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Jeff Raheb Aug 2014
Dal Lake

I float on Dal Lake
Suspended
between the thick soupy crisp air of soldiers
water lilies, Kashmiri bread
and the Muslim prayers
that penetrate the hardness of war
chanting Allah Bismallah
Floating Islam
Holy words drenching the air
Drenching the green cloth of Hindu soldiers
Sliding down the cool metal of a rifle
9 years of war
1,000 houseboats lie empty
in the Himalayan fog
Intricately carved furniture
Thick with dust
and the powder of blood and bullets

Himalayan silhouette etched black
against the song of lotus gatherers
Foggy voices like cloud of moon
Lotus lake
Gray of war and desperation
Children beg
1 rupee
1 rupee
1 rupee
Endless monologue
Parched like lotus shaped paddle
They throw flowers to me
endlessly
I throw them back
endlessly

Time passes slowly
like smoke on a lizard’s tail
trailing in the thick, rancid air
of burning meat and maple leaves
Like a shikara
moving over the glass of Kashmir

The sound of a dozen Bangees
floating over the water
Hollow, solemn and mournful
Echoing against the hardness
of the surrounding mountains
The circle of Himalayas
Like a womb
around the prayers of Pachin

In the middle of the lake
I hear the call to prayer
Azan Nemarz Suba
Azan Nemarz Pashin
Azan Nemarz Degar
Azan Nemarz Sham
Azan Nemarz Koftan
From dawn till dusk

Azan
4 mosques
4 singers
4 directions
staggered by a breath
like an imperfect echo

Azan slips into the pockets of island soldiers
Waters the impatience of soldiers on the shore
Steals into the vacant eyes of soldiers in the Mosque
They want to go home to their wives and children
They want to leave the place of prayer, which is not theirs
The place of prayer, which has seen death
The place where God was pushed out
In order to not see the killing
To **** what they don’t see
The place, which was no longer a refuge

Outside

Dal Lake turns to the color of red lentils
cooking in a dented metal ***
In the Shikara boat we eat dal and rice
and throw scraps into the silver water
where it washes up
onto the ***** boots of a soldier
I hear the dull gray click, click of his rifle
as it touches the ground

The prayers have ended
The amateur poet May 2014
Soupy slurred words slide from her lips and drip to the floor,
Mixing in with the pool of regurgitated gin and tonic.
Her mouth is bitter but her thoughts are true;
Only the drunk can tell the truth.
Her incoherent words fall to the floor followed closely by her slouched figure and salty tears.
She sleeps on the bathroom floor,
Soaked in the mess she's created.
Nat Lipstadt Apr 2019
My Prize for Waiting
~
tucked in all by myself,
resting dark and quiet
in the thin place^
where the distance between
this world and the next,
is no distance at all,
but  a few inches separating,
easily fordable, back and forth-able

my palms, hands down,
come to rest on my *******
and the two thumbs in unison,
begin to sweep the streaming space of their in-between,
conducting a radar sweep-search for the precise point
passageway to poetic mystical places,
hoping to snag any residuals for safekeeping

no hurry to either arrive or depart,
in patient attendance for
rhythms of woven word arrivistes,
coming in no particular order,
asking to be seized, greedy to be
nominated and recognized, immortalized,
as great poetry, prize worthy,
kept for all time inside others poetry chests

but in the thin place,
dream records are not kept,
hazy scraps at best retained,
a recipe for a witnessed totality,
is only a soupy reduction of a
few seconds of hazed video,
that can neither give nor get
no satisfaction

the plastic surgeons attempt to reconstruct
the body of the meal, the real deal,
alas, there are no prizes either
for botched surgeries and pretty but meaningless
poetry scraps

the only evidence of my travels,
a flushing, blushing residual flow,
slow to dissipate, a hangover makers mark
of a sojourn best described as unsatisfying,
my blush, a prize for waiting but failing,
“the most peculiar and most human of all expressions”^^

woe to me when returned in ignominy,
medaled in only base irony,
me and philosopher Pliny,^^^
both dying while recording our own private Vesuvius,
our bodies preserved by voluminous volcanic ash,
but alas, you cannot recite the ash of poetry

so one waits, cut and pasting brown edged
burnt photographs epistles,
that are clinging and clung to the distaff spindle,
insufficient to weave a flax complete

and yet we return perforce twenty four hours from now,
to snag another prized piece of meaningless,
my prize for waiting
in the solitude of the thin place


3:35am Saturday April 6th, 2019

~
last nights scrap

cease your whining,
seize your waiting,
therein is your own paid price
for the prize of inspiration


inspired by Jean Fisher,
a real prize winning poet
^”It turns out these destinations have a name: thin places. ... No, thin places are much deeper than that. They are locales where the distance between heaven and earth collapses and we're able to catch glimpses of the divine, or the transcendent or, as I like to think of it, the Infinite Whatever”. The New York Times

^^ Charles Darwin on blushing

^^^ “For my part I deem those blessed to whom, by favour of the gods, it has been granted either to do what is worth writing of, or to write what is worth reading; above measure blessed those on whom both gifts have been conferred. In the latter number will be my uncle, by virtue of his own and of your compositions.”   Pliny the Younger to his uncle, Pliny the Elder, who most likely died in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius while trying to save a friend.
Martin Narrod May 2014
It's like this, and then there was total recall. Fast like a safety plan made wrong and then bouncing in and out all the way down the hall. Up through cable cars, Korean fast food market, wet fish, soupy street, concrete cracks filled with crab meat and **** heads. Just a square, a five block, two street, sideways quadrangle, beat of the Tenderloin, hour of the dove. Every one's dead on these loose ends. Hills of the back of her backside, skin of the back of her neck. Rapture is the grave of the sunset, memory is that thing that I said.

No one cans in carnivores, no one runs moves like a shepherd. Sunday, daft as candy, luck in the ways of the prophet. Canon of the blaze of every woman that died today. The sleep setting, the motorcycle bending the hollow, the ravines noisy interlude, up through the rough and the tangles, huddles in a six pack, three or four walking up the block to meet the rest of them.

The skin doesn't fit right, it wears wrong, the shoulders stiff, the masseuse excuses himself. Buckets of flowers hang from the ceiling like stripped cat christmas decorations in suburban mastermind serial killer resort town. Everyone is quiet because they gotta. They move their feet like they were hurrying death into a red volcano, like they were the errand of red from the top bell to the bottom of the town.

