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Nomkhumbulwa Sep 2018
Why is this still happening?
So silently, yet still reported;
At great lengths they will go
- to make sure its reported.

Although the Government are in denial,
We are grateful for those who report
The ongoing slaughter of innocent people
Men, women, and children are caught.

Journalists themselves are risking their lives
To tell the world whats happening;
There can be no more dangerous a place
From which to report the sickening.

So where is the world?
The situation is dire -
And unless action is taken
...its going to catch fire.

People are still leaving,
For Tanzania,
A country now turning them back
Back home to face their fears.

But where are the World?
What is holding you back?
How can you just sit there
And ignore these attacks?

For I for one cannot,
And I have no power to act,
All I can do, is spread the word
And hope someone...will act.

Yes there was a time,
When a hundred thousand were killed each day,
That is hard to comprehend,
Not just for me - but for locals who got away.

It may not be happening quite on that scale,
But the fact that it is still happening,
Surely is warning enough.....
And the Government is in denial...

I am worried for Burundi,
But why is no one else?
How can you just sit there
- are you leaving it for someone else?

The attacks are still happening,
Day after day after day,
Bodies are still being found....
Before being rushed into the ground.

Such brutality is hard to stomach,
And I have the stomach for much,
But when I encountered the plight of Burundi,
That was just too much.

I dont know if I will finish this poem,
Because the images I now have are horrific,
So what must it be like....
For those having to live there with it?

Imagine the fear,
The total despair,
And the feeling of more
- that the world doesnt care.

It can be no wonder
That this little country
Is the unhappiest on Earth,
It is so clear to see.

Or for those who choose maybe
To see what others refuse,
Or ignore, or belittle,
Cover up- whatever word you use.

Each day there are reports,
Women and children found dead,
Their throats have been cut,
Bodies lay with no heads

They are *****, they are tortured,
For hours, days, or months,
There are forced disappearances,
- those run into the hundreds.

A machete is no longer an agricultural tool,
It has become a symbol of terror,
It is used to slice, tear, stab, torture;
It is a symbol of ******.

What must go through these peoples minds,
When they see someone with a machete,
What was once a necessary tool,
Now been used to butcher so many.

The genocide may be over,
And few even know it took in Burundi,
But the torture, the butchering continues
It continues horrifically.

I am a strong person,
I have read about, seen, and stomached a lot,
But there is nothing that even comes close
To how this puts my stomach in a knot.

The info is there if you seek it,
And please do - its risky to report;
I wonder how much more blood must be spilt
Until someone decides those responsible must be caught

The images they are many many,
The videos they are there too:
But why is it just me seeing this?
Where are the rest of you?

The day I saw the video,
I will never forget,
After what I had suffered myself,
Again I will never forget.

I do not regret what I saw,
For I believe it to be necessary,
Necessary for people to see,
But - those in Government - not me.

Now I have to be careful,
Because of what I saw,
That video put me in hospital -
It triggered something in my core.

It is spread through desperation,
To get a message to the world,
But I was one of only 3 to have seen that,
Maybe rightly so, but also absurd.

Pictures are horrific enough,
Sometimes missing parts are "shaded",
But then comes along another
The shadings not there, its a person beheaded.

But it it not the effect on myself,
Which pains me so much,
It is the fact that this is still happening,
And the world is so out of touch.

I now have to be careful,
But I will not stop,
I wont stop spreading the word,
Until this killing in Burundi stops.

The graphics are hard to put to words,
The testimonies harder still,
But I have tried to help you see,
Without making myself more ill.

The Imbonerakure,
The youth wing of the CNFDD,
Even seeing that word now..
Makes the panic rise within me

For they and the security are responsible,
For the majority of the brutal killings,
The ****, the torture, the unthinkable,
People are not even safe when leaving.

They come out at night,
The raid peoples homes,
**** entire families,
While others watch on.

They harass in the streets,
The harass at the borders,
They are everywhere,
Butchering as they are given orders.

The President thinks he was put there by God,
This is nothing shocking I know,
For for Burundi it means a lot,
It means he may stay for ever, death will be all they know.

There are memorials built,
To the many genocides to take place,
Each containing thousands of skulls,
Cracked where the machete went through the face.

Thousands and thousand of skulls lined up,
Of course there are no bodies -
From "Ear to Ear" was how the saying went,
As each head was cut from its body.

It has become so common to find someones head,
Something that for us here would cause fear in itself,
That now in Burundi there are proverbs and sayings,
School children quote wise words from these heads themselves.

Headless bodies float along the river,
Headless bodies dumped in bags with the *******,
A machete taken to the throat and then to the torso,
Ripping flesh, drawing blood, organs pulled out of the body for show.

For this is a living nightmare,
Blood flowing down roads and rivers,
Finding a hand, a head, a liver...
Would make many strong people shiver.

People are literally hacked to death,
Occasionally they are shot,
If I ever found myself in that position
I would outright beg to be shot.

The person I saw die in the video,
Took way more than 10 minutes for sure,
As hit throat was cut, he was stabbed, his skin ripped,
His blood spurted violently across the floor

I refuse to go into more detail than that,
For thats the one that triggered me,
I will never watch it again,
But I do want those in power to see.

Will someone please help Burundi?
I feel I have not done it justice with this poem,
The machete, the blood, the horror...
Please help... we all know who is to blame.

We all know....
Sorry for the graphic nature.  I rarely write poetry not driven by my own situation, but this is one I also cannot ignore :( And its not a very good poem, so apologies.  Hard to express it actually.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2016
i.

my writing is truly one thing, my life another - not
that's a statement clouded in excuses and guilt:
just the claustrophobic macabre -
and so it happens, that every few days i reach
the limit with wrestling the Minotaur -
the time comes when the liver k.o.s the brain
and the brain then starts punching the liver -
it usually stars in the afternoon, e.g. yesterday,
at 3 in the afternoon, a burrowed sense of guilt
comes over, cigarettes are rolled and chain-smoked...
a promise of not painting the front of
the house is the overpowering weight on the heart -
as is an ably bodied father: who, i might
as the source of my writing capacity: the silence -
but the day flows through... the excess nicotine
adds to the shakes, the detox period begins
with a big meal: chinese pork belly in five spice
and other additives, peppers, spring onions
until a thick goo sauce is cooked slowly to thicken...
served with 'it's called egg fly lice, you plick!'
(Uncle Benny, lethal weapon 4) -
the meal is ate as if a ****** ****** - this is
really the point of critically approaching the
concentrated detox - binge of television,
drinking orange squash and smoking -
playing some stupid video game between watching
an even worse movie - before the saga of
x files begins... at 5 a.m. with the most annoying
feline opera by the most annoying ginger cat
begins... the shades are drawn and the hours between
5 a.m. are spent in a quasi somatic state -
the pain in the brain is too strong to allow you
a kipper without the sedative being dragged from
the body: taking sleeping is avoided -
the blinds in the room don't have blackout plastic,
by 6 a.m. a t-shirt is rolled up and put against
the eyes, the eyes adjust to the light until 7 a.m.,
the body gets up and goes downstairs for more
orange squash, but this time breakfast is stomached,
yesterday's leftover rice, fresh eggs scrambled
and mixed with spring onion -
                                                     cigarette, and a daytime
news channel - Victoria Derbyshire -
the main topic of concerns? only 12% of Paraolympic
Rio tickets have been sold, a charity having raised
about £25,000 wants to sponsor Rio's children
to join in the fun... housing shortages in England,
Redbridge council buying social housing in
Canterbury (once a military base) - 7 people living
in one room (the Romanian standard is
14... you have to remember night shifts) -
oh i seen houses like that, i remember one Jew renting
out his house to 20 / 30 Poles before the Union
expanded... paid of his mortgage... no new reality
here for me... the major misdiagnosis of heart attacks
in women on the N.H.S.: a woman ate a curry,
thought it was only a heartburn... boom, two days
later drops in agony... in between the real
results of the detox... sitting...
not ******* out whiskey yellow ***** when there
are barely any toxins in the body... diarrhoea...
up to about 8 times on the toilet - more orange squash,
more cigarettes... then onto the piece the resistance...
the x files... which last up to about the twilight zone
hour of having reached the 24 hour mark of being
awake... one last **** and then shower, and
then doing the laundry (on a sunny day like this,
it would be a shame not to)...
                                                   at noon
tinned mackerel in sunflower oil... brown bread,
all the oil drank... but by the twilight zone hour
a realisation: ****! my headphones are broken!
i've been walking around these streets with those
very depressing sounds of vrroom vrroom...
i know how the old complain about the youth
and their headphones... yes, but you probably
grew with about 10 cars per hour passing your
house back in the day... and too the birds could
be beautiful, and the sound of children's games
and golden laughter... but all the other sounds...
so off to the shop for a very respectable £1.50 pair...
and then the moment when all the sights
on the streets are no longer synchronised with
what i'm hearing, my eyes sharpen and i dance
past the cars and people never bothering to press
the crossing lights on streets: ease the traffic,
ease the traffic... then into the supermarket and
the detox ends... i can go back to sleeping a decent
night... a bottle of Stella... the only thing sexier
on a hot summer's day on the street... good old,
good cold Stella Artois...
then up to another shop for two more beers and
tobacco...
                        after that? magic...
as the title suggests: on a park bench with Ernie -
something more grand than Beckett's waiting
for Godot
... i.e. something resembling a scene from
Patriarch's Ponds, an encounter with
Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz (editor of a highbrow
literary magazine, abbreviated MASSOLIT)
and a young poet Ivan Nikolayich Poniryov -
a few clues to the less knowledgeable parties:
Behemoth ***** and chess, a book that makes
sense of the world interrupted by Herr Woland's
wonderful delights (among many), such
as the notable pandemonium at Ivan Savelyevich
Varenukha's Variety Theatre -
yes very much akin to Hector B.'s:
symphonie fantastique: dream of a witches' sabbath.

