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Micheal Wolf Mar 2013
One two three four counting tiles on the wall
Do I do it in consciousness or subliminal
After all I put them there! I know how many already
We think the strangest thoughts, daydreams of simply bored
What if Shrodinger had a dog and Pavlov a cat
Would science be different for that?
Did man really walk on the moon or was it a desert soundstage?
Can air brushed looks ever replace a memory of another's face
Do dogs bark because they can? Or are we to thick to understand
I dont know I I don't speak dog or human sometimes for that matter
If I had religion with god I could natter
As I don't and never will I'll count more until I'm done
Five six seven eight
b e mccomb Feb 2017
suicide is painless
but injustice isn't

it's not fair
it's not fair

i've had a migraine
and a song to match
stuck in my head
for two days

and now
i'm crying

it's not fair
it's not fair

and oh but every war
is in color blazing
bright calfornia sun
soundstage color

he was so close
so **** close

but i don't think it
was the war's fault

you see some people
just aren't destined
for happy endings
and that's not war's fault

wars are needed
to keep things
balanced
too much calm
leaves mundane
trenches in us

but it's still
not fair

not fair he had
to die and not fair
that had he died
another way
it would have
been painless

take or leave it
but do i take
or leave it?


he didn't get that choice

suicide is painless
but death still hurts
i've never been this upset by a show before.
Copyright 2/26/17 by B. E. McComb
Amber Belford Apr 2011
your eyes are cinematic
always drawing me in
a part for me
awaits within
the cerulean traps
although
every time i am called
upon our soundstage
of mutual
lust
yearning
love
i am paralyzed
forgetting my lines
for your lights shine
far too
bright
to allow anything more
for this silent fool
whose body is left reeling
as her mind is left
w o n d e r i n g
b e mccomb Apr 2018
i fell asleep last night
buried in sand on a
soundstage sunset
all maroon velour and
puffy yellow cinnamon
maple leaf squares

the gold and rose
shimmer my eyelids
were made of ran
down in sweaty
rivulets that dried
into fairy freckles

and i was neither
happy nor relaxed
and yet i was
content

drinking silver wine out
of a deep brown glass
quietly and bitterly
warming my twisted back
until a white robed
bedouin breezed in
on a gust of his own
cool half of the desert

shook me to my feet
and told me that the
blissful gauze over
my minds eye
couldn't last forever
and i had better
catch a camel before I was
consumed by the night

so i handed him a yawn
with a ribbon round it
said that it was not my
responsibility to know
the history of the
ceiling fan by heart
rolled upon my stomach
returning to happier dreams

and still the bedouin
could do nothing but
stare through me with
sun bleached eyes
that pulled my bones
out through the skin
of my back and turned
them whiter than the
moon before the night
had even clambered in
on top of dewy skin
and blushing cheeks

and i drifted away
on an inflatable raft
into the night where
nothing could hurt me
copyright 4/25/18 b. e. mccomb
Though the heyday and stellar popularity didst long since wane, I still enjoy listening to select song titles (to many for listing here along this virtual boulevard of broken dream) of this iconic Punk Rock band unique rapid fire machine gun punctuated trademark style still induces goosebumps IF only because my eldest daughter (Eden Liat) used to be a rabid fan.

     She even voluntarily recruited this papa (and asked me in her coy, diminutive, earnestly irresistible purring kitty cat demeanor if yours truly could taxi herself, and one or more best buddies, (whom she keeps in regular communication to this green day) to the the theatrical performance “American Idiot” being shown on Broadway.

     Unsure at the present status of this three (?) member all male musician troupe (with a moderate sized following at the zenith of their renown i.e. with quite a motley crue of groupies to boot), nonetheless at the height of fame and fortune experienced by said trio, a spurious whim spurred this middle aged chap to jot down his feelings of unbridled affinity toward said talented three person creative young men within a poetic format (left unmodified only if there appeared a typographical error, or an ambiguous awkward outdated word arrangement) will be appended below.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Billie Joe Armstrong,
   Mike Dirnt, and Tre Cool
which trio known (the world wide web over)
   as the band Green Day
   composed lyrics and melodies
   this listener did imbibe

   analogous to downing musical fuel
no matter the lead singer
   supposedly never graduated from high school,
yet raw bits of primal utterance
    approximated talent galore,

   which excessive indulgence
   with amber liquids of the dogs
   or flagrant downing
   consciousness expanding material

   filled the airwaves of soundstage and/or studio
   with snapping, popping, and crackling
   rhythmic synchronicity evoking images
   of warm from a Yule tide burning log.

