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BOX cars run by a mile long.
And I wonder what they say to each other
When they stop a mile long on a sidetrack.
  Maybe their chatter goes:
I came from Fargo with a load of wheat up to the danger line.
I came from Omaha with a load of shorthorns and they splintered my boards.
I came from Detroit heavy with a load of flivvers.
I carried apples from the Hood river last year and this year bunches of bananas from Florida; they look for me with watermelons from Mississippi next year.
  
Hammers and shovels of work gangs sleep in shop corners
when the dark stars come on the sky and the night watchmen walk and look.
  
Then the hammer heads talk to the handles,
then the scoops of the shovels talk,
how the day's work nicked and trimmed them,
how they swung and lifted all day,
how the hands of the work gangs smelled of hope.
In the night of the dark stars
when the curve of the sky is a work gang handle,
in the night on the mile long sidetracks,
in the night where the hammers and shovels sleep in corners,
the night watchmen stuff their pipes with dreams-
and sometimes they doze and don't care for nothin',
and sometimes they search their heads for meanings, stories, stars.
  The stuff of it runs like this:
A long way we come; a long way to go; long rests and long deep sniffs for our lungs on the way.
Sleep is a belonging of all; even if all songs are old songs and the singing heart is snuffed out like a switchman's lantern with the oil gone, even if we forget our names and houses in the finish, the secret of sleep is left us, sleep belongs to all, sleep is the first and last and best of all.
  
People singing; people with song mouths connecting with song hearts; people who must sing or die; people whose song hearts break if there is no song mouth; these are my people.
Robin Carretti Feb 2019
The London*
underground
Shoes Chatterbox
Choo Choo train
Mr. Earl Gray
Greyhound
Doing cartwheels
Head over heels

Milk the Cow
"Going Moo" in her
Jimmy Choo
Yahoos
Kickapoos
The Odd Mom
Cocker Doddle Doo
Goody Two shoes
'Peekapoo"

The women living
in her shoes
All Mighty God
  
The dog to chew
Her most expensive
shoe
Lasous
The genius
La Cruz

Goody two shoes
That's show biz
Vacation Dr. Seuss
John Hughes
The master of clues
La mousse
Love truce X-File

Instagram, please smile
In her ballet slippers
He's at the Hub
drinking beer
In the London Fog
Her wooden clogs

Ladybird chirper
He's down to his
goulashes?

Got sidetrack hot
fever lovesick
La muse shoes
Cozy at the caboose
Playing golf in the
Gulf of Mexico

You ain't got a thing
if you don't have
the shoes to swing
Kick up your shoes and
start to sing
This is a comedy of all Goodie two shoes tied into one find you we all own a pair of shoes and have some fun
IN the cool of the night time
The clocks pick off the points
And the mainsprings loosen.
They will need winding.
One of these days...
          they will need winding.

Rabelais in red boards,
Walt Whitman in green,
Hugo in ten-cent paper covers,
Here they stand on shelves
In the cool of the night time
And there is nothing...
To be said against them...
Or for them...
In the cool of the night time
And the clocks.

A man in pigeon-gray pyjamas.
The open window begins at his feet
And goes taller than his head.
Eight feet high is the pattern.

Moon and mist make an oblong layout.
Silver at the man's bare feet.
He swings one foot in a moon silver.
And it costs nothing.

One more day of bread and work.
One more day ... so much rags...
The man barefoot in moon silver
Mutters "You" and "You"
To things hidden
In the cool of the night time,
In Rabelais, Whitman, Hugo,
In an oblong of moon mist.

Out from the window ... prairielands.
Moon mist whitens a golf ground.
Whiter yet is a limestone quarry.
The crickets keep on chirring.

Switch engines of the Great Western
Sidetrack box cars, make up trains
For Weehawken, Oskaloosa, Saskatchewan;
The cattle, the coal, the corn, must go
In the night ... on the prairielands.

Chuff-chuff go the pulses.
They beat in the cool of the night time.
Chuff-chuff and chuff-chuff...
These heartbeats travel the night a mile
And touch the moon silver at the window
And the bones of the man.
It costs nothing.

Rabelais in red boards,
Whitman in green,
Hugo in ten-cent paper covers,
Here they stand on shelves
In the cool of the night time
And the clocks.
Charlie Chirico Jun 2013
My family doctor suggested bed rest.
If that was a statement rather than a suggestion,
I wouldn't know, because the redundancy of those
two words was enough to keep me idle,
awake, agitated for days.

It was around the time he carefully
scribbled his script onto the blue pad
that I began to chuckle. This prefixed
prescript was only a temporary solution
that was barely legible. Whether or not
a scribe in this profession is meant to
be as erratic as nomadic cavern canvas,
it speaks volumes that the DSM IV considers
substantial. Until a once thought preconceived
notion becomes precedent in the ongoing
sought after expansion of knowledge.

A continuation of disorder and disease,
the facts and fallacies,
all become testing.
The standard practice is only as strong
as its weakest hypothesis.
More so when it becomes general practice.
I would like to believe
this to be an emergency,
but the white-coat before me
felt the need to sidetrack,
and thought it appropriate to mention
youth in Asia.