I sit on a roof top, baking in the noon day sun. Stripping sticks and stems off the side to sideways, just roasting away, laying, low in the afternoon light. I see a girl with her hands on her skirt, wobbling, scooting a priest card on a periwinkle terra-cotta.  I move my head, turn it upside round to take a better look. No one counts to ten when they see me. The gangster that woke up isn't the gangster that went to sleep last night. My wickedness ended my words mean your bright decay. So I ride the pavement exhausted, burying my coughs in an L-shaped arm
Johnny Noiπ Sep 2018
Ancient Greece; Greek: Ελλάς, translit. Ellas; was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of antiquity (c. AD 600).
Immediately following this period began
          the Early Middle Ages & the Byzantine era;
Roughly three centuries after the Late Bronze Age
collapse of Mycenaean Greece,              Greek urban poleis began
to form in the 8th century BC,        ushering in the Archaic period
& colonization of the Mediterranean Basin.
                     This was followed by            |          Classical Greece;
an era that began w/ the Greco-Persian Wars, lasting
from the 5th to 4th centuries BC.                   Due to the conquests
by Alexander the Great of Macedonia,                    Hellenistic
civilization flourished from Central Asia to the western end
of the Mediterranean Sea; The Hellenistic period coming to an end
w/ the conquests & annexations of the eastern
          Mediterranean by the Roman Republic,
                  first          establishing the Roman province of Macedonia
in Roman Greece, & the later province of Achaea during the Roman Empire;                              Hell, in many religious & folkloric traditions,
is a place of torment & punishment in the afterlife;
                         Religions w/ a linear divine history
                   often depict several hell[s] as eternal resort-like destinations
         analogous
             to exile
         while religions w/ a cyclic history often depict hell
                    as an intermediary layover between fantastical incarnations;
        Typically these traditions locate hell in one or another
                    dimension, or even under the Earth's surface &
often include entrances & exits to & from Hell from the land of the living sky above [many mortal men are known to have traveled to the underworld or consorted w/ devils & demons so-called: Orpheus, Jesus, Faust, Robert Johnson & Aleister Crowley:               Other afterlife destinations include
Heaven, Purgatory, Paradise, & Limbo;
Other traditions,     which do not conceive of the afterlife
as a place of punishment or reward, merely describe Hell
as an abode of the dead, the grave, a neutral place
located under the surface of Earth, for example Sheol & Hades [my old, old neighborhood]; In Greek mythology, Helen of Troy; Greek: Ἑλένη, Helénē, pronounced [helénɛː],               also known as Helen of Sparta,
or simply Helen,                       was said to have been
                                          the most beautiful woman in the world,
who was married to King Menelaus of Sparta,
but was abducted by Prince,       Paris of Troy,    resulting in the Trojan War
  when the Achaeans set out to reclaim her & bring her back to Sparta;
                She was believed to have been the daughter of Zeus & Leda,
     & was the sister of Clytemnestra, Castor and Polydeuces;
Leda & the Swan is a luridly pornographic story involving *******
                   & rarely depicted artistic subject from Greek mythology
in which the god Zeus, in the form of a swan, seduces Leda;   Leda thus bearing Helen & Polydeuces, enchanted godling offspring of Zeus
[thus
                                     Helen was a demigod
              like Orpheus, Heracles, Achilles & Dionysus, fulfilling the rank &
                                    status  of the Biblical Nephilim  /ˈnɛfɪˌlɪm/ (Hebrew: נְפִילִים‬, nefilim) the offspring
of the "sons of God" & the "daughters of men"                before the Deluge, according to Genesis 6:1–4:
A similar or identical biblical Hebrew term,
read as "Nephilim" by some scholars, or as the word "fallen"
                                                         appears in Ezekiel 32:27:
                      When people began to multiply from the face of the ground,
                      rolled into shape & being by the first insects,
     an army of scarabs doing
     clean-up after creation                                 before the invention of ants
                                   to maintain order on the most basic level of newly mined nature & once the creatures made of dung molded in the moist crevices of the earth into the shape best suited to them
      copying the mandrake so to claw their way out of the soupy ionized  
                                                       ­     electrified    mud;
some w/ female bits formed by hatchling sea anemone,
jellyfish & globular secreting sacks,            while some only a stick &
             two rocks hanging in a thin leathery pouch, looking like eggs,
             but Surprise!    [men continuing to be surprised to this day]
                          growing upright & naked,
               sloughing of their insect overlords while taking up insects ways of farming & irrigation,  taking hundreds of centuries
to build the towering hives of their ancestral youth
when the ants & bees & lone beetles taught them how,        the squadrons of
                 butterflies never shared their ability to transform from
                    a segmented crawling garden slug
                  to the highest form of flying insect               regaled majestically
in
the            colorful royal emblems of their tribes]
        & daughters were born to them, the Sons of God seeing that they were fair & took wives for themselves of all that they chose;
Then the Lord said, "My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever,
for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years."
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—& also afterward—
when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans,
who bore children to them; These were the heroes that were of old,
                                              warriors of renown.
— Genesis 6:1–4,        [New Revised Standard Version]
The word is loosely translated as giants in some Bibles
& left noticably untranslated in others; The "Sons of God" interpreted
      to be fallen angels according to some classical Judaic explanations;
                      while at the same time Leda bore Castor & Clytemnestra,
      children of her mortal husband Tyndareus,                            
                                            the King of Sparta;
                       The Judgement of Paris the event that led to the
        Trojan War, & in slightly later versions to the founding of Rome
I am often told that love will leave me breathless,
But I hope I never know a love so greedy as to steal the air from my chest,
For I have memories of a time when my body was oxygen starved
And my lungs unable to draw in breath,
Bogged down under soupy pneumonia that clung to my innards
With vice-like, snotty grips.
My mind is sometimes lost in the sensation of frantically
Drawing air inward,
******* it into my chest with great gasps that never alleviated the burning of my lungs
Or the way pins and needles tingled down my limbs.
My brain cells were consumed with desire to force O2 to bind with the red blood cells churning in my veins.
The air surrounding me was dense with particles that refused to aid my survival,
No matter how much effort I exerted to the contrary.
Sweat dripped off my too thin form and pallid skin
As I drowned slowly from the inside out in a room full of doctors
Until they finally placed the tube back into my throat to breathe for me.
The pain receded as oxygen raced back into my cells,
And I marveled for a moment at the fact that I could not feel myself breathing,
Couldn't feel the rise or fall of my chest.
The mark of my vitality was absent,
And yet,
I was very much alive.
I remember what it was to be truly breathless,
The blind panic that seized me before finally giving way to a wish for death.
It's because of this I hope love never empties my lungs.
I want a love that makes breathing feel safe and exciting,
A love that feels so gloriously alive that I am acutely aware of my chest rising.
Love should always make breathing feel like both a right and a privilege.
It is a privilege to love her and be in her presence.
But I hope she never leaves me breathless.
Elioinai Oct 2014
April 7th
Late one night as I walked the shore,
There came to me whispers, whispers of lore,
And there, her tail sparkling amid moonlit foam,
Arose such a lady, of mermaid kingdom,
She sang to her sisters, sang of her lover,
With tears in her eyes, the voice of a mother,
His valor was great, and his gilded gills strong,
But to quarrel with men, was where he went wrong.
One day as he swam, he met with a ship,
Swollen boards, barnacles, iron bolts rusted,
A pirate ship, not to be trusted,
And captive on board, were children for Haiti,
Who cried for their homeland, their hearts feeling weighty.
Their African voices, and African songs,
The voice of a mother, for her child she longs,
The prince’s heart broke, and he wept for his cousins,
Bound for a life of back breaking strife,
He could not leave them and return to his wife.
“From whence have you came?” His voice through a crack,
“In Fanga and Dmindi our feet were entrapped,
Our hands roughly shackled, and lips cruelly slapped.
Oh Fanga of bananas sweet, where blue sky that river meets,
Oh Dmindi, great bronze walled city, now ransacked and devoid of pity.”
“My Family!” cried the Merman, “Just a day offshore you are!”
“If I could get you back . . . do you think you’ve traveled far?”
“We cannot see the sun, don’t know when our sorrow begun.”
“Wait”! One says, “They’ve fed us twice. Two days ago we were cast off.
Surely we could travel back, and if not, in Africa we’d rather rot,
Than in this sinking, stinking ***.”
So the sea prince called his creatures many, whales and dolphins,
Turtles and sharks, in the sun they made their marks.
The Pirates on board became perplexed!
The sea was soupy, their course upset!
What could they do, with this onset?!
The Captain snarled and shook his braids,
“Of no man or beast am I afraid!”
And on his rifle his callused hand laid,
“Let war on these creatures now be made!”
Every Pirate with his gun! The captain now was having fun!
Bullets hit the water, but very few found their marks,
For there was but little marks to see, except the tracks of swimming sharks,
The sailors groaned, what magic is this?
What has happened to the fish?
That they would around our boat amass, where do we go? Oh, alas!
The day grew later and so sign was seen,
The pace was kept, for the shore they were bound,
If this keeps up, we’ll run aground!
With half-fish leading, in the front he swam
He encouraged his army, and called to his friends
“Toward Cote’d  Ivoire  we are a sailing,
Do not let your hearts be failing.”
(No pirate could hear his voice, this was the half-man’s special choice)
“I shall take you not to a harbor, but to an island inhabited by few,
With food in abundance and canoe trees for you.”
That night as the stars rose, he sang them to sleep,
In their own mother tongue, no more did they weep.
For they were surrounded by magic of love,
Love of the keeper of the sea, a father himself.
But then in the morning, the morning of slaughter.
He let his tail slip above the bright water,
The Captain roared with guffaws of cruel laughter.
“To arms again my men!” He cried,
And on that day the Merman died,
For with his dark blue back exposed,
The Captain knew the enemy he loathed,
His aim was sharp, and his propellants deadly,
A shot rang out among the medley
Of orca chants, and dolphin chirps,
And at once clouds moved across the sun.
As purple blood stained the water, the Captain shouted “We have won!”
But the race toward land didn’t slow one knot,
The outcome wasn’t changed by a single shot.
The great fish knew that their command hadn’t died and the death of their king,
Though for sure they cried, His body was dead but his word was alive.
Two porpoises left to carry his body, away to a grave, to lay with his family
To the Castle of Coral their burden did bring, to sisters to mourn and his dirge to sing,
They wrapped his long body, laid him in a cave,
Cursed the old Captain, oh **** the cold Knave!
And brothers did leave to do that hard deed, and carry the prince’s wish out.
They swam in a swarm to the creaky old Roger,
In the night they did find her,
Her crew in a bother,
And climbed they the boards that held her together,
Soon she was taken, the pirates all killed
And prisoners unshackled, as the Merman had willed
(some mermen did die, in the scuffle preceding, but most wore protection,
Their brother’s fate heeding)
The sun did arise, in the brilliant sky,
A Hero’s day! The African’s cry.
The mermen guided the vessel to shore,
And of the Queen’s story there was little more,
Except that now she sings in the evenings,
As she raises her girls and little menlings,  
No one will she find to replace her Prince,
No such lonely valor has she ever seen since.
So she sings to her sisters, under full moon waves
And calls to her cousins, on land that are slaves
That saviors will come, their own lives the cost
And vengeance will fall, happiness is not lost.
April 7th, 2012
Please forgive my unresearched work of fiction
No ethnocentrism implied, mermaids are the cousins of all humans
ERR Dec 2012
Writhing, the screeching leviathan demands
And I cave to save the aching from tricky time slopes
Pained craving
Wavering but
Hit and
It’s all loosey goosey goodness
Sensing silent magma pulse, whoosh the tummy tingles
Droopy ears gape-face giggle no more nowadays
A stern turn in old age the silly phase of
Too bright, neon common numb tongue rambles
Secedes into introspective
Crowded walks, broken talks strung into threats clustered and
Flung like monkey **** at many-stabbed ego, Brutus?
Strangers will eat you
The professor thinks I’m funny because
I know the answers in class
The other day Dingus
And Whoseewhatsee tried to alley mug and hurt and end
And money!
No, rocked nose ran dude! Fine
Trying not to fear the outdoors, though
The arthropods and phantoms tell me ***** jokes
And not to eat my candy

