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Perig3e Nov 2010
Who can know sweet
When one has yet to taste sour,
Or appreciate salt,
When one eats bread without sodium?
All rights reserved by the author
david badgerow Jan 2015
women say they want a sensitive man but they mock me when i sit at the piano crying for hours holding a lighthearted paper candle and a smile tucked in between my lips

they say they want a hard working man with ***** fingernails but
they claw at me if i turn a sun-browned shoulder against them in bed

they say they would love a cultured man but they cringe when i kiss them with lips tasting of whiskey & cigar smoke or touch them with fingers gentle as soft old paper

they say they dig the cold but they huddle in blankets when i stay up all night dancing naked across the lawn listening to joni mitchell in january

they say they want their own sugar space but turn sour when i linger and wake up dreaming of becoming an astronaut

they say they're comfortable with my past imperfections but it's my fault when i have a nightmare about being strung out on the perfume of another woman

they want a man who can write a song but they struggle when i anchor a poem to their delicate ankles and fill their empty rooms with shamefully broken pencils

they love my beautiful tattoos and piercings but shake me when i spend days wrapped inside a coral shell singing a lullaby

they want the idea of a man they've read about in books but won't tolerate me when i read them the atrocities in the sunday paper under the lampshade of an oak tree

women say they'll take me as i am but get lonely when i wander for a week and come home buried in the scent of a rock and roll bar

they say they make friends easily, like me, but can't stand to come home to talking & laughing cynical & drunk in a house full of strangers

they want a quiet man who loves them like the stars but scream when i learn to fly at the mercy of the weather & can't be captured

they want to live naughty with the thick musk of a man but act bewildered when they're caught soaking wet and weak in the knees

women say they love men with a tolerance but get jealous when i'm dizzy drunk at dawn on cheap tequila and the memory of my mother

they want a man who lives inside a corridor of words but hate me when they realize artful compliments are only cages of pretty lies

they're helpless for a man with grace but hate me when i'm pitiful and clumsy in the dark after blowing out candles and closing windows in the middle of june

they say they'll only fall in love with a lover of music but audibly cough when i hush them as Coltrane makes dazzling sodium fall across my face

they all wish for a man with careful eyes
but mine are blue and empty in the end
& it gets lonely
so i will no longer carry a song for them in my heart
like a trail-weary cowboy
no lust
no memory
no guilt
no cups
no whistles
or jewels in my vulnerable shadow
A dying man does nothing easy,“Lock and load. Let's do it”,said G.W. Green
Right before Jack Pursley sent 3-5 grams of sodium thiopental coursing through his veins
in Texas. Sticking with the states motto it was probably 5. As lethal drugs flowed into his arms, he used an obscenity to describe life, gasped once and made no further movement.
Imagine his brief confidence in the face of this adversity, before the heart’s blood
Settled in the ventricles.
             Some have called such confidence a monstrosity titled, “Hubris”--
Alexander of Macedonia thought it necessary, to cross the turbulent river against fear
-ful odds. For destiny demanded imitation of his exemplar Achilles
Quickly eroded was this by the pleas of Parmenio, who reasons it would be,“failure at the outset.”

Imagine Alexander reciting the words of G.W. Green, instead of heeding to this squelching caution
How quickly we’d throw this decisions bones in the pile, with ******
In Stalingrad & Nixon in Vietnam
All to be shoved in to, a mass grave of faulted zealots.
Covered with soil, bitter compost not to be forgotten
Rosemary sprouts next to a burning
bush in Iraq.
Andrew Parker Apr 2014
My Lighthouse Poem
4/4/2014

You make my toes tingle,
I never noticed them before.
You're like my hit single,
in my mind every time I walk out the door,
to start my day.
You brighten my soul
and one touch makes me feel a million different ways.
One more positive than the other,
but each heading in the same right direction,
to you.

I can't wait to trace every single millimeter of your body,
like I am on a treasure hunt.
And all I can find at each spot I come into contact with is golden beauty.

Your words are pure and unadulterated,
like the low sodium soy sauce and fresh ginger with sushi.
Ooo, there's just something in your smile,
and no it's not spinach.
It's a reflection of a happier me,
knowing that I could be with you and be happy.

I'll call you my lighthouse,
and nobody will understand.
They'll think I was a lost ship,
and that you helped me reach the sand.

Really it's because you are a stable structure,
out at an emotional sea in a dark sky night.
Really it is because none of the others compare,
to your special kind of shine bright,
with that light,
that I'm fixated on.

On our first date we played bingo and shuffleboard.
On our second date, sushi and tarot cards.
Who knows what crazy adventures any future dates will be,
but who really cares when they include you and me?
Yeah, that's right, it's enough with just you and me,
my lighthouse.
C S Cizek Jul 2014
I bent my toes over the tub
like talons on a sunbaked branch
and clenched the curtain
in my gloved hands.

I sprayed Tilex on a scouring
pad and scrubbed the black mold
riddling the ceiling and caulked
edges of the shower like leprosy.

My lungs filled with nitrogen,
oxygen, and argon as well as
sodium hypochlorite and hydroxide,
spores, and mycotoxins.

I staggered backwards, trying
to find solid ground but found
only a dazed, curtain-wrapped
fall to the cold linoleum below.
This has been my morning so far.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2015
as i once wrote... and i’m not about to change my mind
as to how i managed to spot the two major tools
in language, but for added SHOCK value,
ich kampf... the pronoun takes on an indefinite nature,
as does the complete expression,
it expresses future struggles more than past struggles,
and thus with future struggles there is a process of becoming
rather than being, hence there is no possessiveness
in relation to the past, for a translation into the future;
utilising the definite and indefinite articles within the pronoun
category is my keenest of all observations - the struggle in itself
is as indefinite due to the coupling with the pronoun that allows
dis-possessiveness of concepts, whether they be being at ease
or struggling... as such i know this is incoherent
because the meanings of certain words are so tightly knit that
it is bound to happen, a bit like red and crimson / blue and azure,
but that is as much due to schizoid conditioning of a symptom,
whereby a schizoid conditioning is a complex splintering of
what was once wholly unified, and upon dis-unification the unified is trapped
in a trans-grammatical state of symptom, without any categorical
orientation, whether that’s with nouns, verbs etc.,
primarily stressed by what i can only fathom as pre-nouns
(you know, the vocabulary unit
before new words enter our vocabulary, mostly nouns -
since the quality of things rarely changes -
like sodium and lady gaga, the pre-noun is almost
like a pronoun, although the pre-noun is kept
in a dark room and the pronoun is kept in
a room with a lightbulb),
that which could be uttered and is unnecessarily “thought.”
so through this medley i was only crafting a revision as to whether
call the compound ich kampf within the orientation of:
ich is a definite pronoun or an indefinite pronoun?
and if so... which pronoun orientation in terms of articulation makes
the second aspect of the compound definite or indefinite
for the overall persuasion?
well... anyway... it will make me think rather than read knausgård,
i already read kierkegård - søren
(ø = cut open o for a u, and angstrom = aa, i.e. roll over beethoven):
this is why english is problematic compared
with all the other latinised languages of europe...
due to its diacritical ****** / lack of accent stressors,
ø = u and oo: ***** / luck / pull -
the second use of u is less stressed in the sense that it's short,
a short / dwarfed u (ù), rather than the third example of u,
which is a long / pronounced u (ú)...
or as in the first example the elongated u (ū)
by god,
this is like forging a new linguistic system
in english from all the other languages of europe...
avoiding the linguistic notative system,
characteristic with: /ˈæŋstrʌm; -strəm/;
but obviously that would make spelling words in english
look pretty ugly... but not as ugly as LOL *** ***?!
i never got the hang of the teenage acronym alphabet,
even though i lived as a teenager, and the acronyms were already
in use.
marina Apr 2014
i read that astronauts
can tell from outer
space which cities are
newly built because
electricians are making
streetlights out of
sodium vapor now as
opposed to mercury,
so now road outlines
glow orange

