"swank" poems
Skin as White as Winter Snow
Legs as Boundless as the Sea,
Stationed in Venice or Bordeaux
From Blue-collar to Bourgeois.
Hair is Chic, Yet not Pristine
Soft and Cropped and Fine,
Cheekbones High a Distinct Ravine
Embellished by a High Neckline.
Undefined Peaks and Troughs
Cumbersome and Lank,
Garnished in the Finest Cloth
Awash with Unassuming Swank.
Miss Androgynous hear my call
For I've Become a Virile Gent,
I Yearn for your Unwieldy Frame
That God in Heaven Sent
February 2011
Apr 3, 2011
Apr 3, 2011 at 3:11 PM UTC
Men of the Twenty-first
Up by the Chalk Pit Wood,
Weak with our wounds and our thirst,
Wanting our sleep and our food,
After a day and a night --
God, shall we ever forget!
Beaten and broke in the fight,
But sticking it -- sticking it yet.
Trying to hold the line,
Fainting and spent and done,
Always the thud and the whine,
Always the yell of the ***
Northumerland, Lancaster, York,
Durham and Somerset,
Fighting alone, worn to the bone,
But sticking it -- sticking it yet.
Never a message of hope!
Never a word of cheer!
Fronting Hill 70's shell-swept slope,
With the dull dead plain in our rear.
Always the whine of the shell,
Always the roar of its burst,
Always the tortures of hell,
As waiting and wincing we cursed
Our luck and the guns and the Boche,
When our Corporal shouted, "Stand to!"
And I heard some one cry, "Clear the front for the Guards!"
And the Guards came through.
Our throats they were parched and hot,
But Lord, if you'd heard the cheers!
Irish and Welsh and Scot,
Coldstream and Grenadiers.
Two brigades, if you please,
Dressing as straight as a hem,
We -- we were down on our knees,
Praying for us and for them!
Lord, I could speak for a week,
But how could you understand!
How should your cheeks be wet,
Such feelin's don't come to you.
But when can me or my mates forget,
When the Guards came through?
"Five yards left extend!"
It passed from rank to rank.
Line after line with never a bend,
And a touch of the London swank.
A trifle of swank and dash,
Cool as a home parade,
Twinkle and glitter and flash,
Flinching never a shade,
With the shrapnel right in their face
Doing their Hyde Park stunt,
Keeping their swing at an easy pace,
Arms at the trail, eyes front!
Man, it was great to see!
Man, it was fine to do!
It's a cot and a hospital ward for me,
But I'll tell'em in Blighty, whereever I be,
How the Guards came through.
3.1k
Obama jetted
back to Africa
soaring aloft on
gulf stream swank
a posse of
oil company execs
in tow, intent on liberating
Dark Continent
fossil fuels from unjust
underground prisons
American
entrepreneurs
angling to get the
upper hand in the
high stakes global
resource poker game
pulled a big time race card
to trump China’s
full house
On Goree Island,
political paparazzi
popped and clicked
a perfect image
of the neocolonial
white clad President
framed in a doorway filled
with dark shadows and
heinous memory of the
unspeakable horrors
of global trade
leering from
the portal at the
Gate of No Return
Obama welled with
meditative epiphanies
of personal seachange,
and the vicissitudes of life,
pondering his meteoric rise
from a Land of Lincoln
State Senator to
American President
in the span of
one golden
9/11 decade
At a
South African University
Town Hall Summit,
the fist bumpin,
mike droppin Prez
telepromted the
star struck folks with
solemn universal civil rights
pronouncements,
wrapped in the riddle of
the pursuit of peace,
hidden in the enigma of
the reverence for
human dignity
Later in the day
Mr. Obama sat at the
feet of a comatose Mandela;
whispering into his ear
why an Afghan peace
eludes him, why his
drone strikes rain
death upon innocents
and why his democratic
republic defiles
the civil liberties of its
citizens to ransom
a daily diet of fear
But Madiba does not hear
Mr. Obama’s feverish
confessions; his
ears are closed,
he dreams only
of the paradise of
liberation he earned
for his life's hard wages
Music Selection:
Gil Scott Heron
Western Sunrise
Oakland
070213
jbm
Jul 2, 2013
Jul 2, 2013 at 11:14 AM UTC
I much admire, I must admit,
The man who robs a Bank;
It takes a lot of guts and grit,
For lack of which I thank
The gods: a chap 'twould make of me
You wouldn't ask to tea.