The deadpan humor
was disconcerting.
But not as unnerving
as the redundancies that
were given to me as a solution
for my sporadic sleep.

Some insurance!
Reassure me, doctor!
So, he did,
through his proclivity
for pharmaceuticals.
M Harris Feb 2017
Newfangled Biosphere Pyramid Scheme In Dwelling To Sidetrack,
Sanities Seduced So You Never Will Retort.
Threaten the sanctity of the delusion,
Unlearn. Start altering the definitions.

Force fed more dread so you relinquish control,
Cravings we must return.
Unfetter the soul,
In a system where acceptances esteemed more than the veracity,
Flawed perception of tour progression through that which we consume.
Exposed through The Earliest Of Eons.

Resistance-Resistance is Demarcated
Subversion-Subvert the Paradigm
Stirring Within A Ecosphere
Numb And Incarcerated

Stirred On My Own
In Prehistoric Of Existences

Slumbering. Visualizing. Bleeding. Conscious.

Appreciations bolted in a collective delusion
Lulled by ease and consumption
An entire realm of souls visualizing their existences.
Mankind is not superior, we’re just folklore's in our own consciences.
Betty May 2012
He asked me why we couldn’t do it in the basement.
The answer isn’t a simple one;
I couldn’t tell him about that poem you wrote me.
I blamed it on my irrational fear of spiders
To sidetrack his incessant inquisitions.

It was the only place I used to be able to be myself.
With trying to improve the area,
It turned into more of a hell.
The carpet feels like knives on my feet.
The ground is much colder than I remember it being.

A place that was once so dear and warm
Is now filled with empty wine bottles and full ashtrays
And a sewing machine that just represents
All that I’ve tried and never succeeded in.
I could hide this from him, but not from you.

Next time he asks if we could do it in the basement,
I should say sure, why not, because
It’s not like I have a past that will keep up the empty bottles and full ashtrays.
It’s time to face my irrational fear that has
Absolutely nothing to do with spiders.
Moris Jul 2012
I have been reading more.
I have been tipping my waitresses more.
Stopping on intersections to pet the passing canine.
Attempting to watch what I eat.
Having strong work ethic.
Bumming a smoke.
Paying the electric on time.
Talk less about me,
Let's hear more about your day.
You, you, you.
That should sidetrack the deafening of my thoughts.
Throwing pennies into fountains,
Tossing a dollar or two to the street performer.
Seeking fulfillment.
Not there,
Not yet,
Not happy,
Not a ton.
With this pattern I await a beacon.
With this pattern I await direction.
xuans Jul 2015
the story started with hairline cracks.
cracks that were so fine, thin and insignificant.
let us not sidetrack,
and go straight to how it all happened.

somehow the pressure got to us all
widening the tiny fissures in the wall
slowly the walls started crumbling
and the decorations started tumbling.

the pieces of the walls started to fall off
and each piece that almost hits me
i dodge, dust myself off and cough
it never did hit me that this really could be.

eventually i became enlightened
and my perspective was brightened
suddenly the rug fell through the floor
and i am out the door

plunged into darkness, i ask
since when had the fault lines widened to swallow me up?
into an endless abyss of darkness
unlike that of dusk
Gaye Sep 2015
What’s the color of the sky in your memory?
I know you loved your twinkling mansion
But with misty eyes I realized that-
You’re awaiting just beneath my heart.

I hummed melodies lacking pace
And studied verses to sidetrack you
But do you remember the days
I talked to you endlessly?

You kicked me with at most joy
And somersaulted all around me
But you never knew that I dreamt-
A thousand dreams of loving you!

I’m sorry for all your dreams
I’m sorry for all your smiles
You deserved to be born
But I butchered you!
Megan Grace Apr 2015
(I) seaweed skin
today there is a
crevice where my
lungs used to be

(II) brass arteries
i took the long
way to work this
morning trying
to sidetrack my
mind with new
roads but there
are some bits of
you creeping up
my spine and
burrowing into
my hair and
nuzzling my ear
i had thought that
by now i would be
able to take breaths
without chunks of
sentences meant for
you breaking off
from my bronchial
tubes but they are
somehow still lodged
in there like they
have been called home

(III) umbrella heart
i used to wish no one
would ever touch me
ever touch me ever
touch me because their
fingerprints would last
too long and i can't scrub
them off like i want to
please let this be different
please let this be the end
of you aching at the base
of my skull and robbing
me of my purple dreams
and green hopes i want
to feel myself in my arms
instead of you
Jami Samson Nov 2013
Seawater on summer
Is what my tears are
When they race down my cheeks;
Hot and salty.
And I knew they did not sidetrack
To evaporate on my lips
But I tasted that bitterness
Caught in my throat
Which my eyes have no power
To splash like the waves
That normally surf my face;
Only accumulate
And let them slam inside me
Repeatedly.
And I wish I did not have to
Watch that movie,
Watch that part of the movie,
Watch that movie's credits rolling,
Repeatedly,
Just to admit
That I cheated on this taste test
And my tears are not salty.
At all.
#47, Nov.29.13
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2015
take money out of the equation, and sack all the waiters and return to tribalism, the former statement of non-intellectual socialism, the sort of inherent: in us there is a togetherness, no more service from strangers in the hierarchy of enriching a piece of metal or a wavy rectangle of paper with “necessary” symbolism of authority of the status quo... but that’s not going to happen... the pickpocket picts are no more... the normalising normans glared at the hastings pinnacle and integrated with the saxon women... the saracens became surnames in poland... actually that last one is very true... a branch of my family has the surname saracen.*

