"sisyphus" poems
The big angry things sling vocal feces
Fleshy phallus-pumps close at hand, cooing
Guzzle guzzle ethanol
Inebriated petrol-baby
"Smash the atom!"
"We're too late, we're too late!"
Tar (quick) sand *****
Big angry things drown
"We gotta gotta drill!"
Penetrate the Mother with a steel ****
Oedipus laughs
As the boulder, finally
Crushes Sisyphus.
Mar 3, 2013
Mar 3, 2013 at 2:54 PM UTC
Zeus had plastic surgery,
his fingertips shaved off
so he would not leave prints
when he committed
his archetypal crimes.
He changed his name to Saturn
then to Cronos
then to Albatross Von Mariner,
all this subterfuge
just to disquise the fact
that he goes borderline ballistic
when he doesn't get his way.
He pulled Icarus out of the sky,
wounded Prometheus’ side,
left Sisyphus on a steep lonely mountain,
dared Demeter to save her daughter,
yet these souls persist
in mnemonic literary defiance
of a single fact…
No god is greater than you,
the karma jury has come in
and Zeus is sentenced
to five years of community service
on Interstate Highway 5.
He will wear a yellow clown suit
with a red rubber nose
and floppy green shoes
with a fast food tray hanging from his neck
and he will walk in traffic snarls
stopping at every car
to clean the windows
to sell hotdogs
with purple relish and black mustard
wrapped in grey buns
as unappetizing and pathetic
as the lies
he has told us about ourselves
for so long.
Oct 24, 2012
Oct 24, 2012 at 7:35 AM UTC
see, atlas nearly dropped the world at the first sign of tremors
and gaia would've blown her top with wrath
and it nearly toppled sisyphus' boulder til it crushed him
but the 'nearly' doesn't matter 'cause the world's still in his grasp
and if paris picked selene, we might've had a heart-shaped moon
but we got the trojan shitshow, millions died
and we nearly went extinct just 'cause some ******* greek was *****
but the 'nearly' doesn't matter since we just about survived
Nov 22, 2018
Nov 22, 2018 at 4:39 AM UTC
When I say she's my rock, to the people I meet
For some reason they all, seem to think that that's sweet.
But no she is not, my foundation of stone,
Who supports and holds me, when I feel alone.
She isn't the constant, that keeps me sane
Because it's been a long time, and that girl she did change.
No for I am Sisyphus, and this much is true,
I'll never make things work with you.
But I am Sisyphus, it's what I do,
And I'm in love, with trying to
Oct 2, 2016
Oct 2, 2016 at 4:14 AM UTC
kiss my sorry *** and imagine
a differential. divide it by two,
see? this will give you the
circumference of existential
convulsion; you will see past
the freaky book you can't read
for lack of knowing and how
absurdism scares you if you
believe it. that's why you dropped
The Myth of Sisyphus part-way
through cuz what came to mind
with all the drippy Dali-mentalscape
spa of shread-dread WHATSyness!
was Camus coming to so many a pessimists
ending he had to turn it last second to say
'but in the end, we must assume that
Sisyphus is happy' and all you see in your
minds-eye is pursuit of this absurdist
paradise for nervous thought-drawn chain
-smokers is a gun to your head with one
last glance at the ocean.
Feb 19, 2014
Feb 19, 2014 at 2:21 AM UTC
Somebody call Ben Affleck
We got phantoms in this *****
This endless haunted mansion
Their presence pervades
No company
In this lonely labyrinth
Only phantoms
The only figures resembling humanity
Are the corpses of those before
Who couldn't navigate this torturous structure
And of course, the masquerading phantoms
My soul they aim to puncture
I tried closing my eyes
But I just kept running into walls
I tried sleeping through it
But I just sank deeper into the basement
When I attempted to join the phantoms
You were there
You waited until I was hanging there
On the rope
And eviscerated everything
Lycanthrope
The rope in shreds
Your heart then fled
Leaving me alone again
Lying in my exhausted blood
The phantoms sensed my desperation
And took advantage of my disorientation
So I ran to the darkest recesses of the basement
To retrieve my blindfold and sledgehammer
But is my hammer powerful enough?