I do not mean a burglar cove
Who climbs into a house,
From room to room flash-lit to rove
As quiet as a mouse;
Ah no, in Crime he cannot rank
With him who robs a Bank.
Who seemeth not to care a whoop
For danger at its height;
Who handles what is known as 'soup,'
And dandles dynamite:
Unto a bloke who can do that
I doff my bowler hat.
I think he is the kind of stuff
To be a mighty man
In battlefield,--aye, brave enough
The Cross Victorian
To win and rise to high command,
A hero in the land.
What General with all his swank
Has guts enough to rob a Bank!
2.5k
I can’t apologize enough for your situation
Hillary Swank is definitely not one of my favorite actors.
Michael Buble hasn’t met you yet apparently either
River can’t wait for you to get home and neither can I
Does it get tiring reading poems about you?
Can’t help it, but I’ll try my hardest dear
If you were a Jedi, your lightsaber would be green
One O’ Clock isn’t my best time
Jan 25, 2012
Jan 25, 2012 at 6:02 PM UTC
a conscious
stake was
city of
justice where
grand duchy
staved it
from the
dark and
rubbed unions
particularly swank
then treaty
millennia till
Brexit left
their reckoning
with covert
aspects of
haute recovery
Oct 25, 2018
Oct 25, 2018 at 2:10 PM UTC
Tea is, in essence, ******* ******* amazing**.
Black, Green, White, Herbal, Oolong, Pu-erh; in blends or pure, **** it don't matter!
Each type has it's time and place, and all of it is ******* incredible.
**Optional, but Highly recommended:**
Apprehend a badass cup and fill that **** with yo' favorite motherfuckin' Tea
then spill a healthy dose of your favorite Whiskey/Brandy in that ****
and squeeze the **** out of some Lemon above that ****
and, if desired, stir up some swank-ass Honey in that ****
then finally sip yo' ******** to a higher state of being, motherfuckas!
Oct 11, 2013
Oct 11, 2013 at 2:07 PM UTC
Where are
The ecstatic saxophones that
Slung forth swank slurs of
Beauty,
The *** *** ***
Bass lines,
The snaps and snares and the
Sweet rhythm of the Night?
Music had character
And minds followed, in following
Soared.
There were no glittery vampires,
No prepubescent
Brother boy bands.
Soulful crooners never
Warbled over Alejandro,
Or the boots with the fur, with the fur.
We wrote letters and shared thoughts and ideas
And convictions.
There was no need for the techno
Middleman
To wrap our
Real thoughts in LOLs
To make opening
Up to another
More efficient.
Mass media
Gluttony drowns
America till I strain and struggle
Only to barely stay afloat
In this sea of apathy.
But you won't buy and sell my soul.
I'm not going to
Be your
Consumptive,
Quiet,
Couldn't-care-less,
I won't get in the way,
And I won't raise my voice,
Good American,
2.5 children,
Christian,
Conserva-libera-publi-crat,
Self-centered, Illiterate, Ignorant
Sheep
Only to follow the power.
**** no,
I'm mad as hell;
I want to leave the next generation
A world where
You can confess your
Love and be a man or
Love another man and have
Basic human rights, and it all
Starts in your
Mind
And your
Expression thereof.
It's the saccharine pop
Culture that has
Made free-thought unfashionable, a crime.
Art is
Revolution.
Hang
Up,
Log
Out,
Unplug and just look
At what you've let the
World become in
Letting yourself be
Little more than
A faceless source
Of merciless dollars.
Wrest free our
Culture from the
Calamitous and indifferent
Claws of rampant capitalism.