so i’m reading this article
and i’m hardly debasing myself,
it’s not that i’m referring
to sartre’s negation of certain things
whether animate and essential or
inanimate and existential... in that formula:
i deny therefore i am... because i can’t deny my existence...
and 2000 years down the line i’ll be pitchfork
argument in an atheist’s mouth anyway (nothing is certain in the realm of cognition, hence the cartesian invocation of doubt),
it's not like i'm referring to inappropriate pronoun usage...
so **** a doodle do... twang the strings on the mandolin...
i’m referring to this classical reference of the shy literary figure
unable to spark conversation with strangers...
god, i really love strangers, and talking to them!
why? there is no personal history, there’s no past,
there are no reference points... it’s just the moment and nothing else,
the perfect anonymity project...
not the matrix philosophy (easily invoked because
it has a flimsy plot-line and loads of images...
just what the doctor ordered for the english speaking masses
with a very naked orthography - i.e. if it’s on the internet
it’s not “real life...” as is this computer i’m using
it’s not even here!)
of using the deep web to join the rats and etc.;
i love talking to strangers, i can forget myself
and enter the realm of discretion about how within randomisation
of eggshell, yoke and cockroach there’s also the randomisation
of the interactants to balance out the need for a theological unit, god...
it’s great... it’s like... it’s like... life.
defining the genre of biography proper? never backtrack...
always sidetrack... i can’t be bothered living a life with cocktail parties
and romps and romantic comedies to look forward to
once all the animalism becomes domesticated and a
gym-session complaints column in a newspaper.
LenaPop May 2011
Distract us
Sidetrack us
Engross us
Refract us
Or offer
A glimpse
Just a slight
Of what's real
While we march
In our sleep,
While we are
Standing still,
We’re still reigning
Still falling
Still fighting
False stalling
And cannot see
The ground with
Our heads in
The clouds with
Our eyes And
Our ears Cotton
Wool-ed From
Our fears A
Divine Inter-
ment our shins
Creak on
Cement and
Our boots
Thump and grind
As we march
On the blind
Silent lips
Bleary eyes
Muffled sounds
Freaky minds
Wack Tastic Nov 2013
Screamed at the cat,
thought he toppled the cage,
turned out to be the shelf,
didn't have enough time,
to rinse my hair.
Powered to work;
enjoyed the brisk excersice,
accompanied by grotesque ambience,
"What is that ****?"
From the arrogant.
Three man close,
ends as slow as it started,
the ride home had a sidetrack,
acoustic grassland band,
self proclaimed leader was a real A-hole,
wouldn't let me play,
when I finally did they liked it,
but I didn't give two *****.
Accident on the freeway,
as the faces passed by,
none of them saw me,
but the whole congregation was there,
police, bus driver, Metro insurance man on the side,
in full regalia,
witnessing yet another,
one of those days.
Ken Pepiton Sep 2021
Magi always bring Magic, among other
things, Frankincense was given me to give,
some kids bring tobacco.

Sunday, in our world with weeks
and months and years, in constant tension
pulling days from our lives, as gone-by,
but barely acting once in decades
of note, until
daily news of those who did
begins to pile up and tends to overflow
into to story, myth, and history, fit
with screwy prosody
and no practical scheme for rhyme…

all proving, now is after all that,
our access to mind wandering excursing,
excusing your innocence and ignoring
your being not so,
not so innocent, nor
feeble of mind, un exercised in godliness.

Yes, this
is the blessed assurance that we
were not the first to be
Perfectly Normal, Thank you.

------- and, further more

mind wandering is not a wartime pleasure.

Forward Tactical Operations Center,
some where
actual place, a point in time and space,
to you from me,
actively, choosing to rise to the occasion,
and bow to the overall situation,

life is attractive, not repulsive,
knowing is appealing to the best in me,
not the lazy
good for nothing I can be, with no help
from you or any
strange
power not mine to use,

con-sci, come see, came saw, and a we
arose to agree, this might
e
see, esse, e, this might be power, lying idle.

--- balance of power? Ha. Push
comes to shove, and wishes we could
make up a reason
to enjoy today as the final sure thing.

-- it was a darkthonic thought ought shall should

Substrates, strata below, this pliant surface,
gurgle, signaling nothing, save, more or less,
a belch, or a ****, more like,
ew, {cell phone- in a search pattern}
we need not more of that,
what stink think ye we ought celebrate,

buffoon?