Will visual impairment abstain the trickery of ghosts?
I put Sisyphus to shame
With the determination I utilize to demolish these walls
But the phantoms are devious
They ***** new facades
Thicker, sturdier, with odder textures
I destroy them all the same
It just takes a bit more time
And time means nothing
To a man who's sole purpose is knocking down walls
And cowering from apparitions
Yet a man means nothing
To a time ruled by phantoms
May 24, 2017
May 24, 2017 at 11:54 AM UTC
The lotus, I choose the lotus!
The ebb and flow the shore it goads us
Static focus, a layer peeled off and cast aside
The tide it whispered it spoke to me
but I turned I looked the other way
Upwards roads and downwards roads
Set the rock aside Sisyphus,
Bear the weight no more
Stare in lost, in vacant eyes at a boatless shore
The lotus, I choose the lotus
Wayward streams, down and around it floats us
And spits us out,
Our isolated Elysium or tortured chamber
It’s a matter of where you spend your days, in or out
On what you rest your eyes upon,
The whirlwind, the spinning cannon
Fates bolt it shoots us in twirling spiral
And all along from the corner lit dim
Float the soft tunes of a harpist,
Deft fingers pluck the taught strings,
And her eyes overcast, cloudy grey
Stare vacantly out like person drowned
The lotus, I choose the lotus!
The sweet nectar it covers it soothes me
Puzzled pieces glue me, paste me together
Pluck me, toss me, say that I flew
Let’s play who knows who
Be honest who really knows you
Reflection from the lake,
a familiar face it greets me
Whirlpool tides, how they rip they pull us
Oh the lotus, give me the lotus!
Apr 26, 2019
Apr 26, 2019 at 12:03 AM UTC
We meet again in
the last hour of dawn
deathbed creaking;
ravens croaking;
I said:
not yet, not yet!
my candle flickers -
not yet, not yet!
free your words-
You said:
it’s the eleventh hour;
your pen will bleed-
tear and anger;
your melody will be-
forgotten in the rain;
your scent will linger-
six feet under;
your wisdom will be-
trapped in the quicksand-
of your dear Sisyphus;
your beauty will be-
fed to scavenging worms;
you could have been
a phenomenal maiden.
it’s the eleventh hour
deathbed creaking;
ravens croaking;
too late, too late.
Nov 13, 2020
Nov 13, 2020 at 12:22 AM UTC
We can always arm ourselves, said Epicurus; against all sorts of things, but when it comes to death, we are under the constant, universal misconception that we are somehow able to emerge from our defenseless citadel unscathed.
Step outside the citadel
singular obscurity.
Medulla Oblongata.
Listen...listen...RATS!
Send in the snakes!
The door slams
Sisyphus' boulder
Into the ocean
Splash-ripple, dripple, burn the strip.
Abort the trip!
A Singular Obscurity
...
May 1, 2014
May 1, 2014 at 2:16 PM UTC
i speak louder
but no one seems to hear
move faster
but moving nowhere
simultaneously icarus
simultaneously sisyphus
standing while falling
just the two of us
Jan 12, 2021
Jan 12, 2021 at 4:37 PM UTC
Consciousness,
mindfulness,
philosophical enlightenment -
Live for the **** of it.
Camus was right to breathe in spite of the tide of crushing emptiness.
The boulder gets heavy,
the bones grow weary,
the mountain is steep and we are steeped in irony.
For life can be deadly and death's rows of gravestones mark homes for freed slaves,
their crossed arms hiding scars
left by the teeth of nihilistic grief beatings and
surgery scalpels set to carve by
frequent false
alarms.
Sisyphus took but one break,
to hear the chains rattled from the gates,
hellish obsidian, vermilion flames licking lumps of silica grains
mixed with ash and a black tar splash.
And Orpheus sighed on the lyre and brought tears to the eyes of the most vile,
while Sisyphus
paused -
not long,
but a lifetime for those still free to subside
to dust, from blood and guts,
when their time arrives.
The trials of life,
the striving rites and lavish gifts of light to defy
the black and empty dusk still fail.
Eurydice grows pale as Orpheus turns to see her cheeks
losing every trace of peach hue,
eyes emptying,
lungs leaking their
last gale.
