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Hidden Glade Aug 2018
Think about love
Not like a feeling
But like a call
A longing

Switchboard hearts
Take one call and then another
Just switching
Never staying

I feel like sometimes
I have a switchboard heart
And I’m scared to say that
Because no one wants someone
Who doesn’t know what they want
-L
Derek Yohn Nov 2013
When you set out to make
an omelette, you have to break
an egg.  Now what
do you have?

A broken egg.

Unless you planned ahead
and caught it in a frying
pan.  There are other factors
at play as well.

Plans go awry.  Ask
Murphy.  It's the law.

Lawyers can't be trusted.
That's why they band
together, taking sides
like shirts and skins
in a pick-up game.
i don't like basketball.

Trust is tricky.  You
can always trust a liar.  
They always lie.  It
is what they do.  
They are junkies for
their own stories.

Stories are for humans.  
That's why dogs are
man's best friend.  Dogs
can't talk.

Humans think they are special
because they can talk, unlike
dogs.  We talk about thinking,
doing less so we can
talk about it more on
television.

Nancy Grace is running
reruns of the Natalie
Holloway case.  This is good,
it means all is right
with the world.  No other
girls have disappeared or
are presumed dead.  If
they are dead somewhere, they
live in our memories.

It isn't a circle of life,
it is a sphere of existence.  
Everything is specks of dust
floating inside a water
balloon.

And now i'm in your head.  
We are humans, and
the rent is low.
thinking thinking thinking....it takes up residence in our heads, does it not?
Don Bouchard Jan 2012
Under frizzed hair,
The Conscious Operator,
Smacking gum,
Waits with her tails of living wire
To make connections
At Synaptic Central.

The reader
Tilts a page to catch the rays,
Scans for symbols,
Begins to send
And to receive
Electric fires of thought
Traveling in from
Senses Five -
Traveling out from
Schema Library's
Data files -
To meet and
To commingle
At the Board.

With octopal finesse,
The tireless Operator
Plies Neural Central,
Sending quick myriads of thought
To rest or to revive in living files.

Neurons snap and arc;
Their coded leaping fires
Surge message-full
Through cables sheathed
To Synapse Central,
Where in her nimble hands
Fire Control finds slots
And coordinates connections,
During and Long After
The Outward Reading's done.

Even when the Blinds go down
Synaptic Central's work goes on.
The frizz-haired friend steps out to rest;
Sub-Conscious moves into her place
And with unsteady hand
Plays seeming havoc at the Board
Rearranging and Deranging
Delightful dreams, or horrid.
Universal Thrum Nov 2013
A desiccated brown leaf remembering greener days,
summersaults stem over end into the exposed cold dirt softened somewhat in demeanor by the grass and radiant shafts
The geese and ducks squawk and honk in the distance
Congratulating each other for the day's richness
and the way the sun feels on their proud beaks
glinting off the water in its way
a shimmering band
A princely golden carpet forever unrolling and yet complete
The sun's spindle weaves gems of light into a gossamer web
laid glittering across the water
A vision for Moses
who saw the true path through the sea
Fireworks Forever exploding sunlight
Gifted to the eye on clear liquid canvas
The wind ripples the waves
wrinkles pushed along
foaming in the sand
Little Kisses
on the grainy cheek
Star Flashes Communicating ancient patterns
Secrets of Existence Coming in Morse code, Fibonacci Sequencing,
Sacred Geometry in Twinkling Motion
Individual explosions blinking on a natural switchboard
Telling the architectural answer
Manifesting the blueprint
to only every reason why
The Last Leaf sings in the Breeze, swinging
Don Bouchard Jan 2016
Under frizzed hair,
The Conscious Operator,
Smacking gum,
Waits with her tails of living wire
To make connections
At Synaptic Central.  

The reader
Tilts a page to catch the rays,
Scans for symbols,
Begins to send
And to receive
Electric fires of thought
Traveling in from
Senses Five -
Traveling out from
Schema Library's
Data files -
To meet and
To commingle
At the Board.

With octopal finesse,
The tireless Operator
Plies Neural Central,
Sending quick myriads of thought
To rest or to revive in living files.

Neurons snap and arc;
Their coded leaping fires
Surge message-full
Through cables sheathed
To Synapse Central,
Where in her nimble hands
Fire Control finds slots
And coordinates connections,
During and Long After
The Outward Reading's done.

