"sulfuric" poems
To future conquering civilizations
in galaxies far far away . . .
don't worry about polluting the air,
our smokestacks have shot dirty-bombs
into the clouds for centuries,
mixing rain drops with the
black grime of industrialization,
transforming our children's tears
into cesspools of sulfuric acid and ddt.
We've also drained the bayous and swamps
and between you and me
don't even bother landing in Africa
there isn't suitable drinking water
for miles, you see.
You can thank years of colonization for that.
In fact, you may not want to land
on Mondays, Tuesdays, or Thursdays
in LA either-
on those days the air quality index
is 175 and far too unhealthy for any
biological organism to survive.
But at least you won't die of malnutrition
you've got decisions:
McDonald's or Burger King
choose
cholesterol and diabetes are your shock troops.
Send them in immediately,
there won't be much resistance
we've got these things call lazy boys
and daytime t.v which have
enslaved the population and decreased
the distance
between fully functioning
human beings and mindless apes.
Don't worry about bringing weapons
we've got those too
we've perfected the art of blowing each other away
there's not much for you to do.
we destroy cities with fire from the sky
and our mushroom clouds rise
at least ten miles high.
And god can't see, there's too much smoke
in his eyes
and our radiated children die
with radiated sighs.
While we are on the topic
don't worry about us spreading
propaganda
we've lost the ability to communicate.
We've learned
books turn a peculiar dark yellow
when lighted and burned.
And forget erasing history,
we've done that too.
Our subjugation of native peoples
is masked as 'patriotism'
under the red, white, and blue.
But don't get me wrong,
I tell you all
of this not to dissuade,
please come and attack,
please come and invade.
Here, I'll even turn
on the lights . . .
Dec 23, 2012
Dec 23, 2012 at 9:06 PM UTC
the preacher never wrote a poem
about dahmer's baptism:
1.
he leaned across
the jail cell table
and his eyes were honest
when he said he believed in god
deeply
his eyes were honest
when he said goodnight honey
and gently draped his body
in a tub of sulfuric acid
his open jaw glistening in the moon
dissolving in the dusty noontime soliloquy
of crickets outside his apartment window
2.
can an honest man
bathe in those kind of wounds
and be allowed to ask
for a penance?
3.
for two weeks they left
his baptismal robes in storage
they asked if he really believed it
if he could believe in all this
4.
“when i was a kid
i was just like anybody else”
he had said
he seemed to think
being like anybody else
could dull the bloodstains
reduce the skeletons
still tucked into his closet
to powder
make his wishes into holy water
5.
yes jeffrey, anyone can drink it
but getting drunk on holiness
isn’t enough to repent
all of their fingers are wrapped around
your heart
doesn’t forgetting seem foolish
to the brains in your refrigerator
isn’t it just useless
to the spare ribs, in your bureau
drink all the holy water you want
you will always carry their bodies
on your chest
have you ever had a heart
other than the ones you collected
and did you ever know
what a soul feels like?
6.
and that day
they took him to a prison tub
and his body
glistened under the water
like a drowning animal or a martyr
jeffrey doesn’t float
7.
as he opens his eyes
his mouth wide
he looks just like him
suspended in white
ripples curdling in currents across his pale skin
a solar eclipse
covers the sun
as he comes up
for air
Sep 4, 2012
Sep 4, 2012 at 9:44 PM UTC
Our souls
are one thousand firecrackers
each stick waiting to burn.
Sometimes our souls are quiet,
and the firecrackers are stagnant
and wet.
And sometimes we burn slow,
the firecrackers smoldering sweet and terrible,
the ashes falling in poetic teardrops to the ground.
We are tied down and the firecrackers
are screaming to burst out with a jubilant
expression of WOWWW!
But they are denied.
Until that one moment when all the pieces are set
and finally the firework of our soul is
let loose and explodes with loud, sulfuric glory,
spreading its light and smoke and wonder
across the quiet plains.
Nov 28, 2011
Nov 28, 2011 at 5:28 PM UTC
Her eyes were the color of solar flares
and the remnants of super novae,
eyelashes damp with Venus’ acid rain.