Struggling again, Sisyphus is sent
tumbling down the face of the great mountain,
grabbing gravel and sand and gashing gaps in his hard leather hands.
Bleeding ash,
not blood,
hot red mud dripping from the thick lacerations,
mixing with the sickening avalanche of wasted effort and waylaid plans.
Repeating the climb up the steep peak,
bones creaking like a clock's gears,
rattling off the seconds,
minutes,
hours,
years
until the watch stops its
panicked hands.
Until then we will toil unswayed
as we wear stones to clay,
carving winding paths in spirals up the mountain's waist.
No calm for those with breath,
no rest for beating hearts.
We must live in spite of life,
and then sink silent
to the earth.
Oct 28, 2013
Oct 28, 2013 at 5:33 AM UTC
My use of personal pronouns
Puts me in my poem;
I can roll a rock with Sisyphus,
Be in a ceiling flame in Rome.
I can bring you back to life,
Sharing tales and tea;
Sitting there before my fire,
For all eternity.
I go marauding with Attila,
Walk with Neil Armstrong,
Fly high with Amelia,
Be a Beatle with my song.
My pronouns give me presence
In my lover's residence;
I'm just a specter she can't see;
A spirit roaming outside of me.
I can jot an I with you,
I could pen an our;
But that's just ink on my notebook,
Not as sweet as sour.
I can use my pronouns
To put you in my verse;
And then I lay my pen down,
I'm cursed, but none the worse.
You're just poetry to me.
Dec 29, 2018
Dec 29, 2018 at 11:38 AM UTC
room spins but i do not feel dizzy i am used to the spinning dancingon air i do not care i am painter yet prefer bare walls i am writer yetfavor blank page i practice yoga daily yet suffer angst a romantic withno one to love no one loves me we unheard voices sing to imaginaryaudiences world not yet born anyone who knows me knows i’m wildconflicted vulnerable mistake-prone trapped in lost boy skittish atsight of blood frightened by shadows scenes on tv movies terrified byviolent humankind why do people trust treasure animals? because animalsdon’t lie cheat steal talk ****** gossip why am i always beingmisconstrued misunderstood? why do women get so ****** off at me theyyell slap slam door? why do i just want to not remember get numb die?what do birds see horses know dogs sense dolphins dream butterfliesremember soldiers want to forget? room spins but i do not feel dizzy iam used to the spinning
Mar 1, 2010
Mar 1, 2010 at 7:18 PM UTC
We met in our freshman year gym class. That sounds like the making of a romantic comedy, right? We both know that that's not how this will end.
I'm watching a single broken thread
Of a spider web
Bellow in the sunlight
Of my bedroom.
The spider keeps crawling
Up his broken thread but
Keeps hopelessly
falling back to the bottom.
I named the spider Charles,
Cause it sounds like
One of your many nicknames for me.
I'm trying to make Charles' web into
A metaphor for you.
Are you broken like the string,
Are you doomed like Charles,
A modern day Sisyphus?
I have an English degree.
I can make anything a metaphor.
I've known you for 11 years now; how many of them have you been dead for? I'm tired of you being dead. Can't you just make fun of my hair again? Remember how good we were at algebra?
I miss you not being dead. I drove you to your best friend's funeral. I hardly knew that kid. My only sustaining image of him is the memory of him breaking down a door, drunk, because he wanted to **** one of my friends.
But the truth is is that I sobbed harder than anyone at his ******* hopeless funeral.
You told me you were gonna go out like him.
And because I looked down
into that cheap (bargain deal) coffin,
Which never should have been
An open casket, and
Into your friend's half-lid
Blue tinged eyes,
And suddenly,
it wasn't him.
It was you,
My sweet, old friend.