I (a common, easy going, generic kid)
   spent childhood years
   practicing the piano,
   which tickling the ivory (way before
   realization brought to my attention,

   how elephants illegally poached and slaughtered),
   for shear sporting whim
   pounded the keys with vigor and vim
speculated at how dissimilar mine fate,
   would possibly be if dedication sustained

   to be a self driven task master
   while mollycoddling the baby grand,
perchance me billfold and financial accounts
   would not be extremely paltry and slim

reflected then and now, on one of those “what if...could a,
   should a would a...” hypothetical queries
and wonders if Robert Frost enshrined and rim  
mem bored viz signature ruminating

   about “The Road Not Taken”
might fancy himself joining a seminary
   (rather peculiar though from an atheist)
obeying behavioral edicts
   (with no discipline required
   from “religious fathers”proper and prim,

hence baring the habit as a nun
   in a convent chances negligible to him
i.e. me, yet...all those mewing kitties
will more closely match my anthem

but un-natural suppression sans animal,
   carnal, feral...predilections
   finds thoughts quickly being
   dismissed cuz of such restrained celibacy codas,

and even preferring to be dangling
   (literally), and holding on for dear life
   from a rather straggly limb
even clinging with diminishing strength

   resorting to contriving a rip public kin battle Hymn
knowing likelihood for immediate salvation grim
er ring, and fading outlook Whatsapp eared dim
getting anxious, and minimally cautiously optimistic

   that When September Ends piercing
   me flesh with pellets of cold rain
grip upon the slippery bark will induce
   greater anguish emotional pain

unsure if mine demise will be a cometh,
   as grim reaper doth gain
another mortal, whose life cut short  
will induce a gaping hole within thy family chain.
b e mccomb May 2023
my dreams are
marzipan
almond paste and
powdered sugar
egg whites beaten
kneaded
wrapped in
cling film and frozen
i took them out
to thaw last month

my dreams are
chickens
unhatched
i’ve counted
done the math and put
all of my eggs
into a single
provincial french basket

my dreams are
castles
in the air
or castles
in spain
depending on how
far back you want
to take the saying

either way
their spires are
dark toned
bordeaux bottles
narrow and
full of deep
burgundy
nero d'avola
and beaujolais nouveau
those fit into the
hamper with
my eggs

pinotage
zinfindel
shiraz
malbec
cab franc
take me around
the world
and back again

swooping past
the buttresses
i built of
carmenere
monastrell
grenache

deep and
treacherous moats
filled with every
kind of filler
red that pads out
your favorite blend

(some day i hope
to go to spain
to see my ambitions
in person)

my dreams are
highly breakable
when dropped
on concrete
and notoriously difficult
to clean up

my dreams are
clouds of
small batch
irish cream
swirling around
in espresso ***

my dreams are
right in front of me
and yet i can’t quite
reach them unless i
lean forward
knock over some
neatly arranged plans
spill out school
let it pool and
run off the edge
of the table
and onto the floor

my dreams
are spite
shards of
broken glass
a fallen shelf
astringent
eighty dollar whiskey
wafting through the air

my dreams
are for the future
but are somehow
impossibly
inseparable from
the past

(i always tell myself
if i could live through
a pandemic i can
do anything
including making this
phone call)

my dreams are
motivational
hobby lobby signs
strung up with
fairy lights in my head
“the difference between
a dream and a goal
is a plan”
“just busy building
my empire”
“hustle and heart
will set you apart”
but the signs don’t mention
the heavy feeling of
dread in my gut

don’t tell me
what it’s like to carry
a dream
tell me what it’s like
to carry
aspirations of
something
better for myself
while schlepping
along an intense
fear of failure and
the itching dread
that i’m making the
wrong decision

my dreams are
olive drab and
dried out californa
soundstage brown
a younger me
who could never
foresee who i
am today

my dreams are
the skeleton
hanging in the corner
of henry blake’s office

my dreams are
99 cent
shots of blue liqueur
on my 21st birthday
burning
the back of my throat

my dreams are
lit candles
on the cluttered
coffee table
greenery and
light florals
wafting
into the night

my dreams are
chronic
the thing my parents
warned me about
a genetic predisposition
to addiction

my dream is not
to be rich
my dream is to
afford therapy
copyright 5/25/23 by b. e. mccomb
Barton D Smock Mar 2017
(4)
[entries for tone]

it learned to read by being called every name in the book and it wrote eulogies for the children of getaway drivers and it knew nail as the light bulb of a dream journal and it did not know which palm print went with which birthmark on its mother’s vision board and it had its hair pulled out in a cornfield by a boy / god was too / young to have

[entries for Ohio (ii)]

how absence is to me a bowl and to you a basket. how brothers fight over the last fish and the first snowflake. how sisters arrive whole from the museum of shortcuts. how a baby dressed like another baby is not abused. how a father slips a bear into his story of a mousetrap. how a mother points a set of wind-up teeth away from a square of wet cement. how on a soundstage I roll my ankle while you lift alone a magician’s birthweight. how ****. how it listens in a bathroom stall to the click of a viewfinder. how they horse. and ache.

