I have left, pig-mudding drunk,
having sipped from stock to stock on fraying cheer, stages.
I have stood in foreign basements; sweaty cellars of youth;
begot by attitude breeding spaces of the hip;
drawn circles searching for love in recreating nonsense:
a silly pupil, moon-eyed, out of breathe.

I have heard them quack, reveal their cords;
heard them whisper a thousand and one secrets,
heard them deconstruct their circumstances as pilgrims, penniless and sick.
I have their memories now, an image of a depressed,
***-imprinted pillow soaked in liquor and a feeling of nausea
where ribs sleep on this couch tonight, every night.
I have heard one refute the weight of living, ******,
on the banks of his best friends hospitality, and thought
How much is it worth?

And I have envied every **** greasy pored hipster,
the ones fixing on makingitnew now kind of clan; stared blankly at fashion,
a culture back door where pink fish scales sparkle high from runway halters
to the tops of grown men, bearded and chesty.
And your mothers pearls sit, not your mother’s pearls but your mother’s, mother’s pearls,
that old world clout ornamented around those hairy *******.
Oh yes, I have seen men become peacocks, charmed animals of *******;
seen them teeth at discourse in the noise they create, wide-mouthed and pointed;
I have seen them masked like frantic felines: wooly bully cats trying-to-roll their own meter,
their tobacco stained black charcoal over soft bricked lips quiver to their beats:
those painted lemmingings, without a parachute: kamikaze felons.

I have desired absolute sterility: white china,
in the egg of a toilet bowl I spewed out, shut-up my exuberance for the night;
sorry-pleaded my resolutions to gag out the naughty nouns in my life.
I have quit; turned in my lust for performing the lioness, paw-licking,
snarly creature: the predator of my youth, and now,
I am pretty-headed, tamed in bath oils and schedules;
a spotted fox, in plain view, one medium-sized mammal getting by.

The Camel’s **** is an ugly lump
  Which well you may see at the Zoo;
But uglier yet is the **** we get
  From having too little to do.

Kiddies and grown-ups too-oo-oo,
If we haven’t enough to do-oo-oo,
  We get the ****—
  Cameelious ****—
The **** that is black and blue!

We climb out of bed with a frouzly head
  And a snarly-yarly voice.
We shiver and scowl and we grunt and we growl
  At our bath and our boots and our toys!

And there ought to be a corner for me
(And I know there is one for you)
  When we get the ****—
  Cameelious ****—
The **** that is black and blue!

The cure for this ill is not to sit still,
  Or frowst with a book by the fire;
But to take a large *** and a shovel also,
  And dig till you gently perspire.

And then you will find that the sun and the wind
And the Djinn of the Garden too,
  Have lifted the ****—
  The horrible ****—
The **** that is black and blue!

I get it as well as you-oo-oo,
If I haven’t enough to do-oo-oo,
  We all get ****—
  Cameelious ****—
Kiddies and grown-ups too!

I feel like Godzilla in a frilly party dress
Wearing ribbons and flounces while causing distress
Or a jalapeno pepper in a pumpkin pie,
Dangerously spicy and living a lie
spiky and snarly like a cat in a cage,
yet trussed up in garlands that tighten with age
I'm sweet on the outside, I'm feeling quite witchy,
If you've read my poem, you'll say I'm just ******.

has never really been my thing.

My clothes sit funny, and frump
in all of the wrong places. I'm
short, and kinda chubby. My body
is so disproportionate, I won't even
go there. I have freckles painted
all over, cursing me to be
forever fair skinned.

I'll look away, and pretend to be
in deep thought. Or I'll act like I
suddenly have something I'm
absorbed in, on my ****** phone.
I run my hands through
my snarly, blonde hair - even though
it looks just fine. Yes, I'm that person
who coughs, just so that I'm doing something
if I don't feel
quite right.

I'm sure you can decipher the difference
between my real laugh
and the fake.


At times though, this is null and void.
It's those days, that i love the most.
Rare, but rewarding.

Standing tall, I'll smile at strangers.
Looking in the mirror is fun, and taking
pictures - isn't torture. Laughter eases
out of me, and I shout.

Sometimes I get really ballsy, and
I'll tell you if I think you're cute
just because I can. Flirting is easier
and not something I worry about.


Confidence is all about the
m  i  n  d   s  e  t  .

halter of progress
bane of evolution
frostbite of growth
death of the future

try to stop me now!
I dare you!

