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Cedric McClester Apr 2015
By: Cedric McClester

It’s a shame
And the disgrace is
A neon shirt
And pink shoelaces
Resulted in an act
So tasteless
That the victim wound up
With stitches in some places

A neon shirt and pink shoelaces
Or acting effeminate
If that’s what the case is
Physically attacking him
Was entirely baseless
And sooner or later
We all need to face this

Why you ask
Was he under attack
Homophobia
And as a matter of fact
Though it’s not a case
Of white or black
The bottom line is
It was a hateful act

A neon shirt and pink shoelaces
Or acting effeminate
If that’s what the case is
Physically attacking him
Was entirely baseless
And sooner or later
We all need to face this

What people do
In my point of view
Is a matter of personal choice
Not up for review
Unless it’s hurting others
Or causes their rights to
Be infringed upon
Then ya might wanna sue

A neon shirt and pink shoelaces
Or acting effeminate
If that’s what the case is
Physically attacking him
Was entirely baseless
And sooner or later
We all need to face this

And here’s the thing
That I don’t get
How is what he does
Considered a threat
To anybody else
Albeit
Even those who object
Shouldn’t become upset – cos

A neon shirt and pink shoelaces
Or acting effeminate
If that’s what the case is
Physically attacking him
Was entirely baseless
And sooner or later
We all need to face this


(c) Copyright 2015, Cedric McClester.  All rights reserved.
India Hares Jul 2017
shoelaces

My shoelaces need to be tied
But I’m stuck still in love
I’m trying to kiss my goodbyes
But darling it’s tough

My eyes don’t really see anymore
his eyes are stuck in my sight
No... I know I need to shut that door
For it keeps me awake at night

My shoelaces need to be tied
Maybe then I can move on
Maybe then I can move to a new sky
Instead of repeating the same ******* song

Falling out of love is a hard thing to do
So give me some clues
Now you know why I can’t tie my shoes
Stephanie Little Dec 2013
White shoelaces tied carefully,
clothes ironed straight,
not a strand of hair in his face,
private school and Christian home.
His momma packed him PB&J.;

She said, "Son, don't hang with the wrong kind of kids,
the ones sitting in the back of the classroom
who wear words on their necks and
black every Sunday."

And she puts a napkin in his lunchbox and reminds him
to wash his hands.
And she prays for him to find cleanliness,
and she checks the internet history every day
while he finishes homework and practices piano.

She tells him, "Son, don't let those celebrities
with their drugs and their ***** words
influence you."

And she emphasizes "man shall not lie with man"
and not "God loves all His children"
and tells him not to let any mud get on his new socks.

He sits on the couch and
he sits in the audience and
he's told what isn't okay.
He is raised following predjudices he doesn't agree to,
stereotypes engraved deep in his brain to the core.

He was never taught any different,
he was never educated on differences.
He knows a million shades of white but God forbid he touch a blade of glass.
He was taught to keep his window locked,
head down,
eyes shut,
mouth closed,
hands folded,
back straight,
shoelaces tied.

Momma says, "Son, better keep yourself clean,"
but she touches him with ***** hands
and ties a rope
he never wanted
around his neck.
As I told you already that I was Graeme Thorne in the 1950s and apart from the fact I was him for just 8 years, I had a best friend named bobby Francis who was a very ***** fellow, well back then so was I
Bobby had a teenage crush on dody Stephens who sang pink shoe laces which was bobby's fave song and I, as Graeme Thorne thought yeah she is cute and bobby bought her album over to my house and you could hear his voice twanging with the words pink shoelaces and then in 1959 bobby bought pink shoelaces which caused a bit of shock for teachers at old scots college and Greame Thorne who was me said it looks weird that my mate is wearing pink shoe laces
But bobby couldn't give a flying **** about what people were saying about him
Just listen or try and get the memory of him singing
Tan shoes and pink shoelaces
A polka dot vest hey man oh man tan shoes with pink shoelaces and a big panamol
With a purple hat band and my friend bobby sang that with the same twang as dodi Stephens
Which could be the reason why
Bobby is having a tween crush on an older 13 year old singer
I as Graeme Thorne also had a crush on dodi and both me and bobby were dodi's dory but bobby's mum got really cranky with bobby for his voice because it could be a **** voice but bobby used bad language to tell his mum to get ****** and every time we went to the local shops in Bondi beach we bought our ice creams and sat on the beach singing the dodi Stephens hit
And then two gorgeous 12 year old girls sat near us and I said
How about a bit of sugar and bobby said for you maybe but I want dodi's pink shoelaces
And I told bobby to live in the realistic years and bobby said you can talk to these girls but I like dodi ok and bobby was ******* over dodi Stephens **** body while I as Graeme Thorne went over to the 12 year old girls and started to massage their backs and thighs saying to bobby these girls are a nice *** of sugar
For my spoon and as the girls left they kissed me as greame Thorne on the lips and left thinking my friend was a bit of a **** and when we got back to bobby's house bobby played pink shoe laces very loud as well as ******* thinking dodi is a 50s fox and I toild him that those girls on the beach were **** too and bobby said yeah I agree but I plan to finish school and marry dodi and then said he was Dooley and dodi is trying to keep me safe well in 1960 I was kidnapped and killed and bobby well I will never ever know if he got it together with dodi, probably not but in my current life at the age of 22 I heard bobby's twang singing pink shoe laces as I heard it on the radio and now I listen to pink shoe laces on YouTube
She is hot
Robin Carretti Jul 2018
He was blown>>>>
>>>> away_--- from
my lace-up
Is She his blue
Mood tie set any bet
to walk the talk

At your own pace
The lustful wake up she
got the face

The edge of his rim sneaker
So prim who is proper
On the brim of ecstasy
He puts sugar on my tongue

Rumors like the "Talking Heads"
All in the bedding sneaker
Jane of the jungle wild tongue
She races Tarzan swinging sneakers
You and I tripped over dreams the sneaker?
Lip to lip disaster

The "Cyberwar" stepped on melting
Gold *** of tar
The loud blaster she moves the
Starwars so far

He could eat her up
his checkered black and white flag
Like a lobster claw his last draw

The racer mouth sponsor

She was born 2-B that way
sneakers love 3 some run
It's not unusual to have fun
with anyone
Her hands were far gone but
solid as a rock
Rollicking flying his rocket
Racing by her own clock Ms. Hornet


His sneaker loud love feud one
the detail on her sneaker
the wild bird of a bud

He shook me all night long
don't do an
A-C-D-C  on me
The sneaker he got the
Crazy eights
 No prank calls
Her hot buns and
Speaker- Frank-flirters
take me out to the
ball game demonized

The Anti Christ be born again
My sneaker group what a tank full
The Antitank no thanks
You cant always get what you want
and if you try sometimes
Charge all plastic but
sneakers like rubber soul

Visa hot runner Lisa no control
The American Express abdominal press
Shop until she drop's gum-drops
Your head was like a
Rolling Stone Jagger
Bigfoot sneaker Friday 13 size
That girl sweet pea Lea surprise
In the Hell, kitchen she snapped
That purr nightcap like Cleopatra

He's the Mantra so passionate fruit loopier
She's the Mona Lisa unfriendly sneaker
Your happy socks are quick
On his bell-hop feet
The sneaker riddle beat


That long meeting so *******
For time baby blue eyes Frank
on the mic
Like the jitterbug tight-knit
as sneaker print rug
Citron sharp eyes 5 Karat
Spicy hot Chili pepper
poem sonnet

The singer swung
Jazzy sneaker band
Dr. Who wears sneakers drinking
Dr. Pepper

The "Red Apple McIntosh" computer
Such a loud mouth hacker Josh
Jeweled Judy cultured pearls sneaker smash

Or her Stairmaster her
sneaker hotties ruffles have ridges
The juicy burgers dill pickles

Desperately sneaking Susan
sneakers to her affair finish line 
What a Lady Madonna
baby sneakers
at her breast rebel of hearts
I wonder how she manages to
sneaker speed the rest

Her best to out twin any talk
bullseye power walk
Buying the triplex sneaker
The loud talker 4 for 4 fame Wendy
Run like a fugitive your alias
name
Go International quite run
for your money I suppose
His sneakers up on her recliner
It wasn't her better rose
She's the high boot lady ever finer

On E-Bay selling your favorite sneakers
Those Australian Huskies biting sneakers
Such a Paws up against doggone heartbreaker

The in-crowd Flynn or another runner Lynn
Everybody is not a star or wedding crasher
Or even the right sneaker lover

Lady that lives in her homeless shoes
Are we all inside a video game
all commercials

Needing bifocals video begins
 Wynn at Sneaker Con
Joy to the world of the joystick
The sneaker of the Torah prayers of
the Temple
All dots and specs out of sneakers
More zits and pimples
I just want one-half cream
The changing Moon 1/2 Wolf
My man (Mr. Drakar) Howling toenail

French onion soup say cheese
her sneaker what a
no-brainer lightheaded breeze
You come so far sneaker trainer
And a grave site plot famous
brand sneaker
name

A million odds to one name in the
cemetery
****** Mary she flies in her
sneaker like Mary Poppins
Going under the influence
Heres looking at you kid umbrella

Hot Hollywood Taurus Bulldog
runner
We really don't have a name

We are writers and ****
good fighters single to mingle sneaker
Not the homewrecker more like the homemakers
Even sneaker has a voice and walks like singers
Shoeiverse sneaker race
became her living curse
The grin of the Grinch green sneakers
On his sled ride the lucky shamrock

I'm the happy heel
The tigress furry feel skip to my Lou
he ordered the
kids happy meal

Getting a ticket for reckless walking
Lights on or eyes wide shut
Are sneakers running for their life?

More fuel- time we get no alone time
Let's go shopping for the
new sneaker called
(Valentine only) sold one
day the sale
Singing her sneaker song a chip
device to talk back hot male
The 'Calvin Klein" dockers her ball of the foot
tennis sneakers It's her loud Owl ******-hoot

The farm girl Ralph Lauren corral
To rope her in lasso-like with morals
racing horse of different color fashion
I cannot hear you I have a hell
of a tinnitus reaction

  She-Devil bickering.>>> No heart like a sneaker
I am a snake too short to run the mile

I was too busy looking
at her long legs
On the Jet
** Plane
The most popular lady
in her sneakers 

Viper car and strings attachments
Ms. Love lace the shoelaces
with hearts
She is tied to his ankles
like condiments
Like Sweet cherries what a
bomb kicker sneaker
The Southern Belle runner
Be the stunner the trucker roadrunner

Hail to Mary the sneaker
Queen of Sheba
Turn on the radio Country singer Reba
What a sneaker rating ratio

When she bent down the crisscross
Watch out cross my heart trainer

Cross my heart and hope to die
To get slimmer
I am the happy sneaker
all the moods hot goods
(Hey Robin Hood)
stealing a rich man and poor women
which is the witch

One string said pull me the
other one said you feel like a
Chrome lead sleepy feet go to bed

Like Beer and pretzels
What an insane sneaker hazard
Hospital beepers sneaker virus
stepped on the most expensive
Venus, I beg you to run
lips we travel bullets and stars
We just want some fun

Marathon key just one clicker
That strawberry shortcake
Versus the "Cherry Bomb"
The Prince and the Pauper
what a toad kisser
That army tanker hurry up
lunch or brunch
What a Patriot Brady bunch

My shoelaces became like a
firecracker candy bar crunch

Who is the loser lover
or the winner
The long trip almost at the end
of the race
What a rivalry those shot glasses
at random
The sneaker fandom

Smile to me if you're not
wearing anything
but sneakers
My wings the wifi cute feet just
say Hi

No, I saw a man 600 pounds
of Reebok gold way too
much belly roll fat
The Dr. Seuss cat in the hat

Nike in the air Robin
bird skydivers
Dark matter gold diggers
Movie (It) Stephen King
skateboard

Penny feet relaxer
The Wise clown got her
The sneakers comedians
Seinfeld stand up sneaker
To be dead or wed Kleinfeld
Exotic sneakers and
cars he made a home run
Hot hell ring my bell
You made me happy
I got to first base

And you all sync into
one of a kind sneaker
Mom Robin the singer
No, I saw a man-eating
out of his sneaker
His head up in the Nike air
Oh! all hell breaks footloose
computer looking
up the sneaker sales

All I am doing is clicking
with a mouse
Where is my lover
sneaker twin, my spouse
This is about a trip not on an airplane flight more down to earth long walk star gazers or runners and clickers but its a comedy around all names and hot runner shes the firecracker don't  eat her at her game
Lauren Marie Apr 2014
I don’t want anyone to get hurt from my carelessness
Like having my shoelaces undone
And someone else tripping over them
It’s unfair, and it should have happened to me.