Suppose we all know the story behind
or under as we may,
surmise, compromising prized right ness
given up over down,
stand up, fall down, prop up hold down

proper propping
propagate a reason, fit to this season
- autumn, ends the year, winter
- starts next
now
all this de novo knowing, for the price of attention
you may know, not freely,
known, but freely taken as known before, by others
of our kind,

-- I am distracted by a blue jay, on the rock
-- behind the thinker comes
the thought, dragging it's feet, to make clouds of dust,
because,
the dust is there, and does this flying at my desire
to see once, and again, the effect of

me at six, mind wandering on a dry and dusty trail,
-- realizing
confabulatory stories are in fact
"perfectly normal, thank you. A basket of eggs, or a basket
of

air, empty air, no signal, no closing inverted commas.

Have we lost the magic?

---
No listen, ah, and smell,
the bacon, ah, forbidden meat,
smells so good, does it not, smell so good?

It might not **** you, son, but hell of a price
you pay for taking a bite, of some thing
due to it smelling,
so good.

--------- setting, as the propagated
translation of tradition to kab-allah, I say
a wish in time to pre
vent any explosive out burst of gut dispute,

per and may haps rise around me, big
am, we, m'fam… wakes in me a joy,
quite normal,
joy of a grandfather, finishing the faith
a character has developed,
while making, wei true, making wei wu
wu wu of the ever skeptical sepsis sort,
test this
T-cell, is this us? Or is this MERSACOVIDEO
override, through the bluetooth meanies

missing since the Yellow Submarine sunk
in Central Park, c. 1968.

Around the time Dubcek lost to the Commies.
Same season when North Korea got the Pueblo.

The tangled web,
seen in the sunlight topping the eastern wall,
George Harrison, perfect timing
every time I remember, this is real, out there
nearer the edge of my light cone,
from c.1968…

deception, ungrip the gripped fist,
monkey reaching for the fly in the bottle,
that chatters incessantly of having lived before,
monkey fist
feels something sticky,
is it… curious as george, for dammedshore,
a wave
of recognition, there's Waldo,
and Magic, Incorporated, free to reread, and
seed into my grand children,
who are reading the same hard back
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, that
I brought home to their mother after the trip
to Huston, during HP's takeover of Compac,

No, correction, it was after the trip to Denver.
--- sidetrack breadcrumb Quark and metadata
Sunday morning, up early, to the modern equivalent of an outhouse,
I make my morning absolutions, as is my constitutional right requirement,
TODAY, I see evidence of a grandchild, bookmarked, a book I know from quite some time ago...
Ken Pepiton Dec 2022
So called, taker of the offered gift.
-- some say he is the lazyman, some say holy
here's this day, wit you and me in it, see/
clever berdach clown curio
here's whose telling who's story, as if
what is it, the touche engarde
peace re distance, engaged,
- final gloss, if it makes peace
touch me with a sign, signal peace first
at a distance,
a whistle, and a wavy, hey
what's new?
Finding any finer points
to press
into service? Dialoging with Daemon's.
-- spirits claiming truth makes nothing free.
so all who aim at nothing know it.

In a time, we all hold, in stories
of who we were
when only sense talkers lived
on the dryland,
relatives of mine and yours lived
on the dryland…
- we came as children, already
- teachers and feeders were here.
- we became boys, we learned
- we learned letters let one
- become any believable,
- why not factor, a will,
- and we was only me,
- suddenlies occur,
- and this one was you…
- we the writer/reading mind, me

- I said, I see no other, I must do some new--ness
- necessary how ness options,
- so sleep came and gave me hats,
- each hat held a dreamtime,
- I had artist intuition, I knew the use of gifts.
As a I shudder when I hear "the burden of the Lord"
the long forbidden phrase, banned
to any professor

becoming the story all boys and girls know by heart.
-Grace comes with a price, Christ failed to pay,
according to the institutions of religionized authority.

Augury. Spill the dove's guts and wish on the liver spots.

Been there, done that.
Played the game, read the book, watched the trilogy.

Drama serves to open wedoms, welcome, become dear,
pay up front for an hour or two of laughing,
at the royal fool retelling the savior story.
-----------
cut to Danny Kaye, close up wink,
check out the Emperor's New Mind.
-----------
whole world of inventions making our link occur,
instant occurences, technical tools for making joy.
Happy hellos, that each have good byes, good be witcha.
Turn up the house lights. See your role,
take your proper bow, on your mark
pirouette on a paradigm./
Roll in the Phrygian dime, tales. Fascis./ what
could that mean, in a peace making tale,
told in the fallout shelter,
after the legend of the Alamo lost all credibility.

Staged form,
dance expressed
in silent wordwise opera,
quest for meaning, go riverwise, be rain,
be one drop
of your kind of thing,
falling splat… near where the whole fallen man story started,
timewise, around the time Jacob dreamed,
what would seem the right thing to do,
that's a question from Hebrew Schule, if you
were Jacob, and I, your brother, keeper
of our father's flocks… do you take usus fructus abusus,
of our father's lands and wells?