Aug 5, 2022
Aug 5, 2022 at 7:21 PM UTC
Left hope behind
Abandoned fights
All vicious signs
Of savage plights
Felt like a flea
A parasite
All savage plea
To savage plight
Oh Sisyphus
Exhausted might
Lay in a hearse
Oh savage plight
Heathen in prayer
God-given right
Sign of the lair
Of savage plights
A crimson snow
And eyes of white
But don't you know
These savage plights
By Doom's own herald, God's own **** creatures all collide
Like ole rye barrelled, seasoned to withstand savage plights
Let woman cry
Let man be scorned
Let savage plights
Shut closing doors
He'll will stay frozen
Heaven forlorn
The savage chosen
***** of Babylon
Live off of plights
All but one savage
Dragged day and night
Your horseless carriage
Call it a burden
That is your right
One thing's for certain
It's savage plights
With mind so prurient
Give humans blights
From West to Orient
Come savage plights
Dorian-like picture on the wall, too mild a fighter for a knight
Was God-forsaken, after all, dealt sole with and to others each a savage plight
Nov 16, 2019
Nov 16, 2019 at 3:32 PM UTC
Prologue: **He wrote her a poem
With the weight of a love letter
Her wrote her one hundred more
Just to know she was truth**
I want to budget
my words
To strangle the
syllables
To pin down the point
To lock into you
so now I am
Sisyphus ready
my hands on the boulder
so steady the blood from the dig in my shoulder
I lock my eyes on the sun
to find a find a place on the grip
but
would take the weight of the world
for a
taste of your lip
**** it
I’m
**ready to serve
only
you**
**so
how do I
coldly
crack ribs
in a caged heart of strife?
without stealing
the lungs
of the one who breathes life?**
I meet you often in my late hours morose
meditating on mad dreams
Your cockiness verbose
just give me the word
I’ll do as you please
you can file your nails
as my tongue splits your knees
(Bukowski) Banging (hard on skeleton keys) a sentence assassin
killing paragraphs (open essays diminished)
as the typewriter talks till it laughs (in tatters+finished)
screaming
”take me through door after door!!!”
Always seeking
the right words,
From love’s lexiconic relief,
the sentence that shatters,
so don’t run on the dream
it’s punctuation that matters
**the period that finally
bores into you**.
Aug 4, 2018
Aug 4, 2018 at 2:41 AM UTC
If you think that you're 'over the hill'
there's a pill you can take
it'll make you feel brand new
and ready once more for the climb.
but you know it's all a bit Sisyphus
when
they call you by name, and it's
Narcissus.
No pills for me
herbal tea will be just fine
.
Sep 22, 2025
Sep 22, 2025 at 11:22 AM UTC
There is a beetle on the high street,
pushing the sun along at a fraction-
0f-a-mile-per-hour. He is pondering
his plans for the summer.
Perhaps different venues?
Perhaps different dung?
But he knows it's all foolishness.
He never goes anywhere.
Then a god falls out of the sky.
Not a particularly large one,
a medium-sized god as far as
they go. Roughly human-
shaped. Not counting those
streaming banners of fire
that pour from his eyes.
Few humans have burning eyes.
A dagger drips from an open
wound and he clenches his
blood (it is his own blood) in his hand.
More are coming he realizes.
All of them. And he's quite
correct. Without trumpets or
lights or choruses or bowls or
scrolls, it starts to rain.
The beetle pauses in his
pilgrimage to survey the
man underneath the god's feet.
A hand in a crater of asphalt
with a keen, nigh-inaudible
wheeze of breath. A cough
and a choke.
And the beetle scuttles on.
They fall from clouds that aren't,
I mean, actually in the sky. They crush
buildings and businessmen, They
eat fountains. They descend into an
unthinkable and unthinking
age like a dizzied chorus that cannot
pick up on the beat. Purple sash
and green helm, They build mountains.
Teeth chip around the clay- the men
and women- like fireworks.
The gods' great works resolve
like a finished slider puzzle, like the
back of the sun. Mannequins watch
the moving marble for a moment.
But the Mutes eventually find a voice,
they shout, they run into the fray.
Tantalus' mouth fills with
wine. The beetle walks around his
head. Sisyphus' back was broken
by a boulder. The poor little fellow
descends into an inferno and
climbs the devil's back like a
Purgative mountaineer. Such struggle,
thinks he, to have to take a detour.
Sky sets fire to the shell pink
sun at night.
The liquid spheres engulf ideas
on a dry stretch of ocean.