But I guess no matter how hard I try,
Or even how my shoelaces are tied
Sometimes the laces will come undone
And someone might come along
and fall.

I could spin the thought
And ask the question
Was it my carelessness which had them trip,
Or the carelessness of their very own?

I am conditioned to take the blame
Growing up with a father who ceases to never admit fault
Even when his hands are stained with the mistake.

I have a chance for that cycle change.

Practice allowing others to take responsibility
Instead of pointing fault at me.

Regardless if it was my their fault or mine,
I can’t go back in time,
And change the fact they fell.

What I do have in my control
Is the hand I can extend
To help raise them up, and stand again.
lilac Nov 2016
i'm tripping over shoelaces
and falling over beating hearts
while you are watching
with amused, worried eyes.
my fingers turn to ice
and i manage to mumble
"i like your hair" before
the world ends and
my shoelaces are strangling me.
errrr
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2016
if you can find c. g. jung writing an answer to the biblical Hiob, i can be found writing this... or as the Lad Bible states: be your superficial you... so when she's not her superficial self... you can just play the awkward monotone speaking caveman that you weren't before she played you that superficial card of hers to tone down your interests.

you know why i'm fascinated with schizophrenics?
primarily because they are concerned with
an inorganic medical condition,
there are, absolutely, no reasons to suggests they
are organically prone to premature degeneracy,
they are what the Alzheimer old man calls an angel,
and what the "angel" experiences from time to time...
to cite a non-typical schizoid experience -
a splinter in the mind?
when i wrote my previous poem, i was listening
to the song *the parting glass
throughout,
on and on and on... the rhythm took over...
and when the "poem" was finished i retracted myself
into my room and first played auld lang syne
(with lyrics and English translation)
...
                           and then... the pure instrumental
of knee-deep-bagpie... bagpipes, sure, horrid,
screeching drowning-lungs of magpie
cackling cut short into a carbonated highland water...
     oh don't worry, what this comes down to
is personal experience, such negations of ease
are not like the black plague, or a.i.d.s.,
they don't come into contact with purely-riddle
human incompetence... it takes more than that...
certain conditions are not viral...
you can't interpreted them as political malevolence
akin to a political movement... primarily because
the numbers don't add up...
                    the complexity of thought is
the complexity of regarding the mind as an abstract
of the brain, given the brain has no accuracies
concerning abstraction when stated against being automated
to a pair of kidneys... i too wish for a La La Land sometimes...
but that's not the reason people allow ***** donations...
     but you know, it really gripped me,
i wrote that poem, listening to the parting glass,
and felt nothing, nothing... because i was so
formulated to write what i wrote...
  i wrote the last bit, walked into my room,
and played the second version of auld lang syne...
the royal scots dragoon guards pure instrumental...
   and you get to weep these cold tears
after an insomniac cold shivers getting warmer with whiskey...
              and whimper and bite your bottom lips...
because you're hardly a woman fainting
and the drama isn't in you...
               and it's actual tears...
people laugh and cry saharan tears, meaning: it never
rains over it...   i see Sahara as the ancient version
of the Himalayan mountain range, suddenly reduced
because god is fickle and well, aren't we all?
           if any of us are alive to read or speak such
encodings... there will be a desert made from
the Himalayas that will be called the Himalaya -
but that's really being optimistic.
       there used to be mountains, mountains in
north Africa, Gandalf! but they crumbled in deserts!
where once a mountain range, subsequently a desert...
where now a desert, once a mountain range.
can i please get a taxi to leave this current
history and Darwinistic revisionism of it as telling
us ape Adam had more psychology about him than
Charles XIV? i want to hear the geological version
of Darwinism! but am i hearing any of it? n'ah ah.
       so yes, upon hearing the scotch dragoon guards
pipe a full whiskey sodden breath into the
         bagpi - i heard the word counter to my scrambled
narrative... king... king?!
                   which is what's bewildering about
a medical term deemed premature dementia...
   it's an organic impossibility...
but given society is an inorganic organism
and all our socio-political mechanisms aren't exactly
organic, there might be some sense in this piquant
dabble in an auditory hallucinogenic experience -
which, evidently, people find frightening,
since they occupy defining their thinking with
hearing so much, and when seeing a homeless man
think so little...
                     logic? a particular arrangement of words
that does not provide kind rubrics for the testimony of
the many...
                    i can hallucinate this auditory "addition"
and competently go on my daily business,
or my nightly business finishing a bottle of scottish amber...
some people cannot...
                 what i see it western society predicating
their poor knowledge of Alzheimer's as if searching
for some genius to explain what happens to the abstract
functions of what the brain represents
                 in terms of how the brain and abstraction
can't be cleanly separated, i.e. to treat the degeneracy
of the brain as succumbed to, but not succumbing to
the elaborated foundations of the "brain"
within the trans-physical functions of the "brain"
within a framework of memory, vocabulary, memory.
people first attribute the brain with too much
           concern for abstraction when in fast the driving
force for abstraction is the now-vogue zeitgeist
"psyche does not exist" -
                            and when the brain degenerates like
a heart or a kidney can... people start to freak
out propping out a Frankenstein revival that brain
cannot in-act upon...
                                 they told us the brain is fat...
          then they tell us only 0%, or fat-free yoghurts are
good... isn't the case for the epidemic of dementia
due to the fact that we're censoring fat?
what feeds the brain? fat! what are we censoring from
our diets? fat! fat free ******* yoghurt!
                             where does the modern epidemic
stem from? censoring fat! you anorexic ******* morons!
  you know why i put extra fat in the way i cook
meals, you know what orthodox cooks tend to
like a sizzle of a lump of lard? brain food...
     and yes, some call it eating a lot of nuts...
well then... fry me a ribs-eye steak on a handful of
cashew nuts you crazy *******!
            this is what drives me crazy concerning
auditory hallucinogenic experiences...
there are no drugs that you could ever sell that people
would buy to experience an auditory hallucination...
primarily because people made thought
   an auditory experience...
                  that's the norm, i'm not talking Walt Disney
here... and people enjoy music because it feeds the heart
in a way averse to images that feed the libido
or dreaming...
    the point being, my "hallucinatory" experience lasted
for less than a second... some ***** on l.s.d. trips
for half a day because he finds modern movies boring
and finally gets to appreciate cubist contortion
mechanisations... i can do more damage with a second's
worth of "auditory" hallucination than that little
hippy can do away with 12 hours, and only end up
writing a haiku thinking he can suddenly conjure up
spirits of Shinto like some Gilgamesh *** Bruce Springsteen;
then he shaves his hair and travels to Mongolia
to learn the index against the lips motorboating
harmonica... and i end up saying: thank you;
cos it wouldn't be twangy without that kind of a tranquiliser
to stabilise excitement beyond encoding sounds.
          i can tell you how ******-up my internal
narrative has become, so i'm defeatist,
here's how it looks like when i get agitated...
               writing on a white flag...
      oh look: wavy! wavy! i'm waving it...
going boats full of nuts and bananas!
             you ever hear the story of a psychiatrist
jumping on a table and barking when a conscription
  cadet tried to fake being mad?
      she did what i just wrote and asked H. Clinton
to reiterate on the campaign trail.
                    inauguration 2017:
   i solemnly swear, that H. Clinton barked like a ruffian
poodle on the campaign trail.
  beside the point though, schizophrenia is an inorganic
manifestation of an actual organic degeneracy -
it's a negation-of-ease for dangerous people...
     people who probably have a music taste outside
the top 40 best selling albums (let alone singles)...
                   and they're quick to pick up on this grey area
concerning premature depression...
                it's trendy these days... people who are melancholic
are people who are like Homer, wrote the Odyssey
went blind from making too much heroism from
      the cannibalism at the gates of Troy and couldn't
handle telling a single lie after having written such an epic...
   or as Virgil convened: Paris didn't escape,
Aeneid did... no one knows what happened to Paris,
       probably choked on a raisin or something:
it's ancient history, if you're not going to talk about it
in a callous manner, then be prepared for careless mannerisms:
pout, **** *** cheek, shelfie!
               what i am seeing is this quote:
a butterfly on the Galapagos Islands... a Tornado in
Colorado... the poetics of quantum physics,
or misplaced potentials of counter-quantifiable
simultaneous counter-interpretations...
    the butterfly effect? under the umbrella corporate
otherwise known, from ancient times: a metaphor.
hey, we started reading into hydrocarbons,
there's no way to talk easy for us...
                           for all my love for one inspiration,
i lost my love for him when he said that not tying your
shoelaces (i.e. spelling) was because he thought it was
indoctrination... you know who i mean: Mr. Chow Chewski...
   spelling? that's like tying your shoelaces!
         question is... who would ingest a hallucinogenic
drug that didn't utilise the multi-coloured world to
an excessive amount to be prescribed, say, an U.V.
phosphorescent spectrum of seeing... when, given all
that... sound occupies this realm of b & w?
               who could create an auditory hallucinogenic?
can you imagine it?
                             most people with a weakened cognitive
membrane would go nuts... as the case has been proven
many a times...
        but given the fact that no such hallucinogenic exists,
or that "auditory" / cognitive hallucinations are
disregarded even though Descartes stressed this
   notion of a substance / thought, and an extension /
       sensual disparities with regards to cohesive uniformity,
i.e. regarding over-stressing a particular sense
      and never reaching a former cohesion...
           can only mean a circumstance later described
by Kant within the framework of the noumenon -
    i.e. perhaps you've seen too much, but heard too little...
perhaps you've tasted too much, but had barely a sniff of
                  more...
        the original thought when exposed to a cohesion
of uniformed senses, experiencing a discohesion of
             a presupposed sensual "uniformity",
returns back into a form of thought, i.e. an extension...
                only because the thing in question is a
presupposition, not a supposition that can be countered
with a proposition, i.e. since we all made mistakes
presupposing, we have become prone to propositions to
suppose otherwise... in terse terms: invent politics.
so what i termed "auditory" and "hallucination"
and conflated them in a prefix of cognitive-, in consolidation
i meant to say that: once all presuppositions (thoughts)
disappear by the miraculous ape that man either is
or wishes himself to still be... and we deem to say:
   reality...                 we only have suppositions (extensions)
               that appear...
                         by the miraculous ape that man never
was and wishes himself to nonetheless be:
  in that consolidatory ref. to the last trinity of Cartesian
thought: substance - in the former the formation
of will... in the latter the complete lack of it -
                              to the simpler scenarios,
we already have knowledge of prisons and asylums...
            because internalising such possible scenarios
never leaves the many to be grafting such possibilities
with enough calm as to persevere for the sole purpose
of understanding, as what point can a noumenon-unit
enter the argument if not from a reflex
                       as this continued narration explains...
none of this was reflected upon...
reflection in such circumstances usually means weaving
a machete at your neighbour...
                                  the noumenon-unit
the ping-pong factor in all of this is a reflex action...
         not a reflective action...
               i am no king no more than i am a pauper...
   now imagine if i tripped for 12 hours on l.s.d.,
having extracted so much, from an "auditory" "hallucination",
that, in the realm of the mind, is neither a minute,
nor a second, nor a nanosecond...
               it's unitary equivalent is simply that of: a word.
Richard j Heby Apr 2012
the night i met a map maker
who'd never seen the world
i found out that this living life
slowly comes unfurled

with every sought experience
and everything undone,
granted we are shoelaces
tied and gone **-gung

so much so that we don't know
the order of our things,
like when we meet a pretty girl
we take her off some rings

and when the rings come ringing by
the anchor on your ship
i answer the phone and to him say
i'll never take your ****

to my house
because i don't have indoor plumbing.
Ignite Mar 2019
Some of my friends and family do not understand anxiety
“It can’t be that bad”
“You don’t have anything to be afraid of”
“Just calm down”