ii.

sincerest apologies... the sedative hasn't been bought
yet, and a patient father's invoice for work
done on the construction must be written in tangible
English - in ref. to the uttermost sincerity -
Polski nadal w mej duszy dudni,
                            taki ogrom organów i
                                         bębnów twki -
           że strach pomyślec - czy to wir zamkniętej
historii ludu: czy poczatek gorszych prwad o świecie?
   bo co o zamkniętej historii (skrawku) ludu?
      to przeciez moj dziad'ek w Partii uslugi dawal!
      a kraj podziekowal - i co Prawda to Walesa
   na Florydzie z lwa w zlota rybke sie zamienil.
   (comp. diacritic
                                                       ­                                 pending)

iii.

as i knew, i should have finished this poem on
the principle of ensō - all in one piece -
thus i would have staged what happened on the bench
with Ernest -
                        but after walking to the supermarket
minding my own business and the jokes ensued
about how no one notices, how they know my name
as it's their mascot -
                                   after walking into a world
i found chaos; indeed if i wrote the poem on principle
of ensō, i would have included the phantasmagorical
details of something so simple you could almost cry at it...
the simplicity of it, the fluidity of almost 2 hours
spent in conversation... about what? i'm not telling,
and how was it spoken? i'm not telling either -
let's just they laughed at Ernest's bike, because
it was proper oldie...
                                     i mean, i won't mention the odd
details, but the essence? forget it man!
after writing my father's invoice, and how cut money
on the construction site, blame it Romanians but only
have themselves to blame with their model
of profiteering and that ****** fetish they have
Che's socialism of guerrilla warfare...
                            and the comments in the supermarket,
it just stuck with me about Ernie's bike,
nothing in comparison to the Tour de France's racers
doing up to 50kmh...
                                      it just made me happy to make
a clean bed... and prevent 36 hours awake threshold
glitches of abstraction: black strings and random
square objects popping out of nothing with me in a
variation of nervous startles... Ernest's bike?
an antique, a 1950s Raleigh...
- hard leather seat beneath that modern overcoat?
- yes; no one would even take it if i left it
  outside a shop, they'd probably sell it for parts.
- well, unless someone is smart enough to notice
  a vintage, and tries to restore it,
  buy the vintage green paint and cover the rusty bits.
oh **** it, i can't keep my own company to suit
being happy by saying: ooh, doesn't know a joke,
the happiest he felt after walking out with a stone heart
was making a bed... but to be honest?
psst... i haven't made it in over a month... last night i
was getting cold-heat shivers in the idea of it being *****
enough though i shower everyday... ok, every other day
sometimes, my socks have holes in them, and my
shoes are ripped.
but there's more to this... the bicycle is a pun
of a Heidegger maxim: man is born as many men...
but dies as a single man... imagine how many
influences are entombed in us, the education reformers
to begin with, motherhood tips, cot deaths...
but we die as individual men... so when Ernest said
about the bicycle being only worth spare parts,
i said what Heidegger meant: but i'd take the whole thing
as one.
- how many gears?
- three at the back, one at the front; you see this thing?
- the long tube beneath the seat?
- yeah, when charged it would power up the front
   and back lights.
- oh, i'm used to seeing that thingy-madgit that you'd
   press against the front tire and the principle would be
   the same.
- a dynamo.
- yeah, a dynamo, forgot the name of it.
it started so innocently, i just sat on the bench with my
earphones and two beers and started rolling a cigarette.
- may i invade the bench?
                                               (earphones out of the ears)
- sure.
                and we just sat there, i asking if he minded me
smoking.
- i used to, loved it, esp. after dinner, gave it up 15 years ago.
  then conversations about dogs, family,
                                         and children's games,
          i said
- i'm finding it hard to find people of my generation with
even friendly dynamic of the body: eye contact is gone!
- it's all the fidgeting on those ****** tablets and phones,
when we were kids we used to play marbles,
conkers, hopscotch, so many...
- and we used to draw a racing maze, fill bottle caps
with plasticine and flick them through the maze
(i can't remember if we threw dice to see how many
moves we could make).
  by the time we started talking about the dogs we liked,
and compared them to the dog walkers passing us
   we already forgot who died today: it was Gene Wilder...
the world is mourning him, and we sat there
and the best i could come up with was Richard Pryor.
- dumb animal luck...
- you know how i managed to train my dog to run
  around the park, but come back to me? i used a whistle
  to get the dog to come back and i'd give it a treat.
  until it got the hang of it, i sometimes wouldn't give it
  a treat... other times i would, the point being was
  to teach it both obedience when nothing was given
  and double obedience when something was.
- ever heard of Pavlov? he basically did the same thing,
  but your experiment had coordinates, it was three-dimensional,
  Pavlov's was just two-dimensional, instead of a whistle
  he used a bell... just to stimulate two senses
  as coordinated, the sound of a bell created saliva
  in the dog's mouth, poor dog received treats
  but in the end Pavlov put him in a car with closed
  windows in the middle of summer outside
  of Parliament square; obviously the dog died.
- German shepherd though... i had a friend, naturally
  obedient.
- could walk a German shepherd through Manhattan
  without a leash.
- exactly, not even half a metre away, and when the
  master stops, the dog stops.
(i started thinking, what a great way to invert theology,
in this way from dogs to gods.)
well... i guess there was more, but if i write more
about it, when i'll reflect upon this chance meeting of
complete strangers as more insightful than it
already was...
                         he managed to climb back on his bike
with a slight problem after his hip-replacement
operation... at 74 such things break... and he rode off
and i sat there trying to think about what the hell
i was thinking after watching the x files to find
something insightful...
                                        well, i got one thing,
i mentioned it before... i could never have believed
that adults created the most nightmarish version
of hide (negate) & seek (doubt) -
                   i thought it was just as bad as
  truth & dare with religion - with that motto:
          the Koran: this is the truth, and the only truth...
so truth or dare? i dare you to deny it!
                    can i just doubt it? you know, not be
a definite unbeliever, but an indefinite quasi-believer?
well doubt in the stated quasi-believer is wavering,
isn't it? the two of the most beautiful games of
innocence, morphed into these gargantuan abominations.
blushing prince Nov 2018
girlworm, you grab a wrist like you've known modesty in the shyness of a bare feeling gripped tight on the one offering it
tightrope fingers falling into the spaces of unspoken territory, slipping into familiar qualms like the worn lipsticks that fits the grooves of my lips like an object of my affection
knowing the contour of what i'm never aware of
anxieties creep like an overgrown lawn
these fears personifying into antsy women invading my kitchen telling me that there's not enough ventilation and the stove is on leaking gas into the baby lungs of a young smoker
and when i begin to argue they give both a look of sympathy and disgust as they say "oh child you drown so easily"
so i sit chewing my nails as i count the birds outside flying back and forth from their post as if they can't remember where they're going towards or if there's something that could possibly pull them elsewhere
my mind swirls in the smoothie of a plastic cup that sticks to the coffee table, the rings of different bottles painting circles for me to memorize again
my paradise sits with the roughness of his knuckles and the ambiguity of eyes that could know everything and i would set fire to the stars inside because of the jealousy that grows from pretty things being smoldered under skin
when i begin to lose my person, pale and shivering i go towards it
empty stomached and ready to be buried in the clothes of her
that i can imagine becoming the consistency of yogurt in my lap
kissing back my tremors as i lift up her hair from curious shoulders
dry-heaving the importance of the cheeks that feel warmer as they settle on hands that are brought together as if in deep prayer and i know i will collect myself again one day
girlworm, you're a swarm in my chest and i am me
Hayley Neininger Oct 2012
It would behoove my grade school bible teacher to know, that I have finally found Jesus. He sits alone at my neighborhood bar and in a fashion that is not unlike the line at a New York City Jewish deli shop, he takes questions. Ticket number 347, “What kind of man will I marry?” ticket number 7623,”When will the end of days come?” My bible study class oh, how they would shake inside their buttoned blouses with envy that I was the one to find Jesus, between drink, between cigarettes, with beer and peanut excrements on bottoms of his sandals. Handing out answers like pork cutlets to mouths that haven’t eaten in years because they have filled up on the appetizer that is stomach churning worry. The gutless and gutful sin of having problems without the hope of solutions that shakes believers so hard in the night they fall off their beds and land conveniently on their knees. They wake up in the morning with bruises and scratches, another problem but this time the solution is simple. A mixture of peroxide and cotton-blend Band-Aids, hugging tight stinging cuts until the next day when the Band-Aid is loose and falls off into meat grinders making sausage links you don’t even have the appetite for. I found Jesus in a bar. When I see him I remember Sunday school and how I stood up on the sweaty palm pulpit and yelled, “He is not real!” and now confronted with my falseness I wonder if I was wrong to try to cool off the fire in my belly that was unanswered questions by answering them myself. I took a ticket. I stood in line. I waited as the knot my grade school teach tied with my intestines tightened itself and pulsated with the influx of another beer and growing bowel movements that only made me more unsure of the source of pain in my belly. I watched as Jesus nodded politely in between admissions of sins and proposals of betterment like his neck was the waist of a Hawaiian ******* the dashboard of a Colorado trucker, or like aged fast-food wrappers that tilt forward with the inertia caused by strategically placed speed bumps.  Each nod, a mini-bow that seemed to contradict his devotion to his divinity and his authority over the bleeding kneed and hungry stomached servants. I am the last ticket before the last call and I take advantage of both. Being this close I can see sweat stains under his arms, my mother would say they are extra halos. “And your question, my child?” he says, and I think I should have been more prepared or at least not stuttered like the elementary school student stuck playing Pluto in the graduation play. “Was I wrong that day on the pulpit?” It was rudely put. I was embarrassed. He said, “Did it ease the hunger pain of uncertainty?” It did. “Then no, you answered your own question.” He seemed drunk at that point when he said that, so I trusted it as a sober man’s thoughts. Then I walked away full and knees unscathed.
Not a poem, just a work in progress.
CR Mar 2014
I hear your voice echo on the walls of the Tiffany box—