and newer cities tend
to be more geometrically
planned, all straight
edges and such, while
older cities are made up
of frantic curves and
corners

and i wonder if i look
to you like i have been
worn and used, am i
frenzied and dull, or
am i new?  maybe my
jagged lines have
been sanded and smoothed

maybe
i still
glow
this has been unfinished in my drafts for a while
Taylor St Onge May 2014
I’ve been thinking about hands
a lot lately and how fingerprints are like
permanent, foreshadowing tree rings
etched onto our beings; I wonder if
the number of rings on my palms have any
correlation to the number of years I’ll live or
the number of years he’ll live or the number of
years that she lived. I’ve been thinking a lot about
        life lines        and        heart lines
and if there is any stock to be found in palmistry;
I wonder how my fate line got to be
so muddled with my luck line.  

I see my life the way a clairvoyant would:
in cut-up and choppy strips of film—
I should have seen the omens,
I should have read the smoke signals,
I should have recognized the cards.

Act One began on a waning crescent moon
and continued until its gluttonous belly
had swollen with light; I thought to
myself that craniums made of gallium
often melt the quickest, that blood filled
with plutonium often flows the slowest.  I would
have given my body up to the pathologist free of charge,
would have let him dig his hands into my entrails for
some sort of divination, some sort of revelation—
I was never told to beware the Ides of June
nor the Kalends of November.

Act Two began with the birth of Jack Frost
and has been continuing without intermission for
the past four celestial cycles; I thought to
myself that heart valves made of sodium polyacrylate
often love the most, that sinkholes disguised as
fingertips often feel the deepest.  He whispered
in my ear cliched words about not believing in
God, but how I made him feel blessed, and in
that moment I knew he was the oneiromantic being
that had been shadowing my dreams since 1996—
I guess you could say that, sometimes,
I believe in love.

There is an art to fortune-telling
there is an art to hands
there is an art to bones
there is an art to dreams, and over the years,
I have found them coinciding more often
than not.  In my sleep, in notebooks, in
irises, in mirrors, in poetry, in small little sighs.
I do not know if I believe in fate or destiny, in
God, in auras, or in the Blood Moon Prophecy,
but I do know that I believe in you.  I find myself writing
sappy verses and smelling your shirts and I do
not know if it is because I miss you or if it is because
I’m bored or if they’ve somehow
                       mergedintothesamething.  

I’ve been wondering a lot lately about
where you show up on my hands; about where
he showed up and where she showed up.  I want
to know which lines bisect and which lines fall
short; I want to know if the resemblance between
        mother        and         daughter
continues into that of my palm lines.  I want to know
if my life line matches hers and if my heart line
is even worth giving away—

find me in your crystal ball, make me
your sacrificed animal, look for my body
in the stars, and we will know that
        it was all made to be.
divination meets mommy drabbles meets boy drabbles meets words
claire Aug 2015
Listen:

You cannot give back what you stole from yourself. You can’t feed your body the things you denied it while it was quivering beneath the whip of your merciless, perfectionist dysmorphia, or erase the scars you’ve carved into it, or stroke it tenderly all those times you wished you could jump out of your flesh and become somebody else—a goddess-girl, a radiant impossibility, angelic fire with taut skin over crystal cheekbones and a torso so trim it could snap in a storm.

But you can start again. You can make vows to yourself that you will spend the rest of your life fulfilling, because to hell with comparison. To hell with the wars waged on magazine racks. To hell with GET SKINNY IN 3 WEEKS and HOW TO TIGHTEN YOUR ABS and 10 TIPS THAT WILL MAKE HIM WANT YOU. To hell with the mythology of thin—this vile word, this grotesque title, this dismissal of your vibrant heart and humming brain, this slaughtering of your entirety. To hell with the numbers that made you ill. To hell with calories/ scales/ grams/ portions, the formulas that stabbed you and wrecked you and violated you in ways so wicked you still cannot breathe them aloud. To hell with it all.

All this time you have been confused by yourself, thinking it ugly, despicable, criminal. All your life you have suppressed the sunburst inside you. Now, it’s time to release the latch. Time to push the lid open. Time to make whatever noise you were never bold enough to make, because none of it matters, you know? Size and measurement and all that soul-splitting *******. You are not bone or blood or cell; you are dizzy blue light and skipped heartbeats, the intersection of potassium and sodium, that chemical eruption of color, that running down unnamed streets amid stars and heavy breathing, that feeling of pushing through bodies of strangers to where there is the sweet negative space in the eye of it all, waiting for you to pull your hair off your face and dance like you are waterfall upon waterfall come to life.

You are not an equation. You are not pounds and inches. You are breath and sight and noise and movement and growth, and you cannot squander another pounding of your sweet, open-palm heart loathing your body for the misdeed of not being something else. The extra flesh protecting your vital organs is irrelevant when all the world is an electrical impulse roaring its beauty for you. The precise width of your hips is immaterial here in this place where sleepless people are kissing and comets are screaming through the atmosphere like fallen gods and tomorrow is unfurling in great, glittering swaths of potential.
Wade Redfearn Feb 2010
she spoke to me, on the daffodil sweetness of the pasture
while the grasses, waving, muttered their moist message on the wind
of rot, and renewal,
(but hold your lips, be still for an explosion of intimacy, for a moment)

'Are those a constellation?' she asks.
"The Pleiades."
'You don't know that.'

she doesn't care where the car begins, exhaling gently, to stop
and she commends its forward motion
(the keening love of a sodium light
and forgetfulness in every bone of my body)
I love the thrum of it, below my feet,
murmuring vibrato in the pedals.