Forethought set piece,
a mental drama
in the literal jungle of guesses men have left,
scribbles in sand, gigabits aligned in assorted sense,
pearling stones in wide shallow streams,
reflecting fractal suns,

rented cyberspace poet taste tests,
poetaster proofs of progress, testimony-

witness if I lie, catch me if you can,
lest I lean on my own pile of reasons
for being any thing at all, as a man, I mean,
not as a stack of sense
I
balance by leaning lightly into winding Jello
time winds of reasons after imaginations,
shifting actual pairs of dimes,
Phrygian capped Liberty,
she who welcomes po', any shade,
sifting fine sense to hold one particular
God's thoughts, so no jot or tittle is ever lost,
God knows, pro-verbs pro-cede acting as if
any who opens the habitate, is visited,
by the visitor who gave reason worth,
the truth you test through living it out, once,

logic, orderly paths to production at scale,
odds increase
as new minds come online, wondering
if I had the tool for the task at hand,
how might I use such a tool.
Money and data, both lack any good, save
the use that can be made of each concept,
each mind framing paradigm building tool,

take a thought and hold it, mark your time.

---  there's my cue, says the real Ken Pepiton,
in text, actual current context of --
What is this…?
play, perhaps,
- feels like a movie- you know?

happening to be enabled by my augments,
to remember any fact I was ever given as a go-by.

Benchmarks in history, of your single point
for becoming anything at all,
relative to the edge
of my influx, swinging wide
ifitsnotitsgottabegnosisnotted, tangled
knots, tighten, right,
or loosen, if
depends, swings on a single strand that is you,
and nada mas, just
you… doer of all you ever do, before or after.

Now, so, as we think,
in mind, we exist,
at the moment, this instance of reality,
a thought I used to think of you, ready,
is behavior in progress,
be, I became holder of this thought by
having read the story I believe,
my leave, I let my story be true, I do not
lie to me, ethos. Point… from which an axion

extends… a sense of thick, frictionless time,
in a wind-like form, gnosisnot, you feel
you know, the flow is safe to let go,
-Jello-time slowing
think with logos as logos as that word
unfolds to essential first phase human maturity,
recalling names of things you named, as a child
learning the role of mankind in reality, growing
sharper, or brighter as age, demands,
understanding, and, in my culture, forewarning,
do not lean on any structure you build alone.

I have my being in that same story,
after my entrering in
to the realm
of walking upright,
I stepped
knowing some time since, giant
steps taken feel just like falling
- faith, fidelity its ownself
strong confidence in the depth intentionally
forcing re-deflection, cross winding threaded

thoughts fit in words, each word held either

sense, common or crazy, to any seer, in this medium,
connected to a mortal means for holding thoughts,

as no man can hold the wind in his fist,
so no lie can hold a truth known to make
it's knowers free…

so, what is free? At the moment, you. Free
to choose to
retry tracing conservation of energy, or
let it be, at innate literal action level letting loose,
open the sluice, let go the flood of ifery,
the way life ever was done,
is the way life ever is done.
As a mind thinks it is it is.
As a man, wombed or un, thinks at the core,
so it is, and only actual faith shifts from absurd,
to sublime, one step past proverbial simple…

if the sense in any word, holds mere, I know, right,
mere inspiration, a thought that feels real yessy,
no pain, easy to work with, ever onward leaning,
no dread hell to pay should I assume the reason,
I was made,
is peace, made by my say so, where none was,
where only I was,

bottom line, good for nothing I could think
of being
worth the effort
to guide through the meandering course
of human events, where all the power lies,
to hold back the flood, forecast by the redactors
of the literature, all we know, wordwise,
from the time
of the oldest texts, and most recent prophecies.

- aside, btw, sidetrack, all the oldest texts,
- sealed in eroded alluvial bubbles,
- you have seen the edges of the deserts,
- geological symmetry, same forces, same patterns
- -- Dead Sea Scrolls, found in once sealed amphora
during my mortal moments, those were deciphered.

- same aside, the tehkne we use allows, if we chose
- to learn to learn forever, no fear of never knowing all.
- The truth you know, frees to the limit of the sense it makes
- in post- all we all ever knew, loosed, in one generational
- laminate of spiritual images fitted in words for use,
- rote
- ritual liturgical dance, done in clouds of representative
- saintly prayers on the way through the void to the other
side… meandering streams of conscience, science, sfumata,
no lines, smoke-like streams of conscious -- awake, and attending

From on high the seer says, we saw when the poet wrote the tale
we tell it as we told it,
still,
few find the time or patience, to ponder, dams.

---------- Now, me, 74 and a half years old, today, by the way,

Younger me lives in all my once unaccounted for idle words,
rusting hulks of reasons for my shame,
all my reasons for war,
all my reasons for crafting confabulations, - another btw
I learned why preachers tell jokes, by paying attention
to one thing, one Sunday, for about a minute.

The Methodist Minister, in his Holy Garb, classic black
John Wesly style flowing robes of early modern academes…
advisory boards, seers, sayers and prognosticators…

Told of a preacher overhearing children staging a liar's contest,
the prize was a common box turtle. Why, heavens,
of course, the guided holy man, knew, I must give these lads
a lesson… so he peered over the plank fence, and ahemed them
to attention, "Boys, when I was your age, I never told lies."

Where upon the boy with the turtle handed it over,
all conceded none could tell a bigger lie.