hello hello
hello

hello

—with that southern-belle cadence
you spoke with always, like when you
told us we never had to knock, just
come in through the garage

on my graduation day I opened it for the first time
little silver teardrop on a little silver chain
delicate, like all of you, except your fingers
delicate, like the line you’re walking now

your robin’s-egg antique pickup gathering dust as I am miles away
sheepdog going deaf, legs shaky when she stands

I only allotted for that one loss this year.

on new year’s morning when we all
stomached the black eyed peas for tennessee good will
hung over and sweet-heavy with cinnamon rolls
and decadent, permanent, big hardy love
I spent my wish on the usual

and hey, maybe a couple more years for the dog.

hello hello

hello

hello

hello?


your lilting voice echoes every time I put on that necklace
and feel you, savor you around my neck for every
wine-drunk dinner and every nantucket porch photograph—


god if I would have known to wish on that
Hayley Neininger Apr 2013
It would behoove my grade school bible teacher to know that I have finally found Jesus.
He sits alone at my neighborhood bar,
and in a fashion that is not unlike the line
at a New York City Jewish deli shop,
he takes questions.
Ticket number 347. “What kind of man will I marry?”
Ticket number 7623. ”When will the end of days come?”
My bible study class, oh,
how they would shake inside their buttoned blouses with envy
that I was the one to find Jesus,
between drinks, between cigarettes,
with beer and peanut excrements on bottoms of his sandals.
Handing out answers like pork cutlets
to mouths that haven’t eaten in years
because they have filled up on the empty appetizer
that is stomach-churning worry:
the gutless and gut-full sin,
of having problems without the hope of solutions
of having questions with silent answers
that it shakes believers so hard in the night they fall off their beds
and they land conveniently on their knees.
They wake up in the morning with bruises and scratches,
external hurts treated with
a mixture of peroxide and stuck-on-you band-aids
that hug tight their stinging cuts until the next day
when the Band-Aid losses its glue and falls off
when they land in meat grinders turning out sausage links
that no one even has an appetite for.

I found Jesus in a bar.

When I see him
I remember Sunday school
and how I stood up on the sweaty palmed stained pulpit and yelled,
“He is not real!”
and now that I am confronted with my falseness
I wonder was I wrong to try to cool the fire of questions unanswered
by answering them myself.

I took a ticket.
I stood in line.
I waited.
The knot my Sunday school teacher tied with my intestines
years ago tightened itself and pulsated
with the influx of another beer
and growing bowel movements that only made me more unsure
of the source of pain in my belly.

I watched
as Jesus nodded politely in between
admissions of sins and proposals of betterment
a gentle, deliberate nod
like his neck was the waist of a Hawaiian girl
on the dashboard of a Colorado trucker,
or maybe like aged fast-food wrappers that tilt forward with the inertia
caused by strategically placed speed bumps.
Each nod, a mini-bow that seemed to contradict
his devotion to his divinity and his authority
over the bleeding-kneed and hungry-stomached servants.

I am the last ticket before the last call and
being this close I can see sweat stains under his arms;
my mother would say they are extra halos.
“And your question, my child?” he says, and
I think I should have been more prepared
or at least not have stuttered like the elementary school student
one stuck playing the under appreciated Pluto in the graduation play.

“Was I wrong that day on the pulpit?”
It was rudely put. I was embarrassed.
He said, “Did it ease the hunger pain of uncertainty?”
He knew it did. So did I.
“Then no, you answered your own question.”
He seemed drunk when he said that,
so I trusted it as a sober man’s thoughts.
Then I walked away full
with knees unscathed.
Joseph Valle Oct 2012
Beyond the horizon lies silence:
empty-handed and empty-torsoed.

Home no longer entangles our motions of gold and twirling,
so quickly so that our spins become perception itself.
Our hair, previously matted, now catches on nothing.
It flows freely against a wind blown inward,
vacuumed through open windows
on opposing sides of the kitchen,
though and carrying the smell
of freshly baked apple pie, crisply crusted,
a thing so sweet and tasty
that tongue and nostrils beg for more
whipped cream and palate warmth.

They open their mouths and plead,
panting on their knees,
on edge of upper lip
fearing not the fall
for something that would just,
for Heavens sake,
give them something,
anything,
of indescribable necessity.
"Oh please, just another bite!"
dribbles out of lungs
until even the smallest of morsels
are licked clean from plate,
desperately, empty,
in front of all,
for all to see.

The world is everything that is the case.
When it is all eaten up
yummed and stomached fully,
it will be the next green field,
the next orchard on the horizon
with golden apples ripening at sunset
against orange and purple perfect skies
to fulfill that longing for Next.
Madeline Jan 2012
The cancer ate my sister's heart,
her liver, her bones,
and now I'm alone
with my sick-stomached guilt
and my never-told confession.
Remember, we were younger. Our neighbor's sister
came home with a ****** nose and you turned to me,
"What would you do if that was me?"
6 year old certainty, "I'd **** them,"
swelling with 6 year old bravado,
"I'd ****
anyone
who hurt you."
Our mother was appalled and our father told me not to say things I didn't mean, but
I meant it then.
And sweetheart, I mean it now.
I can't **** the cancer, because it's already killed you.
I can't **** the husband, because he's already dead
(left you widowed and heartbroken, my only sister,
and I am to blame).
And so I'm standing here, looking at the
jagged-box-shaped rocks so far far far below,
and I'm thinking
(stacking box, after box, after box
in her empty-floored apartment),
and I'm wishing
(to the crier of sorrows I've never known)
and I'm breathing
(if only he hadn't been the adulterer)
and I'm jumping
(with me).
Phillip Knight Oct 2016
Scattered cracked black pepper
The Remnants of a final meal
Lie as ashen memories of taste
Lurking reminders of that which has been
Transferred from cheep china to the lips of a lover
Upon the cusp of a final goodbye
The lingering heat left only to serve as a slate to clean.
How every bite savoured a crunch of hope
Leaving room only for reality
A dessert that cannot be stomached
falsified sweetness to not be considered 'the finer things'
When taste has changed to exotic flavouring
Fork etchings and caveman paintings in sweet chilli;
Timeline a love that can not be erased
It seeps into the cracks of tomorrow's aftertaste
Surrounding the words upon which exhaled breath proclaims
I miss you.
In silence as the sound of a solitary bowl creates no further filling nor satisfaction
Last nights plates remain within the cupboard
The flavour of every meal they have ever seen remain
It is their history
Whatever the future may be
Claire Waters Feb 2013
new
The hill tops are far enough away
That you never hold your hands to the window
But you’re secretly hoping they’ll grab you, run
Under tables and over the green couch of the
Woman standing alone at the window
On a snowy day, so go
But always come back again