They have a Huck Finn cave display at Disneyworld. In Adventure Island, or somewhere, or one of us, deep in the vastness of spines and fingers.

Its fiberglass walls are a portrait of America -
the glean of dew a reflection of that spirit
that drove us over the borders, the rivers, to Oregon,
so we could love under a naked moon,
and renounce our lives of glee, and security
for the bright unsettled plantation of the starless fields.

'You don't know a constellation from a cloud of dandelion seeds.'

But oh, my relentless pioneer love, I do - I know a constellation
is made of stars, and rough determination, and I know that,
love is a today thing, and we are yesterday people
that pain is tomorrow, and we will always be children of the dusk preceding
destined, dear, to find our love receding

Are you prepared, or will the wilderness this time swallow you?
Just ask me.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2016
with him included? the devil's dozen, or
the 13 -
             then the hours of Horus:
noon - Simon Peter -
later with covenant
of the hour: holy spirit,
and the minute hand: son
                       and the second hand: the father
oh quiet the trinity handful,
given year zero -
            hours 12 through to 1
Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew,
Thomas, Matthew, James, Thaddeus, Simon, Judas

                                    s / p.
                    s.                                 a.
                   θ.                                      j.
                  j.                     Δ                     j.  
                         m.                                  p.
                                             b.

look at the ******* clock! something's awry!
Simon peter 12
     Andrew 13
        James 14
                   John 15 (3 a.m. / p.m.)
       Philip 16
         Bartholomew 17 (5 p.m.)
        Thomas 18 (six)
                         Matthew 19 (seven)
                James (ibn Alφaeus) 20 (eight)
     "θ" (nine),
                  Simon K9'ite - ten
          Iscariot - eleven     - clocks are wrong...
the year 0 a.d. is based on this,
               twelve disciples, twelve hours a.m. / a.d.
and                                              v.  
                                                 p.m. / b.c.,
   hence the trinity / Δ -
an hour for the holy spirit to catch on,
son monetises the minutes
and the father being omnipresent understands within
seconds...
                       but i was aiming to do justice to the harvest missed
last year, i was intending to make wine;
hence the list of ingredients,
a) wine yeast;
             b) yeast nutrient:
                                diammonium phosphate,
magnesium sulphate, nicotinic acid, magnesium carbonate,
   thiamine hydrochloride, zinc sulphate, ferrous
ammonium sulphate, biotin;
   c) pectolase:
                    pectinase enzyme, dextrose monohydrate;
d) bruclens cleaner / steriliser:
                   sodium percarbonate;
  e) fine fining A: silica sol,
                  "      B: chitosan (derived from crab and shrimp
shells, contains sodium metabisulphite)
                 f) two months' worth of patience.
it's that time of the year where you make wine
(just a little bush, enough for 12 bottles) -
and gestapo a curry -
                                   a tarka dhal
and a kheralan chicken with coconut milk...
i love when **** decays, it tastes better than
when **** blossoms and isn't exactly edible
but merely colourful.
Jordan Smith Oct 2013
I can't know what having nerves is like.
I don't want anything anymore.
I was never told by my mother to clean my room.
My room has been ***** ever since just so one day I hope she comes in raising hell just so I'll clean up.
My room remains close friends with the dump because I'm still waiting for that day so I can make it spotless.
I never knew what to do with those mother's day cards I was forced to make in school.
Maybe they were delivered to her by some divine mail man that never showed up.
Maybe I wasn't on their map, maybe I'm not on the map, maybe I shouldn't be on the map, maybe I should burn that map down with cliches of passion, maybe I should make my own map of the hills I've crossed, the ones I never tried to cross, the places I've been, the places I've never been, the place I was yesterday, the place I was today, the place I'll go tomorrow, and where it all ends.
X marks the spot.
I've stood upon the soil she cried on.
Up grew the tongues of people that could tell me "what really happened."
I chose to spray pesticides on those beautiful plants.
Instead I let weeds grow there.
They told me the truth, but too much of one thing is filling.
So in return I fed them salt so nothing would grow there ever again.
Sodium Chloride silenced the truth, I realized later that the soil sat in my ears and I made myself deaf and shot my foot off.
Sodium Chloride was the cyanide to my soil.
I drew a map of that soil.
It turned into a maze that I never did figure out how to get out of.
I still don't know how to feel, I can't even feel the crumpled map you threw out on how to reach me.
Outta sight, outta mind. An eye for an eye.
Walmart, Sobeys obey the ****** man
Circled up family clan
Noises from a familiar land

Castles of torture for our souls
Silver, Gold, and Mercury, and
Plutonium, Sodium, Potassium mold

On stands held tight by weakening hands
They lead you along a path far away from
Truth locked away in the Promise Land.

Up in our heads, in our thoughts, the higher self
will lead the way, Never to be left on a shelf
Take it down for daily dissection
Self-Righteous freedom of introspection

Mothersoul sitting on the ties of the railroad,
Looking down the path to his homeland.
Birdys and net turkey stuffing you can bet.
Sal Lake Jan 2013
It's cranberry sauce
That’s it, I’ve done it
My brain is mush
Heartbeat through a megaphone
I’m pulling on my pant legs
Tightening my veins around my bones
& I think the thermometer in my brain needs reprogrammed

I. Now I’m a cozy embryo
With cotton in my marrow
Last of my breed so the bad men can’t see me
I’m sitting here in my own bullet train
Flying through metro lights at night
With coruscating sodium vapor
Vibrating in my peripheries
My appendages do not exist

II. We are the carbon monoxide leak
We are the cold coaxing hypothermia
Still trying to define the agony of existence
& Beauty of meaning through definition

III. “If you don’t get old, you die”
Shut up & pay your taxes old man
I can stay young for as long as I want
I am healthy
I am eternal
I’ve got all the cotton in the world

IV. I wonder if all sentient life deals
With the same paranoia as humans do
It’s the reason we never shut up
& hold love for vague idols

V. I like smiles
& I like sadness

VI. What does loneliness see when it chases its
Shadow?
You’ve got a mouse in your hand that cannot know that you are
Sentient.
You are a wooden giant from outer space that burned upon
Entry.
Where does apathy sleep when it has had too much to
Eat?
Why can’t you see your house from three million miles
Away?
If you need help breathing then you deserve to die in
Appalachia.
If I lie here long enough under enough blankets, then
I'm not real
Is it possible to save up enough money to avoid humans
Altogether?