Riverwise, meandering is how whole forests, and mountains,
have been carried to the sea. Ideal fluidity, presumes
we can think real complex things,
look at any protein, that’s a twisted process,
think that up, irreducible complexity of realification,
twists that twist as far as possible, constantly, taking shape
forces beyond the power
of water and rolling stone and flotsam, command,

a lip of the earth rises in a one-sided smile… things thought
riverwise, always,
in any religion,

accepting truth, is the way life takes us beyond our fear of death,
or possible acceptance of chains forged in guilds,
doctrinal congress, doxological orthogonal games, in the realm

of my reality, my century after the concept, the first gripping
hook, metaphor, hook-up, connextion, come along, hold on,

if you did inherit the wind,
would you find your self returning or going… from now on…
-- easy as untangling princess hair from a slept in tiara, first thing... real life Grandpa... sowing curios burrs found in my socks...
Don Bouchard May 2015
When you whisper close,
My hair rises...
I get the chills...
Feel thrills...
I'm in first grade again,
That first crush feeling...
And frowzy-headedness comes reeling...
Delicious ticklings up my spine
Sidetrack me for a little bit,
Like that first glass of wine....

I even lose my place,
My bookmark I can't find...
Should have folded down the tip....
Doesn't  matter...
I think I'll let my reading slip...
If these razors could talk, they'd spin tales of stories so intricate like the inside of a body, funny because that's how it felt every time a thin red line pouring out failure always seemed to feel like. If they could tell you anything I'd hope they'd tell you how hard I fought to keep it hidden and inside a box. Instead of thinking outside that box I would be caged inside it shoved in like sardines, that must be how it felt when they found the tools of new beginnings inside a container that blared the words normal in a big red sign. The color red will never seem normal to me I've seen it on sheets pooling out over my hands. The metal was a sidetrack a bump in the road the only one to feel it was the inside of these clothes and now they have left their mark. If the skin I crawl under could somehow paint you a time of when everything seemed "fine" I hope to god it twists your stomach like the veins inside my wrists curl around the bone woven together like the sewing needle my grandma just can't put down. The doctors glares were as cold as how each and every razorblade kiss was . if these razors could somehow show you that it was not their fault but mine, even the slightest twitch makes it seem impossible to not go back again and yet they are still there they chant the same tune every night and if you'd listen a little closer it'd go something like this "you got a little something on that clean skin you've covered up just enough and its time to pick your weapon and let the ritual of sins begin. Come a litter closer we can show you the world you won't have to feel and it'll be like a drug. Don't think just let the sharp begin to bite and I tell you now you can sleep tonight" the singsong rant is as empty as my box but yet it wounds deeper than I ever could. If these razors could talk, I hope and pray they tell you of every time there words got wedged into my skin like tiny little slivers from a wooden deck I had never sat on. If the sheets I tied over ever open wound showed you the evidence of an unfinished crime scene would you be able to stomach the fact these blades have control. If these razors could talk they'd tell you they aren't finished with me yet.
trigger warning for self harm
Star Gazer Mar 2016
Mom
Mom was always a questionable figure in my life. She has inspired me but nonetheless not every parent is perfect, not even in the eyes of their child. I can remember at a young age of eight, I asked mom, "Mom, how will I know when I'm mature?" Her response still echoes in my head when I come to a stand still situation. She said "You are mature when you realise that going into your room and slamming your door does not make your problems disappear and they may be lurking in the room with you or right outside of the door". Obviously at the tender age of eight, I had no idea what she meant so I decided to give my own interpretation; "so there will be times we need to get a new door?"

Since I grew up without a father, Mom was forced to work to take up the bread-maker role and provide for my extra interests and any other things since I wanted to grow up slightly interesting. So "James Patterson books that you're probably going to read once and costs $50 sure son, I'll buy it for you". "Guitar lessons for your clumsy hands so you can woo the ladies? sure". I wasn't spoiled, don't get me wrong. I worked with my Aunts cafe (they are extremely successful; I think it's ripping off her employees and sacrificing the blood of a thousand babies or something. You get the picture; even though they are family, they aren't exactly the best people in this world. Then again you might argue success is the outcome of severity).

My mother was also the one to give me the talk (yes, that one with the bees,butterflies, magic liquids, ***** and elephants) , I could recall the embarrassment I felt from that moment. To clarify, I wasn't exactly old (about 12-13) nor did I have the maturity of a child but the conversation went a little like this -

      "Hey, do you know how to use a ******? To keep you safe in case you are ever... if you ever ... want to engage in intimate activities with a girlfriend".

      "Yea, mom I'm good. It's just like wearing a hat".

      "You know, if you put it on your head you will probably get someone pregnant".

      "Mom, I didn't mean I'm going to wear it like a hat, I'm going to wear it where I should be wearing it".

      "Don't fill it up with water and pretend its a water balloon before too and don't blow it up like a balloon".

      "Why are you telling me this mom? Sounds like you know someone who did it before?"
        
     Mom with a giggle and starts to sidetrack to an anecdote of the past; "Yes actually, when you were little you thought they were balloons. You were so small and adorable, who'd known so many years pass".

     "Ok thanks Mom, I got it. I don't think I'll ever get a girlfriend in this life though, seems a like a lot of work. The flowers, the gifts, the talking. I don't even know how to talk to a girl".

     "Simple, you talk to a girl, by talking to them like anyone else...Do clean up your language and don't be too stupid though. It's ok to show people you care about that you care, no matter who they are to you".