Clouds splinter in a victor's hands,
are frozen shut.
and everything sinks back home
in the middle of a wor
Mar 8, 2010
Mar 8, 2010 at 2:32 PM UTC
Sisyphus, my brother. This rock you push is a great weight to bear. It is too much and too little.
What is this Rock?
Sisyphus, my brother. Who can speak to you of toil? Who can claim your lack of will to be your restraint? That same rock to be pushed and rolled for time immortal is all that you have known. The rock is all your focus, all your desire. It is the world to you, in one indifferent globe. You have no thought of food, nor drink, nor rest, or other pleasures of this life. You know only your task and your object. The hill is of no consequence. The days spin past without you taking notice. Time is of no consequence.
What is this Rock?
Sisyphus, my brother. Who can speak to you of futility? Who can claim your time is productively spent? You, who roll to the top of that grim mountain the same heavy stone; only for it to roll from its’ perch to the stopping spot from whence you hauled it. With each day and each night you strain to force your task onward. Each drop of your sweat becomes a testament to your duty. Each drop a second. Each second soon forgotten. No matter what you could endure, the charge of yours remains the same. Your stone must rise. Your stone must fall.
What is this Rock?
Sisyphus, my brother. Who can speak to you of Fulfillment? Who can claim you are a man whose soul is empty? You, who look each day upon that same destiny without hesitation and without grief. Never have you turned from that same monotonous fate to other horizons; but have remained bound to it. Other men seek escapes and new journeys. They seek new faces and new glories. They want for gold and flesh and praise. You, who have none, do not grieve for them. You have the stone. And the stone must be lifted. The stone must be pursued. The stone gives life meaning. The stone gives life purpose. The stone banishes all doubt, all fear. The stone alone has worth. The stone alone has truth.
What is this Rock?
Sisyphus, my brother. The Rock is Love.
Aug 30, 2010
Aug 30, 2010 at 4:19 PM UTC
when he was 84, he rarely recalled
the Great War, though he left a finger somewhere
in French soil, and on deep sleep nights,
few and far between, it would call him
a spectral image of gas dead faces
drifting through like sallow clouds
in the charcoal sky
his nephew was the only one left
to fish these green waters, to court the steady
trout that he too saw in his dreams--all the others,
even his own sons, marching in the concrete squares
of the cities, visiting now and then like peddlers
hawking wares he could not understand...
soccer games and mutual funds
gourmet feasts at eateries
with cryptic names
the lake was still the same
the loons chatting, the waves lapping
but without his Helen, the fish he caught
were usually granted reprieve, saved from
his sharp gutting blade, her sizzling skillet,
and without her beside him under her ancient quilts,
the nights were not longer, for grief, he knew,
did not stretch time, but only
made its circle smaller
was a sun sated Saturday
when the nephew had honey do's as good excuses
and the old man was left alone, sitting by a black rotary phone,
waiting for one of his old nine digits to dial the new nine and two ones,
it is what they all would have expected, a cry for help, a long mute ambulance ride, them seeing him helpless with hoses and wires, delaying the funeral pyres, as was the custom in this post teen century
instead, though he felt the anvil on his chest,
and sweat drenched his JC Penney work shirt,
he moved not his feeble fingers to the phone, but his fated feet
to the lake, once only a long a hop from the porch, now a mammoth journey, ten, twelve Sisyphus steps downhill--when he reached the waters edge, the fowl called him casually, their slow song on the currents,
and he sat in the fresh grass, watching the painted blue sky
he saw the fins of those he had set free, hoping
that would count for something
when he curled in fetal repose,
and closed his eyes
by this lonely lake
Mar 5, 2015
Mar 5, 2015 at 10:31 PM UTC
I **** at writing poetry, but I do it anyway
Because life is an absurd struggle in
An impersonal universe, thus rendering
All efforts ultimately meaningless,
If that's the case, why shouldn't
I write bad poetry? If we are to, as
Camus says "imagine Sisyphus happy"
Then I'll keep rolling this metaphorical
Boulder of frustrated creativity up the
Mountain of artistic expression, in the
Misplaced hope that just maybe,
One of these times, instead of rolling
Back down and adding one more instance,
To that large pile of abject failures that
I've accumulated throughout my life,
It will stay at the top, rendering me
Successful, and making one of these
Jumbled word salad tangents into
Something that's actually worth reading.