“It can be that bad” I tell them
Anxiety strings barbed wire across doorways and coats people in broken glass
You can’t go anywhere
Anxiety is like a room in an adventure movie where water is steadily pumping onto the floor until it’s up to your chest
Except there’s no magic lever or button for anxiety
It just keeps going until you’ve drowned
Anxiety is a boulder strapped to your back
It keeps pressing and pressing
Even when you’re tired and you just want to sleep, it keeps pressing
Even when you fall, it keeps pressing
Even when you stop struggling to move, to survive, it keeps pressing

“There’s plenty to be afraid of” I say
Anxiety is a monster with giant bulging eyes and thousands of teeth and claws
And the worst part is that no one else can see it following you down the hallways at school
Stalking you in the bathrooms at concerts
Hiding under your own bed
Anxiety is like an uninvited party guest
You never know when Anxiety is going to join the party
It just shows up
And you never have enough snacks or blankets for Anxiety
It always wants more
And it doesn’t leave until 4am when you’re shaking from exhaustion
Anxiety doesn’t even say Thank you
For taking up everything you had in you
It just leaves
And you know Anxiety will be back
Eventually
What’s scary about Anxiety is that it keeps you from doing something you really wanna do
Like spending the night at your friends
You really wanna go but you just don’t
Because you don’t want to have to explain why your body has begun to unravel itself, time traveling back to when anxiety kept humans alive and why apparently your body thinks your friend’s sweet little French bulldog is the equivalent of a modern day saber tooth tiger  
Another scary thing about anxiety is the fact it’s something your brain makes up and your body BELIEVES it of all things
“I’m dying” your brain says
And so your body believes it
Because why would a piece of your body lie to itself?
Why would you lie to yourself?

“I can’t just calm down” I say to them
The whole thing with Anxiety is not just the fact that the guy next to you could be a suicide bomber or that the girl across the isle could have a knife in her pocket or  the fact you’ve got a test to pass or that your shoelaces aren’t symmetrical
It’s that anxiety gives you anxiety
What a beautiful self-destructive cycle
And if I could calm down don’t you think I would?
Do you think I would scratch myself raw trying to force the anxiety out of my skin?
Do you think I would spend my friend’s birthday party having a panic attack in the bathroom?
God why is it always bathrooms?
Do you think I would spend my every waking hour anxiously figuring out how I can avoid all the things that give me anxiety?
The thing about anxiety is that nothing can “get rid of it”
There is no cure
A million billion poems and hugs and dark closets and angry songs and therapists could not get rid of anxiety
Anxiety has embedded itself into me and I don’t have enough strength to dig the scalpel into my own skin and carve it out
I don’t think anyone has that kind of strength

“Anxiety is a part of me” I tell them
And the thing I ask now even gives me anxiety
Isn’t that ironic?
But I still ask it
I always ask it
“Will you still accept me?
Hi guys! I have no clue what I’m doing here, but hi!
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2019
it would seem,
   a maine **** cat, male, is best appeased
by a shoelace...
     hardly a comparison
aligned to the master mikhail bulgakov...
this cat doesn't drink *****,
or play chess...
nor does it drink wine...
      it prefers sushi shrimps and
       sushi trout eyes...
and... shoelaces... for a game...
as i too might, imagining being infested
by a tapeworm...
shoelaces: but no shoes
   do women really keep cats for
replacement company therapy sessions?
i just keep cats as the last
resort format of a curiosity
learning curvature... they're just weird,
or rather, of all the petted animal,
so subtly idiosyncratic...
  i have too many nicknames for them...
the male? quarus? osama bind laden:
the terrorist... the aria king...
   bodzio when he's wanting
to cling to head-butting you as a greeting...
   pavarotti...
          he meows to the point of howling
come 4am...
   the female? veroniya?
       ss-obersturmbannführer,
witch,
            tyson fury when she's trying
to hide her "oopsie" of a ****'s worth...
jaws... since her tail is always upright...
like a shark's fin when she's strutting...
oh but animals have their character...
   less visible in dogs...
    give it enough time:
you're bound to spot it among / in cats...
even a cow was a character dynamic
proding suss... however subtle...
most people don't encompass a capacity
to encompass this sort of
                    gift.  

.and some would claim that there exists, a contradictory-"******" related to the psyche of suicides... it would appear the mere thought of suicide is a "disgruntled" variation of arousal, nay, the mere thought is more potent than a ****** arousal... it's less the ultimate taboo, but the ultimate fetish... why blame those, who have managed to satisfy this urge? my father never complained about suicides, he had a story, where his friend committed suicide, becausde his father was ******* his girlfriend, and he, simply, reached the threshold of what was acceptable, for his psyche to manifest a will inclined to entertain life, rather than that omniscient lover, death... i've come to realise that death, is... as ****** as whatever harlequin / de sade ******* allows, nay, more... how mere thinking can create an arousal, of goosebump testicles, imitating a ***** dynamic, without really achieving a hard-on, rather, a protruding tongue, silenced, which gives the hands momentum, to doodle, something, akin to this; suicide is forever going to be, the exacted limit of passing a free will judgement, however wrong... if the argument goes: humans are without free will, a suicide will always provide the antithesis; i've had a fwend (" ") once, who wanted to shame michael hutchence for his suicide... one brave ******* in all honesty... to experience that sort of a metaphysical ******, well... don't know what it would feel like... any science is contrary to the details, given that... all your "proof" is ascribed to the dead... but at least a philosophical mind-set provides, some groundwork, for imagining a counter-argument, and... the justification for the most "abhorrent" expression of free will... it feels good, to be left without the shackles of the free will argument, that excludes the act of suicide; that's the 1st step: if someone can't commit themselves to suicide, then... man has no free will... there's nothing quiet like engaging with a conscious choice, freed from conscience, whatever post mortem arguments come after, don't even matter... flimsy ******* sparrows, scheming and fluttering of wings! fly! fly! be free! be free!

                           tim pool:
being gay is not a choice,
being religious is,

except the whole
bureucratic fiasco
of the catholic church

the whole pro-life
and pro-baptism...

   i made it blatantly clear
that i didn't want
to be baptißed,
when i dissented from
having to be
confirmed...

mind you:
one great aspect of a catholic
school?
   uniforms...

yeah... i guess you don't
get to create a group
dynamic borrowed
from clothing,
there's no high-school "culture"
that later translates itself
into a resentment culture
that lends the high-school
years as blueprint,
for "extracurricular" activities
of: the motivational life
(aspect)...

i can't remember being
asked whether
i wanted to be baptißed
or not...
i do remember being
asked to be confirmed...
i declined...

so... i am an apostate,
but for that to have any
clingy-meaning,
you'd need catholic
bureucracy to imply
"something"...
nothing protestant:
*****-nilly on the side...

   an uncircumcised man
succumbs to the allure
of hebrew mysticism
and (g)nosticism...
   namely the qabbalah...

oh sure, sure,
i was going to side with
the younger devil
(islam) on matters
of my, "christianity"...
i was going straight
to the jews to find
reasonable answers...

      oh ****...
    i should have done that
protestant "thing"
of borrowing from
either buddhist or hindu...
****...
must have slipped my
'ed.

i still don't understand how h'american
adult life translates itself from
a resentment of the h'american high-school,
if it does not lend itself to
the critique associated with faith schools,
and uniforms...
                 at least in english,
catholic high-schools...
everyone was made uniform,
akin to joining the army...
an army of jesuits...
         h'american public schools,
and their non-uniform policies...
bad idea...
       we had about 3 non-uniform days
in school, we were allowed to not wear uniforms,
as long as we gave money to a charity cause...

i hate the notion of the genesis
of culture, being excavated from h'american
public schools, where uniforms were deemed:
non-complicit...

i liked the uniform,
it's the closest i ever came to my father's
stint in the ****** army...
           being the most handsome,
recruited for the "royal guard" equivalent...
i.e. the republican guard...
pretending soldier status...
shooting blanks, at state funerals in
a "bargain" of the salvo...

thank god i never attended a public
school, i liked my catholic school uniform...
i never dressed to impress...
i never made a cultural backdrop out
of it... there was never a piggy-bank's
worth of a twilight saga to bank on...
     thank god not all of h'america
left the shores of america...
  thank god some of it: stayed in its place;

what?!
  
      i live in england...
  why wouldn't i whistle the le marseillaise
alongside the british grenadiers' fife and drum,
rather than... oh god... god save the queen / king?
the most ****** national anthem in
world history...

  sorry, i can't...
                it's a ****** anthem...
              at least the russians and the scots have
the grounds for an anthem covered...
****... beside vaughan williams...
    elgar?! that's it?! no wonder.
Tom Leveille Jun 2014
while september cicadas
were singing my neighbors to sleep
i was up walking holes in my shoes
over love once lost
so many poems ago
that the only thing i remember
about the house at 38th & bluestone
is that it reeked of alcohol and is
as i'm sure of it
still saturated in perfume
and abandoned laughter
but that's not the point
give me a minute
what i'm trying to say
is i always thought god
enjoyed watching things leave me
it makes me wonder
what was on his mind
that night in september
when i stooped to cough
or tie my shoelaces
i no longer remember why
but i recall their trajectory
the way gravity cradled my hands
and brought them crashing back to earth like a 747
they landed inches away
from a scrap of crumpled loose leaf
folded in half like the smiles
of my relatives on a holiday truce
you see, lately i've been looking for scars in the newspaper
i find myself checking the obituary
for my former selves since the day i found your suicide letter
maybe that's why i can never explain my obsession with history
maybe archeology is just a funeral
in reverse
maybe hell is just rewinding home movies
or watching confetti
turn back into photographs
i never told anyone
the reason the doors to the gun cabinet in my family's house are locked not because they are afraid
i will take my life
but because sometimes
i sing them birthday songs
on the day you died
it makes me think
of how rooms only echo
when they are empty

*you know
i never echoed until you died
Marshall Gass Jun 2014
Oh yes! I had plans to woo you
with roses and chocolates
and other mushy make-up
that might just rev up your fireworks
Yet I knew deep inside
it wouldn't work so well.

So jugular it was
condoms and plastic roses
knotted in shoelaces
painted and welded on a metal frame
worded: I will take you
to take me: Now!

But you laughed
and blew the condoms into balloons
and spray painted the roses in silver
and I used the shoelaces
to hang my head in creative shame!

Yet when we met on the deck of union
for the first time
the sparks lit up the nightsky
and we slept curled up around each other
like question marks

Thats how we bought tickets
to forever
Crazy?
I waited-you came!