Just like that, the spiral ceases
We were packed
Like sardines
Wrapped in butcher paper
Blind night vision
Then deer in headlights
Kissing the pavement
Mutually requited
Uninterest
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2020
.come to think of it... a fillet of meat never implores me to think about what's about to be eaten... nor does a whole chicken implore me to think about what's about to be eaten... but whenever i see my fellow man... esp. when my fellow man is begging to not be taken seriously... i do... tend to... in the back of my mind... attempt to bypass thinking about a butchers' cut... of what... looks pristine when walking or running... parcles of the "excess" of limbs... given a dead chicken... it's all readily available... but... working from a genesis of movement toward the study of both coffin and stone; and wind? i would most certainly understand ******... but then again... not all that ******... end up eating their intentions... which makes me make phantoms of nostalgia... ****'s sake... even the sharks these days will bite: but spit our flesh out... because... well: why **** something that you will not eat? because... there's a... Hadrian's wall counter-impetus?! but it's welcoming to think about ****** as... also a bit of a hunt... i guess that's what keeps me off a streak of tartare "justice": before i start gagging and imitation regurgitation... such a foul beast from an ownership of a tongue alone... forget that shambo of the mind... no wonder... man kills man without intentions to eat him... i'd sooner eat cat-****-and-puke... then again... unless it was the brain, the heart, the liver... those ackward limbs and muscles... i could somehow imagine eating the tender bits... never those... ostrich extensions of reimagining animate agilities of a kama sutra: study.

stupendous...

   i will hold a stone in one hand
and imagine a mountain...

i will hold a glass in the other...
and imagine the sea:

not from the brain...
but from the tips of my fingers...

stupendous... quiet so...

               otherwise less impressive:
most thoroughly...

then i will hold some ice in one hand...
and some black earth in the other...

i will scrunch some paper into a ball...
rather than fold it...
   then i'll lick a knife...
            then...
          
                if there's any more "quo vadis"
sensibility to go through with...
i'll remember: ask the anaesthetician
that question: quo vadis...

as he distracts you with the jab
before... that sort of "sleep"...

            i would like to feel the texture
of thought...
        perhaps even sniff it out
into a bottle - out from my head...
this perpetual (th)ought i...

had it been only a moral quest
rather than... picking
up stray lines that otherwise made-up
a concern for narrative...

                                yes: "or" this insomnia
narrative... all these bothersome
daydreams and counter-measures...

it's not merely enough to play
out monkey-dough roles...
tongue of a serpent...
body still functioning at best
in imitation...
inconveniences of noble feats
acquired from watching widow swans
in that term: monogamy...

or in a circus of a harem of walruses...
this chimera this man...
the loan animal and his loan
words: schnitzel puppy flip flip...

        unless it's pure history of dates...
it's... a mongrel of archeology
and etymology...
           to find the oldest word...
that has been translated: diffused...

beside og, da, i, am... om, to...
         w...      z...
           w tym: in this...
          z tego: from this...

a letter that can act like a conjunction...
i: "e"... and...
         or a pronoun...

wood does not have a chemical formula...
water does: inorganic matter does...
stones do...

air does...
            oxygen by whatever %... nitrogen by
whatever %..
i studied chemistry...
but the question only comes now...

what is the chemical formula for... wood?
well... wood doesn't have a chemical formula...
truly... even i'm astounded...

even Alain de Lille looks stupified...
i know... they have a list of formulas
for... ****'s sake... even the ozone!
O₃... which is "impossible" since oxygen
is doubly-binding...

shortcuts to god... i can't call them anything
but just that...
why doesn't wood have a chemical
formula?!

i will hold a book in one hand...
and a feather in another...

    you can have a chemical formula
for... stibnite...
    orthorhombic... Sb₂S₃...
of sure... you can have that...
you can have a chemical formula for:

millerite (NiS)
  zwieselite... olivenite...
          adamine Zn2(AsO4)(OH) -
   autunite Cu(UO2)2(PO4)2 · 12H2O...
benitoite...
                  
all these formulas...
these aquariums of inorganic matter...
but still... no chemical formula for...
wood!

lignin is only part of the equation...
what can be accounted for photosynthesis:
C₅₅H₇₂O₅N₄Mg (chlorophyll)...
      
you'd think water would be more
complicated...
    
beryl?
            hollandite?
         ­ tremolite...       so that's "earth"
all covered; no?

but where's that formula for wood?

good-luck looking for that holy graille...
either the cup or the cross...
cubanite... no problem...
   benitoite...
              goethite...

               am i drinking? oh right... that's me
waking up to a reality of not being
in a boyband...

all these chemical names coming and
going...
  glass...
trinitite,
made by the trinity nuclear-weapon test...
the libyan desert glass...
volcanic obsidian glass...

otherwise glass is:
silicon dioxide +
SiO2
calcium carbonate +
CaCO3
sodium carbonate
Na2CO3

             what's the chemical formula
for wood?!
any luck with paper?
a mixture... primer: cellulose (C6H10O5)n...

approx. 50% carbon, 42% oxygen,
6% hydrogen, 1% nitrogen, and 1%
other elements
(calcium, potassium, sodium,
     magnesium, iron, and manganese)

i guess it's one of those social media
relationship statuses: "it's... complicated"...
my bad...
   cellulose... polyose... and lignin...

something spectacular was supposed to
happen: there was an avenue of pristine
love waiting: i never managed
to wait for it... in the end...
run-of-the-mill stuff...
           there was this "this"...
and there was this "that"...
     pointers in braille...
      limintless echoes of uncaressed
agonies... splendours upon the attire
table of dead-meat: quasi...
     when inspected by the more eloquent
butchers of surgery...

            but the whiskey or the *****...
flowed like... it possessed the knowledge
of... gomme syrup...
of all the detailed memories
of: these people have lived...
the alchemists:
   - zosimos of panopolis
   - ge hong
- jean baptista van helmont...
    
  why is leonardo da vinci's mona lisa
so... forced upon us?
ever look at... Perronneau's
  madame de sorquainville?

i always "mistake"... albrecht Düre
with gustave Doré...
i implore you...
don't make me buy chocolates
or flowers... it's not one of thoese
dementia riddled "misnomer" takes
on Monet and Édouard Manet

here's my quadratic:
   albrecht Düre            Claude Monet



       Édouard Manet                     gustave Doré

very much a rhombus...
besides the fact that when i do pop the cork
"pop"... and "cork"...
the libido does rampage...
and i'm imagining myself in a brothel...
and i am the brothel...
and all that's love is about the basic
need for what's easil given
to a petter dog...
down my view no alley with
a grandma and a leash to look / feel
suspect... repetition of the times...
or some sort of allure for repenting
the deeds of youth...