...probably not gonna happen, though.
Mar 12, 2016
Mar 12, 2016 at 3:28 AM UTC
What did Sisyphus know
About a slippery slope;
Shoulder to stone
His feet groped,
Shifting inclinations;
Each step consequential,
A mythic joke.
Wiggle the toes,
Feel for the edge,
Sliding is inevitable.
We have no victims
On fallacious slopes.
Which lost hair defines bald;
Which millimeter makes you tall;
How many dimes makes one well off;
Which freckle makes you cute or beautiful;
Which ounce makes you fat,
From thin to Bottacelli.
Where does one begin?
Removing sentiments,
One at a time,
You find you straddle
The love/hate line,
A line drawn on a mountain top,
And splitting your Sisyphus rock.
Dec 17, 2015
Dec 17, 2015 at 12:01 PM UTC
I feel as if, the world conspires against me. Wondering day by day just how it is going to get in my way. Gone it seems has the flavor that colored my actions with interest. Left only with the barest of actions that inspire the desire and thirst for life. I feel as if I labor in vain like Sisyphus cursed to push my ambitions up the hill of my toil just to have them rolled back to where I began. I grow weary of this existence, tire easily at this fate. My mind finds an escape to wonder blissfully of paths never taken of how good life could have easily been. And so I begin to question my self as I sit alone on this abysmal shelf with nothing more than my thoughts to keep me company. What is the point of this seemingly pointless journey. Why do I toil like a simple servant advancing the goals of others while mine own sit there neglected. It is a question that I on many a occasion have reflected, as I stood time and time again bereft of any goal or ideal. Is it merely character that is being built, others will tell me that I build morals that will serve me in my future. Still others commend me for the sacrifice I show, and for a time I grow content with that. But in the end I find that I have not moved, have not progressed in anyway that I can see. So I go on to deep myself worthless, and my mind and body dull from their lack of use. I have ambition more than I can handle. What I seem to continually lack is the resource then the resolve to see it to completion. I see the ones who have climbed to the heavens to dine with God himself and I ask myself. What do I miss? What don't I know? What has escaped me such that I cannot seem to soar higher than this meager place. And yet an answer does not show it's self to me. And so I stay and ponder these things. Where the answer will come I do not know. Where I will go, I have nothing but the question mark as an answer to show. But somehow I know that someday I shall move past this blocked way. And there lies the hope I hold closely that in the end my work and my toil will not be wasted. Not be put under the tag of useless. I hold that hope and that is the way I continue to press my way through this world.
May 9, 2012
May 9, 2012 at 5:31 PM UTC
i would like to spend
the remainder of my days
floating
alone in outer space
past the edge of the universe
where not even starlight could reach me
and I would float in the blackness
without sight or sound or heat
forever
no gravity to press down on my
shattered body
free from the dull ache
of titanium plates and screws
relief to cartilage ripped to shreds
but most importantly
i would be far too far away
for anyone to ask me
if i was okay
or if i needed help
Jun 14, 2017
Jun 14, 2017 at 3:26 PM UTC
optimists and pessimists
need each other
to diffuse
their respective
perspectives.
pessimists
get too helpless.
they feel
everything is on them.
it starts to feel
like they think they're Atlas,
or Sisyphus.
pushing their boulder up
the mountain, forever
and ever
alone.
some inferiority complexes
border on narcissism.
optimists get too helpful.
they burn so hot
they forget that sometimes
they can be as useless
as the pessimists feel.
most people that want
to be positive, surround
themselves with positive
people. and negativity
vice versa.
this creates delusion.
it makes happy people
seeing all that's happy
and unhappy people
seeing all that's unhappy.
no one group feels
for the other
and neither ends up feeling
anything
completely.
you put yourself in
a position where all your
input contains a consistent
confirmation of your stale,
untested outlook.
if nothing is tested, nothing
is validated.
that's just science.
surround yourself with
people that diffuse you.
you need that
tension.
if nothing else,
you won't get
bored.
Nov 3, 2013
Nov 3, 2013 at 6:39 AM UTC