[no animal makes up for lost time]

toothache
come home
I’ll wear
a shirt

[untitled]

why does uncle
love baseball
and throw
so hard

what’s a city

kid I come before you
knowing full well
I won’t remember
my answers

the left hand is for pawing
at the broken
rabbits, these buildings

think god
will jump

who does memory
impress, who

can it warn

/ I left you for nobody else
Although the following poetic/prosaic material written January eighteenth two thousand and eighteen, I came across these encapsulated, enclosed, encoded, and encrusted with barnacle clad body electric of my trademark crafted gobbledygook today January third two thousand and twenty three.  
     Though the heyday and stellar popularity didst long since wane, I still enjoy listening to select song titles (to many for listing here along this virtual boulevard of broken dream) of this iconic Punk Rock band unique rapid fire machine gun punctuated trademark style still induces goosebumps IF only because my eldest daughter used to be a rabid fan.
     She even voluntarily recruited this papa (and asked me in her coy, diminutive, earnestly irresistible purring kitty cat demeanor if yours truly could taxi herself, and one or more best buddies, (whom she keeps in regular communication to this Green Day) to the the theatrical performance “American Idiot” being shown on Broadway. Hence I rented a vehicle, and nervously hightailed into the core of the Big Apple for the first time in my hermetically sealed seminarian like sequestered life.
     Unsure at the present status of this three (?) member all male musician troupe (with a moderate sized following at the zenith of their renown i.e. with quite a motley crue of groupies to boot), nonetheless at the height of fame and fortune experienced by said trio, a spurious whim spurred this middle aged chap to jot down his feelings of unbridled affinity toward said talented three person creative young men within a poetic format (left unmodified only if there appeared a typographical error, or an ambiguous awkward outdated word arrangement) will be appended below.
Billie Joe Armstrong,
Mike Dirnt, and Tre Cool,
which trio known
(the world wide web over)
as the band Green Day
composed lyrics and melodies
this listener did imbibe
analogous to downing musical fuel
no matter the lead singer
supposedly never graduated

from high school,
yet raw bits of primal utterance
approximated immense talent galore,
which excessive indulgence
with amber liquids of the dogs
or flagrant downing
consciousness expanding material
filled the airwaves of soundstage and/or studio
with snapping, popping, and crackling
rhythmic synchronicity evoking images
of warm from a Yule tide burning log.

I (a common, easy going, generic kid,
a garden variety and generic American Idiot)
spent childhood years
practicing the piano,
which tickling the ivory (way before
realization brought to my attention,
how elephants illegally
poached and slaughtered),
for shear sporting whim
pounded the keys with vigor and vim

speculated at how dissimilar mine fate,
would possibly be if dedication sustained
to be a self driven task master
while mollycoddling the baby grand,
perchance me billfold and financial accounts
would not be extremely paltry and slim
reflected then and now,
on one of those “what if...could a,
should a would a...” hypothetical queries
and wonders When Stopping By Woods
on a Snowy Evening  

if Robert Frost enshrined and rim  
mem bored viz signature ruminating
about “The Road Not Taken”
might fancy himself joining a seminary
(rather peculiar though from an atheist)
obeying behavioral edicts
(with no discipline required
from “religious fathers”proper and prim,
hence baring the habit as a nun
in a convent chances negligible to him

i.e. me, yet...all those mewing kitties
will more closely match my anthem
but un-natural suppression sans animal,
carnal, feral...predilections
finds thoughts quickly being
dismissed cuz of such
restrained celibacy codas,
and even preferring to be dangling
(literally), and holding on for dear life
from a rather straggly limb

even clinging with diminishing strength
resorting to contriving
a rip public kin battle Hymn
knowing likelihood
(When I Come Around)
for immediate salvation grim
er ring, and fading outlook
Whatsapp eared dim
getting anxious, and
minimally cautiously optimistic

that When September Ends piercing
me (a Basket Case)
flesh with pellets of cold rain
grip upon the slippery bark will induce
greater anguish emotional pain
unsure if mine demise will be a cometh,
as grim reaper doth gain
another mortal, whose life cut short  
will induce a gaping hole
within thy family chain.

— The End —