Now earlier I said, questionable, that's because she at times can be a hypocrite. I recall asking her at about 15, -

"is it ok for me to cry? I mean it feels strange, there's this something I can feel. I don't know how to describe it, but I don't know whether to cry or to scream or to just ..."

"It's ok for a guy to cry, it's ok for anyone to cry. The biggest importance is that you know to wipe those tears and keep going. Tissues work but I would recommend letting it roll down your cheeks and you'll realise, all you are doing is making yourself look more miserable and it's really not going to change much".

"Did you cry Mom? Like when ... passed away?"

"No. I didn't shed a single tear".
                    (Obviously she was lying because I had heard her on many occasions on my fathers funeral day sometimes every third year or some years in a row. We live in a small house where the walls are thin).

Mom being the only person I know to ask for advice. I approached her with question on love, when I was about 17 after somehow finding a girl who said she liked me.

        "Mom how do you know when you are in love? Or how do you know you should love that person and what if they don't love you back?"

       "Simple, love is when you miss the presence of someone in your life. Love can be between family. Love is thinking of them even when you're suppose to be doing other stuff. Love is caring how they are or how their day goes. Love is like seeing a light at the end of a tunnel filled with roses".
(Roses have a significant meaning to me, I always place Roses at the two most important people in my lives, one is my father, who altered who I have become, and the other is my greatest friend. Roses aren't something I give away, I have never given a rose unless it came straight from the heart. I know, you're probably thinking it's just a flower. It was the flower that my father first purchased for my mother , it was the flower that was at the wedding reception, it was the flower that I had placed on the casket and it's the flower I give to people I know I will always cherish with my heart).

Mom was remarkable, I would have not been happier with any other mother. There are times we fight but we always mend things.

I remember staggering home drunk, unable to fit the key into the lock and face reddened by the number of friends who kept telling me "just another one".
About a week later, my mother who doesn't drink except an occasional beer to fit into the mood of a party sat me down and asked me how many things did I drink that night. I started listing drinks, thinking she would be proud (stupid teenager brain, I know)... " So i had a shot of some vanilla ***** thing, but I was already drunk at that point. I had some absinthe thing....Oh i had some wings. I had about four beers. I think I had hot chips. I think I also had some Hennesy but it might have been water".
        Her face reddened and for that second I thought my neck was due for a snapping, nothing happened. All she said was -

          "At least you knew to eat, but don't drink too much. I raised you this old all alone, I don't want to have to lose you to something as stupid as alcohol. Also if you want to drink, just don't. Not until you are 18 anyways".

One more fight I could remember which happened quite recently was the passing of my great grandmother (god bless her soul; r.i.p), I remember being upset at my mom for not telling me about great grandmas passing, especially since it was during Final examination periods and she waited till after. Which in retrospect I had no idea why I was mad, just failed to realise it must have been harder for her than it was for me.

There was this one time, when I was about six, a boy in my class, lets call him Peter had teased me about my dead father. Kids will be kids and kids will also be cruel. I came home that day after school asked mom.
            
                   "Mommy what do you do if someone you don't like talks about you?"

                  "When I was a kid, I knocked a girl down and stepped on her neck but you shouldn't do that because when you do that, his mom will surely get upset same way I will get upset if someone hurts you".
                
Ignoring what she said , six year old me shoved Peter to the ground and placed my shoe on his neck screaming things, I obviously must have heard somewhere
               "You're lucky I'm sparing you".

Since this was still before school , my mother witnesses this, pushes me off the kid and makes me apologise and checks to see if the boy is alright. My mom told the teachers on me, and I don't remember the consequences but I can recall she told me to talk with Peter after the apology. Peter forgave me with his open heart and became my best friend from 6 till 18 ( at 18 we had a falling out but we've been best friends for long enough for me to cherish and forgive him for everything. We just never grew closer ever again. Plus congratulations, he's getting engaged :)   ).

             Thank you Mom, for raising me to be the man that I am today. I still struggle speaking to girls ( I didn't speak to a girl till I was 14, so I am sure I have some social issues but I try to make things work), but Mom you've taught me everything from driving, to shaving, to cleaning up after myself, to knowing how to respect people and understanding that sometimes things need to be talked out and that's all that's required. We don't say "love you's " in our family but deep down in my silent heart, Mom just know that I love everything you have given or tried to give me and thank you for letting me live the life I have lived. Bye
Jeni Nov 2015
Lost
in your heart
You wonder
if anyone will want you.
You don't understand
the wrench
the stealing force
taking you
away.
Away.
Away from me.
It's not enough.
To want,
It's not enough.
No.
Because the twisted sheets
whisper a story
and the worn deep mattress
murmurs
the truth.
When sleep won't rob you
When desire won't heal you
When fun won't sidetrack you
When your mind can't stop going
back there
So don't you know that you matter?
No
You know, I don't say it, just to say it.
I say it because...
I love you.
Dark n Beautiful Oct 2019
In a world of filled of hate
Love is not the enough
We need a clean slate

We have given up on believing
The superior, then there is the inferior
The rich and then there is the poor
The celebrities and there is the followers
Then comes action, follow by reactions:
Politics and politicians:
Beam us up Scotty:  beam then down Lucifer

I read this morning that Kanye W
Is thanking the lord for his S68 million refund
Here I am thanking the lord this morning
Not to be gun down, by the drifters
Or to be sidetrack by co-workers,
Only if peace would come sooner,
And haters would vanish…..
Like the children of Hamlet town
DC raw love Jan 2015
A life beyond your thoughts
Prison, the old term Penitentiary

Penitentiary which means
Sacraments of penance

Which means to receive divine mercy for the sins committed against God.

