often parodied by the peenge of the thole of tauricide roaring in the winds of paravented elitism that scaramouches of skelder and the consequences of their impudence in only schadenfreude of perendination might they meet a whadronque end at the terminus of their own wrathcheque in their estrapade of the interrex rather than the eupraxia of their common objective in objectivism that finally regards with supreme truth the elements of neovitalism that buoy rhizogenic and seminal seminules of hylozoism combined with ratomorphism that we might all be astounded when the roostery outmantles the owlery because of the oxyacaesthesia that only the gubbertushed crapehangers disown in their minimifidian minimism against dogmatic lurches of triumph against the headlong deceit of hamshackled commitments of the spargosis of the colporteurs of only the most plebeian considerations rather than the most promethean samizdats that survive because the biognosy of bionomics is tautochronous to the fascinations of a newfangled isonomy between the bibliopolist of rarissima and the henchmen of the politicide of the polyacoustic babeldom of conclamation that tries desperately to cadge and roodge through diestrus the selachostomous sondage of the clastic mereology of love beyond any trivialized notions of macadamized macarism or worse the opportunism of the portreeve gauleiters of vandalized schadenfreude disregarding the ****** of a gamboling frescade with the hypaethral heavens bequeathing the glebes of plebania with a pleroma rather than a pleonexia. The pasilaly of consequentialism in the reference of doxography that might never faint by the cordial resofincular dimensions of  corrugated wizened and dwizzened dringles of pataphysical naivety that is an objurgation of negativism rather than an elevated triumph of the aqueducts of the irrigation of all novantique by the paragons of lolloping swank in the proper pleckigger notarized by the plackiques of the semaphores of the ennobled wrepolis never craven in its eustress that finally the fangasts of temerity rather than the harridans of the bloodthirst corruption of the boweries of graft eviscerated by the providence of the esquivalience of naivety that they might understand the synclastic relativism of our times magnifies the mesmerism of the siderism finally stellized enough to outmantle the pothers of fumatorium and erase the frinterans of spendthrift pismirism from the hallowed sacrarium of the modern liturgy rather than the archaeolatry of the bethels of lewd tradition empowered by footloose philandering and venal venereal valetudinarianism that itches to foreclose on every mortgaged contract of family that they might be defiliated by the timmynoggies of sin rather than redacted by the greater good of the enosimania of those that find findrouement neither a rubricality nor a qualm but rather the axiomatic fulfillment of the toil of graklongeur never feckless in its ascendancy against the tidal destruction of selenocentric arrogance of ludibund nescience that frolics only in the carapace of naive novantique rather than the egestuous realization that the crapehangers of shibboleth are useless because the apikoros are defiled by their flargent disbelief rather than ennobled by their fidelity to the agapism of a favored century over the declension of the fatalism of finifugal aghast and rantipole negations of the malaise of only the malapert reconnaissance of the scepsis of dubiety rather than the optimistic omphalism of synclastic and amasthenic centuples of redintegrated happenstance becoming peremptory novelty in the novantique of the proper pleckigger of reverence in the paravent against the umbrageous sabotage of the listless in liturgy and the intorgurent disdain of liberticide. May God reckon upon the Earth a newer triumph that never in sheepish bleats davers in periblebsis because of predatory galvanization of instinct and the worst shibboleths of the pilgarlick pigsconce of blatteroons of nescience in their firm commitment to hylicism that can easily find apagoge never only in the aphemia of aphnology of the anacusic irrecusable enmity of those that despise halidom because of the groundling fascination with only volcanic lavondeurs rather than the narthex of lavaderos that scavenge all florilegium for the tombstone of truth and the resurrection of the lively anacampserote of the optimistic escape of those persecuted by estoppage and redstrall into the frontier of harmony and the syndicalism of centripetal serendipity. Amen
Pennilessness shadows black
unemployment endless track
rails tie-er less lee when dumbly staring
overdrawn account issues
   another clattering smack.

Income pleat undergraduate degree
contributed to the role of a sporadic employee
time to acquire handy dandy blues clues key
lost within vacillating undermining spree.

Mental state can be a precarious widget-like thing
directly at the whim of financial sliding swing
self-destruction demonic ring
courtesy of pauperism
delivers the destructive poisoned scorpion sting.

Immortal force of please hear my cry
provide support while
   under the sheltering sky
steady (just out of reach)
   sought income bolster up high

mirage vision brings transient delight
to this great (former
Civil War Yankee) supreme guy.

If no breakthrough I do not foresee
charity not for profit (but only prophet) I will bee
and this blurb carved outside my cave-like hovel
many moons and break of the day find me

imploring existential vagaries this baby boomer
sans middle-aged man who hankers to be free
thus though aye to be a schnorrer

who scrounges parking lots for scattered change
yet...decries blubbering the beggar's credo
write out a check and mail to me.

Philanthropic persons
   may rightfully balk and get irate
at such brazen plea to squelch
   ma pecuniary financial state

yet where the crossroads of mine future
most likely crop up which
would cause far a tete a tete
meanwhile, stoicism bids me wait...

For Godot, Curly, Shemp, or Moe
the stand-in for a Stool Pigeon
or even an odd antagonist
   or protagonist dreamt
   by Edgar Allan Poe.
violavics Jul 2017
Being knit-picky won’t let you get by
Every hour you’ll wonder without even knowing it
Forget about the excess
As if you are unaware

Suppressing is not the answer
Relieving and breathing
Surely you can add to that
Carefree and peacefully

Winding down and pivoting down
No time scrounges for allotted share:
Dubious alignments make no amends

Let them see you
for who you are
Let them see you
for what you display
Let them see you
for why you go on about
and do it relentlessly
July 4 2017 10:26AM
It's your stage and you define it
Robert C Ellis May 2018
Collection
Obsession
Like all movement
It is misdirection

The soul scrounges dust
From the fingers of outer space
Uncontrolling it's collisions
Planets all over the place

We need story and song
We must prove the valor of Belong
And we misspend all time with strain
Love is our cover for a life in vain
Swanson Street is yawning
  the pubs are closed
  street-lamps flicker
   cabs are waiting in rows-

  some revellers are drunk
to  Flinders Station how they struggle
a woman is singing La vie en rose
a bird is chirping on a church steeple-

a sudden gust descends from nowhere
it sweeps discarded papers and debris into the crispy air-

a hungry and mangy dog scrounges at the bin
it's pitiful and finds but a banana-skin-

under the lights of Princes Bridge
a few tramps and vagabonds are asleep-

at this sombre hour why am I still wandering?
Time I've lost count of, sitting on a bench in poetry-writing

— The End —