Body in the curves of the Northern Lights,
there were stars at her fingertips,
galaxies twined in the star dust of her hair.
Constellations lined her dress
as she danced in the celeste of red ribbon clouds
the storms created.
She travelled across the icelands of Neptune
though days never passed through the tail of Hailey’s comet,
only sulfuric nights on Io.
May 14, 2013
May 14, 2013 at 8:13 AM UTC
---
on a hill stood wicked tree
a single root, branches three
one branch was war
one branch was want
one branch was greed
horrid haunt
its root was pride
its power great
acid soil of perfect hate
its bark like scabs
sulfuric green
a stunted growth
twisted . mean
lichen of ignorance
crusted there
on the north side
of despair
black mushrooms
sprouted from its pores
growing from
starvation's spores
and yet it thrived and gave its fruit
they were put forth by the root
these carried seeds to plant in season
they want it growing for some reason
they plant it lone upon a hill
where it can grow
it's growing
still
it grows from you
it grows from me
we feed that hateful
wicked tree
soulsurvivor
rewritten
(c) 6/13/2015
first draft 2014
Jun 13, 2015
Jun 13, 2015 at 8:26 AM UTC
Steam spilling, white froths licking
Marble mantle pieces, stone white
Opaque ghosts swirling conspicuously,
Silently naught with disturbance and gloat
Humble in nature, the steam spills
From the open pours,
Streaming running water
spring, a delightful swing
slight melodies of sulfuric and mountain
flirting lavishly , emitting heat
an early morning bathe,
bright sunshine invades
sleeping shadows tinted cold
a chilling sensation humming
with that of the pool’s lip
--fluttering autumn leaves—
--cascading crystal flakes—
--rustling green trees—
--tickling cool rain—
The surface of the spring’s pool remains
It stirs with the slightest breath
Occupying stark bodies
Gleaming baby red
Washing away, cleansing a new day
As sunlight sparkles on the
Mirror surface
Feb 23, 2016
Feb 23, 2016 at 9:41 PM UTC
A drab drop drips
Downed casualty
Down casually.
A sulfuric gust cycles
In three fly-by nights.
A gust hoping,
A breeze yearning to dab a wet tear off a moistened spring cheek.
Floating by on a wisp of breath,
Breathed once by the blessed. Now irreparably tainted, then incomprehensible anew:
Treated by the respirations of the perspiring, expending breath on czarist ears, aspiring;
Cured by the tongues of the insatiably dying
And by those primary soothe-ers, invisibly crying.
Alveoli gripping that sine qua non of civilization
Until they must release the once-oxygen into the hills of Kyivan Rus.
A first breath and second
As much as a penultimate and final.
And witness to the chronology that led to such a
Bloodbath-blessed blast
As this.
Jul 31, 2014
Jul 31, 2014 at 11:44 PM UTC
Bitterness pours into
The mind, akin to
sulfuric acid in dark ink
****** chemicals
Blossoming to clouds
in the vessel
Of consciousness
Becoming phantoms, ghosts
All manner of nightmare
Haunts, parasitic, they proliferate
Be aware, they live
in your nighttime anger
The kind you sleep on
To sleep, perchance to
DREAM
May 10, 2017
May 10, 2017 at 2:07 AM UTC
Poems, the consciousness of minutes
Plucked like corn from the ear
Of language,
Between the here and now
Of echoes reflection,
A door to everywhere and nowhere
At the desk,
An escape from the peoples,
From the abyss that fills,
From the sulfuric melancholy
Where unconquerable ruins
Lay at the foot of memory
Armed with an assault of words.
The beneficent metaphorical
Divinities of the moments we
Connect like spinning webs,
You, me, him, her,
They, poets and every one else.
We compact time ripping off
The facelessness of vanities,
Provokers of thought,
Erupting the sensitivity and
Stirring the pit of emotion.
Every poet must know a lover
To cut the cord from the ink
And commit to the experience
Of the realised, words become
What we have done.