              ****: to hell with stochholm cyborgs
and all that anemic clues...
those autistic plots and "twists"...
        
am i to suddenly come out begging
for my democratic right?
writing as an extension of thinking...
i hardly think it's an invitation
to speak...

              less... "inclined" to counter this freedom?
esp. now?
esp. now?
       now of all times... come... let's dictate
the future together...
let's start sharpening the meat-grinder!
let's keep up with the chisel for a tooth
of the grand earthworm:
wursecker... for the bone to become marror
to become: all but the plaster-work
of pâté!

         smear that **** all over...
                    oh right... what's being "debated"?
the self-employed being given
slave status or otherwise...
those given employee stature...
to be somehow above?
in england there are 5.5 MILLION self-employed
sub-contractors...

the bus driver gets a day off...
unions and what not...
  ******* kind and fellow examples of
non-replica me...
             unions, what unions?
here's to... what?
fizzying out the expandables?
      good lock and chain and "luck"...
no one came when i was i need...
no one came but they still had to ridicule me...

i am enjoying this... whatever "this" is...
i like to think of it...
what the darwinism ideologues
    have been spewing
all along...
recycling primer...
        getting rid of a tootache...
just enough to be... the sensible
english gentleman...
but not... a weimar **** in waiting ******...
sieve it...

we'd be lost in hope...
when all hope is but a blistering
bargain...
when most of us don't have
landlord credentials...

             pokey porky pie-yo!
i like this currency of a carboot sale...
happening...
i quiet like the clearance...
the easily available sale of death...
the darwinism that darwinism
doesn't exactly "like"...

hell... shove the weakest under the bus...
under the hittite slash and draw...
i'm trying to remain bothered...
so says the drunk...

or at least... when the government says:
curfew... no more than 2
in a public space congregation...
i start thinking about how pork torsos
are hanged in a slaughterhause...
then i start to imagine...
that meat-hook... plucked in under
the chin... that excess of a bonus tooth
for where the uvula and the tonsil
should be...

   oh look... it glides! it hangs!
to be crucified is such an obscure...
such an out-of-date symbolism...
how about hanging from a meat-hook?
for piercing those n.h.s. ambulances tires?!
or coughing in the faces of old people?
how about... being impregnated
by a pike inserted in a quasi-sodomite
pristine ****... reaching the ****** of
both pelvis and coccyx...
how's that?

   n'ah... i rather like re-imagining
the curcifixion dangling on your neck...
with a meat-hook and subsequent dangling
on the treadmill of minced...
right under the chin... where the tongue
begins... and ends... to lick
and slobber that last and lost retention
of vowels in oyster juices...
    from the concrete constructs
                                of consonants...
        
a hot-dog hard-on on for...
                                     for the benefits of
sigma humanity;
   i'll try to retain remaining obscure...
****... if i don't i'll probably have to beg
for the image replication of trimmed eyebrows!
sweet ridicule Mar 2015
how could I ever explain
the hiccups in my brain
(what was i just thinking)
writing 'bubblegum tongue '
degrades
the act of kissing

and I am full of carbohydrates caffeine almond milk
(vegetarian yes)
unmotivated to go vegan alone
sitting against a wall
with pink pig headphones in--my sister's I swear
reading grand hopeful endless infinite
quotes
oblivious to everything
fake
around me--I'm too preoccupied with
finding my alter-ego

                                                      ­                   was machst mich so glucklich

you can kiss
all the boys you want
pretty girl
but naproxen sodium doesn't
numb my pain
anymore than empty touch
will numb yours
but maybe you shouldn't want to feel numb?
Anais Vionet Jan 2022
Snow began in mordant gray dusk,
a silent sprinkle of crystal light twinkle,
attaché charm to the simply ordinary.

Purple skies drew black as dreary fought back
to obscure winter’s mask of ceramic magique.

Yellow sodium campus lights slow ignite to golden
halo bright, their intense, saintly glows casting rivers
of shadow and a golden glisten to the snowflakes that fall
twisting, in silence, in grace, to present winter's face.
I love the snow (is that because I’m from the south?)
From a vessel of mercury stained with Cinnabar, they brought next to Vas Auric, an ocher figure from the environment posed by the sarcophagus, to the detriment of the meats that resisted the Larnax or ash sarcophagus that came in other larnakes from Persia. The colors were specified in nature from a new terrarum upon the arrival of this prehistoric substance, in Neolithic pride, as it shone in the ceramic that they had been climbing from the hill of Patmos. Post-mortem, they were aedicules that were already established with pecuniary obols, to coin the solidity of the disputed and risky lands of the Camels; Gaugamela in the ambages of the bodies that must have remained standing, but with their staunch resistance they ended up colored by the ocher of cinnabar, and the rust of camels looking for traces of the mercury trickery that snatched them in the fleshless tombs, in thick and vivid sight of the Ghosts of Shiraz, who mostly accompanied him from their stagnant warehouses in Jaffa. In the northern Governorate of Zefian, the bodies from the Tel Gomel siege, in particular the Cinnabar embalming funeral company and mobile, came alongside Wonthelimar as pieces of Lord Hades' grave goods, mutilating the diaphragm with little light than in any eye that could observe, binding to HgS sulfur; Cinnabar that was already decanting from the last reduced specimen in the Hellenika Necropolis, Kímolos. Being ocher that glowed, and was complemented by the hyper chlorinated red blood cells with the Aldehyde, to micro-inseminate in mischief from the sketches of the Infant from Kalymnos Raeder, which appeared in some masonry sketches in harmonious earthy alchemy, removing the Larnax packages that they brought the ashes of Alexander the Great, and in others the anatomical of the others that were only simulated, since they could never reunite their symbolic bodies of osteology, which was diagnosed before all along with the Larnax of the Emperor that would be revived by the Vas Auric.

From the Hellenika necropolis in Kimolos, the spectrographies of the sarcofaghus of the fallen in Tel Gomel were indicated, there were five thousand Macedonians who were transmigrated from the Lepidoptera sarcophagus that was injected by the psyche that covered them from the fifth house of the Necropolis, or the “V” courtyard (fifth sarcophagus) of Hellenika, the favorite place of her Erichthonius or fetish serpent who was her consort of Athenea. Here the chemical elements of Prometheus crossing all the ages of time, and the age that oxygenated him in its chains in support of the Neolithic, were represented. Vernarth's Zefian computer brought sodium, magnesium and aluminum, Borker silicon, phosphorus and chlorine, Leiak Calcium, iron, and Potassium and finally Kaitelka throwing graphitic carbon through space. The chemical shadows of Hellenika's fifth courtyard varied them with ultra-trace of Labrys or double-edged axes swinging on the pendular in front of Prometheus as the savior of man, and the abstract demiurge of Hellenika's philosophy. The red blood cells with their links stained the ink of Aeschylus of ruddy color, and of an Oceanid orange hue like a glanders viaduct that turned iron towards the narthex or transmigration portico of Helleniká on the way to Patmos, to finally transport the mercurial bodies of the five thousand, totally covered with sulfur cinnabar in all its bone structure. The scapulae of some Hypapists had eagle claws that exported the sacrum of another in one claw, agglutinating into little crows that grappled with the jambs of cubes and humerus in the hemipelvis of the one who avoided it? But it lay split in two, almost pointing with its index a versicular of the Hebrew Vulgate. Some femurs of some Hoplites histrionized in the spectrogram and iris of Zefian who analyzed them, and who ventured the right ulna of a Macedonian to Tartarus, an undamaged Hetairoi as acrostic white bleeding from a distal epiphysis that was seen to be crowded with red blood cells, in order of Zefian and the grace of the serpent Eriction, for temporary sedimented colorations, and then to is taken to the zygomatic where a flabby Leonatus had embedded itself in the bronze, as a temporary fauna in the left, while Athenea relieved them after the post-exhumation.