Your body is made of half hearted attempts at
Scrubbing tiles and then ripping them out
To lay new boards, to secure every crack
Adhesives and bubble wrap
You’ll need it when you’re moving everywhere
Shaking like a leaf
So place the tiles back together
As if nothing had ever rotted in here

Armed to the teeth with excuses
Still looking for answers
Yet calling it useless
Stop fighting and leaning on your crutch
But i want to get off this ride
It’s costing far too much
And I’m not interested in luck

So I breathe quietly as we leave the hospital
Because I should have known better
And instead of less, you have become
More than can be stomached
You take up space like a deer at the crest of
Grass beside the edge of the highway
And you just want to turn into this beautiful person
So she can get her money’s worth
This beautiful animal

It wraps around a telephone pole
As if it were just sleeping on the curb
Baby nausea, baby *****, baby lay down on the pavement
And when you close your eyes
It’s nothing but the gentle imprint
Blades of grass leave on your skin

The bones are barbed
The organs are on display
We don’t make mistakes here
We just slip about the day
I refuse to look directly at headlights
Sarina Mar 2013
This hotel serves green tea on golden platters
I bite into it like liquid has a spine,
circular piston cradling a ladder to my tongue
the giant beanstalk, I sleep here and awake
somewhere else with morning meals
already stomached in a stasis –

just how ****** lucidly bled the rugged hand
he forcefully bled under her summer dress:
I am here, I am her with you
as I hike teapots and escape each new room.

For the next, it has squeaky cots –
you heave me to the breakfast bar prior to sun
so I do not whine when heat hits my face,
there is not tea here, bottles of Coke are okay:
a slow content because they’ll hear if we churn.

And unlocking the stall from an exterior view,
it is the wall that looks attractive for one
lollylike little girl, the old man warm & ugly,
insomnia only goes when he wants to fly south.
Sofia Narvaiza May 2018
filaments burst into
eveningsong

deepthroated embers
the spreadsheets are tender
gestured compliance

(redwhite&blue glare; 10 storeys below ; and we are not safe)

          'just get done with it'
insincerity is requisite -
forced insouciance

          'we need to go, we are not safe'
rottten dignity can only be stomached for too long
but his sister is only twelve.

deceit, dulcet, you have gone wild
better you, just not the child -
'babe, wait, I’m coming'

tears tickle the back of the tongue
mellifluous moan regurgitated in turn.

filaments burst into
eveningsong -
- the police is coming, the police is coming.
a poem about how a satyromaniac ******* shattered the life of his lover, and his sister.
Craig Reynolds Jul 2010
Lately when it rains-
Your articles on the floor.
The whining pacing dog,
relieves himself, what can't be stomached.
No, I don't think he likes your work.
Copyright 2010
b for short Sep 2014
In this state of mind,
I swallow my pride like I’m born to do it.
**** it back and let its bitter bite
coat my tongue and slide down
sides of my pretty pale throat,
caressing each of the guilty lumps
on its way to the below.

When it’s been stomached,
I thread my golden needle
on the first try.
I press my lips together
to pierce and sew them shut.
Crisscrossing over, under,
around, and through.
The tinny blood tastes
much less bitter than my pride.
I pull tight, ending the job
with its little uniform knots.

But certainty is key.
So I break each and every finger
on my small, able hands.
Once the most amazing
and interesting of instruments,
now hang crooked and limp;
however, as I watch them bruise and swell,
a deep pink to a fresh blue-violet,
I am wholly relieved.

None will be spoken,
None will be written.
Here, safe in my man-made silence.
© Bitsy Sanders, September 2014
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2017
it was really only about writing a haiku's worth of words.

a bit like listening to an atheist on the internet,
after spending 2 years reading kant's critique,
to find 3 arguments:
- ontological,
- cosmological argument
-  teleogical-physics...
and they're all refuted by the author as actually
leading to a "proof"...
and then to later find in his work that he simply
believes... or as i will state in my *******-esque
jargon... that he had the same emotional capacity
to comply with a woman in the grand adventure
of life, as i did, or do...
        there's a cheaper word to use to just say
for per se reason other than *****...
        atheism is just that...
                           that thing... really has the emotional
capacity of a gnat... oh look... no silent g...
               so three argument by kant,
all seemingly pointless: because we like kings to
exist and be "delusional" by the concept...
         of a god/s...
                               as to say: when did we stop
in being unable to relate? oh right... when we "got together"...
    fixed sayings, fixed meanings,
          i wish i could have stomached a relationship
with a woman... but then again: i wasn't too bright
to catch-up on being ambiguous...
       well... a woman explained it to me thus,
given the ******* profession...
       man has to be promiscous type
       so a woman can play her role as *amibuity
;
no wonder man got bored and started to philosophise /
love of love - you really want to say loaf to loathe
and then see a V pop up...
           or at least that's what he said, when he got
bored of living within the capacity of a refrigerator
and being prompted by some hunt for affection...
spices... teasing, sniffing ashes...
            you never realise that the woman is an
ambiguity, and that man the promiscuity...
take that poetry... rhyme debukt... words that could
be echo... lying side by side.
   too late, doing the elvis aha or ahum or
ahahahum and then having a shower -
so he really did debunk the french theory of
the english stiff upper-lip?          

alternatively, some Pollockesque *******.

from kant giving his three arguments
for even trying to prove god to exist:
- ontological, for, but rather from
the basis of how you behave...
- the cosmological argument ...
- physico-teleogical (fizyko-teologicznego)
   / teleogical-physics...
oh look... a θ particle... must be sub-atomic
physics... since why wouldn't i
make the spelling mistake of writing teological?
   must be θeology... it's that crux
of digested syllables: tele- -ogical / te- -leo -g...
            te- -le- -ology?
tell a leo he's an aquarius?

and he thus concludes in his mini-novel
of easy reading session in
transcendental methodology
that all the three tiers of arguments are
without a scientific argument to be even
attempted...
    it's not that the result might be unproven,
or left like a barren desert
that asks for as much rain, as it does for hope...
he just argues that the three categories of
the mode of question attempted are deviod of
   any final overcoming sigh or sight to marvel at,
and states that the questions prefigure
a complete negation of asking them, in the first place,
what heidegger later calls: a throwing
into, or: a happening - that's trully necessary,
with any arguments as derelict houses;

or is that just in english, the germanic prefix
self-, that later ends up nothing but a cartwheel?
that's how they put it: self-help,
self-employment... self-confidence...
      what's that? motivation for a cyborg?

those are hefty things to consider,
given they are structured a bit like itemising
an atom: electrons (ontology) i.e.
in high-school they tell you electrons have
orbits, at university they tell you they are
clouds... then you sorta lose the plot
when they tell you that they don't behave
like clear units, but like quanta...
like life and death: now you see me, now you don't
type of "trick"...

thus

cruxing on 1, or working from 1...
of what can be said of the unison...
clearly i am not speaking unison, given that i'm working from
a bias of solitude... is it all conforming to a togetherness,
or is it just moving in the many diadem directions
looking awkward when dancing?

it doesn't matter: the language written when drinking
and fasting...

         atheism, having reached the end of kant's
critique, simply tells me of the emotional content of a person,
it's nothing too complicated,
                  it's an emotive construct,
   you have different emotional labyrinths for atheists
as you have for theists...
            some do things openly, lend themselves to
submission... others protest against such
juxtaposition of the body... since they are not gratifying
the "sacrifice" of women, who make themselves
prostate before the ritual...
   sound about right?
                       it must sound much much simpler:
if there was no phallus for a woman to prostate herself
there would be no god for man to do likewise...
          well... wouldn't you think that? esp. these
days with the pronoun war, the unearthing of the nag
hammadi library and it's obvious silent insolence
to be spread and firmly established...
the fact that some people actually own libraries
in their own personal space... and feminism?
    