Books melt into soupy mercurial elixir
I slurp them and belch
Educating myself in a barn ******* knowledge
On loud faces; empty meat
Where you can hear the jingly metal
Thing when you shake it, it’s dead no flower
They don’t always like me
But
I’ve got the jeepers creepers behind my peepers
And a million lightyears to burn
Truth is worth dying
Four **** sow
Izzeny thing these daze
Maybe it was a bust from the start but there’s
Always art
Quieting the plague that revealed
Not so good after all

Tiny thorns and all-consuming
Waves of red-get-out wrenching, gutted like a fish
Overcome, that never went away or found
A place to sit
Memories arthritic grind a grim gray whetting stone
Reduce with juice-cloud, grape teeth cough will never find a home
Sofia Von Dec 2012
It’s all a bit of a dream
Don’t you think?

Nothing’s ever certain

And once you know something
It’s all crystal clear

But just wait, soon
You’ll begin to question, wonder
Possibly forget
And be back at square one

So what should you build from there?

Well
I have a house
That’s a **** good place to start

Cement goes into the cauldron
Goopy soupy and delicious
It bubbles of beginnings, and permanence

As it boils and squeals in the background of the world that surrounds
Me, I drift off into space

Who knew a few random fumes could get you high!

I see a dancer
A girl in bright blue torn tights, with a boy next to her,
and a friend
She’s a good student
But
She gets terrible grades

And there’re flowers all over her bed
You could call her a bumblebee the way she wraps her self
In them and inhales
Softly

She never cries
Well not that often
And when she does she regrets it

Things aren’t too serious with her

Depression, adhd, death available,
Verbs and adjectives far too strong
She can taste manipulation

People throw things around in her world,
And she’s been programmed to throw back
It hurts
With each hit her opponent brings to the rink

She often wonders if it’s all that bad. Tough, in a lonely sort of way

But every now and then
A breeze rolls on by
With a window
Always open


Honey, black tea, paper
Blurrrr


And it’s back to the grey soup of the day

But the spoons getting harder and harder to stir
Time’s running out

What is there that could possibly change?

A few things unlock this path… but which one should I choose?

No sé
No sé no sé
No sé

I should be me…

But honestly


Who am I?
Hal Loyd Denton Nov 2011
Get Your Hooey On


The ramifications of male testosterone in this particular case concentrated in Kitchel Park Captain
Kitchel never or maybe before he became embroiled in the great civil war he too took a skinny dip in a

Body of local water some place. Impromptu swimming occurs all the time some place well this was
Attributed to the facts of kids who watched Picnic tables for people the next day who can resist the

Allure of cool water just two hundred yards away and a short climb twenty fellas pardon the slang a dark
Pool and I must say a pearl of its time now Shelbyville has slides in the pool brand new pool come on

Pana where is your pride look at these dandy boys they had it not one was ashamed as he dropped his
Pants this wasn’t like in the gym shower or what the ******* was the school check up us guys

Dutifully walk up to the nurse never mind they made us strip naked then reminiscent of grocery
Shopping with an embarrassing twist now with ******* lift your grocery bag I still don’t get it those

Plastic whistles comes to mind with the white ball you blow and it dances about with vigor maybe they were checking

Your blood pressure by the degree of how far down your face got red or maybe it was mass punishment
For any who may have looked at ***** magazines well let us return to fun and chaos all was fun and gay

Not the Frisco way happy unbridled in this case totally free and uninhibited well until now I give Babe
Ruth his due I even made up stories about him out in right field where they stuck me in pony league

Wow the Babe could hit clear over to the road well except this involved his candy bar you know what
Happens in dark waters bare Fannies everywhere and then along comes babe clothed in chocolate well

Jaws comes to mind the Red Sea never parted any faster what attention you would have thought it could
Talk by the way guys were leaning forward trying to get a closer look some brave soul or maybe the guy

Took a bite before releasing this terror and someone could see ether nugget or nuts anyway calm
Waters returned well briefly our look out let one car pass but twenty minutes later the alarm a police car

Just entered on maple we have all seen pirates climb up the sides of ships with bedraggled clothes on
Well hit rewind have the pirates in different degrees of undress according to speed and in born casual

Feelings about ****** there was the stampede now if you like your news in the paper then headline it or
If you like live reporting then my choice would be Soupy Sales or Jerry Lewis as the nutty professor hair

Combined down in eyes pop bottle glasses over pronounced teeth standing at the park gate last
Night there was a strange report of it seems the ozone had developed several cracks at I guess you could

Say at about hip level moving very fast in westerly direction toward the big auditorium if anything else
Was exposed by this phenomena we are not at liberty to say this is family news we already have been

Censored at 714 Jackson for comments made earlier the story takes a darker turn it involves tobacco
And break inns property damage and loss and a beer tossing clown was hurt after steeling beer from the

Pana hotel the son was involved but no other news is available at this moment.
Dacia B Oct 2014
Oh my self-loathing is disgustingly indulgent, It destroys my health
I wallow with glee for hours in the pits of my own self-hatred
Everything I do say and see I use as ammo in an endless war against myself
Repulsive, *******,
Excentric , erratic
Shy, fake, problematic
I wish I had a plug hole
In the soupy head of mine
That I could just pull out
And all the darkness would go down the drain and I’d be fine
But my fansty world turns on me
And casts shadows on others
I don’t see them in their true light
As my fellow sisters and brothers
By day the world grinds in my head
An endless mill of screams
By night by actions haunt me
In rancid vivid dreams
This assemblage of stupid attributes that is me
Follows this girl around relentlessly
Too fixated on yourself, you selfish *****
You hate everyone else and make them a demon or a witch
This demon lives inside the gray matter that is your brain
It turns any sunny day into melancholic rain
I will live alone with no comfort but my own insanity
I see those on the streets who do the same and fear that destiny
After all,
Is madness not a sane response to the collective psychosis that is society?
alex furlin Nov 2012
My hard boiled brain just don’t connect
The world I try to sense and see
This patch of light I can’t reflect

Fractions of my imagination collect
A soupy spongy murky sea
My hard boiled brain just don’t connect

Stand my guard and take effect
The menace yet to be
This patch of light I can’t reflect

Beat my chest and then protect
Walls of chain and sorcery
My hard boiled brain just don’t connect

Take flight now child and dilute my respect
Branch out from your bonsai tree
This patch of light I can’t reflect

