"serling" poems
Normally this place is colder than a penguin's ****
But Holy Satan, it's steaming right now
And I'm sure it's not my cappuccino
Or the fact that i'm wearing a hoodie,
Must be (it is) the movement of your buttocks
Over there on the little wooden stage
That nobody uses except for sitting and
playing with those lame monster cards.
You and your friend, yeah, that one.
The girl that was on the table behind mine,
sneaking a peek at my iPad as it streamed
The Twilight Zone, the episode with the piano
That reveals what people hide in their souls
**** lucky that isn't here or
They'd call the cops on me for
Like ****** assault or something),
Began twerking randomly when you called her
And are still going at it, as if you're telling her lessons,
And i'm sitting here pretending to be paying attention
To Rod Serling's monologue intro
When really i'm looking at that popping shake.
Holy Satan! "Control yourself" I think
"Oh what's that? I don't remember
Having a highlighter marker in my pants.
Oh **** that's not it, ******* it."
And now you're showing your friend
How to seductively move that stomach,
This is bad (no, it's perfect),
You pulling your shirt up a bit
Above the belly button and doing that.
And how come i'm the only one here
Noticing this (besides your friends at the table).
I know the place is mostly empty but
It's a small space, it's easy to see this,
Yet these idiots are drooling over their
New Pokemon game; what the ******* hell?
When you've got the greatest show on campus
Going on right ******* there! I don't get it.
Am I like a perv or something? (Yes).
To the girl with the goddess body
Twerking all nerdishly and awesome
In the coffee shop:
Don't stop,
******* it.
Holy Satan,
Don't ever stop!
May 1, 2014
May 1, 2014 at 6:47 PM UTC
Our discussion scared me
I could not believe
That I could actually be living
With a monster from Maple Street
I checked the address
And then checked it again
I never moved
So, I started asking questions
But the answers I received
Led me right back to Maple Street
Back to the monster you revealed
Blaming those so unlike us
Because everyone tells you to doubt
Pointing out those they see as different
Because their power is on
When you are in the dark
Makes you almost predatory
Almost like a shark
Paranoia is overtaking us
As Twilight Zone forsaw so long ago
I wonder how Mr. Serling knew
That the monsters were due
The monsters that live on Maple Street
© September 28, 2009 Deanna Repose
Reposted from: http://blog.deannarepose.com
Oct 1, 2009
Oct 1, 2009 at 11:47 AM UTC
Come closer, beckoning
witch finger,
curling, crunching
in shade.
Summon the night
gallery, hanging Homer and Waterhouse as distorted oil
oozing into a
disappearing act.
My feet are a detached movement
upon semi-real
floor of tar-black
tile.
Scraaaaaaaaaping———
Where is the lapel suit
of my Rod Serling dulled
by bad agents of
thrills.
Have him string me
up, a hoisted body settled into daVinci
wings of plain wood and
curvature like a waxy bird's.
The pig's blood waiting
above my head,
Serling signaled
for drama.
I see the false teeth of the planetarium
twinkle, an engulfing omnitheater's
air that I am crucified.
Serling behind the casque of gauze
to young Shatner and wandering
starships of lean men and
the end of this star system into
galactic
odyssey.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Was Mister Spock ever tossed from
Olympus and forced lame in
the heart, a shell that is far
from hollow—what only
a mother could hold.
The bow figurehead, awaiting
corrosion.
Apr 24, 2013
Apr 24, 2013 at 3:01 PM UTC
Rod Serling In The Blue Finch Foie Gras
went peacefully when the proper Authorities arrived
to escort Him from the Pate' to the Patio
but was overheard trading barbs with a flat foot
florid with Aqua Velva; both eyes -
without Harps, Utterly.
Jul 28, 2013
Jul 28, 2013 at 4:20 PM UTC
Welcome to your new day
where life it seems
is nothing more than a string of dreams
n' the people you've met upon the stage
were sitting inside a little cage
and Rod Serling has been directing this whole time
(he's been telling you how to say your lines)
You've been arguing for a better part
because you know it's not the end that counts...
you want a choice in where you start...
but he's just informed you it's too late
you've already chosen to participate
you'll have to do the best you can...
a dream he's entitled: your life span...
now you're kicking
and, just screaming
he says hold on ...calm down
I'll see who I can bring around
You're completely sarcastic at this point...
"Oh, right. Like you can bring John Lennon, or Elvis to this joint?!"
You hear, "they're on another gig..."
(so you ask for help from someone really--- big)
He kind of laughs, and then he says...
"I've been telling you to wake up this whole time...
you don't even need to spend a dime
it's called free will, man...
can't you see?
Besides...
You've got way more pull to ask than me!"
Jul 28, 2013
Jul 28, 2013 at 2:53 PM UTC
Every once in a while, especially on holidays, I find myself wandering through my memory museum - rattling doors and fishing through those virtual hallways. That’s where I found ‘Father Lucas,’ last night, back from when I was eight or so, at (private catholic) school.