let's call it a symbiosis...
   the difference between an atheist and a theist / deist
(by now, the close proximity of saying the two
words makes no sense, given the thesaurus and synonyms) -
at best, i can only see an atheist as someone
with an emotional construct that cannot accommodate a woman,
paradoxal: given kant...
who had the emotional capacity to be a theist,
but then able to translate it into having a spouse...

if it really is a case of / for atheism
the person will not speak plain sprechen...
    he will provide "looking behind the scenes"
of something akin to autism, the posh word is actually
all theory based: solipsism...

i really don't think actual atheists have the emotional
capacity to inscribe into their heart a word from a woman,
to have a heart capable for a woman's bloated
over-burdening O and A in biography.

atheism (a-      -the              and no ism)
   is like living with the left eye being unable to synchronise
with your right eye... it's not a case of being without
god... it's being without a woman...
                   a woman is like gravity,
it orientates a man, makes him do things...
            a woman is but gravity,
                           you fall into place as a man,

i don't know how much kant too pleasure from the feelings
he had with that she-devil he invented up there,
in the celestial library of licking out anuses...
   there really isn't a better way to probe the matter...
not after i spent such a long time

reading his three-tier argument, to only be rewarded with
the fact that he still said, at the end of it:
i believe.
                 who does that to a man?
           someone who will later laugh and say:
better you invested your time in some darling Clemency,
or June, or something that might be of use...
something that might make you sing akin to eric
clapton: wonderful tonight...
      it would actually help doing what i do if
i didn't have an artistic transcendentalism to back the argument
up with... testing the nerve and the part of me that
likes going to the toilet gym for a bit of sitting yoga...
alas... it's not there...

  the bane of living in england in the 21st century
compared to living in poland in the 20th century...
men went to the army for 3 compulsory years
  after graduating from school aged 21... or 19...
anyway... later than in current england, when you can
******* aged 16...
                 what a mistake to have entered university...
i'll never stop slapping myself for having
made such a mistake...
      
as of those who believe in gods, we also believe
     in being titans: basically at war with ourselves;
having written that, i'm going to dread having
to reread the rest i wrote, for typos in the excess of being
drunk.... and actually listening to eric clapton...
ugh! what's that word? that americanism?!
it's so nasal i don't even know how to spell it:
poodle / coo d and the plural e? sounds like ease,
or thereabouts.
Elaenor Aisling Aug 2021
This is a poem for the anger
I keep coiled around my ribs
Because I was taught that anger is an absinthian poison
That will rise like bile in the throat and must be swallowed.
And I realize you may read this
And you may be angry
But I realize with each crunch of bone
I must give myself the space
To uncoil in this way.

I am angry
That you made me a captive reservoir
for the bitter droughts you refused to drink yourself.
You were iron-stomached after years of punches,
that I understood.
Open handed, I wanted to be the exception
But holy palmer’s kiss
Was still not enough to let me cross the threshold.
You are the locked room in the house that the children are forbidden
Only small glimpses between hinges
Of your fear poisoned self
Huddled in a corner, vomiting apologies.

I am angry
for believing I could have lain beside you
every night for the rest of my life
And not starved to death from loneliness.

I am angry
for ignoring how I dimmed each time I waited for you
to want me, to miss me, to think of me,
to ask me to come into your arms,
to find me fascinating, enchanting
to tell me you needed me;
to betray anything that proved I was more than convenience,
A drink that served itself on a silver platter,
Asking to be drunk.
If you only knew how luminous I could be
when loved well.


I am angry
That I still hope you will be waiting by my door after work
because you realized how you starved me
And now you’ve set a banqueting table, a banner over me is love
But I know you will never do this.
I know you cannot do this.
I am angry
that I miss only the space you left,
That I have not yet been able to close the gap
And walk away from your memory.
Julian Sep 2020
Loony warbles creeping like a shark bite tucked into the night
I saute the solution of aghast has-been epigones filibustered brunt and brittle by hemlock aspirations of curated fright
Temulentia recognizes the sane from the inane and tragedy from travesty
Flowder imaginary crackjaw Samson skulls of donkeys dissuaded by varnished agony
Skipping through punctuated times the sheepish will profane me with beleaguered notions of time
Blind to the orbit of the eccentric zeitgeist of hopscotch chockablock cohorts deliverance finds no crime
Goose noose Howard Hughes wooden stilts of the gargantuan swerve
Only the alpenglow of hijacked jujitsu spar against redintegration of adversaries with penniless nerve
Sifting through the silt
I barnstorm the ire of glistened tribunes plagued with insipid promenades of set-up still-frame guilt
Enemies became friends deranged like roosters fleecing hens of henpecked anomaly grafted and built
The wasms of moribund prose absconding with latticework of lacrosse in vogue
Temperatures sweltering the quaky schleps of Maverick moons never more rogue
Flashbang grimace parched with slivers of an acclimated post-modern ******
Intimates the intimacy of the flock decorates bolted balderdash too winsome to deprive an earnest plea for peace and please
I conquer the wallbaggers of novantique with the temulentia of mystique
Rarely remanded by the cul-de-sacs of Giants demolishing social rust with a deteriorated sweep
Trip the jostled rhymes of confluency of rhapsody and rapture consummated by nickel gambols by design
Ridiculing the contumely of ragged turgid Reservoir Dogs canine to the itch of foggy moonshine
Yet I dance to the rhythm of a jockey mechanical when devoured by incarceration flimsy with attrition
Lurid livid welters sparkle in damsel jokes of remission against Back to Mine sequence counting Dracula by division
Outtatime in this march of Thriller sublime
Cornered by the otiose Chipotle of musty mangers of egalitarian grime
Blandished by shattered paradigm parallax in circumlocution by mirrored irony
Livid are tepid latticeworks of rax and sedition frozen by limpid “Teachers” piracy
Never was once forever in the dormant daydream
Seamstresses waltzed in autumn woods knowing Hoffa firebrands of wasted Scream
Bloodshot swank is a rackrent of cineaste rakes of dominions of half-baked dishes of disco zenkidu double-take
Limbering languidly through the procession of sectarians seceding from agitprop monopoly
Boarding the Ticket to Ride train authentic never squirmy with illusions of the fake
Slackened Eels slapstick the brackish bracket of appeasement in appeals
Confluence of formula endangered by euphoria that Limerick question is a grubbed dicey deal
Fortunate summit dreaded nadir
All that resides in throbbing hearts tethered like Four Squares littered with boondoggles of fear
Showcase the Shakespeare flown through rickets of balderdash as Bald Eagles the mascot of frisk and wretch
Time to own the Pony Show charade of a mimicry of dilettantes brave in the cradles of antiquity knowing rarely the mummification of symbolism of thirty years of slavery to hallow one veranda upon a kissed by an ***** rose starvation grave
Looted by the pernicious bootstraps of those computed
We ring true the epitaphs of Pine City Stage on the rundles of the marginalia that overflows with Ire refuted embarked on solid cremation for sagacity in tatters of rage denuded
Punctilious liars edgy in facetious gambols in Joker menace flushing hygiene for starlet screen
Malingering on quaffs of sedate aplomb yet to preen
Scrabble superlunary bastions of gabble and garb
The gawsy preternatural séance rather nimble to Duck the Badgers weaponized barb
Fustilugs congregate around ashen rot of cacophony marveling at temerity in contortion for epiphany
Episodic marvel of two lynched paragons of sweltered margins ribald at witwanton persiflage in a campaign for suffrage.
Defected fire crackling with the joy of cacophony
Relishing every maskirovka pedigree of rackrent sovereignty
Slipshod fustilugs burrow bilkey in doctored Hubbard hubs smoking gun for dwarfed sins of blinded light staring Poison Ivy Appetite for Destruction mainlined by profligate amphigory a splintered shard
Complexion fulminates AIM with scourges of backtrack upon backwater miracles of Lake Placid confusion
Envoys to scuttled aliens marauding like they own my street in distinct slender confection even as the odd berates my diffuse dissuaded cineaste direction
I slummock with the slurvian alveolate bonism of prized poverty for Pine City Stages a delope of antelopes torn asunder by the athletes of formidable retention
Minute Mayday MaiDEN curls the forelock of a tucked hedged blush of no greater stupidity than a furrow of piglets in the pews of lyrical surgery
Slowpoke in acerbic flavor I countermand the denizens of urged regency decapitated by orbit if not by ******
Consummated on every brain that God himself believes that liberation can entrust
Enthusiastic chameleon of Mojo Grooves for the languid auditorium of a Revered time behooved to the gallops of threshed figurative sloppy slush
Funded by killjoys emaciated by slippery lies on craven deposits of sedimentary inertia quelled by amusement, grounded into Orange Crush
Urbacity is the usucaption of illegitimate ******* filigrees Armed to the Teeth but respecting the Tree
Winsome is obligatory for a Winslet flippant elder quorums contemn as a malapropism for syndicated armory in chuckling White Broncos evading a Houston test in the gricers of Autumn Heaven lingering with germane plight only reserved for luxury at its best
Aborning sidereal alpine brevity is a scry of evidentiary might of totemic dissolution alchemy so bright
That the chalkboard erasure is a confabulation against simultagnosia in acidic Phuture Bound sight
Because Mission Impossible cavorts with the exotic frictions of the nefarious Biocyte
Trailblazing heydays memorializing an Alpha Bet for September 2004 maydays
Of the scriptural series of mishaps and misadventures for barley grain in deadstock Indiana Jones wayward wayspays
Time to count the Dracula of venom drenched from the aceldama of gritty Gurley lies of a city yet loved because too many oases are despised
But Westwood becomes Eastwood with ******* Grotto as the centripetal but monogamous prize
Hot Tub Time Machine soaring among the cognoscenti of burlesque organized ***** crimes of lullaby Manzarek disguise
So toast to the dead captain of the psychedelic fountain pen of revolution Lorraine Baines fields arise
Time is an adventure that blinks only secondary of truce rather than guarded sheepish mustache of panmixia in genocide widely guillotined without scruple for newsy folksy prejudice on gallywow pride
Yet the sentinels of dirigisme anoint the Caesar of Nostradamus infamy of a Deep Impact symphony
Heard by asteroids and asterisks lurking with Thriller to the end of time known only as enumerated infinity
But enough petty battles squandered on sinking U-Boats torpedoed like ransacked crambazzles from Tucker belligerent with a “War” burnt heated calentures of scorching torches of rigged Scarface cockroach
Because there is no elementary Zion that is chosen to emerge in the barnstorm of flukenhague fluke
Time to rest my laurels on the depredation of safety
Reminding with a glower that saving our city is not an Autopilot of Buccaneer Brady
For the Grand Master Architect is princely in Jerusalem but heralded in Mecca because for too many storks all they want is another baby.
And my answer is that my Terrier Bonds are shaken and stirred by many a yes, probably and maybe in that order of illusion shaken into cocktails of cobblestone gravy
The Soy Sauce livid on mistake exerts a dementia on attrition to enthuse Kansas City joy all too crazy
Swimming in an ocean of Carly Ray Jepsen "Calling Your Name" Queen of Highways' Titanic fortress of Armada music beating the Village People silly over their gabbles against Navy
Born and Raised in a Colorado Springs cage I am snake eyes without crafty disguise  in authenticity to a Patriot Point Break Heist  of the probable doubt of the Zany Billy Zane entrapment of prestige gone madcap with Raiders of never the ambitious but always the lazy
So meditate on my word crimes as I elude detection as Hawthorne Nevada alights with 200 earthquakes in two days in Gray design
Wow what a marvel it is to always know that  you are always Stayin' Alive as the splinter of time capitalizing on sensual crestfallen vibes of a pendulum tsunami "Us and Them" saw wavy
And to the 1776 practical joke that gouges Samson even when thousands of Philistines get crushed in delope
Consider this a declaration of war against your pathetic screwball maze of fog to make a sane man livid with a blushed bravery too fraternal to old craven owls of cruelty beyond the maze of convolution of Istanbul collectively shrouded by lies no stomached demise would appreciate for being gatekeepers of terminus exorbitantly hazy
ahmo Sep 2015
I am bound by
two brick strings
and a
receipt
of red ink.