I know your tricks!
your snarly ways!

the maybes
the sick feelings
the doubtful thoughts
the double-takes

I know them all!
every
single
one

and you can’t stop me anymore!
nuh-uh
you can try,
but you
can’t!

so now,
be afraid!
be very afraid!
because world

here I come

and honestly,
you’ve got no way
to stop
me




(unless you **** me,
of course.)

Snarly and ferocious, this dreadful child has been gifted to me.
At age 3, I was cursed with a responsibility to protect and mentor this devilish girl.
Fourteen years of pure evil and malignancy drives my mind to a state in which no man should ever have to feel.

My heart shrieks with vengeance as she so deliberately tries to inflict pain on it.
My conscience refrains me from doing the harm she does to me,
Reminding me that I am the bigger person.

Little girl, you devious and vicious soul,
I've dreaded the very day I first glanced upon your face.
As your ruthlessness and your carelessness towards other people causes heartache,
When words fly out of your mouth.

You sadistic young twit,
I must correct you for your behavior.
But I hold no authority to do so,
Yet I have been branded your guardian ever since the devil himself has spawned you.

I listen and feel for your struggles, I do.
So I must question why you don't respect mine?
Is life all about you, little girl?
Or is it you just find joy in driving me to insanity?

No longer will I entertain these loathsome conflicts,
As you are my unchosen inferior.
I will fight the urge to play your game,
And find the humor in your desire to leave me discouraged.

Little girl, you silly child.
One day you will be mournful,
When the time comes where I will not be present,
And you will nevermore have me to fulfill your barbarous needs.

The sun is much too hot this morning to sit,
outside, read the paper, the Bible or a book;
but with wafting of a gentle breeze,
I am content, to sit and look.

At bird life hopping in the locust tree,
hummingbirds at the glistening feeder;
they hover so **** close to my face,
frolicking with no apparent leader.

The  snarly trumpet vine shades me,
from the golden orb's great glare;
while cacti bask, in its molten heat,
they're almost everywhere.

My dog is panting by my side,
flitting from the sun and shade;
his endurance from the heat,
begins to wilt and fade.

So  to the cool interior we go,
into the place that I call home;
sitting in a chair, I contemplate,
and share with you this simple poem.

Greeting the sun once more
It hasn't even risen yet
It's snarly rays lifting it up
Into the chrysalis light blue
Dark circles under my eyes
My baby and I get high
He pours me my coffee
Asks if there's anything he can do
To help me get ready.

And everything's so good
And different now, see
I write and develop
Grow and prosper
I reassure myself to be positive
Cuz I'm still just so young man
And learning and educating
Myself, myself

Thought so much of me
For a years time now
Had to use a thrifty tool box
Entitled "ways to make **** happen"
And now the tools are just safely
In the tips of my hands.

Call times minutes away
I imagine once the rays serve as a tripod to what beacons and spots
Our daily lives
We're all just dust particles
With thinking caps
And face

Pink colored flowers face me from the window
Whisper and blowing in the wind
Or practicing their own hymn
With golden silence
But ain't nothing ever quiet.

This is what it's like to allow
Happiness.

People say that Trump may even have influenced the cicadas cycle;
yet while the cicadas chirp away in our trees,
Trump has aroused stragglers who are prepared to live underground,
if necessary, in The American Redoubt where they fear an insurrection
will consume all resources and outsiders will attack their homes.
Trump drums away, like the cicadas, with a more fearsome sound,
and who knows what he would look like if he shed his exoskeleton.
I am not a fan of sci-fi movies, but think there must be a sci-fi movie,
maybe much like Invasion of the Body Snatchers,
where instead of emerging from a pod,
he loosens his Chinese-made tie
and sheds the exoskeleton of his Chinese-tailored suit;
then, bird-like, sort-of-foot-things burst from the expensive shoes,
maybe those tassel loafers I’ve never liked,
and reveals not some low-energy monster
but excuse me, a disgusting, great, huge, horrible, incredible,
terrible something even more hideous
with clumps of orange hairy stuff,
and patchy old skin,
and a snarly mouth-like thing
that sends out a tremendous stench,
for it would not be some weak, loser of a monster,
but a great, amazing, but stupid thing
that consumed everything in its path.
We would see that something really dangerous was going on,
but until we were able to determine and understand this problem
and the dangerous threat it poses, something bad is happening,
and we have to be much smarter, or it's never, ever going to end.

who could resist being up this early and watching the MOON DISAPPEAR before my eyes?  