Zefian with sodium, magnesium, and aluminum ritualized raising them in each of the morbid dances, but relieving the stains in each of the affected areas, with a pinch of Mashiach Cinnabar, for the post-mortem effect that was coming in the galloping efflorations of the Nótos de Borker, which bore a replica of a diadem of the skull in perforation of its forehead with the “V” mark, ibid, Athenea being a favorite and born from the forehead of Zeus. This rubric was made on most of the bodies that were sewn with the hides of raptors that protected them until it was time to exhume them with the basal chlorination of Cinnabar and Antiphon Benedictus.

The surface of the Helleniká solid was made up of lavish kinetics, and nuclei to react in hydrogen sulfide, in ionized particles of greater growth to the development of a mythical embryonic and updated, in Promethean neo-policies of the transcendental size of distemperance, which rose in carts of mass photons, by the Heracleian ultra theater trying to emancipate a concentric character in the tragic proscenium, and of an antagonistic whole as an actor of institutionalization of the surviving scenic works, flagellating images that are not of his intentions, nor by whom erected them or by whoever takes them to the ultra gothic scene, or of demigods who save man from his siege in contemporary total disappearance, subjugated to the enslavement of a utopia, and not of the seasonality of Gods made men, with policies, made in the cookbook measure of tasteless soups in invisible realms.

The formulas and equations were re-coined in the bones and columns that are erected by the dynamics of human demand, which revives him on pilot scales that wander unchanged from the Theater of the Epidaurus, and in the memory appendix that is subtracted from the West: Dyticá (Twilight of Leiak), a species of Prometheus of the Forests, but this time not stinging any sip of liquids with entomology, and Lepidoptera of Gethsemane in flocks that come to clean the scabs of the heroes, who are only capable of resisting such effusion of subtle prophylaxis, in this neo-Ambrosia Mercurial.
Prometheus in Vain
Àŧùl Mar 2015
Why does it happen to me?
Did the accident also give me a brain tumor?
The most common symptoms of brain tumors include headaches; numbness or tingling in the arms or legs; seizures, memory problems; mood and personality changes; balance and walking problems; nausea and vomiting; changes in speech, vision, or hearing.
I have all except seizures and nausea & vomiting.
I am already on Sodium Valproate and Valproic Acid controlled release tablets which are given to brain tumour patients as well.
My psychiatrist was so scared while asking my dad the last time we went for checkup, "Did he have seizures or vomiting?"

But I am not scared, I know that stuff can only get better for me. I have had enough of misfortune.
Just felt that I needed to share my thoughts.
Filmore Townsend Oct 2012
we sit here
wandering, pondering,
       quandring
away the life.
awaiting the flood of
the Universal Ocean
to fill lungs of carbon
with sodium -
salinity in the tissue rising.
we sit here
awaiting Lot's wife,
to be pillar'd in a sense -
to be brined from the soul out.
we sit here
awaiting to be marbled and
pock'd with time,
to rest upon the Ocean's bed
and dream in lucidity -

and dream of the Shores.
and awaken of the Shores.
and feast of the Shores.

we sit here
awaiting in waste, in haste,
in repetition that our feet draw us upon.
we sit here awaiting,
healing of wounds thru time -
and the brambles wrapped tight
and tore of the flesh,
poxing.
limping, hobbling, waltzing on
and a blooded foot drew us home -
drew us onward.
Vivian Jan 2015
liquid crystal display
glimmering salacious self-imagery at you,
your lips parted and breath
staccatoing along, flitting just
behind the beat, like your aunt's
first dance at the wedding reception (before
she's had enough to drink) or
her last (when she's had
too much)
she was in the passenger seat
on our drive homeward, leaning in
to the driver's seat conspiratorially,
oblivious to your beauty splayed out
exhausted in the backseat.
"she's my
baby niece, and you better not
**** with her
heart, you hear me missy?"
and I assured her I wouldn't as you
laughed and laughed, bell peals
in the backseat and church bells
echoing in my ear, past and possible
future, sodium vapor lights
slipping away along the highway as
your aunt slid back into the passenger seat.
"so"
"so"
"she's quite a
character," I say, bemused, and your
eyes crinkled at the corners like
newspaper redesigned during crumpling as
kindling for the fire, blue and blue and blue
in the backseat.
"that's true"
"just like you"
"just like me" you agree,
crossing your legs, legs that go on
for dynasties in thigh highs and
your dress riding up too high for my eyes
to focus on the taillights ahead of us when
paradise is in the rearview:
love is
cold lobster bisque
in a big bowl in bed in the morning,
two spoons and a carton of orange juice
arrayed on the covers atop our
entangled legs.
David Bojay Apr 2014
gets up from chair, and breathes in deeply

     people are made up of so many things, it's amazing

     1. Oxygen
     2. Carbon
     3. Hydrogen
     4. Nitrogen
     5. Calcium
     6. Phosphorus
     7. Potassium
     8. Sulfur
     9. Sodium
    10. Magnesium

  i guess paying attention in biology did pay off

    i remember when i was 11 years old my brother showed me a movie clip where Charlie Chaplin spoke in-front of tons of people

  he said "we think too much and feel too little".... i finally understand

and if you feel sad, i hope you can find a therapist, or i hope you can afford a 12 pack of beer at the liquor store to ease what you feel right then


  *walks out the house


                       looks around and smiles

i found hope on the corner of arapaho and shiloh, it was 7:32 pm, i remember because i texted myself saying "dude you're finally happy"

no more desires of being dead ever came to mind

   i found out what a man i can be if i pushed myself and loved without regretting, without being scared of falling for things for the wrong reasons

i found out to learn everything and grasp whatever came my way even if it brought me to my knees

   i'm going to die fulfilled


                         i feel like rhyming, sorry, i'm not a good rhymer, but here i go....