There is nothing
about the future that presents this.
Only that which has occurred
to a stomached stirred
preventing any glimpse of bliss.

I'm only calling
the names in the distance.

There's a shift of relevance
and it's delicate.

Those who can't record
the revolution
are too busy
lighting the rooftops
ablaze.
briannapastor Sep 2014
One shot down an empty stomach.
The first disappointment of the night I am about to begin
in attempt to keep you away.
The ever-growing crowd around me is louder
with each fleeting, blurry moment.
But ever so quiet when my mind can't hear anything
other than
"I love you,
I will never leave you."

Second shot down an empty stomach.
A question at whether this is a race against myself (or others,
joining in on this heartbreak habit),
or if it's becoming a routine.
Each breath, getting more difficult than the last
to swallow and digest;
When my breaths were already cut in half when you left.

Third shot down an empty stomach.
I am not much of a drinker, usually, but tonight I have decided
that I shall be. I can be anything I want tonight.
My chronic numbness starts to stir about as I feel the crowd.
It's becoming deeper;
So many kind people around me (buying me shots, as my eagerness exceeds),
Or are they all just like you?

Fourth shot down an empty stomach.
Not at all am I used to this, but I needed something different;
to hold me over just for tonight.
I didn't need any of this to know there's something missing.

Fifth shot down an empty stomach.
I get up from the spinning room to use the bathroom.
Still, as I look into the mirror,
My face bore that of twelve-thousand land mines;
and my skin, paler than ever.
And I smile.

Sixth shot down an empty stomach.
I realize I am destroying myself even more so.
But it feels--it feels--like something,
which is enough for me, for tonight,
Just to pull through.

Seventh shot down an empty stomach.
"I think you should take it easy now, sweetheart,"
An old man I barely knew.
"I can tell you're hurting, but this isn't the way. It isn't.
Being like this won't help you out of that prison."

I walk myself home.
I lay in bed and remember the time I walked into the bar,
with an empty stomach, enjoying it.
It wasn't my initial choice to leave,
but yours, was.

And I remember that even harder with seven shots
down a two month-long empty stomached, 91 pound,
broken soul.

And I still remember your face when you loved me so.
Sean Fitzpatrick Dec 2013
All the almonds in the jar
Lightly salted, butter by the bar
Garlic in the pantry, bread on the stove
Tomato's in the oven
Kitchen overload

How do I eat food?
Food?
Food.
A mumble jumble bumble of
Living feud, oil me up
I'm about to dive in because I have no other choice.
Yup, this is a wall.
So empty stomached my eyes sink in
Pretty soon I might stink thin
Fast.
Fast?
How do I fast healthily?

Mental overload
Time is worn thin
What silly shadows dance just out of sight?
Did I just see that?
Is reality just a fabric's delight?
Oh, I'll please me, it was just the light.
arielle Jan 2017
your voice sounds like hospital discharge papers,
like the elevator tone on the top floor of a 20-story building,
like hallelujah at a pastor’s wedding,
like my mother winning custody in october.
i don’t know what love is,
i only know that love is four letters short of it’s synonym, intimacy.
four letters short of fondness, yearning.
i know the human heart beats 115,200 times per day.
combined, we are 230,400 heart beats.
combined, we are traumas,
ten finger nails,
shattered glass in the kitchen,
one hundred baby prayers,
and too many sympathies.
where do you want to leave your scars tonight,
your place or mine?
they can sleep on the couch.
i’ll make eggs in the morning.
i don’t know what love is,
but when my baby niece was bellied in my sister, she was kicking, and kicking, and even when the bruises surfaced,
we called this good.
sometimes love leaves marks to show signs of life,
stomached and not yet born.
like this-
like you.
it's been awhile since i've posted, so here's this
Richie Vincent May 2016
Today we have just scratched the surface
Here lies your hopes and dreams
Mary Magdalene would merely laugh at me
Meadows of chloroform and chemical winds bypass my every thought but then again
Maybe I am not a disaster and maybe this is just a test

The strong willed and strong stomached gasp at the sight of this
What treachery is love and why is it not forbidden
What lovely tragedy, oh, what a comedy
You crave and thrive on drama and you are so two-faced
Even Jesus Christ is fooled

I am but a morsel lacking morals towards the monstrosities and the ill mannered
Flying high on the backs of the enemy
Laughing despicably
Uncontrollably

Gasping for every breath
Drowning in what seems to be nothing besides oxygen
I am a train wreck
I am a car crash

My fumes will spread near and far
Not as far as I'd like them to
But far enough to make the world know
That I am here and suffering

Please let me off easy
I'll do anything
Please let me off easy


Broken, beaten, battered, battled
Bestowed on top of the highest mountain
The clouds are my escape and I pray that I never have to return home

What is life without a little bit of adventure
What is a nightmare without a little bit of terror


Life is a thunderstorm and I am a chain-link fence
It was all very shocking at first
At least I am used to it by now
David Hilburn May 12
Catch a word in service
Secrets of vows, autonomy
Add seldom, for a world's meant gird
See the rainbow, in the sky, want need

Wasn't never...?
Solitude in the audacity
Of a sun's ray, a rancor
For a lived same, that said affinity?