I’m still here, but the moon decided to go to sleep


I feel very grandiose about this, I must have more stoicism than the moon, even


and I take a long pull from a ten dollar brut and I congratulate myself  in the way the french know, with a flick of a wrist and a nose into the frame..


could it be any more of a wonderful sweaty awful burden?

could I be more tempted?  I will lick it all like a puppy

my tongue will develop horrible callous and pallups

Id have to start using extra care listerine and pop them and watch the blood ooze down the mirror from my snarly, yellow tongue

but i swear, it would be worth it

I’d taste the smoke coming from the chimney

I’d taste the fluorescent bulbs in the billboard advert. reminding me about time..

I’d like the palm trees that are so stoic themselves they are of stone…

the freeway would taste like used cigarettes and budwiser and jizzy ribbed trojans


the balconies and rooftops would be clean, the gravel cared for at least a month ago,

three months ago

I don't wite poetry drunk and think
it's great, or rather: to later
                                       think, it's great

rather, as a genuine outlet,
   worth the dub: ***** poetry
(analyse that,
     Ronnie K., the sentimental
     psychopath),
    since i could be up to no...

(and already the sealed cascade
   of the original intention:
whirlwind spaghetti remnants
worth of: collage);

for Sienkiewicz really
is tedius, in the camp of writers
some dubbed:

a first class, second class writer,
i even managed to dream
that i was reading a contemporary
novel:

         yet somehow the remaining
200 pages of this (circa) 800 page
novel are hanging over me
ungidested, like some farce
of the sword of Democles...

me and my necrophilic taste in
books, or rather:
        catching up to: the dogma
of what youth is pushed in schools
and tested on...

    and I am of the authentic opinion
that Bolesław Pruß is readable,
a 19th century story,
     written in the 19th century...

Siekiewicz's romanticism is
too, inauthentic...
   i could blame the weather,
cold spring mornings,
a seemingly eternal sun throughout
the day...
       but the women
as unrelateable as hot sushi...
a 19th century romanticism
of a late 14th / eartly 15th century
"history":

           and they said Kraszewski
was supposed to be as entertaining
as soaking stale bread in water...

beyond a doubt...
     and without much to think about,
I can't imagine anyone who
writes these snippets (akin) to be
proud, and not ashamed
in some way that could better
translated / attired with the word:

barely satiated...
            I almost wish it sounded
better in my head,
even though it was worth
about a worth of time
   equal to that of a splinter
barely compensating a century
worth of oak, standing dumb
before its majesty.

at least a compensation though,
if I seemingly cannot fathom
"serious" literature
of the living, i also cannot fathom
poetry of the dead...
         the dead can't be excused
the fickleness of the living,
    as the living can't exactly
recreate the rigidness of the dead:
plus the obvious,
painstaking process of:
      the missing typewriter...

not to mention:
      sooner comes cinematic
version of a modern tale...
              and already the undomesticated
reader making books into
bricks...
            
    otherwise the constipated tradition
and literary hoarding of the past,
it almost dwarfs any ambition
when compared to the biblio-monolith
of, say, the Qu'ran...
                      no qualms for
having only read an instruction
manual, and wholeheartedly
   gesticulated at the moon
    and Mecca (or what's left of it)...

"satanic" credo murmurs in
a catholic church:
                         no way forward -
no way back...
      and certainly not down
the exhausted route of becoming
a ***** for secularism...
        somehow and most certainly
"somewhere"
                in an existential limbo...
without a crisis:
           or rather:
     watching about a hundred breakdowns
per day, and not exactly
gesticulating at an exited libido
as compensation for the disorientation
of others...

but there certainly could be worse
outlets than writing drunk...
thankfully sometimes the quiet sober
opinion at 7am,
     where I am, genuinely jealous
of the salat...
          yet unconvertable,
             bound to that infernal
religion that is: on the tip of
the tongue of an English teacher -
humanism.

               no serious literature
of the living, as certainly that of
the "canonised" dead,
   countered with:
      no serious poetry of
     of (ditto): only that of the living
and of the immediately: in transit
id est: with third party remnants...

evidently i was going to
break these "rules" / whims
   by having inherited the remnants
of the Beat movement,
      and invested in gathering
a necessary compedium...
          
    a time when it almost feels like:
your average Joe and John
were not overtly politicised...
        as compensation for
voting apathy,
                  and the unredeemable
post scriptum of nuance...

no, I don't think much of the poetry
I write drunk...
     but I can certainly attest
    that, with it as an outlet -
     I'm far from requiring a punching
bag, bound to some chemical
rainbow of explanations,
    that, for the most part:
                act like placebos;

came the people happy in their
misery...
    came the people gluttonous
in their happiness...
        only that the former
            had the better humour,
since the latter,
   very much akin to their politics:

perhaps sarcasm is the lowest
form of wit,
   but given sarcasm in a subtle
way... without ridicule...
it's still better than snarly
conservative humour...
                         for some reason...
without pointing out the obvious:
having to laugh
at jokes of an angry man...
     turns out a crying clown
is thrice as funny.