Nouns, pronouns, adjectives, these things
Are tools to the inner soul,
We become prophetic and speak
The Fallen,
We know the children of dust
And ignite the realised poem
In each of them,
This is how poetry exists,
How philosophy exists,
And love,
And even hate.
And if these things don't exist,
Then I do not exist,
Neither do you.
Somewhere in the darkness
A prisoner of words begins
Writing the light brighter
than any under the sun.
The first of first, her hair in the
Motion as she flicks slender finger
With her eyes gushing in a half
Smile, the music on the radio,
The memory of Mother, everything,
Everywhere, poetry is life,
It writes itself!
And here in this decalogue,
Every love survives,
Every pain manifest,
Streaking in the heart the
Blood races to the fingers and
Bleeds words to paper.
Every poem is a sacrifice,
Time, energy, pieces
Of you, pieces of I
Scattered in the penumbra,
We become as crystalline structures,
Transparent translation of the
Spirit that burns.
Every man and woman
Writes the experience,
Life and its unique constellation
Of emotions, enormously
We must write the world,
The poem is real,
The images speaks itself.
Poetry is life,
Deserve your poem.
Apr 6, 2016
Apr 6, 2016 at 5:24 PM UTC
It's supposed to be
98 and cloudless today.
By the time I roll in,
and park my car,
Roman's walking up to me,
his gold tooth a
full yellow smile in the sun.
“Hey meyer,
I need you to
Pull the box truck around,
We’ve got some plants we’ve gotta load,
Then we’ve got a landscape job
About an hour from here.”
“Are we gonna be back here
Today?”
“Probably not
until
late.”
The box truck
Is a holdover from the old owners
Of Ken’s Nursery,
It’s still got
Ken’s Nursery in large comic sans
On it’s rust-streaked sides.
The wheel wells are rusted
brown as salt deposits
On the shores of sulfuric oceans,
and little ringlets of decay
rock as the truck bounces;
It’s old springs
Giving back after all these years.
Today we have:
Forty-two veriagated ferns.
Ten dragon lilies.
10 cannas,
But cannas have to have a male and female to flower,
So 20 cannas collectively,
And we’ve gotta mulch.
By the time we’ve loaded all the plants;
stuffed the mulch in with the Bobcat,
And thrown in our picks and shovels,
My shirt is soaked through.
98 degrees and cloudless.
Roman walks to his car
and takes off his shirt
To reveal a pink belly
full of folding skin
and matted black upwelling *****
Singing with sweat-diamonds
In the unperturbed vision of the sun.
My shirt is soaked already too.
But even as I loaded the truck,
I thought about Melissa.
When I get home,
She probably won’t be there.
When the female is separated from the male canna,
Nothing dies, the two live happily ever after.
But the canna does not flower,
And doesn’t remember enough
To miss it.
Just continues quietly with a black bulb
The color of a skink’s underbelly.
Nov 21, 2011
Nov 21, 2011 at 12:01 AM UTC
venus
morning star
lucifer f a
l
l
i
n
g backwards and forwards in time
in rotation
in retrograde rotation
(“the fall of lucifer” painted darkly against the bright spot in the sky)
((i see myself in the
shadows beneath
his tumbling figure))
light-bringer
dawn-bringer
the rising sun in the east
a supernova exploding in the background: there are subatomic particles
bigger than what i can offer
there are greenhouse gasses that
give off more heat than my body
will ever be able to produce for anyone
day light
night light
the setting sun in the west
a constellational birth in the foreground: there are
not enough moons in the solar system
there is not enough space
between planetary rings to explain
gravitation and the human body
(aphrodite tell me: is this sin or is this love?)