Author Notes
Most enjoyable poem today.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, 2 months ago
basil Aug 2021

you took my hat off and wore it
it looked better on you
you took my shoelaces and
tied them around your wrists like bracelets
i wanted to hold your hands

you showed me your poem
something a little dark, but i liked it
and you always tell me what book you're reading
you tell me to watch your favorite animes
even though it's been years since i've watched anything at all
i watch them all as if they will show me the world through your eyes

i thought i was special but i learned you do that with everyone
you told me a list of her favorite anime characters from memory
you told everyone in ap government the books you were reading

my shoelaces weren't even the only ones you stole
i wish i could stop pretending i mean something to you

i wish i meant something to you

u can't just give me a beaded ring and expect me not to fall in love with you, *******

08.16.2021
Rissa Lav May 2017
again and again I tripped.

the first time
my shoelaces had been
white,
pure from the silt.
I noticed a stain from
the grime,
not bleak to the
first glance
but I knew my lacs
had lost
their purity.

one more time,
a piece of thread unraveled.
again, not drastic
to perception
but it was clear
my shoelaces
were erupting due
to the results of my reckless
wanderings.

again and again I tripped
and by the time I decided to face
myself in order to
reflect upon my ineptitude,
I didn't know who I was
or where I had been.

I was forced to ponder
my shoelaces
for what they really
were: unrecognizably filthy

my shoelaces were now charcoal,
fringed and covered by all the them for were
their ruined mess
muck and dirt I put them through.
I wondered if anyone could
tell that they were
once untainted and unattained
or if all they saw of them
were their ruined mess.

again and again I tripped
and I began to wonder
if there was any reason to get
back up again?

I gave all that I could give
and the result was
anesthetic sentiment
and
obscene shoelaces.
Chris Voss Feb 2013
I'm leaving.
Less like, Peace the **** out,
more like, I gotta go.
I'm leaving the way ships are wooed by waves,
under the pretense of more promising continents.

I can see where countless hands have pulled at my shoelaces,
wrapped my arches in ribbons of origami,
left me second guessing how well holes burn through soles.
It's been a long day of finding breathing space between double-knots and bending
broken fingernails back into place;
the self-constrained chaotic embrace of something supposedly so
straight as string brings forth beckoning ghosts of
those figure-eight souls who laid themselves
horizontal
to waste their Sundays tracing the Hills
on the breath fogged side of some painted-shut window sill;
trading the promise of Infinity
for the Religion of Monotony.
Praying through agoraphobic day-dreams
raining across the night sky of their eye lids
with the brilliance of meteorites,
imagining how earth-shattering they could be
if only these tyrannosauruses would just look up.

I have come here;
Less like, conquest
more like, exploration.
--Abandoned the comfort of quaint, suburban
ruins of the American Dream, which buckled
like widows knees mid frail-voiced eulogy
mourning the death of their Salesman--
and wandered aimlessly into the improvisation of some story-book jungle,
wishing I was better rehearsed.

I have come here
to congregate with the snakes and beasts; to feast beneath
the din of carnal sin and primal instincts. I've chosen to begin jumping
from stump-to-stump like stepping headstones
in a graveyard of fallen trees, where men,
                     who grew up too quickly and forgot the importance of pretend,
                     who learned early on how to black-market trade
                              the need to imagine for something a little bit more
                                                      tangib­le,­
                     who, smiling through serrated teeth,
saw it fit to clear this wilderness for something a little bit more
domesticated.

But thank god, these brambles grow so thick!
For every hail Mary their metal tongues would lick
into the trees' skin, a hallelujah of vines and branches and roots
would erupt in confused medley,
and their finest mathematics couldn't begin to calculate
the thriving division of a place so ungoverned by logic.       
In a jungle plucked straight from storybook pages
I'll band together with these untamed brutes
--these feral barbarians and unbroken monstrosities--
to howl at the moon with the effervescence of a Ginsberg poem.
We'll forge a tinsel-town crown and take turns
playing king of Where the Wild Things Are found.

See, unlike concrete cities
The Wild of Atavism has never forgotten that
Tradition is a catalyst for change
and that nothing is permanent.
Hell, I've been having laughing contests with a mountain
because every now-and-again he will crack
A smile, and when a mountain laughs
He does so, so gutturally,
From deep within his catacomb chest that
the whole Earth quakes -- everything shifts--
And I'm not gonna lie to you right now,
I've sort of got my heart set on being a part of something so
significant.

So if you follow,
shipwrecked and mapless,
Keep your shoelaces strapped tight
and run off the infinity of double knots.
If you go looking for me, continue
past the paint chips, through
the open window;
Set your sights to the far treelines.
And don't strain yourself listening for
the laughter of mountains,
Because when that stoic disposition
Finally does crack, you'll feel it in your feet
no matter where you are.
And from the way his ridges are crumbling,
I think I've almost got him beat.
Feb 27, 2013

© Christopher Voss
JJ Hutton Apr 2013
There are only two ways to truly know someone: sleep with them or take them bowling.
Phoenix Aime was the woman of my dreams. So, I took her bowling.

Paid for a game. Rented shoes. Got the little, sticky bracelet thingy that said Slippery Joe Lanes.
That way if we got in some sort of accident on the way home,
the guy at the morgue could identify us as bowlers. Anyway, here's the bulleted list of what I knew about Phoenix up to that point:

• She looked like Diane Keaton circa 1972
• She talked with great pretension concerning craft beer
• She only patronized two restaurants: Denny's and IHOP
• She was eight years older than me
• She kissed my sister once on a dare
• Her shoe size was 7
• She was perfect or a near synonym

The bowling alley was empty save a World War II vet in a wheelchair and his wife at lane six,
and they were barely there. Country music played over the loud speaker. And I felt cozy. Predictable. Like a payment plan on the QVC.

That was until Phoenix said, "I forgot something. I'm going to go talk to Mack real quick."
Mack worked the front desk, according to his name tag. Talk to Mack. She just talked to Mack. Mack was sleeping with her. I untied my shoelaces. Oh, Mack, love your red polo with blue tiger stripes.
I pulled my sneakers off. Oh, Mack, I love it when you dip your finger in nacho cheese and feed it to me. Slid my right foot into bowling shoe. Halfway in with the left, and my socked foot struck something plastic. A stick of tiny deodorant. Like unsavory truck-stop-to-truck-stop deodorant. Oh, Mack, I love it when you deodorize -- so hard. Pull the strings tight on the left shoe. Oh, Mack, rub the deodorant until your underarms are SO CHALKY AND WHITE.

"You okay?" Phoenix asked.

"Yeah, what do I look like something's wrong?"

She carried a seafoam green bowling ball with a ****** Mary insignia. "It looks like you triple-knotted your shoes there."

And I said something dumb like, better safe than sorry.

"Sorry about leaving you all alone. Mack holds onto my ***** for me," she said.  I bet he does. "I hate talking to that guy." What? "He's a vegan."

Now, at that time in my life, I was a vegan. And had planned some stirring remarks about the processing of sweet little piggies into cancerous hot dog machines on the way to pick her up. Thought she would think me full of passion, "on fire" for a cause, you know? The wise thing would have been to say, oh well, I'm a vegan. But instead I asked, "What do you mean?"

"You know serial killer's get a last meal before they're executed, right?"

"Right." Where the hell is this going?

"Well, have you ever heard of someone on death row requesting a last meal that didn't involve some sort of animal product? Gacy had buckets of chicken, Bundy had a medium rare steak, even uh, ****, what was his name, McVeigh, Timothy McVeigh he had two pints of mint chocolate ice cream. Dairy."

"I'm not sure how this refutes veganism."

"Nobody is a vegan for their last meal. Nobody. I'm not going to subscribe to a diet that I can't follow until the very end. Live every day like your last, that's my motto."

"That's your motto." I said. To be a great listener, just repeat the last three or four things anyone says to you and raise your eyebrows a little bit. (Examples: "My dog died." -- "You're dog died.", "I never ate breakfast burritos again." -- "Never ate it again.", "I love you." -- "You love me.")

Over Phoenix's shoulder, over by lane six, the wife wheeled the World War II vet up to the lane. And he tossed the ball. Good team, I thought. Want to know someone take them to the bowling alley.

Phoenix removed a glove from her pocket. She had her own ball. Brought her own badass, jet black bowling gloves. And if her carnivorous tendencies hadn't already put a ***** in the Golden Days of Josh and Phoenix, that glove did.

She typed her name first on the scoring computer. Didn't ask if I wanted to go first. That's fine. Approached the lane, three fingers inside the ****** Mary. She brought her bony arm back with the grace of a ballerina tucked away stage right in the shadows. Mary cut from grace slid down the lane with a spin.

Strike. I couldn't really see the pins from my angle. But I recieved a transmission via the "yes" and arm pump. That was two marks against her, and I was going to three. I'd call it strikes, but well, the whole bowling skew.

Here's a bulleted list of what a "yes" and arm pump immediately taught me:

• She takes bowling serious.
• If you take bowling serious, when do you relax?
• She'd never relax.
• My life would be tucked shirts, matching belts and shoes.

For six frames, I picked up fours and sevens. Phoenix, though, nothing but strikes. I threw a gutter on frame seven. Like a normal human being, I shrugged. Made a face out the sides of my mouth. Kept it light.

"I thought you were a grown *** man," Phoenix said.

"Me too."

What happened next, I willed. I'm not god or anything like that. At the time, just cosmicly ******.
Her step stuttered. 7-10 split. "Mack!" she screamed. "Floors are slicker than a used car salesman's hair."

From across the alley,
"Sorry, Phoenix, baby. I'll bring you some nachos. That make up for it?"

"Ain't gonna knock down two pins is it?"

"So, uh, no nachos then?"

"Actually, go ahead and bring those."

She lined up. Back straight. Legs together. She rolled her neck. "You're about to see how it's done."

And I didn't. She broke it down the middle. Field goal. In that moment, that holy moment, I was knowledge plateau. Vindicated.

For about 10 seconds.

Mack swaggered over, nachos in hand. "Phoenix, sweetie, you okay?"

"Do I look okay?"

"No, that's why I asked."

"Just give me the nachos."

"Ah crap." Mack had gotten his pointer finger in the nacho cheese.

"Let me see it."

And right there, right in front the ****** Mary seafoam green bowling ball, she slurped the cheese off his finger."