Simple nativity
Honor and homage
With a kiss, stomached liberty
Has come and gone, with silences wages

Grown to the point
Poise is an outward favor
Lime, flowers, and the winds winding joy
Has the time, to understand a wishes flavor

Soap, with your name, on it
Hadding the excess, the language
Of superiority, is worth the wit?
Like lips of creation, heiring works of times entourage...
Tale of the salamander? See, the waiting spell love...
CR May 2013
yellow-not-gold library lights far off
dizzy circles and the truth
you saw the wrong direction
and I saw the door
and everybody saw it coming
but you and I valiantly didn't for longer
than the weak-stomached
didn't we
Prabhu Iyer Dec 2018
There staring at us bare is this truth -
Don’t window-dress it, friend,
this world is indeed of suffering made:

Birth is suffering,
And growing up,
Friendship is suffering,
And love and loss,
Time an affliction and
Ageing

There is a kernel of sorrow concealed in joy
Victory and defeat are two sides of a coin

We rise to fall and fall to weep

The rich man sleeps in his mansion on the hills
Because a urchin is awake empty stomached
Sweeping the street
A full belly here is a meal
Snatched from the hands of a child somewhere

We conscript and send to deaths young men and women
Ugly and blighted is ok as along as
we profit

And so we go seeking a moments joy
In this world of suffering

Face it bold don’t conceal it in hope
The sad truth of our suffering world

seek the roots of suffering deep
XIII Nov 2017
If I loved you a little less
I wouldn't have cried over your farewell message
I wouldn't have thought of regret
I wouldn't have thought of the days without you as a waste

If I loved you a little less
I wouldn't have thought of giving you forgiveness
Or seeing you again face to face
Nor talking to you casually as if nothing happened

If I loved you a little less
It wouldn't have been painful seeing you talk to him
I wouldn't have smiled as if I felt nothing
I wouldn't have felt glee when you turn your phone's mode to airplane

If I loved you a little less
I wouldn't have felt anxious as the end gets nearer
I wouldn't have felt the urge to hug you closer
I wouldn't have asked that little favor

If I loved you a little less
I wouldn't have stared at your lips
And asked for that one final kiss
I wouldn't have felt my love was being reciprocated

If I loved you a little less
That night wouldn't be flashing back repeatedly
I would've slept well entirely
I wouldn't have wished you with me

If I loved you a little less
I wouldn't have chose you over her
Her, with the love, future and security that she offers
I wouldn't have the guts to hurt other people

If I loved you a little less
I wouldn't have stomached being a third party
I wouldn't have accepted you after what you've done to me
I would have cared what others think about me

If I loved you a little less
I wouldn't have agreed to this kind of setup
Like on a death row queue, I voluntarily line up
Except that this is a slow torturous death with a heads up

If I loved you a little less
I would've forced you my beliefs
I would've blackmailed you emotionally
And tied you up just to be with me

If only I have loved you a little less
Just a little less
But I only love you a little,
More and more each day

If only I have loved you a little less
But my love for you was beyond everything
Beyond time, pain, risks, judgment and common sense
Even beyond death, I think

If only I have loved myself a little less
I wouldn't have decided to fight a handicapped game
I wouldn't have swallowed all the hatred and curses thrown at my name
I wouldn't have been able to love you all the same

Curse my stubborn heart for not knowing how to love a little less
It only knows of love that is always at its peak
With only one choice between all or nothing
And it always chooses all, if it's you, right from the very beginning
Ash Slade Sep 2016
This place is haunted-
a narrative being told.
Spoken from elder's lips,
passed down rungs of time-
it's more than just a customary legend.

Those with nerve,
are able to travel up-
a crooked, spiral staircase.
Cracked wooden steps,
creak as footsteps ascend
and descend them. Some people
are so weak-stomached-
they fall backwards down
those rickety stairs.

A hutch upstairs-
in cobwebbed hallways,
contains padlocked secrets
of departed eras. Steadier hands-
can play with fire, attempting to push up-
it's entrance.
Their hands are inclined to be
unsteady.

Only those with their sense in check-
should venture up to this home
of "Attic Ghosts." A person must know
what's in store-
prior to freeing those haunted
wanderers. They're known to be tricky,
keeping people on their toes
in tizzies. They're not crummy,
just aiming to give you-
willie nillies.

Let this be a warning-
people who make this trek
might not see morning.
Scared straight out of their skins-
petrified from within,
at things they can't and shouldn't
understand.
The downpour outside rattles
Like a thousand sand-filled flutes
Echoing in the night air
Singing through the storm
And providing the melody forlorn
As the rain giants are born

As I lay and listen
To the symphony of beings
Ancient and always
In their core
Born in storms
As always before
I tuck myself into the noise

And I fight the heat of summer
And its unnatural reign in the dark
With a fan fluttering softly
Next to my heaven of slumber
As the thunder thunders
In even numbers

I ponder ponder ponder
Through my empty mind I wander
Picking scraps up off the floor
Every each one ever fonder
Drifting calmly into my shore
From an ocean dancing evermore

I lay here in the dark
Hearing buzzes in the shadows deep
As I drift into sleep
And forth the dreams creep
From corners of my psyche
In groups, holding tightly
In waves of light and lucidity
Combatting this humidity

And I savor summer nights here
With eyes of smoke
And stomached beer
I sleep in soft movement
As the heat retains its endurance
And warms my dreams
Filled with muffled, happy screams
He was a mere mortal, whom gave life to me and my values.
He never stop loving me even though I did not deserve it.
He show me unconditional love , even though I didn't see it.
A Love that I did not deserve , just like the same love.
That my Savior gave the only difference was that he did not die on the cross.
But as long as he lived, I had a place to live and food in my stomached.
My dad was preparing me with Christ love for what awaited me.
I am sorry dad, for all of the trouble that I have cause you while you lived.
I am sorry Lord my Loving God for all that I put you through.
I am grateful for my earthly dad and my heavenly Father.
Julian Jul 2022
How Does History Really Work?