Express yourself or submit,
Stand up for a free America.
I will not be sold.
Oct 26, 2010
Oct 26, 2010 at 2:23 PM UTC
In Neverland - never to grow old
never to marry that sweetheart
never to have children and grandchildren
nor watch hair thin and grey.
Full of derring-do - more dash than discipline
lanky and loose-limbed they swank and saunter
not like soldiers at all
no doff the cap humility
to the old rules and distant monarchies.
From a newly stolen world
hardly secured or steady with itself
lodged on the edge of a vast continent
clinging to a rim of turquoise blue.
Now cramped
in the pock-holed sores of ancient lands
richly bone-dusted from time to time.
Waiting for the fight to end
to go ‘back home’ ‘over there’
to farms and factories; schools and stations.
Still there - left behind
in the archipelago of cemeteries
as far as Fromelles, Pozieres,
to Bullencourt and Paschendaele
in fields of beetroot and corn,
fields bleeding red with poppies
beside the Menin Road at Ypres
in bluebelled woods of Verdun
in the silt of the Somme
on the plains of Flanders
in the victory graves at Amiens
Monash’s boys - the lost boys
cried for their mothers
begged for water
screamed to die
hung like khaki bundles on the wire.
Commanded by Field Marshalls
who never went to the fields,
who played the numbers game
in a war of bluff and bluster,
who never touched the dirt and slime,
nor waded through the ****** slush
of broken men and boys,
never waist-deep in mud and sinking,
wounded and drowning in that shambles of a war
Wearing dead men’s boots
and shrapnel-holed helmets
tunics and leggings splattered and rotting
with dead men’s blood and brains
Some haunted boys came home
knapsacks full of secret pictures,
old rusty tins crammed with suffering
breast pockets held their grief
wrapped in shroud-shreds.
They brought their duckboard demons
to the world of peace
Gas-choked fretful lungs still brought
the caustic fumes with every breath exhaled
and from every pore the death-sweat of decay.
But most boys were lost boys
lost forever in that no-man’s land
that Neverland of lives unlived.
© M.L.Emmett
Nov 10, 2015
Nov 10, 2015 at 12:32 PM UTC
*They are all drunk, light footed, swank
spunky babes and daring guys once in campus
now yellowing leaves in slanting evening light
their dress, manners and assured pace suggest
"There is no need for any hurry in our lives any more"
all those songs deeply buried quickly surface
after all these years of total separation, can you believe?
They started from where they left, many decades back
memories poured out, collected in pools, happy faces
reflected on that clear surface like before,
and words regained their cadence of those days of yore
meanings deeply buried under the dead leaves of
fallen years surfaced, tickled, they giggled and shared secrets
once more as if still in teens they are
The last thing one remembers,
before slipping in to stupor is Happiness
a parakeet with colorful wings floating on the air,
lovingly calling each one's pet name in campus then,
magic that went missing from lives, all these years
was brought back by memories, they find what that means
there it was thick in the night air, past , chocking every throat,
a simulacrum of past, white clad ghost embraced them tight.*
May 9, 2014
May 9, 2014 at 8:23 AM UTC
In Neverland - never to grow old
never to marry that sweetheart
never to have children and grandchildren
nor watch hair thin and grey.
Full of derring-do - more dash than discipline
lanky and loose-limbed they swank and saunter
not like soldiers at all
no doff the cap humility
to the old rules and distant monarchies.
From a newly stolen world
hardly secured or steady with itself
lodged on the edge of a vast continent
clinging to a rim of turquoise blue.
Now cramped
in the pock-holed sores of ancient lands
richly bone-dusted from time to time.
Waiting for the fight to end
to go ‘back home’ ‘over there’
to farms and factories; schools and stations.
Still there - left behind
in the archipelago of cemeteries
as far as Fromelles, Pozieres,
to Bullencourt and Paschendaele
in fields of beetroot and corn,
fields bleeding red with poppies
beside the Menin Road at Ypres
in bluebelled woods of Verdun
in the silt of the Somme
on the plains of Flanders
in the victory graves at Amiens
Monash’s boys - the lost boys
cried for their mothers
begged for water
screamed to die
hung like khaki bundles on the wire.