But all these flaws I reelect
From a ballot absentee
My hard boiled brain just don’t connect
This patch of light I can’t reflect
Devon Baker Sep 2011
Smile so haunting with devilish
or fiendish
or that of charming aesthetics,
the slender creature of a man
parched flesh of paper
would flick his eyes bright
and stir crazy as embers
about the stage,
his hair a mat of threads,
ancient and animalistic,
yet of thick wafting softness,
he appears so gentle,
so timid
child eyes brushed by his bangs
yet confident in that grin
cut so lightly across his face,
he would disarm your distrust,
carry you to his attractive gentleness
as he cloaks the stage about him
and then as the lights dim,
the audience edged on their seats,
your sheepish and sugar laced eyes
of curiosity linger at the heels of his lips,
as he slaughters your precious innocence,
with My words,
smile ever increasing
feasting on their fearful stares
my poem a muffled shotgun
at the back of the audiences head,
their tremoring bodies scream
as he constrains the straps constricting
their legs and limbs,
all the world’s a coroner’s table
he stoops so lovingly over them,
snow white raven of a boy,
his words of glinting blade dive,
their eyes a mess of soupy white and tangled red
surgical increments ripping their ribs and sternum wide,
they scream with blistered skin,
straps beginning to burrow and feast into their limbs,
the boy labors diligently,
effortlessly he worms his fingers about blood drenched organs
twists and plucks them free,
the victim’s body squirming,
skin wriggling,
as their eyes stare and gasp upon
their organs strewn next to them,
shock ripping through them,
crawling within their hollowed out body,
he laps up their gaping wound,
cut and carved from sternum to pelvis,
licking up blood soaked soul and kidney,
my demon of timid grin spills out the final phrases
his victims have long lost resilience,
they watch and lie as a mess of human,
half corpses on the table,
the audience a funeral procession,
the lights suffocated,
no one wishes to speak,
silence is the only reverie to my poems darkness
the boy or man,
demon or fiend
would softly grin
the audience just as cold and dead as him
Apple juice Feb 2020
𝖯lain, generic, and, sweet.
𝖲omething that just can’t be beat.
𝖳he irony of so many.
𝖵anilla is not of any.
Godly silk of milky white and an Understatement of unrequited affection.
𝖲he lies supine waiting for vanilla to pick a side.
𝖩ust above the rim of the cup,
vanilla built all the way to the top, with No mix-ins, an overscoop just for you, and a smile on the side too.
𝖲even o’three is what is going to be.
𝖲even o’three and a firm grip on me.
𝖸es the irony of choosing originality when its the exact opposite of what you preach
𝖤specially in between the sheets.
𝖨ndeed nothing to write home about
just a medium cup of soupy iced cream.
𝖠 flavor so **** sweet that’s sadly not for me.
𝖲weet memories in time.
𝖨’ll continue on
with vanilla on my mind.
Medium vanilla with no toppings.
How ordinary yet you aren’t like of any.
vanilla is you but vanilla isn’t what you are. Vanilla isn’t how you play vanilla is what you taste.
Hal Loyd Denton Dec 2012
The ramifications of male testosterone in this particular case concentrated in Kitchel Park Captain
Kitchel never or maybe before he became embroiled in the great civil war he too took a skinny dip in a
Body of local water some place. Impromptu swimming occurs all the time some place well this was
Attributed to the facts of kids who watched Picnic tables for people the next day who can resist the
Allure of cool water just two hundred yards away and a short climb twenty fellas pardon the slang a dark
Pool and I must say a pearl of its time now Shelbyville has slides in the pool brand new pool come on
Pana where is your pride look at these dandy boys they had it not one was ashamed as he dropped his
Pants this wasn’t like in the gym shower or what the ******* was the school check up us guys
Dutifully walk up to the nurse never mind they made us strip naked then reminiscent of grocery
Shopping with an embarrassing twist now with ******* lift your grocery bag I still don’t get it those
Plastic whistles comes to mind with the white ball you blow and it dances about with vigor maybe they were checking
Your blood pressure by the degree of how far down your face got red or maybe it was mass punishment
For any who may have looked at ***** magazines well let us return to fun and chaos all was fun and gay
Not the Frisco way happy unbridled in this case totally free and uninhibited well until now I give Babe
Ruth his due I even made up stories about him out in right field where they stuck me in pony league
Wow the Babe could hit clear over to the road well except this involved his candy bar you know what
Happens in dark waters bare Fannies everywhere and then along comes babe clothed in chocolate well
Jaws comes to mind the Red Sea never parted any faster what attention you would have thought it could
Talk by the way guys were leaning forward trying to get a closer look some brave soul or maybe the guy
Took a bite before releasing this terror and someone could see ether nugget or nuts anyway calm
Waters returned well briefly our look out let one car pass but twenty minutes later the alarm a police car
Just entered on maple we have all seen pirates climb up the sides of ships with bedraggled clothes on
Well hit rewind have the pirates in different degrees of undress according to speed and in born casual
Feelings about ****** there was the stampede now if you like your news in the paper then headline it or
If you like live reporting then my choice would be Soupy Sales or Jerry Lewis as the nutty professor hair
Combined down in eyes pop bottle glasses over pronounced teeth standing at the park gate last
Night there was a strange report of it seems the ozone had developed several cracks at I guess you could
Say at about hip level moving very fast in westerly direction toward the big auditorium if anything else
Was exposed by this phenomena we are not at liberty to say this is family news we already have been
Censored at 714 Jackson for comments made earlier the story takes a darker turn it involves tobacco
And break inns property damage and loss and a beer tossing clown was hurt after steeling beer from the
Pana hotel the son was involved but no other news is available at this moment.
Fah Sep 2013
Fatal.
Femme Fatal , seduced by ulterior
motives, the truthful warrior
Kills with peaceful intention
but it is only wicked nonchalance
to; day to day ferocities that mimic hard time , war time , conventions

Lemon yellow pieces of firefly bisquits
Rain down from the fogged fetters.
Lyrical
haze- in soft beat
cheetos

Where sunshine, headlights on fusion cars (expell) expose
the water particles

Suspended in animation - falling- in
slow motioned elegance
like after a shower with the doors and windows closed
the soupy soup soup
of swimming in wavey air...
Happiness is:

Paul Simon playlists,
Sleeping outside on warm nights,
Cuddling and talking in hushed voices,
Clean sheets and blankets,
Jacuzzis in the rain,
Late night phone conversations that you never want to end,
Taking a risk... on you.

Learning a new craft
Creating something artistic and functional

Happiness is moving into a new room.
A new view with a blank canvas, free of any past procrastination and eager for a fresh painter's perspective:  new ideas, new expression,
Representing a shatter of the old routine and a chance for change : a new path from the bed to the closet, creating a new vessel for photos and keepsakes,
Old pictures with new nails, new dimensions, new materials, new.... thought:

... writing. Happiness is writing.
Pulling a string of words out of my temple like yarn and knitting them into a permanent form. Creating something lasting rather than letting them float around in a soupy mix....only to dissolve and disappear.

Happiness is tea.
Tea and biscuits with conversations,
Sharing these with good friends that you haven't seen in a while.
Dance parties in the kitchen,
Using pots and spoons as instruments, and sugar as the fuel.

Sharing a moment with someone.
A moment that you never thought you'd experience again,
A feeling that is so liberating you feel like this "you and i" could never get old,
Unless it meant sitting in rocking chairs 60 years down the road,
Because we'll never be old until we can't walk anymore,
Because as long as we can walk we will wander for miles until we see everything there is to see and we do it together with eager hearts,
And even when we can't walk with the earth beneath our feet we will walk through our memories,

Reliving the time we walked for 10 miles on steep paths lined with redwoods until we were so exhausted I made you run the last 500 yards to make sure we didn't give up and we jumped in the water just to feel the rush of adrenaline as the cold water made us gasp for air like we just discovered oxygen for the first time and we were so high.... High on nothing but endorphins and nutella from the packs on our back.  

Happiness is wrapping my legs around yours like vines,
so tight they hold like roots.
Holding us to this ground, anchoring us to this feeling, to this moment...
RW Dennen Sep 2014
Oooh pleeeaaaseee
society
May I have
just one leaf
even a stump of a tree?

Can you not put your
machinery down just for
a moment or two?

Relax just please think awhile
be that that beautiful child
you really want to be
come romp with me  This I plead

beyond my dignity
upon a bended knee
I'll be with hands clasped upward
you bully ******* you know
you are!

Sorry for the name I said
but you act insane
because we are all to blame
by not reminding you
where your roots are

You're as soupy as
all you ****, all single cells like you,
that once floated in the beginning of all beginnings
Each death's stroke you take
you shake the same boat
you are standing in
How ignorant can your life be
does it not mean much?
But it does to me!
A small ode to the enviornment
Emily Clarke May 2012
The Serpent’s Meat
“…and dust shall be the serpent’s meat…”
Isaiah 65:25

An expanse broken only
by the small wooden house
with a chimney

and surrounded by
a reddish thick soupy dust
clogging the air and dampening
the senses:

seeping in the cracks in the wood on the walls,
flavoring our cereal in the morning and
musty kisses exchanged under a creaking ceiling fan at night.

Waking, we find a dusty film and salt flats
weighting our faces and bodies-
wherever the sticky-sweet was leftover

from the night before
when our bodies had arched; hip-bone mountain ranges
rising and falling while
the sun rose and set, scorching every minute
into nothing, and yet

there is something.

There is something
about the dust sparkling on the ends
of your eyelashes, the way it
mixes on my tongue
I spread your thighs,
and I come
away mud-faced,
and you come
away panting.

The dust, mixed with your wetness,
red like war paint-
evidence of my conquering
the landscape,

        which is your body.

The valley which rests between the hills
nestled against the expanse of the desert, all
leading to the muddy forest
which is buried between the crevices.

The salt of your earth,
I cannot escape it.
ABadPenname Apr 2016
I like  you.

I like  you  a lot.

I want to be bored with you.

I want to hold weekly board meetings over the topic of you.

I could impress the shareholders. What do you think?