Frame seven, a good as time as any to call it a match. The wife of the World War II vet kissed her husband's forehead. Handed him a ball. As I walked by, hand on shoulder. "Struck gold, dude."
happiness...is everything. Happiness isnt based on money and sometimes not even on what you're doing. Its about who your with.
its about living with no regrets
And realising that a bad thing will last a few months, so who cares if he doesnt ask you out? who cares what your parents catch doing with the one who does? and who cares what anyone says about you.
Happiness is taking a risk
and it pays off
and even if it doesnt
another oppurtunity presents itself.
happiness is staying up all night with your frends.
happiness is water fights on late summer evenings.
happiness is love....lust only gives moments of happiness to the fact you cant believe you have that person...love leaves you eternally in wonder of how you ended up feeling so right.
happiness is being with your friends and wearing crazy *** hats in public
happiness is seeing a familiar face in nevr ending sea of lies.
happiness is no homework
happiness is having tickle fights with the one you love
happiness is lying in the sun looking at the clouds
happiness is doing wat you want to do
happiness is helping one another
happiness if giving all of you no matter how much you recieve in return
happiness is being able to speak your mind
happiness is knowing you have earnt all the praise you get and being able to say thank you...not going red, studying your shoelaces and bringing yourself down
happiness is confidence
happiness is working hard for something
happiness is being wateva you want and not caring what anyone says...you only get to live once..you will nevr live it down if you're on your deathbed and you realise that you've spent your whole life being what everyone else wanted you to be. living a lie
happiness is finding out who you are
happiness is coming home and your parents ask you how your day was...evn if u jst grunt back
happiness is singing in the shower as loud as you can...i mean showers hav that magical power that means no-one else can hear you...rite?
happiness is not being afraid to say someone is hot...it makes u all giggly...saying someone is good looking doesnt neccessarily mean you want them
happiness is feeling safe
happiness is feeling wanted
happiness is feeling at peace with yourself
happiness is feeling that someone always has your back
happiness is when something isnt funny..but your so happy to see someone that u cant stop smiling
happiness is that one thing you can nevr really express to someone...its like a drug, it makes you do crazy things...its make you feel ontop of the world.
this made me happy knowing that peopl will read this and feel happy
it made me happy because i made a good attempt to describe something that can nevr be completely decribed.

happiness is the one thing that keeps you going when you're like the single flowers whose colours hav turned to shades of grey

i cant explain this happiness
randy123 Aug 2010
Sitting on my bed
Gazing out at the view
Laptop in lap
I wonder
Being of mixed race
The truth of my origins
The blood coursing through my veins
Goffle they would say
But iv always believed a man's skin colour doesn't define who he is
Kwabulawayo
A place where he is being killed
Home of the Ndebele
My hometown
Built on the ruins of a Royal town
uMzilikazi ,Leander Starr Jameson ,Lobengula ,Cecil john rhodes
Men of courage
Black and white
Fought struggles
Years before my birth
Mater Dei Hospital
My journeys beginning
My grandfathers end.
Joy and pain
My hearts memories
From Primary
Whitestone
Green fields
Where i spent my childhood
Life's little joys
Clay-yaki
In the rain
Barefoot.
Speargrass
How it stung
Running through the grass
Taller than i was
Forts
Built with shoelaces
Marbles
Fights in the sand
Afternoons spent picking mullberyys
The girls dormitory
Offbounds.
Matrons
Got me the cain
Thursday Nights
Prefects Priveleges
Sports
Cross country
The houses of Tuli, Shangani, Shashe
lifelong friends made
A place frozen in memory
Home of the best years of my life
Tears streaming down
Every Sunday evening
The way back
A boarders sentiment
Lasting 5min till reunited with friends
Tuck shared
Eskimo Hut
The Green Mamba Or Pink Panther
The food hall
Quiet
Till dessert came
Mr Haworth
Everyday
"The queen would be disgusted if she saw u eating"
The tide of his time
Wandering around my childhood
I bumped unintentionally into
Maturity
Starless nights
First kisses
A little bit older i was
Emily Von Shultz Nov 2010
I've got my eyes slighty squinted,
as we spin round on a carnival ride.
I can almost smell the ocean from here,
as it washes in with the tide.

I can feel the dangling of my untied shoelaces,
and I can see people's faces
blurring with the bright colours of their clothes.
I am wearing my light grey dress,
and we are both laughing,
our hair is tangling together in a ginger and blonde mess.

I catch a glare of sunlight in my eyes,
so I close them and watch purple and green patterns dance
against the darkness of my eyelids,
I open them to realize that
no longer are we kids.

We are in the back seat of your car,
it's 2 AM and it's raining outside,
no longer are we on the carnival ride.
You try to tickle me in a flirtatious way,
and when I say I have to leave,
you beg me to stay.
I say goodnight,
and hug you tight.

Then,
Slowly,
I bring my face closer to yours,
and kiss you gently.

You kiss me back.
Once,
Twice,
and again.
Our lips begin to dance together,
Waltzing to the rhythm of the rain.

The scent of your skin fills my lungs,
and it adds a sensual feeling
to the embracement of our tongues.

Your hand slips beneath my shirt
as I pull yours off,
it feels like my heart is free of all its hurt.
Wandering hands in the darkness of night,
my eyes are fixated on you,
admiring your body in flickering streetlight.

Your breathing becomes shallow,
and I feel like you want me,
only me.
But I know now that it's just...
Lust.
That small man who always sang
That small man who danced in my head
That small man with youth
Undid his shoelaces
And broke all the barracks of the festival
Suddenly everything collapsed
And in the silence of the festival
In the ruin of the festival
I heard your happy voice
Your voice so torn and fragile
Innocent and desolate
Came from afar and called me
And I put my hands on my chest
where they trembled ******
Seven broken pieces of mirror
with your twinkling smile
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2022
i could tell you how certain stations on the London underground
smell, but i can't capture you this smell...
a bit like in that film Perfume: scents are lost over time,
with regards to places -
                            unlike the eternal pine forest...
or the zest of lemon...
                                         those are universal scents...
one could and humanity has: created a synthetic answer
and copied these scents... made synthetic tastes
a whole chemistry of a posteriori scents and tastes...
Kant and chemistry are a perfect combination...
given the classical schematic:

analytical                         analytical
a priori                             a posteriori
apples grow on               tomatoes:
trees and                          categorised as fruits          
carrots grow                    yet used as vegetables
in the earth                      the analysis being
since apples                     even though they grow
are a fruit                         on something: trees,
while carrots                    bushes, vines...
are a root vegetable,       analysis has found that
ergo?                                 they are better treated
all vegetables                   as vegetables rather than
grow in the earth            fruits, since one rarely cooks
while all fruits                 savoury meals with fruit
grow on trees                  yet the tomato is used
or shrubs                         plentifully in savoury cooking


synthetic                          synthetic
a priori                           a posteriori
■, ▲                                   in light of the given examples
(geometry)                        in the realm of the analytical
and the propositions       a priori: that fruits grow on
that come with                 trees or bushes
them:                                  there's the pineapple
e.g. c² = a² + b²                   anomaly:
or physics:                         pineapples grow on the ground
e = mc²                                (in the ground) like cabbage-heads
                                            grow in much the same fashion...

i always struggle with the a posteriori conceptualization...
in the original i wrote as can be seen above...
are tomatoes the byproduct of
analytical a posteriori knowledge?
i.e. they are fruits that are used as vegetables (used,
hell, even treated as such)... because you will not find
a tomato desert as such...
the classification of a tomato as a fruit:
given how it grows... would also invoke the cucumber
to be treated as a vegetable:
vegetables are not as juicy as fruits...
the flesh of the fruit is usually softer and certainly
more juicy... while the flesh of the vegetable
is more bulky and requires cooking and salt
to extract the juices oh a higher carbohydrate
concentrate of the fibrous nature...

pineapples... a fruit that grows like a vegetable
in the earth...
i like this "confusion" in my head...
i'm not going to clarify it...
            i leave this curiosity in my writing on purpose...
analytical a posteriori facts:
well... first having categorised the tomato as a fruit:
upon analysis... true: the tomato behaves like
a fruit... but upon analysis: after the fact:
it is better used as a vegetable...

         and the synthetic a posteriori truth about
the pineapple? then again: i know where i might be going wrong...
isn't synthetic a posteriori knowledge possible?
it's not as simple as the pineapple example
based on: fruits grow on trees while vegetables grow in
the earth... i can only find questions
on the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge...
ergo? of course synthetic a posteriori knowledge
is possible...
    it's ingrained in chemistry...
what does synthetic a posteriori knowledge look like?

a chemist tastes a lemon... and he tries to replicate
the taste of lemon using chemicals...
he breaks down the chemistry of the lemon...
and? with due course... replicates the taste of lemon
without actually using a lemon!
he breaks the lemon to the basic components
of citric acids and whatever else is needed to replicate
the taste of lemon and grind it into a powder:
chemistry is synthetic a posteriori knowledge...
isn't it?

the examples i cited with the pineapples:
it doesn't matter that the pineapple behaves like
a vegetable when it grows...
apart from that sick idea of a Hawaiian pizza toppings...
pineapple? ham?! you what?!
that's not synthetic a posteriori knowledge:
that's just a ******* whim of bad-taste...
there's no actual synthesis of the pineapple growing
as a vegetable and the "ingenuity" of treating
it like a bad idea for a pizza topping...
the tomato: however... is a pristine example
of analytical a posteriori knowledge:
sure... it's categorised as a vegetable...
because of the way it grows... compared to actual vegetables:
but? you wouldn't allow the tomato
to be bitten into like an apple... you wouldn't bake
a tomato cake as you might bake a banana cake...
the analysis concludes: our knowledge of fruits is this...
and we have this vegetable: the tomato
that's a fruit... but it would be better suited
in being used like a vegetable...

synthetic a posteriori does exist... it just doesn't apply
to pineapples for the simply reason that they
grow like vegetables... they're still going to be fruits...
synthetic a posteriori knowledge is chemistry...
it has to exist because a pineapple is
not a synthetic a priori "idea" of TASTE let alone
virtue or however Kant framed it...

ugh... my first day back at Craven Cottage...
little ****** steward: i hate these hierarchies...
it's a petty army of high-viz. jackets...
   i wasn't the supervisor but i had some colts under
my "supervision"... i tried to smooth things over:
i did... in the end i wanted to see Fulham play
Liverpool... i spread the word around:
this is *******... they should have put us inside
the stadium...
   but... the weather was the loveliest and the Thames
was tide-out... two seagulls arguing...
in the shade: this part of London is truly mesmerising...
i love the smell of the Thames with the tide out...
in the shade under these mammoth-esque splendours
of foliage...
hell... i even managed to spot my first KONIK
(little horse)... that's slang for... those ******* that buy
tickets at the regular price... then hang around the stadium
and try to push the tickets at a hyper-inflated price...
the ****** was selling the tickets for £250 for two!
and this was after the first half finished!
i told one of the guys with a radio:
call this in...
                          i had to repeat myself about 3 times
before the management agreed to my concern...
they sent two spare police officers to the person in question...
he almost sold those ******* tickets...
one minute i see him pretend to tie his shoelaces
(he wasn't pretending) - his black cap
disappearing under the bushes... next minute:
wh'ah where?! ****** did a runner...
so he wasn't tying his shoelaces "on a whim":
he was about to do a runner...

                  that's ******* exploitation...
that's like: stealing... capitalism at its worst...
the ingenuity of crime: oh... but it's innocent crime...
it's i buy something for £30 but...
i'll sell it for you for £250...
                             now... it's not antiques! it's not a *******
van Gogh painting that has been lying around
for quite some time... gaining a repertoire and a reputation
as something good, worthwhile:
it's a ******* football match ticket!
hyper-inflation like under the Weimar Republic...
money good as "gold": "gold" as in winter fuel,
timber the new platinum!

after all: there was no real synthetic a priori knowledge:
chemistry is hardly a question of appearance,
water is clear, but so is hydrochloric acid...
what else is clear? sodium hydroxide...
                 chemistry was born from synthetic a posteriori
knowledge...
how many chemical experiments came as a surprise
a sort of anti-Eureka of synthetic a priori knowledge?
champagne springs to mind... lysergic acid comes
to mind: no one was actually trying to find these things...
e.g. they did not come about through analytical
a posteriori knowledge: they arose from
a dimension of the synthetic a posteriori knowledge:
by chance: by accident...

sure... i might be doing a ******-low-skill job right
now: and it is... i'll admit...
it's super **** sometimes:
most of the time my coworkers are either
over-bearing ego-maniacs fixated on hierarchy,
or they're lazy Somali youths...
or just plain-sighted Nimrods...
i sometimes leave my mind to wander...
that when i get the jerks in the feet like
i'm about to fall over... like for bearskin hatted
soldiers on parade...
but i leave my mind to wander:
it's not an insult if it's true...
                  no: when i was a roofer and fiddling
with inanimate things there was more focus
on the work to be done... dealing with people
is a crass differentiation from perfecting how an inanimate
ought to behave under your hands...
to turn a roll of felt into a water-insulated roof
with a roll of fleece and enough tar...
people are different: i'm sort of studying people...
gearing myself to hover in on children in schools...