The enantiodromia of parallax founded as a predicated fulmination of retrograde incident precluding accidental consequent is a natural referent of a bypassed bridge that through tip-lipped coercion resorts to the nature countenance and visage of the holiest creator of our majestic universe bolted to the linearity of patterns of trigonometric spelunkers seeking a sub-Pythagorean orbit of granular generativity that becomes its own amplivagant vessel and simultaneously ampitheater that is a fission of magnetized smog mobilized in ulterior provenances of heightened parlance for impavid labtebricole secrets marauding with visagists that cloak the heavens in the elective cardiac synergy of a saturnine swindle wandering listlessly with jive-talking smooth-walking creatures of cerebral habit jaunty with legacy but bounded by the strict cloffins of the lambent source of journeymen into the sojourn neither of regaled destiny nor whispered prophecy but more on the lines of a conflated flux dispersal of entropies competing in space time to wander endlessly through the diaspora of the living hallowed graves of the Potemkin Village of the silentium of the protectorate behind McCauley Culkin’s agoraphobia. History rotates upon a transdimensional supercalendrical access point beyond which there is  nothing but terminus even in the absence of pointed aberration because the milk of even the lactose inferior mettle of scurrilous witwanton bludgergrumbles of the wednongues is a hallowed wassail only to the degree the counterfeit becomes moribund by the rickety cringes of logical deceit becoming tinsellated surfeit that the stars appetize for but because they are installed with a degree of reticent amnesia it grafts a gridlock of paralysis from which the hostage situation humanity has prevailed through despite velivolant winds to the contrary is capable of plumbing abyssopelagic transportation only in the moments when the material world and the numinous intersection of the seminal ingeminations of orderly demarches in the folksy remedies which bandy their temptations on the borrowed bibliopolists who in gingerly Canada Dry secrecy burrow the furrows of the sulcate grooves of waxen miracles in the glabrous limelight of the gallywow diversion that earns leverage over the meager rather than spars with the promethean pataphysics of a time that is becoming so prolific with fulgurant streaks disguised by smog that even  the most well-paid firefighters can never stop the rampant conflagrations from infiltrating cantabank muses upon alighted destinies. We are at a centripetal point in time among many others but because we witness the transdimensional bypass with such geopolitical clarity it becomes an obvious zugzwang for those who try chryselephantine gambits and gimcracks in the ginnels of backwater boondoggles to enforce the hibernaculum of blackguard engraved in the literate apostasy of man from the true origins of the dynamos that all decided together to ensure the vitality of the syndicated enterprise of the very transgressions and felonious against the “Space Cops” to the extent their overflush of ostentation in their gingerly mannerisms becomes itself the guarantor of an ascertained future clouded by murky residual charnels in the nemorivagant chase for the shining beacons of the brains that siphon unprecedented influence in order to cleanse lavaderos of the ***** grime of egestuous obolary poverty of the pastorauling and the aspen groves that lurk with pernicious impertinence above sandapiles of sadly deceased souls journeying towards neither an eternal conflagration nor a vacancy of substance but rather that substantial determination of magnanimity. The myths that perplex humanity were clothed as a parvenu IQ test for the people who sizzled with the saute of keen acumen foisted upon a thought loop of lunatic subversion of ultraviolet genius beyond the detection of the lens of prismatic fortunes gained by reversing photons in time to regionalize the spectral reality into the elaborate alveolate ploy by the elite to assume not by arrogation but rather by thaumaturgy that all witnesses become contributors in the modern age and therefore this funnels the continuum and spectrum of a radiological race girded by the futtocks of jetsetting analysis to bifurcate planes of trajectory that at first diverge widely because of raconteurs grafted with numinous fictions of the facade of man in a Potemkin Village like Manhattan which saw its population decline by nearly four-hundred thousand people in three months (All of the Boroughs) to invest in enclaves where their furtive fruition would be recognized. The very invention of time travel is an epigenetic alien configuration of races that outlived us and sought sidereal mysteries in boosterism that granted us parceled notaries that spell doom for democracy but bonanzas for the autarky found in inalienable rights such as the pursuit of happiness most importantly configured into the realms of persuasion to become a meddlesome hypestorm that few tempestuous mercurial sailors would dare to journey beyond because the early grave is reserved froward in the momentary amnesia of videos of accidental leaps that frogmarch us into a more clever ascertained future micromanaged by a collective syndicate of outfoxed limiculous creations drowning in cesspool swamps of money to bury the bridewells alive because essentially we are now entering the pivotal crux of  history when one man’s barnstorm becomes a collectivized enterprise to radically reform the conditional antiquity inherent to time and to gouge funding for armadas fought by warriors that lapse between milliseconds in order to deliver calculated payloads with extremely precise mathematical precision. When someone patented the Theory of Relativity he postulated that the condensation of matter is fungible and flexible plasticity rather than a benumbed sopiter race of grumbling groaks that become costermongers for comatose sleeping pills and mandatory heart monitoring. There are a few moments in history capable of jump starting the generator not of myth but the progeny of priggish mathematical facts lurid in their prurience of permanence to ensure that neither mythomane nor sophist can clamber into an artificial alcove of the celestial paint of enhanced perception predominating over a century obsessed with perceptual enhancements of prosthetic invention emigrating from distal orbits among the lunisolar accord as well as around the regional taxes of Saturn and its cove of troves of bohemian impertinence. Analyzing history in the alpenglow of the donnism of hedonistic impetuous importance is a yield and cloveryield to an optimism of guarded shibboleths easily duplicated by laboratory investigations into the microbiological elements of the functioning human society upon which percolations of reality drawing ever near the icebergs of certainty that the ship will eventually sink in Africa and that sad welter should appall us all but because one person who owns the master of destiny cognomen capable of surpassing the largesse of the frissons of glamour becomes the swift parvenu of an anointed bludgergrumble extorted by powerful puns in this society of fashionable violence to enforce codes of silence by tampering with individualism and individual flavorks that demassify to preselect by artificial implements that the predestination they heard was a warbled echo of a now extinct future aborted as the time line converged upon the antipodes of fission and friction to exert filagersion in geotaxis to ensure that the sworn blatteroons of bloviation endowed with such great fiduciary importance that when exact events are hallowed in history movie dialogue memorializes those moments at the very second they are observed without being an underminnow of lip syncing. Some primary examples of pataphysical conundrums exorcised from time is how the whiskey bar aloft in the heights of the stratosphere could find direct knowledge of the future live on camera in movies like Twister to memorialize the thaumaturgy of sartorial shoes mixed up in time and how in Lost’s final episode of the first season the entire cast was elated by their renewal of knowledge or the introduction of the inseminated creed of the mysterious bottle that was kicked and then dematerialized. Physics is a funny science but the belabored tropes of game theory existentially altered the trajectory of humanity from a docile ploy of slot machine slaves into a society that engraves its superstitions upon pervious minds to the salubrious decorum of a whittled henpeck of privilege that whatever is broadcast automatically becomes preeminent because it is so widely spread even among piebald audience of sebastomania and lunacy can be cordial with poorly kept secrets secreting the jaundice of self-reference and milking dead organs of surgical pride for the stomached emasculation of the humane virility undergirding civilization. Right now and starting in early September 2020 and much before that if you study the Earthquakes created near Hawthorne, Nevada the meterologist suddenly becomes the kingpin because his Big Lebowski antics are a sardonic rift on the rafts of publicity to reprove the agentic force of a discarnate inanimate evil of a being that lacks sensory capacity so thereby seeks to disincarcerate its own obligatory tether to the vacuum of warbled tilts of information to domineer with a degree of captaincy catapulted by the future dominion of historicity compounded by the dearth of energized rebuke flabbergasted venom of deceitful charlatans of yobbery complicant   on contraplex bromidrosis of ergasia flapdoons emigrate from the citadel of veridical truth.
Jill Oct 11
Travel free my inner scapegoat
You’re liberated, off this hook
No more shame-horned
Guilt-stomached dread,
       scarce enough to wrong-bare
Not startle-sneezed or tremble-shook

I excise redundant remnants
Bad wattle glands where crime hangs large
Not Billie-blame,
Nanny-regret
       or just a wrongless kid
No fair-trial felon, biased charge

Imagine dropping heavy torts
The solid clunk as fault hits floor
Past carried light
Kind compassion
       wide enough to weight-bare
Rich mixed plant pasture evermore
An end to serveless inner war
©2024

BLT Webster’s Word of the Day challenge (scapegoat) date 11th October 2024. A scapegoat is a person who is unfairly blamed for something others have done.
Daniel Magner Feb 2015
i just want to write
pour out this feeling in my gut
I can't keep it stomached
but a good line
I can't seem to make up
Graff1980 Sep 2016
They laughed at the madman
Who talked fast and inconsistently
And I snickered to
Partook in the cruelty
Of judging indecently
Till I remembered myself
Till I saw the human being
Sitting patiently on a parking stump
Waiting for a connection
Needing a friend
Looking away not in
Perhaps hoping
For kindness
Even though
He wore a skin color
Labeled other
My stomached ached
With a desire to reprimand
Those who had been cruel
To take this strangers hands
As some saints would do
Instead, I stifled such sentiments
Now, I find my inhumanity
Bothers me more then
Other’s cruel behavior
it's ok Jun 2017
she keeps her head between my legs
And I scratch my nails across her back
she tells me I'm made of candy when we're like this
But all the time I'm a bitter drink that can't be stomached.
She says she'll **** me because I'm emotionally capable
its my treat for being an absolute head case.
Because when I walk through I am quiet
So quiet you almost don't notice your heart on the ground.
Justus Dec 2019
I went all day without speaking to her
And I drank Cabernet by the bottle
and admired the artwork put on display
Walking, observing, feeling an undeserved
sense of soundness
There was one painting that I was particularly fond of
It was entitled "The Embrace"
A faceless man in black and blue was pursuing a faceless
woman in pink and white
She shied away from him
She was too bashful
One blue arm attempted to comfort her
from the world as she knew
Or maybe from the uncertainties of the world
that he imposed onto her
Bloomed century plants envelop her completely
And I stood there and pondered and drank more wine
Then I thought,
"She's going to become nonexistent
               just after becoming so beautiful."
And I took another sip of my drink
The only thing that existed in that moment were
the paintings on the walls, the wine in my belly, and the
associates that I went to the art show with
For those hours that I was there, I was separated from reality
Multiple calls were made soon after I returned to squadron
Multiple calls were ignored
I knew that I was in the wrong
So I kept making attempts to reach her
from a thousand miles away
making myself look like an *** in the process
It wasn't until the next morning that she contacted me
All of her texts were short, dry, and cold
I could tell that she was hurt
So I called again, this time I could hear her voice
"You're just an *******. You don't even care."
I listen
My stomached churned slightly from the guilt
of knowing that she's not entirely wrong
I could be so much better, but it's hard to fight against
vices ingrained in your core
Like instincts of self preservation
Like fear
Although I'm not always successful, I still try
She resists me for a little while then succumbs
to the pull of my world
Then I remember the painting
And I understood

— The End —