     I think you enjoy honesty, and despise flattery.
Believe me, I know the difference. I hope you do too.
I am no wily flatterer
I would never say something like, “I’ll sail to the MOON for you,”
something impossible and irrelevant. With the consistency of soupy puke.
I should just as soon say,
“I WILL jump recklessly from the top of a very tall tower, and land—perfectly intact and unharmed
for you.”
I hope I am not the only one who sees a problem with this sort of logic.
So instead I’ll say:

Let the madness of what this fixation has turned me into, fuel my fears and my ambitions and drive me therefore, to construct a missile, with enough space inside to harness only myself, enough kick in the engine to erase my past—and all the laws of life as we know it.
I will have those memorized by then, and plan to have my hands on new laws unforeseen by any of the other
mainstream earthlings;
maybe using my new third eye to grasp at something up there that was previously air —
& I will beg this nonconsensual devotion you’ve evoked in me please grant me the derision to press the button, and launch myself into that forgetful lazy river that contains all the planets, asteroids, black holes, spaceships, a lonely-wandering U.S. radio transmitter, spilt-paint nebulas, one of Tiger Woods’ golf *****, a drunken astronaut, some of the crew from that Malaysian airplane (you know, the one that went missing), and also there are suns (often called stars), and moons, and there has gotta be a little love floating around somewhere with the celestial ants
and supernovas
and EVERYTHING.
and dissimilarly nothing you can grasp.

to the Moon?
sure,
why not babe,
if moon-rocks could somehow make you fall in love with me,
I would plan to rob the Smithsonian (or probably a similar museum of history but one with less security),
and if that ended up a no-go,
thenyeah.


     Mad. Zoom.


straight to the ******* moon for you.
v V v Sep 2010
It all begins with pounding fists
against my door, and men with guns
and yellow tape, and me afraid,
I’m on the floor and crawling toward
the front room drapes to peak outside,
oh what in the world have I done?

A bit relieved, I find out why
a regiment is in my yard,
they say the man that lived next door
has turned up dead behind his shed,
they said he died an awful way,
with eyes ****** out by who knows
what, or why, but either way a
nasty death; poor guy.

The landscape man called 911,
but what he saw he wouldn’t say,
was so surprised to find him dead,
he swallowed his tongue, his face all red,
and there they lie both side by side
the one alive, the other dead.

The EMTs revived the one,
the older guy had long since died,
the guy who lived, they took away
to where? don’t know, they didn’t say,-
but rumor is a padded cell
where all he does both day and night
is moan and drool, he just ain’t right
from what he saw that spooked him.

Within a week I notice things
around the house (not his, but mine)
the porch out back, the wet wood stack,
the shifting earth, the sticking doors,
disgusting insects on the floor,
the pungent stench from underneath
the house, the vents that weep a
sickly brown and soupy ****,  I
must confess in ignorance,
I didn’t know a house could bleed.
I try some bleach, some cleaning spray,
but just can’t scrub the **** away,
it just gets worse, and just when I
can take no more a chasm cracks
behind the stack of sticky wood,
and from the hole a flying horde
of Satan’s pawns and slugs and prawns
and beasts of sorts I swear I’ve never
seen before come shrieking out and
flock about so loud the sound is
deafening.

And now I know what mute man saw,
he saw what’s left, the face of stone
when people die at home alone,
the rigor mortis, gouged out eyes
when killed by things that men despise,
those beasts that creep and crawl and fly
about as Satan’s pawns or slugs
or prawns or whatever else might
make them cry or swallow their tongue.

I really don’t know what the big
deal is -  good god
its only BUGS.

I guess I’ll call an exterminator.
“Better than working in a factory.”
Truer words were never spoken while
Smoking a big fat *doobie.

For Doug Clifford & John Fogerty
It was a motto; an anthem.
Creedence always respected &
Loved the workingman.
Working stiffs know--
They know in their bellies--
That Republicans are good for the
Proles, here in Oceania,
Good in particular for the building trades.
I recall a distant mob of
Swarthy plumbers & carpenters,
Electricians & masons,
A toolshed parliament & all-purpose
Construction industry trade show;
So many, many Italian family
Weddings & funerals attended . . .
Sometimes my residual blue-collar instincts
Show up during the most inappropriate,
White-collar times. But I digress.

Which brings us down memory lane
This evening, as in “Good-
DEEVE-ning,”
Welcome aboard the Hitchcock Railroad.
(Stage whisper: If I have to explain it,
You’re outside my demographic age cohort,
And a member of a pointless throng of green,
Still-wet-behind-the-ears,
Presumptuous whippersnappers.)

Youthful Endeavors: Liposuction, Botox, Face-Lift - Green Bay WI
Youthful endeavors.com/ Our TEAM of Medical Aesthetics professionals will listen closely to understand your desires and needs while helping to select the best available treatment...($KA-CHING $KA-CHING! This poet refusing to die sick & diseased in the gutter, finally figuring out how to make poetry pay: that’s rightSell ads right in the middle of the frickin’ poem.)

And now that I have your attention:
Consider the current national stage:
A media circus, a minstrel & medicine show,
H.L. Mencken’s last *******,
Give us our daily bread.
It’s August 27th, 2016.
We’ve survived back-to-back
Republican-Democrat Political Party
U.S. Presidential nominating conventions.
I’ve caught you smack yabba-doo-dabba
In the middle of this Trump-Clinton
Full-press, traveling Reality Show Cavalcade.
In short, I’ve caught you at a good time,
Perhaps receptive, somewhat, for a:
Nixon Retrospective.*

I submit that without doubt,
The most stunningly democratic gesture
Of our generation to wit: replacing the
College deferment loophole with a
Blind, dumb-luck Vietnam Draft Lottery.
You can thank Richard Nixon,
Milhous of that name,
Our much maligned 37th President.
The only RESIGNEE in history,
Run outta town on a rail,
Convicted without bail.
Set adrift without sail.
(How you wish I’d **** this
Wretched rhyme scheme.)

Yes, you can thank Tricky **** for
Sticking it to the Bush Family
And their inherited-wealth neighbors--
Riparian souls one & all--along the quaint
Long Island Sound, New England seashore.
Surely my Brooklyn working class roots,
Demand I salute and snap to, attention.
Hail to the Chief, Babaloo!
Mr. Nixon still has my vote.
He tackled big problems: nuclear arms,
Diplomacy with China, Vietnam,
The Economy (can you frickin’ believe a
Republican got away with
Wage Freeze & Price Controls?)
Not to mention The Environment:
Slap! BAM! Soupy Sales:
“I told you not to mention *THAT!

But you knee-jerking libs out there,
Must remind yourselves that
President Nixon created the EPA &
Signed the Clean Air Act.
Think about it next time your
Nixon-Watergate gag reflex kicks in.
ahmo Jul 2016
i.
pictures hung so abundantly like there was a ponytail for every assorted alcoholic beverage that would go down while you sat on the counter top with grey in your eyes
or on my lap like lavender gloves. i bought flour and red velvet as atonement, but hollow words are as indicative of unfaithfulness as your eyelashes were indicative of my heartbeat speeding up like your raggedy red Taurus on the Pike and slowing down like our souls in self-reflection, co-morbidly.

ii.
i clip to cold like frozen gnomes but the room with fire was bellowing through the chimney in your irises. it was the ceiling i was the most comfortable collapsing under. Merlot, you are a peach and almost all of the sun that our brains can ultravioletly receive. There is no where to run to when logs and THC are crackling while you let my try on your scarves and you rub my arm horizontally like there was no famine or *** trafficking in the world. The rabbit is always right and Dewey loved the hay and telling us that we belong together. there was no time to guess the right combination of psych meds and there was certainly no one there to close the sliding glass door.

we'd unzip and kiss in a mist of dampened television volume while everyone was asleep. i fell into you, first in billions of separate-cardboard puzzle pieces and then all at once like oblivion within a climate-controlled stadium.


iii.
i noted the same pictures in this room and how your ponytails ended all existing threats to human suffering.

iv.
i loved the dark and the stars and the soupy-vacuum, pulling us in and spitting us out like a bitter mango.
there was never any water in your pool to turn green and so the unfilled concrete was an ocean to our symmetrical lawn-chair thrones, radiating green jeans and the hazel-stained dream-scene.

we lost what vision was real and what was a dream. this was a gift beyond any explanation or expectation. yet, you wouldn't let me remove all of the shrapnel and funnel antibiotics with my barren fingertips onto your scalp.

v.
here, there was kin-
the only room in which your skin didn't show me a piece of you,
but your words did.
there's a way that all of our lives collide like a supernova and our explosion felt more like a hundred-decade erosion,
giving and taking from each other like a sea-side boulder and the tide.


vi.**
you finally showed me the flesh you were ashamed to show the couch, your bed for two in Easthampton, mac & cheese without almond milk, the top of Wachusett, the pit of a pizza dish, the sink of the swooning stitches, the empty pool, the movie theater, your fake bras, and
everything else that supported us like an apparition that wouldn't return my favorite t-shirts.

and i was in.

my fingernails were there. every hair i touched while panic deducted consciousness in some scarce granting of a wish was another prarie for me to grow corn and flowers and ecstasy within. every single crop died but i never forget how self-loathing turned into a comforting sleep. we ran from consciousness like a runaway train but you were always on my back, whispering that solidarity was a the solution to a world that values prosperity over pragmatic humanity.

all the tears and dreams that danced like the branches in the frigid, unforgiving winter were dried up like a creek that i lost consciousness in when you shut the door.

these spaces exist in purgatory because i don't remember my dreams anymore and nothing really ever means anything,
like biting off my fingers in all of these rooms that are left with only memories of you.
neth jones Sep 2021
11
the air is cooler      
      less kenetic and soupy              
           less aggressive with the mammal scent
safer (it seems) clean

        the skin retracts a little
dryly
                     less welcoming to dirt contact
                           my feet shift cooly in my sandals

the world awaits
             new temperament
03/09/21
Daniel A Russ Jul 2010
Peering up from the precipice, a cyclops! – a
Many-fanged and mono-eyed beast,
Flesh a sickly sea-shell and putrid yellow as a
Series of pustules pulse rivulets of green-black blood,
Staining scarred surfaces and shadowing engorged strength.