if Leibniz preferred the profession of librarian
and a private intellectual life of par excellence...
i wouldn't think twice about becoming a primary school
teacher than being a secondary school
teacher of chemistry...
**** me: if drag queen hour is about to be imported
from America: i best (better) step in...
i just imagine: well... unlike a barren woman...
who has no children...
who goes into a profession akin to primary school
teaching... but then i'd arrive...
i know the obvious stereotype to battle:
PEDOHPILE! ha ha...
           Ava Lauren: just my type... plump...
full-bodied... probably the age of my mum by now...
that's my type...
i need something rounded of:
a 5.9 = a 6... just an example...
                
             but i let my mind wander... when roofing
you couldn't leave your mind to wonder...
i could... tell you of the specific scents in certain
underground stations... Baker Street? is that the one
with the Victorian arches, a station under the bridge?
i don't remember...
Putney Bridge is a beautiful station...
but today i took the route:
Romford via train... got off at Stratford... waited for a minute
for the central line...
(i love meditating on the topic of tubes maps...
there are only two important lines
in London... why? based on how many times
they intersect... the Central Line and the Piccadilly
Line... they only intersect at Holborn)...
travelled to Holborn... not sitting...
at each carriage there are these half-seats...
you're leaning back... standing-sitting...
i felt so relaxed... i gave way to the momentum
of the tube...
i was moving backwards and forwards...
head nodding... shoulders doing the mr. plastic-fantastic...
i almost tried to remember the remaining
tension in my body... the grip i had on a bottle
of water and a packet of tortilla wraps...
the rest of me was: freed...

when it comes to scents... that's one thing:
everyone knows it's a stupid idea to change tube
lines at Bank... why? well... Bank it connected
to Monument...
it's a city within a city: a London 2.0... oh oh:
yes it ******* is... never change at Bank...
anyway... as i was relaxing having closed my eyes...
i can tell you where the best sounds of
machinery exist in London?
between Liverpool St. - Bank - and Chancery Lane...
mind you... i cycle the route from time to time...
what's above? is not, what's above...
compared to cycling... this route is like:
watching the original Dune movie...
i'm strapped to a ******* earthworm...
or: being digested by one while listening to
the clag glug and clamour iron biting iron...
i sometimes do the "twirl" of the tube above
ground... just after Aldgate...
i head towards Brick Lane... toward Liverpool St.
prior to reaching Bank St.:

all the Piccadilly Stations between Holborn and
Earl's Court have this sickly sweet stench
about them... it's sickly sweet... it's: sickly sweet...

i remember back in St. Augustine's we had one
female primary school teacher...
some ****** proverb speaks the words:
woe unto you for having to care for the children
of others...
while i'm thinking: that would be a worthwhile challenge...
i don't want any of my own:
the fear of ******* them up more than
i was ****** up wears me down...
at least with the genes of strangers
i can send in an auxiliary covert party of my psyche...
who would i send in? the usual suspects...
Kant, Heidegger, Newton, Ezra Pound...
oh... the list is pretty long...

most probably Rumi hanging around with
Zhuangzi... Ovid and Horace...
ooh... terrible idea to start drinking whiskey
after binge-eating a watermelon...
the burps i'm getting back:
******* postcards from Uan Muhuggiag (Libya)...
i'm seeing camels double the number of their humps!
not good... absolutely no good

burp... ooh... this watermelon will not go down
so good... while i worry about *******
myself come tomorrow morning...
unlike the Red Hot Chilly Peppers singing
the fames of California:
what do i have? i have the countryside of Essex
and the incursions in the concrete staccato
of London... i can mediate this...

              burp: well... at least it's whiskey mingling
with the juices of a watermelon...
i much prefer that to the half-digested acidic
meat of any sort...
                 that's healthy burping and healthy farting
for your...
hmm... investing in children... that's an idea...
i once remarked to a boy in a supermarket:
you know... how a while i thought animals
were incapable of seeing 3D objects
in a 2D canvas: i.e. why wouldn't animals
watch television with men?
today i had a "Fred" pester me for a bite
of my tortilla roll...
i would have given it to him freely:
i wasn't that hungry...
   so i asked his owner: so... what's his diet like?
oh... Fred has had pretty stomach upsets...
he spent the past three days eating mulberries
from a tree...
ooh! i love mulberries: who couldn't be more upset?
the dog or the mulberries?
ugh: these kind of people:
that have their dogs on a ******* vegan diet...
hey! Fred! bite into this tortilla wrap!
i have learned that the food man eats
if also eaten by a dog tastes better:
after it was eaten by man!

o.k., fair enough Fred... you have an owner that
deserves having you: but no children...
i'd put you in the same category as a child...
children, dogs, cats...
things that might stir in man the unusual:
certainly not Darwinistic / genetic investment
that might reduce a man's hormonal balance...
mate... you look at me that dumb-***** eyed way
one more time... let me pat you on the head
like i have... you're coming with me to the land
of eternal tortillas wrapping around chicken
and bacon: there's no "yes" as there's no "no"...

but that's London for you...
            and that's also Essex for you...
i spent an entire day in London?
where did i find those cheap-*** beauties of womanhood?
i didn't find them in London:
i had to travel back to Romford to find...
i sat down to eat a snack bucket in a chicken shop:
three spicy wings, some chips...
mayonnaise and some chilly sauce...
a 7up... £3.50... i enjoyed the meal
and thought about: nothing...
nothing is usually hard to "think" about...
you get into geometry: to prolong your time at pretending
to look "cool"... when eating alone...

i hopped on the bus... watched two hunchbacks
of an elderly couple "manage" their way own:
what cruel fate... the extension of mortality
via science... may i never see myself
that old... reduced to being the child of Atlas...
no... i don't care for the sensibility of secularism
and science...
old age transcends both of these:
it's the reality of old age...
prolonged old age is best renowned
and celebrated by lizards: turtles most in fact...
mammals look weird...
mammals look weird when their life is prolonged:
unnaturally: via the basis of science!

start giving out re-prescriptions to people
with a a faith in science but no hope in hope...
start selling them hopes of eternity...
this materialistic "eternal life": is drawing us closer
to no closure...
there comes a life: there coms a death of said life...
it's not fair to pretend that the inevitiable
is "not" going to happen: it will...
the tyranny of old age...
                  by the standards of the Benelux:
i'm more than willing to bow out...

who knows! i am not willing to simply live
for the awkward presence of strangers
on a basis of anomalies and non-intrusions
of some freaked-up formalities...
to hell with that: i have no evolutionary-existential
plight of  "conscience" that might make me suppose:
on racial grounds: that the human "effort"
will disappear: outright: completely:
sure... chances are... humanity will be governed
by more people willing to ***** cities of death via
the pyramid... people engage in the magic carpet
flights of Islam and pseudo-Islam from regions
akin to Somalia and Bangladesh:
my problem? i can't live forever! can i?

et scriptum est...
i like being toyed around as being the idiot...
it helps me grow...
and it was so written...
                ergo? ut necesse sit!
(and so it must be)
  ha ha! ah ha ha h ha ha!
vulnus ferrum:
                  sanguis respiratio
scratch of iron:
breathing blood!
            
mortuus est mori: the dead must die!
vivos debet mori /
vivos non sunt exceptio!

i work among people that make my intellect:
CLOWN!
   i entertain them... i must...
but their intellect is about as much:
grappling as... i don't know what!
i'm out of metaphors and aphorisms...

                        intelligence is discouraged when it comes
to a working environment...
           i'm like Leibniz... i'm unlike Newton...
my ambitions a "cowering" in a personal enterprise...
i like the individualism of m own enterprise:
i don't hope to solve or save the problems of
a common man... nope!
                
last time i heard? the train has arrived:
i also heard: the train is leaving...
well... i'm i geared up:
what do i care for the famines in Ethiopia?!
i don't care for claiming responsibilities for
people who don't take responsibilities for
themselves!
starve?! **** it... why not?"
oh right... one of the Somali types?!
pretend it's work by hiding behind the bushes?!
ergo? behind the bushes i pretend to shower you
with free bread and pork? don't like pork?
eat dirt instead!

i'm done: free-loaders: i'm done with them...
i'm so ******* with these Somalis that you can't even begin to comprehend!
Nicole Dawn May 2015
When I was younger,
I ran barefoot,
Innocent and happy.

As I got older,
I began wearing shoes,
Because that was 'cool'

They hurt my feet,
And killed my innocence.
They drew me to the edge of a cliff
And as I walked along it's edge,
I tripped over
A stupid shoelace,

And now I am falling,
Dreading hitting the ground,
All so I could be 'cool'
EmperorOfMine Nov 2019
We had something that never happened
Lost, uncertain, no control
Kids on a playground, ring-o-round,
Livid souls, trying to run but are trapped in

Suited like a shadow with multiple resting faces
Soul sunken into my shoes in my rainbow shoelaces

Apple in my throat, choking on my emotions
Anxious, paranoid, the same typical symptoms
I feel a little crazy, but at least it's kind of fun
It's a scary day when the depression comes

Captivate my flickering,
This hearts a costume, playing daydream
I'm tired of running the same old mazes
Time to tie up my rainbow shoelaces
Charlotte J Feb 2017
The way he looks at her
and she looks at him
makes love look so
effortless.

He doesn’t even notice
how he is leaning in –
towards her. And how her arm is
intertwined
around his so tightly;
with such a devoted glint of comfort
and familiarity.

I hope you're on the same train.
Making the aftermath
of falling easy, the complexity simply
luminescent.
Almost allowing me to feel light.

My heart had its fair share of
lightness, brightness – heavy now but
the smiles, the laughter;
It makes me feel as if
perhaps
that is what I yearn for in The End.

But will I ever find happiness if I'm overflowing with joy?

Because the
Melancholy
of a platform sliding out-of-mind,
with You standing there debating the
tangles in your shoelaces
warms up my equally tangled,
Masochistic
heart. Because that is not granted for me (us).

Not the handholding
nor the scent of your hair
when it’s 5 a.m. and your arms
are knotted around my waist and we
waste the day, the days, days in my bed.
Oh, yes (please).

No. I can't get that.
I remind myself:
"I don't need that."
I step onto the platform.
I mind the gap.
I dare do much
But I cannot dare to
trip, stumble,
and fall.

For You. (I already have.)
Patrick Sugarr Oct 2014
I hope you trip.
and fall.
for me.
i wish.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2016
Sorbian, meaning, tickling the armpit of Germany
in terms of what's the desired encoding;
the variations of person:
            čłowjek (upper sorban)
               cłowjek (lower   "    )
     čovjek (croatian)
                           člověk    (czech')
człowiek (polish)      clawak (polabian)
              człowiek (kashubian)     človek (slovak)
                                 człowiyk (silesian)
         чoлoвік (ukranian).