          garden of green leaves
               glistening tress
   scented hives, buzzing bees
               we lie under shaded trees
    we pray to who we're afraid to deceive
             if we do, we rot even if we pleaded on our knees
    summer breeze, ******* and THC
            don't leave
  addictions are hard to let go when i love you like grinded holy mary ****
        


   i'm not a good rhymer, i think the song that goes like "versace versace versace versace versace"

was better than what i just w. r. o. t. e.

    haha.


   it's getting dark, i need to go to sleep

*turns off light
doodling with words
Tom McCone Dec 2013
with just keys, right pocket, as witness,
truly,
i would fall a little
more with
you close enough, with
you i
could go out every night
or sleep just a little
easier. we slip
into patterned strides,
eyes ablaze under the enclosure of
sodium streetlamps.
through scraps of sienna cloud,
one star emerges:
a steady twinkle in your eyes,
a heartbeat,

a truth and an intractability.
La Jongleuse Mar 2013
i wish i were a chemist,
so that i could hypothesize
& limit my attempts &
my experiments in futility

so that maybe, I could
tell you that your mere
presence was a catalyst
to my volatile elements

provoking reactions,
left & right, endless
explosions in my head
& mostly, in my chest

or that you tasted like a
antidote to the mundane
bringing me back from
this quiet complacence

i could drink your tonic,
swallow your smoke,
& devour your scraps
like a starving bulimic

or how your poison
made me slip, drip like
mercury, through your
skillful & soft fingertips

like sodium, this persistent
salt that refuses to quit
from my veins, a reserve
remains after the detox

or why i would oscilliate
between the alkaline &  
the acidic, never quite
stabilizing at a safe degree

if i had know all this,
i would not have played
alchemist, concocting
a worthless elixir of life
Cameron Pfeifer Feb 2013
Count every calorie
1,2…Too many
Try each quick trick,
power shake,
weight loss,
fat *******,
muscle building,
fiberlicious,
piece of ******* I can get my hands on
Take the stairs, not the elevator
Walk to work, then walk home
Jog in place,
Do 10 push-ups,
Jumping jacks,
Tuck jumps,
Sit-ups,
Scissor kicks,
You name it I’ve done it
I’ve stuck to my diet for so long
My menu has consisted of a million and one ways to say bland
I have looked into low-fat,
No fat,
Fat free,
Sugar free,
Sodium free,
‘Feel free, to leave me on the shelf because I taste like dog ****’
versions of every name brand in the produce section
and now…now I would **** for some cheese fries,
Or a giant cake just for me,
An entire package of Oreos dipped in Nutella,
Or simply a candy bar
Dieting takes will power,
But vending machines take mere pocket change.
Lucy Power Apr 2012
The only legacy of maturity is insensitivity
I will die old will think nothing of it.
The young tend sodium springs
All the while watched by the barren.
Muted observers to life labours conceiving gasp
Unwilling to interpret.
Bald cries to heaven go souls dug with grapples stuck.
Silence takes precedence in the right seat
Unlawful is the wrong
Red is the left
Old knows all is dark.
We run water to rid false colour
Run it until we are dry
Run it until we are black.
Carlo C Gomez Jul 2023
~
His initial kiss
Is foraging
Ballasting

The solemn experience
Flickers by like sodium lights

It ****** the entrance
Of her thoughts
It settles at the door
To wonderland

Where and there
The pressure meets the surf
Bathing over her

A cleansing ripple
To tide her over 'til spring

~
Francis Rowell Aug 2017
“And to his surprise, there were butterflies coming out of his mouth.”

--- --- --- ---

Quite literally, nothing is literal. Everything is a grain of salt in itself, and therefore no matter what we do or say or read or hear or exist, we all die of sodium poisoning. Is that a possible thing to do? Can we live, breathe, exist even if we ourselves are but a single grain of salt to be taken with other infinite grains of salt? Can a grain of salt itself die in general, let alone die of sodium poisoning?

Ah, sand, then? No, that can’t be any better. What about sugar? Absolutely not. What is everything, then, if not a grain of salt to be taken with another grain of salt, and another, and another?

An extended metaphor, maybe. How many grains of salt does it even take to create an extended metaphor, though? How does one measure such a strange volume? Would the measurements even be cubic? Volume? Area? What does an extended metaphor look like? A paragraph, I suppose, so that would be area. But how big would this paragraph be? Average? How big is the average paragraph, and how would anyone ever count the endless amount of paragraphs being written everywhere and everywhen? Further research is required.

I find myself wishing much more than I ever have, or ever should, that there existed any kind of salt-to-paragraphs conversion chart.
If I could, I would. But I can't, and never will. "Que sera sera," Said I, with my head hanging and my eyes holding back a storm. "Que sera sera."
Universal Thrum Oct 2014
Staring off into the distance of a ***** carpet ridden with living trails of ants, a crawling black river of desolate hunger, counting days of visions, wandering naked in the lake treading water, kissing, spitting out lips and liquid
shifted in dreams
memories poke like a cactus needle open to a room of steam heat and *****
flooding with words that digest imagination and burn eyelids, a cigarette held too close to a crowning flame
incinerating eyelashes and clattering TNT onto the serene image of our drunken antics while the rest of the world is howling for us to see ourselves for the raving lunatics we are, their tired look of exasperation an exhausted mother left alone to raise a hopeless child, wicked only for his ignorance
The last speakers of the paleolithic age journey forth from the depths of the amazonian jungle to heal our souls nailed to the cross as drug dealers because ingested plants grow in the ground

I saw the most beautiful soul weep in fear against a diner booth at midnight
amid plates of burgers, fries and green beans laid on the lineoleum table with no signs of starvation or danger
yet the signs of the apocalypse resonate in all psyches because reptilian brains would rather die than change, conform than bring forth the messianic transformation of our own radical self acceptance as God
and we shun those who are insane on the streets
***** outcasts, poor filth and ugliness
human animals unfit for this society of plastic and image, a mirage over substance
I cross the street rather than look the beggar in the eye because he stinks of desperation, and tell him no no no, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry, I can't share with you all
MOLOCH!
The holy yell
flooding the empty headed street
we abandoned our mother and forsaken our selves to flickering images of lust and prestige, **** and *****, ****** and ***, thick wads
idolizing our own form,
the sirens of the modern age, the golden calves danced around in supermarket check out lines,
capturing us on the jagged cliffs of inattention, glories husked and barren, cultivate likes and followers sweet nicotine in the bloodstream, social media mogul reigning over a grand bazaar of ghosts in a room, talking to other ghosts in rooms of faraway lands, ignoring the living flesh in front of their twitchy eyes, cast down for a screen, forgetting themselves for a profile, a small picture in a corner, an Ignominious massacre of life cast through a digital lens, concerts meant for full expression of a cathartic moment of ****** movement, lost to a sea of hand held recording devices to remember how you didn't feel at that moment  with other people milling about as cattle who would rather document and never watch again then dance and live and be a part of the happening, look, Rip Van Winkles throwing pins with revolutionary prussian ghosts in a sleepy Catskill hollow, zombies behind wheels typing to ****, these words will not save you, they will not fill the siphon hole,
I am with you in this burning sodium night on my back in the grass of a night with no darkness
I am with you where the army of madness will overthrow the living dead and shake their working class dreams to the core with the sudden eternal war of nothingness and contemplation and silence screaming out for someone to save us
Everything is HOLY!