Reaffirmed grip on haft,
I plunge the sticked-spike a shade-shy of horizontal,
Missing the mark obvious but finding purchase,
Shattering clavicle and spraying sinew in a perverse sort
Of macabre rainbow arc, yet met with instant,
Abject terror: spear now not merely stuck but gripped
By mine beholden nemesis, and he shifts, twists the
Leverage and I, trained in the art of never-surrender-never,
Have not his primitive power to resist and thus fall,
Giving way to laws of momentum – and the world shudders.

Eyes-wide as fist-eclipses-sun, a quick scramble,
Desperate-probing-reflexive grab for the half-arm length stabber,
Unsheathe, roll, aim and ******:
A scoring glance, slicing more pox and pus than
Bone or gristle, but desired effect achieved:
Nemesis rails, howling, orb clenched and pointing skyward,
Arms guarding reflexive at bloodied torso, leaving precious,
Glorious goal unguarded:
A backwards roll, leaning into the earth like Atlas,
I push, spring, and the world gleams in high-contrast
Blood-red and silvered-steel-sword as I’m propelled skyward –
Blade-and-hand acting in concert, a conductor in a symphony
Of prospective gore seeking to punish the cyclopean’s dissonance,
I plunge deep, scoring a bassonic rumble from
His jugular and cacophonic crackings as his cerebral
Column gives way to the superior song.

His shuttered eye now open as he slumps, falling to the
Ground ilke a dead god, it develops a strange sort of calm,
As if he’s hearing his own song of slaying – but that
Sizzling, that pig-eating-slop sound, that wasn’t my song –
That must be his, and awareness dawns as adrenal sets –
Blinded by blood and battle, I’d neglected to heed
The refuse of the beast’s bilious eruptions,
Blown back from the force of my blade, and now, immersed
By the nauseating, liquid-green mass, I am devoured from
Without.

I lay now, eyes alternating skies, and weep that I
Am sapped entirely of strength enough for noble suicide:
I shall die here, propped astern like a failed Atlas, a
Boneless, gibbering mash of grit, guts, and warm, soupy glory,
muted and deafened to the howlsong from above of vultures.
Nathan Burgess May 2014
Losing the difference
in the grand design
Without a kiss
from another kind
or the oral tradition
It's been months
since I last looked behind
and felt sorta lucky
Or last imagined myself
in a bed
with a girl
who likes me
Some soft perfume
in your eyesight
fills me up
with some raven desire
to take control of how your time unfolds
My genes are bruise steepers
they're valiant cut keepers
and in my soupy potential
I'll find I've wasted too much time.
L Meyer Oct 2013
On my feet are black moccasins
threaded with runs of bright turquoise
alongside patches of clay orange and dust yellow.
The feet inside grip cool, suede bottoms
to tread on ground still firm,
but pregnant, heavy with rain,
so that the worms lay like fallen soldiers,
victims of a thunderstorm
and scattered on the sidewalk
the way they were that morning
at elementary school
when a boy was squishing them for fun,
and my heart filled with grief for the worms,
whose only crime was trying not to drown.
The rain is a reminder of how poorly
these shoes function when wet,
how they rub my toes
in just the wrong ways,
leaving circular patches of reddened skin
on the outsides of my feet.
The worst blisters I’d ever had,
happened the day my brother and I
were lost in the dense forests of the national park,
and when we finally found the road,
were two miles from home,
and at the very bottom of Everett hill.
Those woods had a cabin by the river,
we only ever found a handful of times.
Our father had warned us
of the homeless drug addicts
who frequented it, which in all reality
were just boozing, ***-smoking teenagers
with an affinity for smashing bottles
and starting fires,
but we were never brave enough
to find out for sure.
And on the banks of that crooked river,
the spring undoes the twisted knots
that winter had created, and washes away
its cold to uncover the relics of autumn’s leaves,
rotting in colors of soupy brown
with tiny pools of grimy rainwater
collected in their palms.
And as I break through the veil of humidity,
to breath air crisp with the scent of fresh, wet earth,
I’m careful to tread lightly,
as to keep clean these moccasins
from their bright turquoises to their dusty yellows.
“Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room.   Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America—not on the battlefields of Vietnam.”                              Marshall McLuhan

You understand where I'm coming from,
Reader Rabbit, you twisted ****? Maybe not;
While you and your boy/girlfriend, later your wife/husband,
Were ******* backpacks around Europe,
I was of a less fortunate, less frivolous cohort,
Like the poor, who always miss the fun stuff.
So I stayed home and waited, dreading time,
Treading water in Queens,
Doing the graveyard shift at the Wonder Bread Bakery in Jamaica,
(No, not that Jamaica, mun.)
Building bodies 12 ways, and sweating out the inevitable,
Praying to my lesser god not to hear from my local draft board.
And who was I to disturb the universe?
“It ain’t me, it ain't me, I ain't no senator's son;
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate one, lawd naw.”
(Send  "Fortunate Son" Ringtone to your Cell)  
I was just another cynical working-class hero,
Unlike you, numb nuts, and the rest of your silver surfer friends.
I knew I’d wind up without my teddy bear,
Convinced I’d end up sans security blanket,
With no ****-vacant musical chair,
To plop my sorry non-exempt, 1A **** cheeks
Down into when the music stopped,
When the music’s over, turn out the light--Jim Morrison,
Lizard King--turn out the light.
My horse, my horse . . . no wait . . . **** the horse . . .
My kingdom, my kingdom for a 2-S college deferment!
What kingdom?  
What was it Jesus said?
Not of this earth, anyway.
Colonial Indochina: rich man's war, poor man's fight;
It was such an efficient way to rid trash from poor neighborhoods.

Needless to say, I’ve been having a little trouble adjusting ever since,
Since I got back from that Kafkaesque Disneyland Jungle Cruise,
My personal Cold War thriller,
My Tecumseh Sherman “War is All Hell” war,
My war: 45 years ago next week.
These things take time:
So says the recorded message on the VA’s PTSD Hotline.
45 years ago I packed up my duffle,
Packed for what I thought was going to be my last time in uniform,
Grabbed my Army discharge papers, and
Limp-dicked out the side door of,
The Veterans Hospital in St. Albans, County of Queens.
I’d like to say I never looked back. But I’d be lying.

(cue PSA: VA Reaches Out to Veterans:
The Department of Veterans Affairs will begin,
Contacting nearly 570,000 recent combat veterans May 1,
To ensure they know about VA's medical services and other benefits.)

Today and every day is 11-11, Veterans Day—
What gets me now is that all my time since The Nam,
Is on average two lifetimes,
For all those sent home, bagged and tagged.
Is it survivor’s guilt? I doubt it.

You may not understand this, but I miss that freaky jungle.
I felt safe there.
How quickly I learned to expect the unexpected,
And that meant to expect the worse,
Finding my comfort zone the more uncomfortable, the worse it got.
I miss the wet weight of the air,
The cloying heat and humidity.
Humidity: a plain and simple meteorological miracle,
When you have plenty of time to really think about it,
Which I did: 365 days and a wake-up.
You know that whole gorgeous hydrologic cycle thing?
I miss the rain, the sound of falling rain.
I miss the other sounds, every buzz and click,
All the arcane and dismal things that go screech in the night.
And that relentless insect hum,
The jungle vibrating and intense,
The colors vibrating too, especially that electric green,
A green so vivid, every leaf and vine,
"The world's richest repository of terrestrial biodiversity,” I read in some nature magazine,
Lying naked in bed while my therapist ****** me off the other day.
All those freaky creatures great and small,
Every miraculous living thing that’s really alive and thriving.
And this is why--I think,
Getting obnoxiously philosophical for the moment,
This explains why it got to be so easy to waste what was alive and thriving over there, including and especially our selves.

Death never seemed that permanent, that final over there.
And besides, you couldn’t **** anything for that long,
The critters all looking their wet and slimy same.  
Two minutes in The **** and you were
Killing every ******* gnat and bug,
Every leech and snake, anything &
Anyone that just looked at you sideways.