Each week, before we received that week's ‘catechism lesson,’ (religious education) from the nuns, we’d get to hear what Father Lucas had to say about the Kafkaesque mysteries of the universe. He looked very old, wise and wrinkled, like a skinny Santa Claus.
Outside of those brief lessons he was always shrouded in a cloud of cigarette smoke. Even at our age, we knew cigarettes were bad for you - but what did ‘Father Lucas’ have to fear from death? On him, the surrounding smoke seemed right and fitting, as if he were the human personification of the burning bush.
My father had just died (we were in a car crash). Before that, the biggest drama in my young life was putting one foot in front of the other, and suddenly, I had a lot - lot, lot of questions that I absolutely, positively and under no circumstances what-so-ever wanted to discuss with anyone.
Imagine, if you will, the gravitas that Rod Serling brought to the introduction of each Twilight Zone episode, and you have Father Lucas’ introducing the lesson. I felt an anticipation of answers independent of my individual situation.
Father Lucas provided context and meaning to the unknown, he dabbled in surrealism, spun out paradox and it seemed that he stood on the very edge of that dark room at the end of the maze. He was transmitting at my frequency, and I could have listened forever. Bless the man.
Ultimately, of course, there were no ‘answers’ - but that’s ok - no answers are an answer.
Dec 23, 2023
Dec 23, 2023 at 2:54 PM UTC
He spoken.
We listen, as he state about another dimension in time.
Another journey.
Another love way into this Twilight Zone of love.
A time to visit our inner self.
To question ourselves about our inner feeling.
Many people never realize they were in love with the person they was with.
Until that person was gone.
And reality starts to kick into their minds.
Rod Serling, realize various ways to make us question things.
Upon the Twilight Zone.
The mind accepts no pretense of perception.
Least not the way we, as people does in the Twilight Zone of love.
Like believing love starts when people connects.
When in truth love begins when you realize that it's true.
And they not seeking ways to hurt you.
Jan 9, 2014
Jan 9, 2014 at 11:33 PM UTC
We need more Martians , they nattered at me all the time,
More monsters—people like to be scared,
As if those callow youngsters,
Growing up with two cars in the garage
And three sets at the country club,
Their fraternity mixers at Whittier or Occidental,
Knew the first **** thing about terror.
Still, they wanted me to grind out the harum-scarum hokum
They enjoyed watching two-reelers on Saturday afternoons
While men were doing hard work in Leyte and Manila,
As if the transitory fear of some ghoulish bogeyman
Would last through the thirty-second epics
Featuring some cartoon bear shilling for beer
Or bunnies extolling the virtues of toilet paper.
Let me tell you what fear is, I would say time and again,
*It’s a padlocked fence and a smokestack
Which isn’t churning out a **** thing.
It’s the jobs you can’t get because you said something
(And more likely, you didn’t) twenty years ago.
It’s one more envelope from the bank or the phone company
With bold red lettering on the front
That you don’t open because you know what it says
And how it doesn’t matter one bit,
Because you can’t do a ******* thing about it*,
And these promising young men would just look at me
Like I was some poorly made-up extraterrestrial
From one of their Buck ******* Rogers potboilers.
Several of my neighbors here were among the men,
Mostly boys in truth, who marched with the 126th New York,
Taking fire at Petersburg and The Wilderness,
At Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor.
We have spoken about the horrors of war,
The kaleidoscope of confusion and dread,
No direction leading to shelter, no road guiding the way to home.
They have said that, as frightening as the sound of the minie *****
Zipping overhead like malevolent flies,
And the cannon were, what they found truly awful
Was the manner in which those fields,
So like the ones where they had flushed out quail as children,
Became foreboding nightmare landscapes,
Containing a dark madness
That they never dreamed could have existed.
Mar 6, 2017
Mar 6, 2017 at 10:28 AM UTC
It happens and I am out of body and the theme from the
Twilight zone is on a a loop.Rod Serling mumbles something to my
Fear.
Insanity crooks a finger and beckons from behind a hooded robe.
But this is a prelude to possibilities down the rabit hole.
So once again I turn my back. Scramble up hill the skinny trail rutted in deep.
Sleep is the breadcrumb trail. That never fails to walk me out of the woods.until next episode.
Man overboard.
Jul 29, 2013
Jul 29, 2013 at 3:59 PM UTC
i like rod serling
his read is a must
the stories were awesome
from him..to us
he scared us at night
i know you remember
little girl lost
what a pretender
pull the covers over you tight
once a week..he'll install the fright
where he would take us..we never would know
but the clue in narration
at the start of the show
like if you know ..what i'm talkin about
the show on t.v...that made you shout
the stars there were many...unknown at first
went on to be great names..like quincy and kirk
i always watch re-runs whenever i can
the show i grew up with
im a rod serling fan......