Commanded by Field Marshalls
who never went to the fields,
who played the numbers game
in a war of bluff and bluster,
who never touched the dirt and slime,
nor waded through the ****** slush
of broken men and boys,
never waist-deep in mud and sinking,
wounded and drowning in that shambles of a war
Wearing dead men’s boots
and shrapnel-holed helmets
tunics and leggings splattered and rotting
with dead men’s blood and brains
Some haunted boys came home
knapsacks full of secret pictures,
old rusty tins crammed with suffering
breast pockets held their grief
wrapped in shroud-shreds.
They brought their duckboard demons
to the world of peace
Gas-choked fretful lungs still brought
the caustic fumes with every breath exhaled
and from every pore the death-sweat of decay.
But most boys were lost boys
lost forever in that no-man’s land
that Neverland of lives unlived.
© M.L.Emmett
Apr 25, 2016
Apr 25, 2016 at 5:44 AM UTC
My arms folded watching you
Waiting for the result of what you do
You brag to make it looking new
Keeping balk till the time is due
The paws are crying
But the claws are flying
The whale has fail
But the fish don’t wail
Don’t say because you are big
You can climb up the fig
For the whale and the tiger
Are bowing the fish and the eagle
Don’t swank as the captain
Cos you can’t move the mountain
Don’t swagger with your brain
For your death you can’t abstain
Mar 28, 2016
Mar 28, 2016 at 11:19 AM UTC
The last time I saw you
was in 2011
You tousled my son's hair
cupped my daughter's chin
in front of the museum
You met me
in your black business suit
as the thick heat
of New York City
coated us
Your grandchildren stared at you,
smiled in shy half-moons
before my mom
took them home.
Then,
just you and I.
We sat for a cold moment
in the restaurant.
I longed for
something more personal
than a swank Upper West Side
joint, and ate nothing
Only water could
slide down
my throat,
and words stuck there
I was thirsty
for the you I had known
A big bear hug
dancing in the living room
to Olivia Newton-John
How you swung me around
and we laughed, my hair flying
I was thirsty
for our secret language
created one summer
for our silly jokes
in restaurants,
people-watching
on Second Avenue
the 80s punks in
East European diners
eating potato perogin
after their long night out
You disappeared on me
and then
after she, my sweetest star,
got sick
you reappeared
calling me every day
to check up on the flowers
in your garden
How you came back
to water it
in your own way
and now
I am only waiting to
cross the oceans,
fly straight into
your arms,
enfold your once-infinite
bear hug invincibility
into my fragile
heart
Dec 16, 2015
Dec 16, 2015 at 10:41 AM UTC
I never thought I would live this long.
I thought I would be dead by fifty.
Live hard, make a pretty corpse
Seemed, at the time to be nifty.
But, fifty came and went on by
And did so relatively quickly,
And here am I, not doddering
Not stooped over, not sickly.
I remember being that kind of kid
Who thought forty was old age.
The kind of oldster playing gramps
In the movies and on the stage.
Gray hair meant guys near death,
I needed not too much convincing.
Thinking of that, thirty years on,
These days, has me broadly wincing.
Looking back is more difficult
As eyesight loses credibility.
So much of what one sees in youth
Is forgotten so very easily.
I look at the photographs of me
Back when I had flattened abs.
Back when my flesh was taut
And hung on me in solid slabs.
I didn’t seem to have any limits
And could do anything I’d care.
Now a long walk is difficult and
My best friend is an easy chair.
Today I see life as a daily feat
That seems to come on quietly
Like a maid in a swank hotel.
It comes in and then out, silently.
I hasten to assure, I am not
Complaining about anything.
I have had more than my share
Of victories, spent my winnings.
It’s just that I never planned
To be an a senior citizen,
Entitled to cheaper entry fees,
An early-bird buffet denizen.