((i will dip my toes in sea foam
until i deteriorate
i will put my ear against conch shells
until i can hear your answer))
venus
evening star
lucifer pouring sulfuric acid into the car vents
the air ducts
the atmosphere
it becomes the thick dark clouds that obscure
my vision of myself from reality
Aug 9, 2015
Aug 9, 2015 at 10:38 PM UTC
It smells like burning flesh dip in a dish of sulfuric acid
It feels like sweat traveling all through your body while you travel across landscapes that cuts and burns you constantly
you can hear your heart beating ever so slowly, almost to a stop when you hear the screams of hell
it taste like bombs and metals, with blood regurgitation from your mouth
You can see the millions of dead bodies, you can see your comrades dying every minute,you can see mutilations of body parts and tears until eventually you see darkness and the sky is filled with hatred and sadness
and you must know in your heart that you did something wrong, that you shouldn't be there, that from that day your life was ruin forever
Apr 16, 2014
Apr 16, 2014 at 10:01 AM UTC
How "Gay" do you suppose, do you suppose you'll be
When In Hell you burn, for all eternity
-
Every ****** every Queer, every **** and ****
You're going to burn in Hell, while Satan ***** your ****
-
He'll tie you to a stump, barbed wire he will use
Sulfuric acid boiling hot, out his **** does ooze
-
Then there are the Demons...can't wait to get their turn
Pumping ******* pumping, in the place of no return
-
When they get tuckered out, a red-hot ***** they will use
They'll ram it up your *** while they put to you the screws
-
Yes-sir-ee you'll be so "Gay", while you burn forevermore
You ****** Queerass Fruitcake, God does you deplore
Feb 17, 2015
Feb 17, 2015 at 3:13 AM UTC
Rats Dropping Like Flies
I eventually encountered one
A crime scene it was
Its sulfuric acid smell of hell was overpowering me
Making me numb
And I saw the maggots
Crawling for a place called home
Although they made a home which was never secured
There was no funeral for the rat
He was just thrown in the trash
It was ******
Destroyed by poison
Its mouth was open
As though calling for help
Nobody wept
For the fear of being victimized
But a close friend of my died
Should I weep or should I have thrown the remorse in the trash?
I didn't hesitate
For in this world
A rat is just a rat
Dec 8, 2014
Dec 8, 2014 at 4:11 PM UTC
You have your demagogic president-elect,
Dreaming in shades of Mussolini
And will sit in his downtown skyscraper and laugh that all the populists
Were not in on the joke,
And thus could not be in on the punchline.
The progressives hotboxed the shower the night we handed the country to Trump.
Pennsylvania, the center of the cataclysm.
The vortex has opened and engulfed all the steel,
All of the illegal immigrants have been scooped up and swallowed,
Reproductive rights will be voided in a stacked Supreme Court validating the opinions of white male legislators.
Tensions twisting to contort and ignore the onset realization
That all progress is halted to return the country to the era of segregation,
Deportation Gestapo formed with the lone intent to displace the children of those who dared to dream of a brighter life.
America, look what you've done and face yourself with your objections.
Look dead in your eyes and see all the minorities, tears in the diaries of closeted teenagers,
And the judicial dread of the gentleman who only wants to live comfortably with his husband.
You've made stepping stones of the counterculture, all crying in dorm rooms or next to their gardens,
All together in sorrow.
Underground America has been sold out,
We're a social experiment for what can happen when sulfuric acid is poured upon the voiceless.
The silent majority has shut us up.
We've been yelling to change history and now are tracking back.
Bigotry is back in style and I'm terrified.