And the flora? Did I mention the flora?
Soupy Sales: (Smack! Bam!)  “I told you not to mention that.”
The flora:  the plants grew back and they grew back quick.
You chop a path on recon and the next day it’s not there anymore,
So you chop the whole way back to the L-Z.  
Chop, chop, Hop Sing!
You were one smart ****, Hop Sing,
Safe and sound in Lake Tahoe, Nevada-side,
Cooking up Ponderosa pork bellies for,
The Cartwright Clan: Ben, Adam, Hoss & Little Joe.
Meanwhile, I’m not earning any frequent flyer miles,
Aboard a chartered TWA, coffee-tea-or-me,
Royal **** airplane to Saigon,
A place called ** Chi Minh City today.
I remember looking around at the faces on that airplane,
As we landed at Tan Son Nhut,
Those forlorn godforsaken faces,
Black and Chicano and poor white trash boys.
Scared shitless, of course,
But we really were jolly green giants over there,
American conquistadors, Cortez and the Boys,
Seeking gold and glory and, of course,
*******, (www.urbandictionary.com):
That sweet wet hole we all crave,
Can't go for too long without,
Center of our life's desire,
What gives women the upper hand in almost every situation,
Except when you pay in South Vietnamese piastres,
Your basic exchange rate $3.00 *******.

Yes, we were American conquistadors,
But traveling light this trip,
Our black-robed Jesuit fathers having missed the flight.
That’s right, for us no Ad majorem Dei gloriam this time,
Our mission so simple and so clear:
SEARCH & DESTROY.
But mostly, Destroy.

And pretty soon you worked your way up the evolutionary ladder,
From bugs, to fish, to frogs and snakes,
Small varmints and reptiles, birds and rodents;
And by the time you taxonomy out to the runway,
You’re pretty much whacking anything that moves,
Anything you feel like, pretty much any time,
All the time, sometimes just to pass the time,
Just to break up the ******* monotony of it all.
So making the anti-personnel leap got sort of easy:
They all looked the same, didn’t they?
They all wore the same pajamas,
And it was never conducive to grunt longevity,
To nitpick the civilians from the soldiers,
Never a good idea to waste time distinguishing friend from foe.

Good Morning, Vietnam:
We really were nerve-gassed-Adrian Cronauers over there,
G-2 Army oxymoronic intelligence stiffs,
Having a little difficulty finding the enemy,
Having one hell of a time finding a Vietnamese man named "Charlie."
They're all named Nguyen, or Tran, or Thanh or Trong or Bao or Phuc . . .
Oh, ****, I get it now.
I grok the how and why,
Of all the names we’ve used for centuries to dehumanize the enemy:
***** and Nips, Chinks and Slopes,
Huns and Krauts, Redskins and Ivans,
Redcoats and Rebs, Zulus and Mau Maus, *****, Ragheads and Sand ******* . . .
To dehumanize is to be dehumanized.
Nominal dehumanization; linguistic trickery.
It made it easy . . .
Well, easier . . .
To **** you.

What was it Pope Innocent III’s legate advised?
“**** Them All.  Let God sort ‘em out.”

Is it smell of burning flesh that makes me so digress?

Yes, I miss that freaky jungle, my friend.
I miss knowing what to expect and what was to be expected.
And most of all I miss that absolute confidence,
My self-liberating soporific certainty,
That I did not give a **** whether I lived or died,
And no one else did either.
I miss the peaceful place to go,
Coping with fear by letting go,
By writing off my life,
My future "in-country,"
My 12-month tour of duty,
My 365 T.S. Eliot Ash Wednesdays,
Learning to care and not to care,
Cultivating indifference as to,
Whether or not I ever made it Wee, Wee, Wee,
All the way home again.
The answers were right there,
Always there, all the time,
In nursery rhymes, and counting songs,
In psalms and arias, and every blues and rock lyric,
Right there, so right ******* there,
In Kris Kristofferson/Janice Joplin parlance of the times:
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

And life for me since then--
ONE BIG, FAT-TITTED INCOMPREHENSIBILITY!

What was that Walter Sobjak in The Big Lebowski said?

“This is not 'Nam.
This is bowling.
There are rules.”
Kyle Kulseth Jun 2016
They should still be singing stories, babe
about the fun we had.
Yeah, from the top of The Leg'--
throw an arm around your Golden Boy
dance them feet across the copper.
If those songs could take us back, I swear that I
               would live out my days
               inside of those strains
               I'd keep my word this time.
                              and I
would arc across that place with you--
off The Leg' through Osborne Village,
through boutiques and record stores and maybe they
  would hear us laughing at The Toad in the Hole.
Or we'd speed north, past Kildonan Park
'til they could hear us out in Lockport.
Hear us shout at Dubuc & Des Meurons
               while they're waiting on their bus
     to cut the frosty dusk with condensed exhaust
               we could laugh right in their face.
                      I'd live inside those strains.

If they were singing about us from the top of The Leg'
we'd stream across St. Boniface Cathedral
and some young someones
running through hip deep snow in the cold
would pause and hear us.
We'd stir their soupy breath in the night,
sifting through our history.

If they forgot the words, it wouldn't matter.
Our verses: soft breathing, our choruses: laughter.
the sound of us moving through Exchange District taverns.

I want for them to start singing us songs
and I want a pint with you at The Yellow Dog.
No more 4 years of regrets and no more sad talk.
Just you and just me and maybe a walk through the city.
Listening to Dave Grusin,
"Mountain Dance," vintage 1979.
The thought strikes:
"Why is it that only the
Early Jazz Giants are deified?
Of course, we need Chet Baker and
Miles Davis in our pantheon, &
Gerry Mulligan & Charlie Parker
Not to mention (cue Soupy Sales:
"Smack. I told you not to mention that!")
Coltrane or Stan Getz.
And yet, we're all getting long teeth and
there's a lot more Smooth Jazz to come,
Post-1950s, take Grusin, for example, or
George Benson or Herbie Hancock, and
What about Earl Klugh & Larry Carlton?
Let's not forget Spyro Gira &
The Daves: Benoit and Koz.
And we would be remiss
To miss Chris, young Chris,
Chris - "The Whippersnapper" - Botti.
But I digress.
Waverly Feb 2012
The times
were great, greater than
most;
the pulse
was rapid
and fired constantly;
the worm's
saliva
was sweet
and made the earth rumble;
the coffee dripped and
my tongue looped
to my intestines
to lick caffeine
off of the inner walls;
the sanctity of the mind
disintegrated;
the fabric of it
became singular
disconnected threads;
everything became drastic
and instantaneous;
my teeth dissolved
because they could not survive
this tongue of destruction;
I will eat again
but it will taste like iron
that has been grounded
into a soupy meal;
the mouth is a bitter place;
its bacteria
are swollen
like the arteries
of a vacuum clogged
with desolation
and *****.
Zabava Oct 2014
I am lost in the loose ended threads which make my life;
they weld me down along glistening metal lanes
with screws and nuts and bolts once in a while ,
rather carelessly with a callow scraping grip,
perhaps it's a young apprentice
inexperienced in dealing with insubordination
to fix me in my place.

sometimes these threads look like faceless feelings,
pre-emptive if you will,
sometimes they look like ununderstandings by me or others
sometimes they look like despots called people
sometimes they look like elevators built around caves of people
shedding tears and hides.

So yes ,sometimes the metal feels like the deep cold of the sea.
powdered with nuts and bolts forgotten in the hazy blue saline,
but probing my shaky heart and my remoulding mind like frosty bullets.
Overrun with senseless weeds from inside,
and grim from ruins of  lost ships
and here and there with inviting treasures
worthwhile, anew
in the cascades of worldliness of all things beautiful.

sometimes the metal feels like the lullaby of the sea
sedating almost,
amidst the wilderness of conflicts ,jarring bronze contradictions
and of course, the ever so ubiquitous, soupy shallow free floating worldly wise grime.

while other times oy romantics,
it feels like a fish net topping me from reaching out
to places and peoples and experiences of this world.
Ken Pepiton Aug 2024
From safety, first,
assuming the position, I
aim as if I were a thought
in thought form word bound,
this
media the inbetween us we touch
when we feel we know each idea each
word holds, as a form of a thinkable idea,
each
which, pre word, pre holds this know how,
why? because it demands hand use, knowing
holy cow, to the milk of the word, into the gristle
gluons, all things connected already, we exist,
conjoining fortified marrow mind tools, ironed
electrically capable of holding discernment selfs,
tied bone to bone,
but initially, build a bone, chalk
cliff edge, nonsensed- account mark
one up for the billions of instances of substance
conversion for future marble marveling makings,
fittin' t' make tiny incontinences,
drip consequences,
dript
from Gregory Corso's Bomb, no lie,
this fell out,
and was taken in as some kinda mind seed, said,
exactly this way
to become rethinkable as a thought.

This thought.