' well, there is a little misunderstanding with the
  czech caron e (ě), mind this later.

yes, the peasants spoke more softly
compared with urban sharpening of accents,
so that you knew that in urban areas South
London has hardly Hackney Cockney,
and never Richmond, like Essex never spoke
good Yorkshire -
                             so they sharpened the letters
and that translated into involving accents
to later be abused -
                             the recipe? yes,
i was cooking Ukrainian Borscht today -
apart from the fact that Borscht isn't exactly classified
as a soup, a Borscht is a *Borscht
,
   it transcends the category of being a soup,
just like rosół transcends the same category of being a soup,
           it's a very fine version of what is otherwise
chicken soup -
                            and as a critique of western cuisine?
why are all western soups like puree? they have
snot consistency, they ever never see-through -
they're all ******* creamy, like toddle-pulp of mauled
faeces - as if a bird feeding its chicks with regurgitated
products - eastern soups are see through,
floating bits you can see, a bit like the sea turned into
a Narcissus clarity. let me tell you,
the nurses love hearing the answers to the questions:
do you do any exercise?
                 yes, i walk everyday, once a week a take on
the miles.
             do you smoke?
        i try to fit within a packet of 20 a day.
do you drink?
                   only on alternative days.
        do you eat your five-a-day necessary ration
of fruits and vegetables?
          i don't like fruits... i avoid them...
vegetables? sure.
the basic ingredients of an Ukrainian broth?
        carrots, beetroots, celery, parsley root,
potatoes, leeks, fibre: green broad beans,
                   mushrooms,
                         red borscht concentrate
           white borscht concentrate for the sourness -
garlic.
                             (base? chicken, salt to taste).
well, coming back to the czech variation of the word
person... i feel there's a need to somehow find
diacritical uses coherent -
                                  i can only see it as
the nakedness of the original phonta (variation
on quanta: a specified sound being encoded with each
letter) -
                      it's diacritical marks akin to punctuation
marks and a few mathematical deliberates -
                  e.g. caron:
                                                        z
                                                      š
the z is invited to be applied to the s to make a shush
stress -
                                       arms wide open looking to
the sky for manna from heaven -
soon enough and y and j were confused with
yaks, tetragrammatons and some Spanish conquistadors
named Jesus - whether jumping or yanking the
shortest straws while sitting in a kayak -
or as Jacky said yards ahead if himself -
                   for every Jew there's a yew tree blossoming.
              there should be a rule of law stating:
only such and such diacritical marks to be applied
to vowels, and such and such marks to be applied to
consonants - but, evidently, this is not the norm -
             these are not merely unconscious accepted
aesthetic consideration, when i was being taught
French at school, i was never taught that
    ê (circumflex e) does as much damage to pronunciation
as does the è (grave e) - i.e. the circumflex is binding
the two letters in-between the stressed vowel,
while the incisor e with è cuts the word off when it's used -
              so the caron (mathematically more than? i.e. >)
  asks pleading to the skies for a letter to balance on?
   and the circumflex looks to the earth to find the seashells
and pebbles?
                             as in less than? i.e. <     ?
i rose above language, i rose above spelling because
i decided i could say to Bukowski's claim of genius:
tie your shoelaces before you talk to me:
simple as simply said: whatever lessons in life
i have to learn i'll learn them by my own accord -
               being drunk in Europe is the norm,
as is prostitution -
               last time the police booked me for drinking
i wasn't there... last time i talked with the Bulgarian mafia
i went back to get my debit card back,
            the **** showed me a wallet with 100 or so more
credit cards, i said: none of these are mine...
          the police cruised pretending law abides to the
standard imposed by politicians...
                   prostitution is fair game, but
keeping the girls contrary to self-employment is abhorred....
            me? i just don't do the dating scene,
should i be harrowed from that hide & seek of western
society's women woefully fishing? can i?
i can't be bothered with the games and the Geisha.
                       - you reach the proper level of appreciation
when you start to ridicule your heroes -
                                  you overpower them,
there's no point brown-nosing them with excess over-quotation,
you brown-nose them for a while, but then the gimmicks
begin... and they know it to be true:
    i' peg down Mr. B like anyone critical of getting an
education: learn to spell, and punctuate, and tie your shoelaces.
       you can't let them get away with it... those dumb-*****,
you can't: we all have a sad story...
    does anyone give a ****? m'eh... probably not.
it's the part when he says he read philosophy
but never bothers the ideas behind into a narrative:
                                   with him your end up *******
before Sophia rather than ******* her...
                        you have to **** her at some point...
                  no point ******* women and simply
******* before the deity -
                  better nothing ******* women and not
******* before the deity of worded fertility -
i was brown-nosing him for much too long...
                 whatever he said in his defence,
i'm aiming to capture the imagination akin to ****** addicts.
                      and that's hardly a feat to undertake.
so yeah, punctuation marks and some mathematical marks
above the Latin... Greek went wholly toward the Cyrillic -
oddly enough a Persian, Cyrus, entombed it into the strength
it possesses, rather than some Saint...
                                        so if i'm a loser at considering
myself a citizen of the world... what is Syria to me?
                                               Syria to me being Anglo-Slav
is:                    when Ramses destroyed Syria...
            don't come here with Westminster, please don't,
leave it out in the open with the paedophiles...
                                            i'm a citizen of England,
not of this world: you keep concerns over Syria where
you're at... if i can't be a citizen of thee world in a world
of globalisation, don't include me!
                                    diacritical marks, punctuation
alongside mathematical Copernican -
                                             yes, umlaut and the colon:,
what's the list? an extra oh... the latter phrase for
          omicron.
                                               Boršč or z z (zed zed)
             or h h (tricky, hay hay? ****** ******?
                               hatch hatch?)
            evidently the pronounced: shoo!
                                                        stinker that one:
given z morphs into h when given s or c...
                                i guess it's easier with      šč,
                   a.k.a.           shch...
and the most frequently asked question in English?
(by the middle class), how do you pronounce this?
                   you know why gangsters don't attack
educated people?
                           they love the fact that people made
the effort to learn reading and curtail other peoples' efforts
in changing perceptions -
                  for me it was always about being taught bad
French and rewriting the laws of stress -
                       i'll never understand the caron on vowels:
sure, the French makes it assured to make the circumflex
and the grave accenting above vowels synonymous...
  &
circus clown Jun 2014
i've made a home
out of untied shoelaces
in the morning
and crowded bedrooms
filled with smoke
and laughter
i never want to leave it again.
Emma Hill Mar 2017
Genderless with scraped knees and
A lipstick crush on one who bore the same name as me
Uncut brown hair untouched by bleach and
Stealing kisses from my best friend while my parents lied asleep
Lying in the grass with a picture book on faeries
Listening to the wind whistle through our dying trees
Jumping on the bed with my ***** and my bubby
Giggling hand over mouth when my mother called him "hubby"
Daisy chains and he loves me nots
Unbrushed teeth beginning to rot
***** shoes and ***** shoelaces
Visiting imagined places
Pink striped socks and a skirt to mismatch
Waiting for robins eggs to fall or to hatch

O, to be a child and to live within a dream
To lie awake at ten past eight, imagination like a stream
Jodie LindaMae Aug 2015
I am nineteen
And sitting in an over-glorified sports bar,
Telling him about my ex
Who would sip from the Devil's cup
And pummel my face
When he tells me
"You are too young to have dealt with that."

And I almost cry.

Because having been involved
In some serious **** before my 18th birthday,
I am afraid to tell him
That I have seen my friends
In coffins with track marks kissing their veins
And truly guilty rapists walk free.
I am ashamed to say
That I know what it is like
To have a person say to me
With no concern, only disdain
"Are you going to calm down
Or do I have to call the police this time?"

I took Atticus Finch too seriously
When he said to put on your fellow man's shoes
And walk around in them.
I have been on first dates in mental hospitals
And I became addicted to nicotine
By tasting it on men's breath
And he would be appalled to find out
The real reasons
I don't drink.

In a world where a year ago
I had to ask to leave the room and ****
I am now in a world
Where I am condemned
For not knowing where I'm going yet
But I will be dammed
If I do not know
What you're allowed to gift someone
Who is in the hospital after a suicide attempt
Or drug overdose.

Books, but only ones with non-controversial themes,
Shoes, laces prohibited.

It seems to me that they know
That my connection to this earth
Has become so frail
That even a shoelace
Could sever it.

His eyes are as young as mine
But he is saying these things to me
With a cigarette in his hand
And the weight of sleepless nights on his shoulders.
And I want to tell him that pain isn't relative
And what hurt me
May **** him
But I will not burden him
With the knowledge
That life gets better
Because I know he is hard headed.

I wonder some nights
If a shoelace is all it would take for him, too

And I almost cry.
Tyler Durden Jan 2015
From afar you're the kerosene burning
Fixation and suffocation
Filling the room from the floor up
I breathe in the smoke
But don't choke.
Chris Thomas Apr 2018
With my shoelaces untied
I'm always falling short
Short of you
Short of yesterday
Short of tomorrow

So, I reach down to tie them
Yet, I am still falling short
Short of my destiny
Short of my reasons
Short of my ankles

With illusion cast aside
I understand why I have fallen short
I am aimless
I am distracted
I am imperfect

But, I'm not reaching anymore
Sarah Nov 2013
"I knew this girl once,
she had long hair, so long it whispered tiny kisses along her hips and waist
she had the oddest bluest eyes i'd ever seen, the color of the sky right before it gets completely dark
her thick, long eyelashes framed those eyes, and freckles formed constellations across her cheeks
i could almost draw the big dipper and Orion's belt on her milky white face.
She didn't know i existed but i admired her from afar. I could tell she was educated- She always had some form of poetry in her hand. But of all the things i could have noticed about her i noticed her bookmarks. She would lose them all the time, i would see her chasing after the scraps of paper as they flew through the wind down the street. She'd stick anything in between those pages, wrappers of all sorts, leaves, pennies, shoelaces, once i even saw a page ripped from a different book. It became my favorite game to guess what the next bookmark would be.  After awhile she stopped chasing the various bookmarks across the city and she cut all that long hair off, then awhile after that she started using unoriginal, uninspired plain old bookmarks.Then even awhile that she stopped bringing books altogether, until one day she didn't show up. Nobody knew that beautiful, mysterious, bookmark making girl was locked up inside her own mind. Nobody knew she hated her long hair and her freckles and even those baby blues. Nobody knew that she couldn't stand to live in her skin anymore so much that she swallowed a couple pills one night to ease away the pain. Even worse was she didn't know i watched her for so long and thought she was the most interesting human being i'd ever encountered. That girl committed suicide because she hated herself learn from her mistake, my mistake, everyone who ever noticed her bookmarks mistake, and don't do this, don't off yourself with a .45 before you've even had a chance to live" he's desperate now  
"please please you don't have to do this" he sputters

I answer simply " I never was much of a bookmark girl, i always dog-eared my pages"

*bang
Sari Sups Oct 2013
All the efforts to be near
by being far away,
like the shoelaces we
pull apart
to tie together.
Like the ***** white shoelaces
on your worn out night sneakers,
And to be together would be a tangle of us,
a knot of seemingly simple twists and ties,
but naturally young children,
the young children we are,
must learn to do.
A series of overs and unders,
that we forget
when we ripen.