Apr 3, 2013
Apr 3, 2013 at 1:16 AM UTC
Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]
“Anglo-Saxon Students Would Not Like to Be Taught by a Jew”
cited in
-Stanley Kunitz Lyrics, Songs, and Albums | Genius
To the Privileged Youth of Columbia University:
As a child of situational poverty
I am so grateful for all my Jewish teachers
Including
Moses
Joshua
Jeremiah
Samuel
David
Solomon
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
Saint Peter and the others in The Twelve
Saint Paul
Elie Weisel
Chaim Potok
Herman Wouk
Leon Uris
Franz Kafka
Leonard Cohen
Anne Frank
Bernard Malamud
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Philip Roth
Osip Mandelstam
Saul Bellow
Isaac Asimov
Woody Allen
Mel Brooks
Edna Ferber
Yip Harburg
George Cukor
Mel Brooks
Oscar Hammerstein
Alan Lerner
Carl Reiner
Rod Serling
Franz Werfel
Alan Arkin
Claire Bloom
Leonard Nimoy
Chaim Topol
Ed Asner
Mel Brooks
Peter Falk
Werner Klemperer
Jack Klugman
Walter Matthau
Tony Randall
Mel Torme
John Banner
Kirk Douglas
Lorne Greene
Eli Wallach
Sam Wanamaker
Morey Amsterdam
Leo Genn
Otto Preminger
Jack Benny
Leslie Howard
Ernst Lubitsch
Cecil B. DeMille
Mortimer Adler
Allen Bloom
Harold Bloom
Irving Berlin
Boris Pasternak
Emil Ludwig
Eric Wolfgang Korngold
Elmer Bernstein
Max Steiner
George Gershwin
Dimitri Tiomkin
Samuel Fuller
Alexander Korda
Zoltan Korda
Emeric Pressburger
Erich von Stroheim
Billy Wilder
William Wyler
Fred Zinnemann
J. J. Abrams
Peter Bogdanovich
Michael Curtiz
Stanley Donen
Stanley Kramer
Howard Caine
Leon Askin
Robert Clary
Dinah Shore
Stephen Sondheim
Volodymyr Zelinsky
Simon Schama
Louise Gluck
Siegfried Sassoon
Isaac Rosenberg
Joseph Brodsky
Rob Morrow
Vasily Grossman
Stanley Kubrick
Viktor Frankl
And more, so many more, a cloud of witnesses
Whose names are written in gold on a scroll in Heaven
But somehow, in this world of beauty and truth
And humanity’s aspirations to the good
All you have found are bullhorns, trash fires, chants
Clinched fists, obscenities, lies, and shrieking hate
Apr 19, 2024
Apr 19, 2024 at 12:12 PM UTC
Of the many cures
—there is no cure
(Dreamsleep: December, 2023)
Dec 10, 2023
Dec 10, 2023 at 2:36 PM UTC
(POSTSCRIPT TO AUTHOR'S NOTE: As the bit of my brain which allows me to actually complete a piece of writing seems to have gone on hiatus, this chestnut is re-submitted for your approval)
We’d stumbled upon it simply by chance,
Playing on a channel heretofore unknown to us,
Almost as if the remote, in a final, desperate attempt
To escape the CGI-augmented Britneys and Biebers,
Had taken matters into its own hands and steered us there
(Indeed, when we tried to find that channel later,
It had gone a-gleaming, replaced by some lower-case Telemundo)
Presenting no outsized and over-decibeled spectacle
But a stark, quiet, indeed all but silent black-and-white panorama
Where a distinctly un-scrubbed and un-homogenized Santa
Delivers no new cars, no cartoon-mouse vacation cavalcade,
No million dollar prize from some scripted faux-survival experience,
But those things from the realm of the small, the subtle:
A sweater, a meal, a bottle for those not overwhelmed by the contents,
All courtesy of a purveyor of gifts seeking nothing more
Than to provide some measure of comfort and joy
For those who were well short on either.
It all tends toward the romantic and maudlin a bit,
One could contend
(And, indeed, did not the teleplay’s progenitor
Insist on spending his eternity on a lonely hilltop,
In order that he could have an unobstructed view
Of the cold, narrow lake
For which he’d formed such an improbable and irrational fondness?)
And those who take such a position may very well be right,
But it is equally likely that we could be better men in a better place
If the notion that we could rise above
Our tin-can and yowling-tabby tribulations
And embrace that within ourselves which is child-like and yet saintly
Was submitted for our consideration on more than an annual basis.
(AUTHOR'S NOTE: This poem owes a considerable debt to the December 23, 1960 episode of The Twilght Zone. The episode, entitled "The Night of the Meek", features Art Carney as a decidedly down-on-his-luck department store Santa who receives a helping hand courtesy of Messrs. Serling and Claus.)
Dec 24, 2019
Dec 24, 2019 at 9:31 AM UTC
In , a world of falsehood many exist.
Making up fiction to be facts of life.
And believing it.
A alternative reality like a story from Star Trek.
We, see it in politicians even in the White House.
Playing games like a cat catching that mice.
Rod Serling, would be proud.
To comprehensively see many in that Twilight Zone.
Until our alternative reality is gone.
And we're back in the real world.
Feb 12, 2017
Feb 12, 2017 at 9:46 PM UTC