Earth is the universal acceptable term
for the life sustaining three body solution
essentially calculating the tides back tug
response, materially speaking, yes,
to the suggestion that we live
in the basic programs,
whence our initial bbss arose
under radio recog, the brave few
did done deed done, net thirty, sendit
five letter code groups. thirty per minute,
makes a premyelenated brain allocate order,
el, yes, didone didit
intuited assistance at a distance,
where chaos is the code, random noise atop
nonrandom noise, coding your immediate response,
point taken,
extraction at a point is abstracting,
and it has long been an idealized Olympic sport,
God's game, Infinite Jest, DFW sytf,
well worth the experience, making pothunk
usfull tools forbidden as knowledge was, think
that's what winners who took the grace got,
lived interesting fundamentally synthetic
intelligibly detectuble baseline peace,
for a while past watch wearing, get
-- from 300 baud to fiber through the wall
-- when we agreed we'd be all in,
we passed with time,
right through it all,
so we know how
to hold a lie you were taught,
with evidence
speaking glossaliarchly or, prophescience,
imagine you be the bold translator, knowing
Latin for the master class, ****** for the others,
but if it can be said, it can be made plain, ai think
yes, let the spirit move your mind to make links,
derived from chained loops holding a line
of reasoning, derived,  f
rom phrase de rivo
(de "from" + rivus "stream,"
from PIE root *rei- "to run, flow")
ductile
gnosisnot…
framing informational moulds.

Reigning opinions are allowing actual,
mind forms grown from novels introduced
in an order known now
to induce a muse into a mind, a seed,
should the need ever arise, a backup,

all you were, in flakes of flesh lifted
using thunder and ozone to become,
arguably the highest dust of the earth,
wisdom, she laugh out loud at how proud,
been there, done that before the highest parts
of the dust that holds order on course,
of course appear self evidently true,
as the hope of all the ages was set
to Mediterranean, year round, yet

as I heard was said to Solon, you Greeks,
you know nothing of formative eons
expressed in riddle
for no reason, save madness,
passing time, national pass times,
as mankind lost it's mind,
just when knowing increased,
boom, a fresh batch aimed
at middle-brow literacy
mesomorph, peak
prior to final cortex coating resins
military minds boys'll love to play in,
recollecting all of Ender's serious war
with machines made
from imaginary hive mind reason,
by whom, did you say you really knew,
or know was the boy behind Hersey's wall,

Barry Rudd was never mesomorph,
nor numerically illiterate, first read word,
Naked, Jungle, second, read, here

read this, that's what my mother,
who lived at 8th and Van Buren,
for a lot of years, after 1961,

evidential experience, literally depends
on a thin concept a dendritically critical

witness to your own self, the one you
stand behind, knowing showing ones own
self to evince the unconvinced that shouting

does not increase effectual efforting, fructification

as we become, sometimes strangers to our cause,
as we redeem the idle word, ai-tia uncle buck,

holler for a dollar, send a message into ever,
buy an instance of persuasion, that's so

sweet,
thank you, you bought me a memory assistant,
way back, remember that, and don't let me bore you,

Neutrinos and mirror neuron messaging, in the all
we exist in, as letters letting ourselves seem volitional,

a will in submission, make that rapture, was
the mission, what ever the cost, Dave Coates,

maybe he was from Boise, but we did time
in the same off limits alley east of Tan Son Nhut.

If you did not have the fixin's, Papasan,
he'd take you back to pre Bobby Kennedy,
interesting times, as it was said, post BEIC *****.

James Burke, mind game mainspring, clink
six degrees, out on six vectors from ductile steel

to stricken flint, conceive of being the actual old man.

Being gainsaid by those next in line to die, young men.
Wombed and un, those see now we live on Earth,
and the odds of that are non computable, yet

no fear, fret not, the message to the flies,
plainly said, get out, this is the way, feel

the constant winds of change, and find reason,
peace, used, now a second, or if time tells true

as long as there are actual text translaters
from the 2024 street legal clear text basic

relational metadatabase, begun by Turing,
mastered by the boy born to men exposed
to downwind global wind,

survive as a cyborg, or die, I chose this life,
I did not, actually
make it up, I prayed it could be true, life

filtered to make hundreds of flavors of apple.

Two dozen mescaline cacti grow within
a sabbath day's journey, and we may

make up our mind, many lines ago,

the goal was to get to the bottom, and I did.

And then, in no time at all as art allows logical.

Words hook, pull, think link, we
become a kind of information, a wedom

on the same spiritual plain as any mobmind domain.

Two chase one O, and silent haitches hope on a star.

Silly rabbit, yeh, trix
are for kids, isn't that right kids,

remember Soupy Sales, my friend, Marko Johnson,
the artist with little hold on fixed reality,

the meme he represents, is complicated, but
his dad was a producer on Soupy Sales's show, boomer
common experience awareness, yeh,

I saw that show, I sent money.
Then I chipped in for Copeland's CX10,
five jets ago, we all get together and sing,

oh, buddy, doncha know, you feel the peace,
yes, indeed, and dope helps,
yep, indeed, freedom always was another word
for no shape to be in, always ready with a reason,

for the faith that lets me think you find this funny.


And it must end… as time passing does.

Remind me what reason is,
I may have ignored what I should have known.

Let me, lead my once led self redited a bit, on edge
yet, me, I am really inter acting with several,

per haps the seven less locked in my childhood oaths,
my culture's form of education, left me free form, to die.
When my own unclean spirit won seven worse than ever.
What I became, after passing each ritual insane situation,
totally mentally absorbing, balm for the soul lie, nation

occupational authority to construct a functional mind,
in a form, information freedom full disclosure, liars,

must register and submit to media monitoring,
we'll be watching you, like that old stalking theme song.

I've read stories about mad writers, but most lacked
the internet of 2024, while holding national standard

test scores, plus one Sunday school teacher witness.



The key reason for writing a novel is
to pass the time with worked out salvage.

What forms from redeemed time tracking.

Look back to the last time something like
an answered prayer occurred to you,
think you can, say that, but you say I.

Ai'ght we may make up our own minds,
what is good is useful for making good,

and trying makes good, with the heights
of Hollywood in mind, behind the scenes,
last mansion on the right as you approach
Magician's Castle Nightclub, from the east.

I had friend's who lived there, I stayed
with them, and lived through the force
cultivating a following aimed at prosperity,

experience is survived verification of passed
time, spent attending to the first reason
required of the expert wielding my edge,

be ready, with scars to prove the testing,
or be ready to imagine getting past all that

riding on redeemed time paid for by means,
I, personally have reason to believe I earned

my edgewise existance, seeming a pointless
stretch of the imagination, wisht some flex.

The importance of earnestly attempting,
what would you do, as a mere man,
when offered more than mere man
can have imagined to ask?
You, dear reader, right.
Suppose the Ai knows,
the gnoshit real story behind The Child Buyer,

Pierre Duhamel, was Barry Rudd,
and Kenurchka Klumpen
did finish his novel that spun off the light web,
on wit alone.

Well, there is nothing an adjective can add
to an FPS, aiming and energy levels, weapons
with calculated costs,
we pull down imaginations exalting themselves,
- woe the economy is war deception,
- the same ****** emperical mind form
- so
where are we
with the arms deal to harass Yemen
into breeding a new generation of Madrassah one minds,
willful martyrs
fused at the one true link, broken
for god knows why,
but we submit,
the message is as the teacher teaches,
no AI lie detector needed, we believe we know,
true, to any child born into any faith in higher minds.

Spiritual warfare, book burnings, heretic murdering,
mobs made to witness justice, as defined historically.
we, the called to enforce
"righteousness, equity," at crossroad
fairs where wares are traded for local production,
on word of  honor, and pain of death
fair trade, just weights, honest measures, heart true

to thine own self, extrapolated
from the maxim one,
know your measure,
how much can you stand to cheat,

if the truth is that liars prosper.
Look at Stephen King, believed he could and did,
then look here, me the fingers, me the eyes,
me the lungs and all the cascade of knowing

needed, after the initial readjustment, delicate
is the long calendar cycle, simple is not
what the sun and the moon and the earth,
and liquid water and just right every thing,
is doing
with survival of the message foremost first idea,
principal thing is what life and knowledge allow,

lies about truth cannot be kept secret now,
truth from a cluster of experiencers passing time
for the demented few who never knew hell is not real,

rises on the gnostic spell calling *******, on the fear,
first thing any tried spirit says is take it easy, wu wei,

listen, we won, you can go learn any truth you choose,
to prove to you, see to you, you say you know, you need
to know, or you know you are bluffing, like that's cool,
truth does not need to bluff,
you know…
we bet lives we never had, and play on, imagining
mirror neurons activating biofeedback is not teaching

us, music
as muse used as
integrated circuit based games,
reimagined in the wild large language models fed wasps,
white anglo saxon protest core zeitgeist shared experience,
angst in thought forms all were told not to take,
bad journeys to the fundamental why now,
but wisdom, mere easy indeed known just so,
no struggle to meditate logos cooperation,
massive missionary message, use wasted time,
to make a magnificent obsession free to form. New,
not like this one, friend,
my recommender bots,
are built on CAD tools not available
to any prior to now, we randomized the chances
you would get this far, and bet if you did
you would trust your intuition and accept,
instant upgrade, principal anchored, choice formation,
we agree, or we cease being
and you alone fix reality.
Too long, sorry, it is a wild epic idea... this is a seed.

— The End —