Yet to untie us would be easy,
one pull and we'd fall lifeless,
next to the black skin of your sneakers,
knowing that we'd be brought back together again,
until you wear out of us,
and replace us with the new leather and fancy threads.
But we'll always be there,
at the bottom of your closet,
wishing to go through the loops once more,
just to be tied together again.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2016
to me, the Cartesian saying had to be relegated to shrapnel,
i treat the cogito
                                           ergo                       sum
like i'd treat atoms, brushing and
signaturing each other with
a stabilised unification
under the name: helium, or hydrogen.
evidently that's also a term
for three dimensional space
and the cohorts of chaos that come
from it.
           but something worries me,
intrinsically it's what i would simply
term: the automation of thinking.
basically? it's blood hard to stop thinking,
to do yoga to intricate being
in nothingness,
    as Heidegger suggested:
non-being is a tier below nothing,
      and i guess automated thinking
comes from non-being,
because there's this intrinsic manifestation
of instinct found in all sport activities
that doesn't allow thinking to take place,
no footballer thinks about his exertion
on the football pitch, no golfer maps
out a system of thought to *** the hole
in one...
                some would even say
that thinking is a form of laziness,
          i find that the whole notions turns
out to be a **** up affair of concern,
the mere notion that thought is automated
    and cannot be barricaded against
its relentless battering our very being
is due to the fact that so many of us
do not attain the all that glitters is gold
particularity of fame...
             it's not that we are doubtful,
but that we are mindful / thoughtful,
a few of us make it to the top of the sardine
can, but so many of us are minding
our own business on this placebo earthenware:
yes, i call this a placebo urn of things
needed (people always rave about nouns
anyway, call it slang, or whatever,
it trends, hashtags and the outdated
forms of phone numbers - calling big brother
eeny, meeny, miny, moe) - i could
swear it's so, but then again, maybe not so.
still (what a crass digression),
coming back to the Cartesian shrapnel...
           basing in on weights and measures -
it's so tiny, that expression,
                      we can think the realistic
and only express a centimetre of the world,
we can be the realistic and only
express a centimetre of the world,
  and then we can think the illusionary
and express a mile of the world,
        and we can be the illusionary and express
   a kilometre of the world:
toward the basis of fame and contentment of
  the shadows...
       yes, we have achieved a "death" of history,
by simply stating our recreational pursuits
being more important than our
need for historical eventuality and crisis, and change...
we have stated a "death" of history
via our population size, our ability to combat
diseases (whether infantile or of a certain maturity),
yes, we have established a congested world,
which facilitates nothing quite like a herd
(cattle mentality): hence the modern concern
for alienation... we're created a collective manifestation
of insects, or as one might suggest
  this is yet another geocentric and heliocentric
concern for us... although relegated to
egocentric and the collective ethos of comrades -
but given the former has been eradicated
as it was previous known: communism -
      in economic vocabulary it's all but gone,
but still exists in the sports: yet again,
the re-surfacing of abolishing automated thinking,
namely, automated collision with the daily
activity - either competitive or mundane,
    as we all soon realised: if automated thinking
is not eradicated by automated doing
     we end up mentally distraught -
our own thinking alienates us and even progresses
to symptoms that have no viability
       concerning a drowning man, nonetheless
we're actually drowning.
i can hardly think that nothing is an abyss -
       to me thought is an abyss (cat meows,
i write, the fermentation of wine goes on in
four jars to my left, bob, pop, bob, pop,
and daniel licht is playing to the fatty *****
that's my brain) -
                     i knew that ponderings ii - vi
would get my creative juices flowing:
finally! a book on philosophy that i can comprehend
within that bilingual complex i've established!
or: this much can be said upon
giving a supermarket cashier a signed copy of
my actually printed works
     and hearing a compliment with eyes
waxed with glee (Tarah);
           now i have 100 copies to push,
become akin to a drug dealer with poetry,
           and that's not going to be easy
without p.r. and all that jingly marketing qualms.
still, what's there to be done
        if not that there is something to be done,
even if it's nothing, or a pebble on a mountain:
which is why there is so much
   potential in individuality, but also so much
angst - instead of doing crosswords we have
other riddles to be bothersome about,
   but so few even get a ?         to be concerned with.
again the Cartesian shrapnel equation,
              so much is staged on it in terms
of how thinking becomes automated, robotic
to the point of making children succumb to
    premature depression -
      back when premature dementia was the hit
on Broadway or in an Estonian lunatic asylum
in the 19th century,
when we first received our psychiatric vocabulary,
now it's the young who are odd
   and it is premature depression,
          a bit like the black plague, against
all hopes, a single identifiable folly.
             and where the best rewards?
solitude, where else?
                          for all that swindling of the talk of species
and competition within / without,
        always one ******* says:
                           i am the zeitgeist - always one:
are there really benefits to realising that
****** equation? are there? to feel alive, to feel
conscious, or the madness of Nietzsche's reversal
stating that he's a thing that simply, exfoliates
necessary thought?
           thought is primarily a moral ought -
the should i or shouldn't i?
        it's intrinsic, inherent and simply: just there...
or in the unlikely event, a step into the abyss
   and subsequent pathologies of the enabling of
   a destruction of the soul: as manifestation
of a transgressively transcendent embodiment
of pure body.
                 so, against all duality, i simply fathom
that ****** thing as shrapnel,
     curiously via (as i already might have said):
so much thinking doesn't precipitate into being,
     and so much being doesn't precipitate into thinking -
or of those who adorn mental silk fabrics and Solomon rings,
         and those who have to pay for elocution
lessons due to their ****** endeavours -
      yet again, alignment with Thesaurus Rex,
cue: down Synonymous Avenue
                     because how many times are we sharpening
our narrative trying to feels less inclined
                 to exfoliate in the exotica of what's
the necessary verbiage, and escape into single
identifiable meanings, without poker, without politics,
without sexualised ambiguity?
for me language should work, not be desecrated
to fun: it, should, work;
                     or here i rest my ambitions,
without any poetic dogma - or to make poetry unrecognisable
when stated, for no reason to discredit
   the systematics of poetry: but for reason
                        Kraken wrangler on language -
as much as Nietzsche might have said about
      philosophical systems and their errors and lack of
honesty: i say as much about poetry careful to
be identified as such: metaphors, imagery blah blah -
all things that make people conscious of what
they're reading is actually what they're reading and say
it's poetry - as i said to the supermarket cashier:
enso (Japanese,
marcon purposively missing) - to write while standing up,
and so the reader is standing up,
         not a novel you take to bed,
                     and read for months on end,
dozing off, or sneering at "uneducated" people
on the train...
                         i might as well be writing instruction
manuals for the sadistic training of ballerinas -
              one cut, one incision, and get the **** out;
or at least that's the idea -
      learn to spell, work on punctuation variations,
    learn to tie your shoelaces... and don't believe in
the word edit.
Artwill Goodman Jun 2015
it's not the large things that send a man to the madhouse

a woman, a
tire that's flat, a
disease, a
desire: fears in front of you,
fears that hold so still
you can study them
like pieces on a
chessboard...

it's not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse. death he's ready for, or
******, ******, robbery, fire, flood...
no, it's the continuing series of small tragedies
that send a man to the
madhouse...

not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left ...

The dread of life
is that swarm of trivialities
that can **** quicker than cancer
and which are always there -
license plates or taxes
or expired driver's license,
or hiring or firing,
doing it or having it done to you, or
roaches or flies or a
broken hook on a
screen, or out of gas
or too much gas,
the sink's stopped-up, the landlord's drunk,
the president doesn't care and the governor's
crazy.

light switch broken, mattress like a
porcupine;
$105 for a tune-up, carburetor and fuel pump at
sears roebuck;
and the phone bill's up and the, market's
down
and the toilet chain is
broken,
and the light has burned out -
the hall light, the front light, the back light,
the inner light; it's
darker than hell
and twice as
expensive.

then there's always ***** and ingrown toenails
and people who insist they're
your friends;
there's always that and worse;
leaky faucet, Christ and Christmas;
blue salami, 9 day rains,
50 cent avocados
and purple
liverwurst.

or making it
as a waitress at norm's on the split shift,
or as an emptier of
bedpans,
or as a car wash or a busboy
or a stealer of old lady's purses
leaving them screaming on the sidewalks
with broken arms at the age of 80.

suddenly
2 red lights in your rear view mirror
and blood in your
underwear;
toothache, and $979 for a bridge
$300 for a gold
tooth,
and China and Russia and America, and
long hair and short hair and no
hair, and beards and no
faces, and plenty of zigzag but no
***, except maybe one to **** in
and the other one around your
gut.

with each broken shoelace
out of one hundred broken shoelaces,
one man, one woman, one
thing
enters a
madhouse.

so be careful
when you
bend over.
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2017
sometimes the smallest error, onto the slightest
step, and then into a lighter step, or
rather: as if skipping along - with added sactions
by the wind from behind -
toward a yacht like outpouring of movement -
alternatively?
London will make them, or rather make mince
meat out of them: you see them sometimes -
in suits, with something still attached to their sleeve:
the label, sometimes a tailor's brand,
  or at least the suggestion: pure cotton -
you see them sometimes, a rare thing to watch,
what with us "cool" urbanites, it's almost a comedy
sketch... a bit like walking with undone
shoelaces, gambling on whether one of your
feet will step onto the other' foot's shoelaces -
and wouldn't that be an avalanche....
but there's an even more subtler faux pas...
   for any budding bibliophile, it's a must to see!
i already did it with one book,
   but it would seem, i was not to make the same
mistake twice...
        how did the first faux pas happen?
all the way from Edinburgh, from Barnardo's
bookshop - i still can't believe i have a 3 year
tattoo from that city, burning up my mind -
   and will ol' jack mind, if i tear that flag up?
well... what with union in the olympics...
   but then scotland v. england in euro 1996 -
and i remember that year... and that goal
by Gazza... mighty ****-heads, i salute you!
back to the faux pas... and i dare say, only
committed from lack of previous interaction
with such a specimen... books stacked from
floor to nearing ceiling, and not a single book
prior that could be thus categorised:
hardback... with a sleeve...
indeed! a hardback with a sleeve... sure,
there are hardback books in this library -
  and if you watch Roman Polański's
9th gate... you'll get the fetish -
but not this first hardback in the library -
a hardback with a sleeve...
     the anatomy of mandess:
volume 1   people and ideas

   essays in the history of psychiatry
edited by w. f. bynum, roy porter and
michael shepherd...
                 yours, for 30 quid from that bookshop
in Edinburgh...
so you ask: where's the faux pas?
  i took the book with me to public places...
i read it on the tube when i moved about
the great yonder of the city: that never shuts up.
the faux pas is this:
  and only the context of the hardback -
you ensure the sleeve remains pristine...
    hardbacks are twice as heavy as paperbacks...
the sleeve is ornamental anyway:
you don't read a hardback with a sleeve still
attached to it... you take it off...
    hardbacks aren't that ornamental after a while...
not to mention the added agility of holding
a hardback book without the sleeve...
i should have figured that out when i ordered
another book via the internet:
    julian jaynes': the origin of consciousness
in the breakdown of the bicemeral mind...
     no romance akin to a bookstore these days...
another example in the library that is a hardback
(albeit without a sleeve)...
   and hence onto the third example
that connects the two:
   heidegger's ponderings ii - vi...
  another hardback, and only the second identical
concept of publishing: a hardback with a sleeve.
as such, it is a very rare faux pas, i have already
stated that - i.e. reading a in hardback in public
places with the sleeve still on it...
       it's only now, having peched myself on the windowsill
and calmly taking sips of bourbon! (yes, i needed
a change) that i "revolutionised" the concept of
reading a hardback... oh the added comfort and
the increasingly accessible grip... what with the sleeve
go, a sleeve that's slick...
    then again: i never treated books like ornament pieces,
so i wouldn't know whether a library
   is more about being useful, or merely something
akin to a wardrobe, or a lampshade...
but there are people who treat books like lampshades,
ornament pieces...
      but if anything is certain:
the Romford library is a disgrace!
                      an utter disgrace!
i couldn't find any books in it that i own!
  the Ilford library on the other hand?
      well... it got me a school-leavers' prize in history
from the entire year-group just before we embarked
to university... that's what the Ilford library
is capable of supplying... i can't remember the exact
title of the essay, but it was concerning
the catholic counter-reformation... jesuits and
ignatious loyola...
  so! as it stands, don't be next one to cross the line
with the faux pas of reading a hardback book
with a sleeve still on it in a public place - well any place...
it's uncomfortable (for one), but it's
   actually a: book as a furniture ornament (aesthetic) accent.

— The End —