Nov 9, 2016
Nov 9, 2016 at 12:22 PM UTC
in
your
face
hell
mongers
you sit in judgement
condemning the lost while
your wings conceal gluttony
envy, pr ide and avar ice like
sulfuric eggs. You drop on down
like harpy eagles on fish
just forget you
ever took on
the title of
'Christian'
because you
can rest assured
that Christ Jesus will
SoulSurvivor
2/7/2015
Feb 7, 2015
Feb 7, 2015 at 3:42 PM UTC
i. take a lesson from the way watercolor paint bleeds through notebook paper
ii. if i lose my mind and we lose our clothes i promise to never lose our hands and i hope you never hate me when the sun is up
iii. you made your bed now lay in mine
iv. my death wish is you telling me that you're sorry over and over again
v. all of these streetlights won't stop staring at me
vi. your eyelids, someone wants to kiss those and no it's not me okay it is
vii. what do you mean you don't keep all of my exhales in a glass jar
viii. i loved a thing once and then i died
ix. **** the world and then don't text it back the morning after
x. **** your love is my benzodiazepine
xi. are we making love or sulfuric acid
xii. how it is vs. how i want it to be vs. how it should actually be
xiii. oh, you didn't hear? your raspy screams and hollowed eyes aren't enough anymore
xiv. and now every car crash sounds like the last time you ever said my name
xv. pretty sure i have john f. kennedy's brain
xvi. you whispered "i love you" and it sounds more like an apology than anything
xvii. i have no poetry left inside of me, just a lot of white paint
xviii. accidentally bashed my head into a wall on purpose today and yes, i still have a mind and yes, you're still on it
Mar 25, 2014
Mar 25, 2014 at 7:30 PM UTC
Death's Icy Kiss
I’ve heard tell
that
when someone freezes to
death, the end
comes after the dying
mind sends a
false warmth throughout
the body;
life’s final trick,
although I have
to admit, that last
lie is
more merciful than
most truth that
I’ve experienced.
I wonder if
the last
few
moments are filled
with fond memories of
better times;
sweltering July nights with
the kids,
the sulfuric smell of
fireworks filling
the air?
I wonder if the
freezing
man could almost
taste the
warm apple pie or
the grilled hamburger with
mustard dripping on his
silly Hawaiian shirt?
If this is the case
death’s icy kiss
isn’t so cruel.
Feb 1, 2021
Feb 1, 2021 at 9:47 AM UTC
I attend the funeral of hope,
weekly
Watch the birth of despair
daily
I think God has gone deaf,
atleast to
my cries
People look at possessions as
success
They aren't
They're stones tied to souls
making sure we all drown with the
Jones'
we all so long to keep up with
Oh yes,
those Jones' are falling to the
Depths of "stuff"
far faster than we Smiths
Good Lord
All day, Everyday,
I see and hear the "upper class"
whine
About the stupidest things
Its appocalypse if the Jones' buy
a BMW
while the neighbor only owns a Cadilac
Utter DEATH
I see these things and hear these silly conversations daily
"Oh did you see how fat Pam's *** looked in that Vera dress at yesterday's luncheon?"
"Yes! All that money spent on lypo! Haha!"
Disgusting ****
like sulfuric acid poured into my ears
And the road on the way to this Country Club and Gated Community called
Deerfield
Is lined with falling down trailers and houses without glass in the Windows
Clothes hung on ancient strings because the wearers can't afford a dryer
Or the electicity to run one
Children filthy and barefoot playing with
hand-me-down toys
in hay field yards
Still cleaner and more pure
than the
Filthy Rich
Apr 15, 2017
Apr 15, 2017 at 11:49 PM UTC
this is worse than i thought it would be.this is harder than i thought.
i ******* know i should accept myself but its hard not to believe im broken
when the only model for happiness includes no room for me,
i don't want to be selfish.
sorry for forcing myself into a life never made for me.
i understand you don't care when i find it hard to breathe.
im choking to death and you just want me to hold your hand
while you breathe into a paper bag.
i'm not your friend, im your comfort object.
i want you to care that im in pain.you told me you love me.
you told me im too good to be true.
you like me the same way you like your coffee: sugared;
drowned in milk so you dont taste the bitter.
:it all feels so one-sided: you said,
**:i tell you everything.why dont you ever tell me anything:
:i want to help you:
:like you help me, i feel so useless:**
i cried and you pretended you didnt see.
you are a sorry excuse for a friend.you are selfish.if i told you i feel like im dissolving
youd ask if this means i love you.
youre corrosive.youre sulfuric acid and i never should have let you inside of me.
god ******* dammit.im tired of writing about you.you make me feel unlovable and broken.
there are bones in the backyard of my childhood home.
there are eight rosebushes to choose from and i grew up
scratching myself ****** on the branches.
you like to disembowel anyone who makes me feel loved and when i try to fix myself you ask
why im abandoning you.
its always the same ******* thing.
its always the same thing.you're always crying and im always biting my cheek.
im always lonely and youre always kissing my neck.
its always the same.