Now in the law it's not much different
There is a Judge that sits high above the court, called your Honer

You are sworn and you say, the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God

Right there you asking for God help or for God to help you


Everyone states there case and you can plea to the mercy of your Honer

So actually who is closer to God.
The priest, the judge or you.

I've gotten sidetrack, prison.
Just do right in life.

Because it *****, it *****, it can hurt you
It can change your life.

For me, because of my knowledge. Everyone looked up to me.
Young, old, black, white, weak and strong.

Knowledge is the most important thing to have in prison.

My time we t by fast and I don't miss it.
But it is the reason for me being on Hello Poetry. I started writing in prison.

Yes I could tell you many stories about prison. Some are even to unbelievable for me to believe, but then again I never laughed so hard in my life.

Prison made me a much stronger person, not in strength but in morals.

I do everything I can do keep kids and teens from the life of prison.
Amanda Kay Burke Aug 2018
Have never felt such pain before
Never this kind of suffering
Used to love life but now I yearn
For the relief death would bring

Skin hurts in the absence of your touch
My heart breaks again each time I wake
I try and try to sidetrack myself
But nothing whisks away the endless ache

It is so much harder to breathe the air
Now Winter is almost gone
I choke on each breath I take
Filled with fear of you moving on

I no longer see the beauty
You introduced me to a long time ago
It has disappeared from everything
Except love we used to know
Its like the world was much prettier when I was around you
S Apr 2014
distractions
imagine going through a day with no distractions or you distracting yourself
i don't think it's possible
no level of determination can break the foundations of distraction
i'm caught up in a vast cloud of nothing
i can't seem to make sense of my thoughts
pathetic how i control my mind but instead i let it control me
i am the main character in my story
no this is not me being depressed or sad or anything like that since i don't believe in any of that
i'm just confused as to why i succumb to distraction when power is a second nature to me
i let it derail and sidetrack me
all i crave right now is to take control of my life
pineliquor Jun 2019
oh come no closer for you will not understand why i dance
with my eyes closed & my body responding to the rhythm
of summer rain. You do not understand because you have a secured
roof over your head. All of your advances are aimed at surfaces,
you lost before you even begin, forever banned / from my solitude.
We do not speak. Our mouths are pried open
with hollow words sputtered out in desperation, while the
chilled room laughs at us, even the cobwebs. I am
also at fault. I can't string my thoughts with links secure,
and you are lovely for thinking my gibberish rhymes like a song.

I sprint, I run, I fall, and run again. my dusty&bruised knees
supporting dusty&bloodied hands in full swing propelled
by the motion, forward. If I don't hurry I'll forget
the confusion, the chaos, the mess I made / in my head
But it's getting so hard to remember.
& it hurts to take a breath.

I am the absence and you are just beginning
don't lose sight or sidetrack. Keep to your path.
"be careful of all voices, including this one."
Pennilessness disallows me
     luxury tubby globe trekker
hence, my imagination
     takes me random places minus
     the hassles of
     any rubber necker
gawkers always staring
     at major or minor

     crash test dummy
     vehicular accident,
     (now strictly, squarely,
     and specifically,
     for poetic license purposes
     of this reasonably
     rhyming adversity
     I dreamt up, while

     driving Miss Daisy, this
     "FAKE" serious, albeit
     totally tubularly
     fictitious **...
     **...humvee wrecker
involving holiday passengers
     seated in luxury
     of double decker

self driving bus,
     which collided with a sleigh
     carelessly manned by Santa Clause
(though no animals i.e. reindeer
     harmed in the writing
     of this video script)
     donned in his
     New England Patriot

     Scottish Tartan checker,
thus the aforementioned,
     non fatal narrow brush you
need rest assured, sans
     make believe death - whew
fortunately miraculously,
     and unbelievably true
lee delivered angels

     intervened clear
     out of the blue
mainly conjured from
     me matt chew,
hoping ye dear reader enjoy
     what I figuratively drew
merely to distract thee

     dearly especial fan
     to sidetrack vital tasks and brew
up a mug of warm
     spirits from a moo moo
kosher bovine amazingly
     able to understand Hebrew.
We take each other almost there
You’ll read this and go
Meh
Almost a waste of time
If there is such a thing
Depending upon
Investment
And whether getting to
Almost there
Is a pleasant distraction
Or a sidetrack
Maybe the two are the same thing
Or maybe almost there
Is as close as anybody gets
I know it’s hard to focus
Especially if you get sidetrack
It’s easy to lose Constitution
When we see something different
Are mind wonder
To beat that
Remind are self
In one thing’s

— The End —