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Justin S Wampler Mar 2015
She sees left and right whilst upside down,
laughing in hysterics at idealistic semantics.
She jauntily journeys to and from small towns,
smiling dead smiles at boys being subtly romantic.

They all want her, the mean queen without a crown,
to be captured by one or another comely fellow.
They all see the lies, under painted makeup thick as a clowns,
she tells with those brown eyes shaded in true yellow.

I see her, my child, my dear, my eyes look around
shiftily calculating the great fortunes I would pay
to knot fingers in her hair, to hear her heart pound.
There she goes now, along on her merry way.

Not that I would join in all the lads attempting her heart,
for fear of the magnificent nothings I would say.
I imagine my presence would give her quite the start,
when she sees I'm true yellow, being born to be afraid.
When I dream of her, I believe she dreams of me.




.
Michelle Ang Mar 2013
The breeze sits in your palm.

the sun is a whimpering haze
of orange and white.

It has been a while since we
have been to church.

We twine our hands together,
Perched like birds on a row of knees.


the crooked pews, aquamarine stained glass windows

the empty space swirling around our panting bodies
in great whorls,

father david spewing forth the gospel, we speak in unison
thanks be to god in the highest, have peace to his people on earth.

Beforehand, we had a family lunch
in the fast food court of the local mall
my father had his name tag, his hat,
his managerial shirt and company-approved trousers,
and the same plate of food he has
consumed for eleven years,

we chew methodically,
enjoy the four-part silence,

glance shiftily at intervals,

let the words hang,
never leap,
off our tongues.

My father is a brave man, defeat is in his posture,
but never his spirit,

he has spent years of his life
in fast food courts, barely daring
to move an inch
for our sake

now he has shrunk into himself,
a man for all men. He sits, patiently.

listen, listen to me,
what I do,
I do for my family,
to let his last sigh be one of relief,

to salvage my mother and father's
hidden grief, to hold it
close to my heart, and let them know that
I understand.

We stop by a cherry orchard,
little Knopp's farm where every item
is home-made.
I strain the very tip of my fingers

to reach that dark purple cluster
of cherries that are warmed by the sun,
and taste like the earth,

it is a hawk and tumbleweed sort of a day.

my brother drapes the weight of his body
over the tree branches, my mother
is on tiptoe on ***** buckets to rip the berries
from the stem,
I watch them both and bristle, struck
by their loveliness.
Nick Strong Dec 2019
Timothy looks away
Slightly disgusted
By those around
Flashing images
streak by
Gardens, yards
Car park
His breathing
Frosts the window
Sarah carefully
Places one ear pod
Into her ear
To listen to Handel’s 5th
Cameron looks
Shiftily down the aisle
For signs of
The trolley cart
That’s never on its way
Signs of passing stations
Shuttle by
Side streets
High streets
Cobbled streets
Timothy sighs
Opens a book
Pretends to be
Invisible
To fellow passengers
The train manager
Formally known as The Conductor
Announces
A delay due to points
Failure
Victoria
Wishes she hadn’t
Left Geoffrey
Last Tuesday
By the gas works wall
Lamp posts,
Telegraph poles
Fence posts
Flash by
A trainee
Train hygiene
Operative
Rustles a bin bag
And asks for *******
Thomas smiles
At the lady across the aisle
Who quickly looks
To the floor
Hedgerows
Sheep
Green grass
A tractor lazily ploughing a furrow
Sandra,
A mother looks embarrassed
Shushes, tries to smother the cries
Of her screaming child
Trampolines
Swings
Slides
Paddling pools
Rush on by
An old lady *****
Vigorously on a mint humbug
Whilst knitting in rhythm
With the motion
Of the train
Factories
Smoking chimneys
Industrial waste
Barren landscapes
Fly by
Terry
Anxious,
Gets up and shakily
Makes his way to check
That his case is
Still in the luggage storage
For the fourth time
Since The last station
Garages with rickety wooden doors
allotment sheds
Lock ups
Pigeon lofts
Pass by
The tannoy crackles
The announcement
That the train will soon
Reach the next station
And  
That
All passengers
Alighting Here
Be careful to take all belongings
And mind the gap
Over grown weeds
Wild rampant Budleahs
Self seeded trees
Glide past
The 3:58 from
Observational nonsense, on a train.
conceived Gerty F. Stein

Jane Birkin's Bare Bush
Chablis is number 2 in wine
White is the cheapest of pine
Bauxite is the hardest to mine
Careful, Natashka, your fork's got a bent tine
Nylon screening comes with substandard spline
Prostrate yourself to digitize my spine
Let us sup as we communalistically dine
No one proceeds to ten without acknowledging nine
Though ivory be bright—ebony do shine
Alice Babette Toklas conceived Gerty F. Stein
Vitamin B17 renders cancer curably benign
Words long-neglected grow hard to define
Around a willing neck is strung a line;
  around the block: electronic soup line
If it be not yours—it be not mine

In the movie Don Juan (1973): Bridgette Bardot held a lit cig 3'' from Jane Birkin's bare bush. It happened in a ***** yet no one died; no hairs were singed; no men were implicated; no courses were diverged; no plans were scotched; no blood was transfused...

Jinsei Iroiro
Catch a ship, one that won't tipple
Get a grip, one that's metagrippal
Poison without sincere apology
**** as a practitioner of cancrology
Steel yourself to the futility of frustration
And feel the freeze of useless cryo-ablation
Have cannibals taught us nothing?
Nothing that McDonald's hasn't disproven
Over a Happy Meal, Ronald preaches the word of Lord Jesus
Honesty was the policy of Murray Humphreys
Let us sway beneath the palms
Sing of Christ through hymns & psalms
On the backs of Jews we exploit their good will
Tricking them into paying for everything

Cup my bra while I snap your *******
On the backs of farmers ride the urbanites who target to pillage
Leftwardly along the left-handed path bores not a missed turn
Through a borough, a hamlet, a class-2A city and a dumpy village
it's legislated to fluoridate each brook, well, spring & cistern
without regard to code, codex, exception or percentage of millage
Should I lance, squeeze, ablate, extirpate or let this cyst burn?
Helpless dejection, abject poverty, silken hose put me in a mood
to wring the necks of stolen chickens; to raise cats on dog food
I rise not by the sun in perigee, nor by the tolling of a church bell
not by Nicky of Cusa on squaring circles or the harrowing of hell
Dermatologically, chiggers and mites nourish by parasitic function
So unlike priests & bishops who decree extreme Catholica unction
It's the affront, prayer-toil & misery what feeds a cold compunction
Hydrogen peroxide is keen for punctured wounds & blisters busted
For disinfecting Negroes and Hebes who muse with brown mustard

*** Phillips has crapped out!
With what shiftily amounts to disgustingly sycophantic loyalty
The teleprompter readers drool over themselves praising royalty
When Lizzy scratches her fragrant, pocked *** to satisfy an itch
Brown-nosing T.V.-types stoop & curtsy to the devil-loving rich
Who better to rut, whelp & back-scuttle than a back-alley *****?
Who better to cut the throat of, eviscerate and toss into a ditch?
Who better to ****** than a ***** in an alley as black as pitch?
bennu Nov 2020
You're a dead duck floating morbidly in April's sunny pond
How anyone'll ever talk to you I'll never know
I'm hardly interested
Don't come to me with those questions
Didn't you hear his last squawk

I watch you shiftily between the reeds,
Waiting for you to do something but you never came

Now you have me feeling like a crazy man,
Out kneeling by this pond and peering between the reeds

It smells here

I think I'm just gonna pack up & head back home

— The End —