Apr 7, 2014
Apr 7, 2014 at 6:39 PM UTC
to even exist
anymore
is it I
or am I you
Television picture
Do you wish I did not
Reflect so white on your wall
Or that my fingernails would dig so deep
Into the black moist earth
of your mind
A glass consciousnesses
\\can be broken in a crystal instant
Forever cursed or blessed
Once again
Nothing
Strange picture on the wall
Will not flash at all
A picture of you
Paper and ink
Do you think
When you die-
Is it everything
Or nothing?
Second Stanza
Broken apart
Like your sentences
In that last conversation
The air
Is so thick with politeness
So physical
the soft of white skin
Or mental
Thoughts becoming
Thin
Bones of fingers
or skull cap
The sing song
language of your eyelashes
Open me
Close me
I am at your command
Free to be used
Or left alone to rot
In the dark dungeon
even that water that is thick and black
The smell of that water sulfuric
even this water
will quench the thirst of any dying man
Gurgle out your last words
once more
(scripted)
Heavy words that
spill //
through cracked lips
porcelain teeth
"Do not leave me. Hold so tightly that last breath."
Jul 20, 2012
Jul 20, 2012 at 11:44 PM UTC
i woke up this morning
with a rage inside
that i never want to subside
put my hat on
threw the hood up
cigarette lit
thinking bout
who i'm gonna **** next
mask and gloves
barrell of sulfuric acid
ready to find a straggler
anyone stupid
or deserving
to get it
i'm the maintenance man
city garbage man
taking care of this **** they can't keep clean
you think it's mean?
well you should see how it feels
to wake up from my dream
or was it a nightmare?
keep quiet and don't say a word
it'll only get you more hurt
who needs a gun and a bullet
when these bare hands can do it
i'm a ***** nasty ************
my scowl looks like a smile
it's so jaded
and foul
but today's just another day
cleaning up the neighborhood
and ******* your wife
Mar 22, 2013
Mar 22, 2013 at 5:06 AM UTC
Vines grow
Wrapped around the skin
The skin of a lion
King of kings
Sail the skies with your ships
You'll never sink
See that the sun sets
Thats when the sky's pink
Full of sulfuric love
Clouds of puff
Rest your vessel on this pillow
Cotton and feathers
Will it all be soft enough
Or will the grayness
Coming from warm waters
Rough it all up
Can it weather this pressure
Dropping no anchors
Focused onward
What lies far ahead
Is the treasure
Only found after death
Aug 20, 2013
Aug 20, 2013 at 11:34 PM UTC
They started off
As nothing more
Than interstellar dust
And then they pulled together
And shone bright in the void
Then they burst
Into a fiery nebula
Of multielemental radiation and dust
And over and over again
They were made and unmade
Beautiful galaxies shining endlessly
In that silent vacuum
And they formed solarities
And became little blobs of magma and gas
And they spun around
Crashing and breaking
Merging and making
Until one day they cooled
And all was calm over the muddy, uniform
Three foot deep sulfuric waves
And one day
They became a red film
But this time
Instead of being made or unmade
They made and unmade themselves
And as they made themselves again
They missed a thread in the genes
And they changed
And over and over
They made these mistakes
But each error they learned from
Each wrong step made them stronger
Each bad guess made them smarter
Each wrong look made them more beautiful
And so they grew
From a film to a blob
From green string to trunks
From swimming rays to Jurassic terrors
From frightened mice
To graceful, awkward, weird-looking, insane, and genius apes
And the time between changes
Kept getting shorter
First coordinated sounds
Then scratched in clay
Then limestone mountains
And one day
They looked around
And realized they had the planet
And as the billenia of the galaxies
Lapsed into the millions of life
Lapsed into the millennia of the young apes
Lapsed into the centuries of the modern species
Will lapse even further
And they looked all around
And they saw this change
And they imagine
And discover
And create
And live
And one day
They will make for themselves
A pair of metal wings
And a tail of pure energy
And they will fly up
And dance amongst the stars
Oct 19, 2016
Oct 19, 2016 at 7:25 PM UTC