Throw open the church doors
think nothing of paying for poison, (as advertised)
but refuse to confront your self possessed greed because the man holding the cup is tired and desperate and I am tired and desperate

A truck hauls a horse
broken wilderness, cleaved concrete, cracked spines wretched scars,
killing anything that isn't hard, impermanent and futile, the land reclaims
but no land to ride, only the black road with its machines spewing the smokey remains of dead ancient animals
nature perverted, mobility imprisoned inside a metal box to be driven when it can run
so apt
for the potential inside coffins of daily lives
talking of dreams gutless to pursue
settling instead for the easy cruise of routine
******* our own hands

We all matter
but this world doesn't work without slaves
so take pride in your nine to five
get some ***** with that job title
and two sentence description
of how you can make the dreams come true, in the suburbs with three kids a couch and security from whatever danger lurks outside of us on TV
our own kind
murderous and malicious
homicidal tribalists
merrymaking nihilists
The fear The Fear
the light the light

I grab her hand and stare into dark eyes deadlocked on the momentary plane, a revealed saint testifying to God's truth Mary Maria, she tells me there is something beautiful outside this current mode of existence, but she's only had a fleeting glimpse
WIP
Geno Cattouse Jan 2013
My expression in verse and word.
It is my rock.
My salvation though I. Walked away when limbs were healed. Over the
Years. It sat in dusty corner like the forgotten bookcase.
Runway living.      Reaching for the next thing distraction.

Social interaction has become a relic. As we wiggle and prance but
Speak less about truth. Face to face. Eye to eye.

Raise your hands out there if you hear me.
Look up from. The screen if you know. Ditto.



Pain is the great equalizer. Fatigue makes cowards of us all.the mighty has a date as well as the meek .
Nod your head if too weak to speak.

I swear. This coil.

This man-ifestation of struggle and toil.
Fear not. The bottom approaches with a rush. A sudden stop.
It is the anticpation that tingles and teases.
Breathlessly we glide.



My words are my blessing and damnation. Barbed and tipped with buffalo ****.

Sweet as the sweetest nectar. Volatile   and ******.
Willful and recklessly they exit to strike and injure.caress. Convince.

My fathers legacy. Process of elimination.
Truth. Has gone wanting today
Never to return I fear. A vagabond.outcast.
A *****.

The wellspring rustles and bubbles patiently not stagnant.

Time is of essence an essence. In essence. A dab or two behind each ear.and sodium pentothal. politicians fess up.
Money caves see sunlight in all corners the thief has absconded. The judge

Slinks down from his perch blood red hands clasped behind his back

There stands the summit. Still I must climb. Unknown the other side.
Will truth abide? there .Another expanse of lies and  distortion.Trickeration says I.
a misty bog. Listen. Bagpipes ?. The leafless branch vibrates  a siren song to the sod.

The shimmering pool in the parched desert of god.
I stagger foward now unaware. No I am past caring. The will still is there
A ghost. Soon soon.

No ?. No. A mirage
Mike Hauser Jul 2017
This is a poem
You can digest with ease
Low on the sodium
Less calories
High in the fiber
Plus gluten free
As your mind
On this poem feeds

This diet poem
Won't add extra weight
Or make you regret
Mistakes you have made
While filling your mind
Or stuffing your face
A great midnight snack
This poem will make

This is a poem
That is saccharine sweet
A satisfiing writing
Tasty in treat
You can feel the pounds melt
On your way to lean
As this diet poem
You sit down to read
James Shasha Jan 2011
Years.
What does a year mean, when there seem to be so many?
We read about them, cast them aside like old photos
Nobody cares to see
And you've already uploaded them so why does it matter?

Occasionally we'll select a year and savor its memory,
And it is the sweet, deep taste of 1997. Or was it '98...?
Sometimes it's hard to tell, sometimes it doesn't matter.
Years can be like lakes, small on a map but to the hapless swimmer,
Boundless.

We struggle to rationalize, to quantify, to measure
But how do you really measure a year?
How about love?
Yeah but after we saw Rent together you didn't talk to me for a week,
And when you did, It was to say that your mother was dying.

It is with all this in mind
That I see you from across the Deli section, head bowed,
Trying to make the all-important decision
Between one low-fat, sodium-free organic granola
And another.

I wonder what the years have done to you,
How they've kept you company,
Who they've dropped on your doorstep.
My imagination fills in what occasional party encounters
And awkward facebook birthday messages cannot.

I pause for a moment- you've chosen your granola and moved on-
And wonder if I should do the same.
I do not know if you saw me,
Or even if you would recognize me,
But something keeps me from going up to you.

It is the weight of years, and how they have put a silent barrier between us
Deeper and wider than the biggest lake.
And all those years, in forgotten photographs and smudged journal entries,
Each one becomes a story of the people it changed,
Of a woman in a grocery store
And the man she used to love.
featherfingers May 2016
I am two:thirty heat lightning.
Inconquerable flashes of my elemental fury
leap from grumbling cloud to dewy earth,
dancing naked under a smoky moon. I am a burning
offering to the sodium lamp sentinels looming golden
over black tar; there is tobacco sown
into my every pore.  I am the underestimated
weight of fog rolling off the meadow's swollen calf
river, the heavy lowing of labor pains, the thick
croak of the year's last bullfrog. I am the first
crunch of dying light, the gray tinge of wood smoke
on chlorophyll burned red. The sting of my icy breath
creeps into sleeping eyelids, through every crack
in waterlogged armor.  My frosty four o'clock
is no place for strangers.  The frozen silence
does not know my strength.  I will bend the world
with feet of glass.  In time, the weight will break
my own limbs, expose their green, soft meat.

I am the green shoots of daffodils sharp,
triumphantly cleaving the rested dirt.  There is yellow
warpaint across my forehead, a crown of blistering elegance
glazed by wings of stubborn three:thirty ice. I am resilient
and eternal—perennial—blooming to a cold, white moon.
you will never break my spirit, world.

— The End —