With amazement I nod whenever
Young people offer their seats.
And any time I run a bit too fast
My heart skips a couple of beats.
Then I walk by a mirror and see
That older person standing there
Who is amazed to still be here
Rocking a head of gray hair.
May 9, 2016
May 9, 2016 at 11:36 PM UTC
Seat a great philosopher,
mathematician, physicist,
and theologian at a table
at a swank outdoor cafe.
Have a lovely, graceful woman
approach to take their orders.
I can tell you exactly
what they are not thinking.
They are not thinking about
Physics, Math, Philosophy or Theology.
Big issues expire in the face of beauty.
mce
Jun 12, 2016
Jun 12, 2016 at 9:08 AM UTC
Cobra's breath
through yard iron teeth,
sullen swank and sway.
Shant no man stand
where WILL be loosed
till gait and gravity
sound pounding shoe.
Within no glass wall
to splinter and fly,
till distant point
seen with thine eye,
Pass behind
to settle in cell,
being recalled of fear
or a rainy day,
Casting visions
of a cruelest hell
of infinite symbol,
sound and smell.
Jun 21, 2012
Jun 21, 2012 at 7:01 AM UTC
Ke nna Lesedi, just a rich, Sharp minded and skinny guy
Still be fiending for change, hardly smoking cheap gwaai
I need bricks in my pants so I buy me a house to freely trap
Working on building success, got my clout by a freestyle rap
I swear I'd buy a blue pill from the matrix
I put all my concentration on the basics
Only gym with my nxondo until e bohale
No drugs in my system,ke ty ka bohlale
I hope you get high off of reading this
I pray that you seek what meaning is
Til your eyes are bothloko in order to harvest the food
Til no lies are accepted and all of us live in the truth
Geekin and tripping I'm straight from the plug
He blessed the friend with some dank and a notepad
I captured and flexed with all of thoughts
I'm thanking the Lord for my swank and my Kodak [mind]
[cav the flow and word combo][Creative Work]
Feb 1, 2018
Feb 1, 2018 at 2:49 PM UTC
My mind seems to be at a blank
Not being able to put pencil to paper
And not having an idea to thank.
A picture of a raging tank?
It all seems to waver,
My mind seems to be at a blank
Ideas waiting in swank,
My mind beginning to taper,
And not having an idea to thank.
A picture of a beautiful sandbank
Seems not to come any clearer,
My mind seems to be at a blank.
A picture of a cliff with an overhanging plank
Is not becoming any brighter;
And not having an idea to thank.
My thoughts seem to be minuscule and lank
Making me seem like such a dreamer.
My mind seems to be at a blank,
And not having an idea to thank.
Oct 19, 2011
Oct 19, 2011 at 9:21 PM UTC
Cobra's breath
through yard iron teeth,
sullen swank and sway.
Shan't no man stand
where WILL be loosed,
'till gait and gravity
sound pounding shoe.
With in no glass wall
to splinter and fly
'till distant point
not seen with thine eye,
pass behind
to settle in cell,
being recalled of fear
or a rainy day,
casting visions
of a cruelest Hell
of infinite symbol,
sound and smell..
© 2005
Dec 21, 2012
Dec 21, 2012 at 2:28 AM UTC
How she did the little me dispel
Like the wind drives away the hucks,
Like the sun scatter broad the clouds--
The verily high and vain damsel!
Thoug I be a low man, I know;
Yet shall I not to a swank bow.