tony blair might have said: personna, personna, personna; but he didn't, so you have me, saying the following:

i pity animals,
  i respect them all the more as:
those worthwhile being petted...
  beyond petting?
                          cattle, no?
i'd like you taking a cow
for a walk, i'd even doubly love
to see you keeping a cow
in your house: just a minor joke.

sure,
give me a chance, i could slaughter
a man given the command;
what, with being
devolved from chemistry
and making the faustian
inkling count in the kitchen,
i'd like to hear
crescendos, of post-scriptum
of circumcision...
    no... i think i like the idea of
making opera butch...
     snarly, satiatable by a ballerina's
pain...
          
         oh don't worry,
i'm the least of your worries...
      i like ******* around...
i'm not stephen king after all...
  just because i write things:
short & sweet doesn't make me
the origin of clown causing *it...

then again...
   i do like gulping down a tartar stake...
with gherkins, shallots among other
things...
   so... you never know...
the joke might have transcended
both the canned laughter and the shattering
silence...

  is it my turn to ha ha, or is it yours?

**** me, that feel of raw meet...
i bet that frozen,
i could not tell the difference between
lamb, beef or...
you know that the executioner of anne bolyen
walked the stage with only his
socks on?
   yeah... she asked him,
why did you take your shoes off?
and he replied:
so you don't hear me tread,
sp the angle from which i'll slice
your head off remains "secret"...
benevolent henry, it only took
one slice at the tender neck...
**** me... queen mary's decapitation
took seven strokes with an axe...
could have sliced 7 watermelons
with that act...
   who uses a blunt instrument
against an enemy?
oh right... a ginger english gall...
and a weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr'ite oof disorder...
anglos vs. picts, no wonder....
that's not called an execution though...
that's called: butchery;
mary, queen of picts wasn't
executed, she was kosher meat.

In this life
You will wear
A million faces

A tearful twist
Of long farewells
And happy helloes,

Angry snarly
Brows furrowing
Deep and curling
Like a monster

A wrinkled mess
Of old man flesh
Crow’s skin tanning
Underneath the eyes
And high above
a prominent chin in
Scowly orbs of judgment

A softer inquisitive one
With confused movements

A face for love and joy

A face for love and lost

And every tiny transitional face
That forms in
Every single emotional
and temporal phase.

return to solitude
where as a child you stared at green grey floor tiles
for so long that they started turning into portals of glass
the edges of the world shimmery and in those void spaces
perhaps you could see wild dogs
roaming the hard shoulders of highways

big snarly things in the city, they're free
i picture they carry all pain and woe
in baskets hanging off ridged backs
it makes me feel better

to return to solitude
carry away and cocoon in this
lonely very beautiful place

full of ice sheets and breeze-blocks and bewildered people and dogs
all traipsing the hard shoulders of highways, together

thinking about those grey green tiles back home
and also about
everyone who turned around
and didn't come back to land

A broken dealing with emotions and their reverberations!

The heartedness is severely upset
with the hidden pain and disappointment of
rending capacity for not being able to stand
as solution for endearing affirmation in
any snarly situation!

Do you have any enveloping
truth, which can be the actual
contact or looked as a cheering
hope of this heart?
Why don’t you check again and
become a patriotic lyricism, carrying
your heart’s wrenching sonnets!
They indeed love you and can't wait
to be in specific union with your
purpose.
©️shivpoetesspriya

out of life
as I did with my hair as
a ten-year old child
that didn’t care. It was a cinch and

did the job fast. I’d throw
the mass in the trash. It looked like
a nest that the Robin hatched

her chicks in. Women are
snarly. And so are men. And I,
too. It’s hard to brush through
the clumps of life. My head is

an ocean. My hair, the crashing
waves. And the men are all lice. I’d
like a clean shave!

Somewhere I Started to Cry.

The bus pulled out.

He didn't notice.
There were chunks of
concrete slabs big
enough to hurl.

The last one lands
away from me. I shout!

Tomorrow! The War will end
Tomorrow.
Hold my hands, my mother

is dying.

The phone is ringing out
the news that I am now
Bob Barker's next
contestant.

I'm not given a paddle
or number. My shirt

Is Unwritten.

You came to save me from
the
Hell

Of undone promises.  

Evocation of a snarly
life

at your feet my deah.



Caroline Shank
9.10.2024