Jan 23, 2012
Jan 23, 2012 at 2:33 AM UTC
If you ever lifted stoner eyes
to catch the swank of a star
in the azure vaults leading to paradise,
and hoped it wouldn't fleet
to another party in the cosmos
where the men have enough
of a spine to reach for it—
then you'd understand
what it means to adore you;
but life has made me a funny young man,
and I don't know how to boldly transmute
my thoughts into cosmic tongue as to
draw you in the gravitational pulls of my affection
just so I can enjoy the way you polish
my sable tresses in an effortless manner,
all the while hoping that consecrating
your stateliness would entice you
to indulge in the leisure of orbiting
around my galaxy, branding my waiting palms
with the heat of your open, fiery hands
except I am petrified of being misunderstood,
and it can leave a man fumbling over his words
when he fears that—in fawning over stars like you—
he would only be carelessly scaring you off
with egocentric dreams.
and I am sorry that I wait until the very last minute
to grow the backbone it takes to shorten the distance
between our smiles and energy—when all I want is a night
to pick you out of every constellation, and know
that you will respond to my inviting gestures
with a beaming smile and say:
“I know you don't got much—
but there's something about
how you're looking out for me—
and I'd like to stick around for a while.”
Mar 15, 2014
Mar 15, 2014 at 9:21 PM UTC
Swank to the floor
My ears are covered
So I hear nothing except you
Dancing in front of the mirror,
In the dark,
So I can picture myself any way I want
Any way I need to…
I close my eyes and move
No longer fearing the dark
I hold my knife close to my heart
Protecting myself from the horrors of the world.
Monsters try to bring me back to reality,
Turn on the light
And open my eyes
Forcing me to see what really stares back from the mirror
Knife protect me,
Bring me to safety.
Back to this gothic but garish look I adore
Wrap me in your melody
Carry me until My feet are far from the ground
Until my voice is in sync with yours
Continuously until nothing else matters
Until the tears are gone
And I do not clutch my chest in pain.
My Knife My Knife,
Protecting me always,
Leading me to good places,
My knife,
Delivering me from a world of strife.
May 29, 2013
May 29, 2013 at 11:51 PM UTC
stop trying?? what do you mean by that you old, dead ******* scoundrel!
whats your aim? where were you living when you wrote those ****** words!
what are you trying to pull? what cruel sick joke? What little passe last toot did you think you had in your gut? !
what kind of full bodied lack of thought thumb up nose remark! you’re wrong, or you’re too right!! graying hair, you ugly man, you elegant, beautiful man! !
stop haunting me! stop advocating your poison! Trechourous fuckerrry!
Troll of urban america, swigging down your swank, your swag, your style! Bahh! you don’t know a domesticated pet from an animal, you do not know of institution! You make your little assumption and laugh!
inhale and **** and like ice cream Ironically! Why would you see and then subject me? !
hahah I’m laughing really hard about it! That’s what you leave me with? trechoruous truth, mock your fellow poets, mark vonnegut, shut up you dead man! !
You would like an ironic joke, wouldn’t you old fellow! are you closer to god now? !
Triumph in your misery, and make a little makeshift idol out of it, and hold it up to the stink of the barlight, that pale chicken soup of sun seeping into your existence, and ******* out into a trough and lyrically blessing the underworld with new tounges. !
!
whatever man, !
Jan 24, 2015
Jan 24, 2015 at 6:34 PM UTC
Cobra's breath
through yard iron teeth,
sullen swank and sway.
Shan't no man stand
Where WILL be loosed,
'til gait and gravity
sound pounding shoe.
When in no glass wall
to splinter and fly
still distant point
seen with thine eye
Pass behind to settle and cell
being recalled of fear of
a rainy day.
Casting visions
of a cruellest hell
of infinite symbol
Sound and smell.
Jan 27, 2017
Jan 27, 2017 at 12:29 AM UTC
Drinking *****
Breathing lies
Sniffing crack
Injecting likes
Blazing ***
Smoking hate
Eating coke
Believing fate
Tasting ****
Doing mine
Licking molly
Puffing crime
Vape opinions
Lines of cash
Feel the E
Camera’s flash
Popping oxy
Juiced on texts
Craving H
Hits of ***
Buzzed on pride
Shooting crank
Chewing shrooms
Dipping swank
Sweating spice
******* dust
Shots of self
****** on lust
Cutting white
Burning black
Craving dope
Snorting smack
Always high
And hungover
Never dreaming
Never sober.
Jun 14, 2021
Jun 14, 2021 at 11:16 AM UTC