Even when the Blinds go down
Synaptic Central's work goes on.
The frizz-haired friend steps out to rest;
Sub-Conscious moves into her place
And with unsteady hand
Plays seeming havoc at the Board
Rearranging and Deranging
Delightful dreams, or horrid.
Hello, Central? (Reader Response Theory)
Thomas Thurman Nov 2010
"Is there anybody there?" said the caller,
"Six ten eight oh one two four three nine?"
And his ears attuned to the empty hum
Of the long-forgotten line;
And an LED on the handset
Flashed, for a moment, red,
And he dialled the number a second time:
"Is there anybody there?" he said.
But no one replied to the caller,
No sound but the dialling tone
Came drifting into his waiting ear
As he held that haunted phone;
But only a host of phantom listeners,
Of spectres weak and strange
Stood hearkening to that human voice
That echoed around the exchange;
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
And his heart was afraid and nervous,
With his hand on the final digit
Of that number not in service;
For he suddenly tapped the receiver
And spoke on that line of dread:
"Tell them I called, and no one answered,
That I kept my word!" he said;
Ay, they heard him replace the receiver,
And his mumbled cursing later,
With the usual subdued but enthused delight
Of the switchboard operator.
(This is a parody of "The Listeners", by Walter de la Mare; you should read that first.)
Declin James Feb 2010
30 seconds.
The translucent window of dreams gets blown open by the quivering baseline, that echo’s throughout this Technicolor city. The distant horizon of reality, depression and cracked council estate morals are long forgotten. The piercing taste of alcohol stings the back of my neck but melts my stomach and helps free the tormented thoughts that plague an overworked mind. Smoke another joint, dance another dance; my feet emulate feelings that cannot be described. ***** sits heavy in my mind, delaying my reactions and isolating my judgment. An old friend who takes the **** dances pasts with a former lover that once kept my heart safely locked up beside hers. Even though the blood of that love dried months ago, the scars are still visible beneath my skin and they scream across my truthful eyes. I decide to let myself drop further into the ever deepening baseline of the city; I feel my eyes plummet into the empty space of my head. The beat of my heart has been removed and replaced by the pulsing nerve of the city. The blinding lights dazzle my imagination and urge me to forget the grey concrete that surrounds this city, the music pumps and drives life’s blood around my clogged veins and the vibrations shake my fragile frame.

I pull another slightly crushed cigarette to my cracked lips, and let the cold night begin the battle against the warm tobacco that flows into my once pure lungs. Poisonous substances help me feel the sweet taste of life, of love, of music. Realism is forgotten about, the boundaries of life are melting in the bottom of a pit somewhere, let them dissolve and never return. Sober problems twist their ankles and fall into the **** soaked gutter, whilst I let myself drown in a moment of sweet nothing. There is no time to be thinking about girls or love, there is no time for idle conversation under the glare of the moon. For a brief moment I watch packs of men move like wolfs circling on the innocence of girls, buy them another drink, crush them another pill. I stumble back into this disillusioned factory that was once a foundation of an honest wage and the reliable structure of a family dinner. Now it is falling to pieces, unable to cope with this tormenting beat that is shaking through my body.  This place is like a time warp, hours feel like minutes yet seconds feel like days.

The first step is admitting defeat; the second is allowing the ******* to begin. I allow the liquor to not only caress but baptize my tongue. I am a puppet to the baseline, a slave being held by strings that are attached to the stars. These stars rise higher than any city skyline can imagine they refuse to be beaten by man; they stay a part of our superstition, a character in our dreams.  In the corners of intoxication the weak fall, unable to cope with the choice of freedom. They recline into a murky puddle of sweat and fear. Their eyes vibrate subconsciously and their legs twitch to the ever changing beat. For me there is no murky puddle, I am lost at sea rolling between the waves, letting the current take me where it pleases. The breeze caresses my consciousness and tickles my sedation.

Without hesitation my feet start moving again, finding a groove that my mind didn’t even know existed, I feel myself slip into a new unknown level, finally even the strings attached to the stars snap from the tension. My mind is free; it is no longer a hundred mile-an-hour switchboard that is overrun by lights and flashes. Frozen fireworks that were once subdued by the oppression of reality, become lukewarm and vibrate on the verge of ecstasy, I feel them take off into the night, one after another, throwing images into the dark sky. Like 1940 they blitz the city and people run for cover shouting screaming for their loved ones.  Yet the nightly residence of this factory remain unworried and free. We are the last of the human race not to flee into our suburbia homes, so listen to this erratic baseline and forget about the yellow hooded figures that patrol the streets, let the night lurch you into a sudden paradox where nobody belongs yet everybody searches for. This is true euphoria.
Julian Nov 2016
Titanic barnstorms the Tennessee plain through jet powered airplane
As though the Lusitania New York City could hardly proffer a contradictory profane
Nevertheless the intricacies of gamboling and gambling garble too many dice
Listerine rinses a whitewashed flaw until it singes gravity sawed twice
Three pieces of would form a tripartite could, that can’t because beggars are mute and rude
That beggars whisper the hymns of an immemorial festivity churlish upon listless attitude
So we hearken the classics and drop the ink quill upon that pile of effluvium and molasses
We invent friction just to pass a fall’s worth of failed jack-*****
“No more” he exclaimed just as the leaky faucet marginally contained
“Know more reason and you will be fully redeemed”
So I cannot pinpoint the provenance of despair among discrete colonies with barter too unfair
With ***** dens conflagration’s dead blank stare
The pit of the useful and the heap of the useless sorted into neat piles on either side of the River Nile
And each pottery keepsake is a husk of a land long ago defiled
But the hunters that talismans comfort shadowed into a grave crypt
They marooned a contact with pedigree to become flimsy with vogue equipped
So they lament on an August morning, lugubrious in toil and minatory in warning
The darkest nights yet seen by sirs yet sheen rollicking in mourning
We skedaddle the limited spectrum of shallow rust becoming hard work’s dross
Draining the swamp of career politicians that prefer the aroma of cod over the swagger of skunks with high sunk costs
Filch me a new coast Bill the Butcher and secure my passage for bonanzas of wealth
A fool’s card is now the traipsed parliament of one world stealth
Among the aristocracy an impediment to change locks all race in internecine game
Racecar palindromes offered as sacrifice to winsome but momentary glares aglow with disdain
Neuter the profligate, neutralize the builder’s set, stain the chastity of the Marmoset
Suddenly the zero-sum game adds up to twenty
With every dime and dozen going to infinity beyond debt with prosperity aplenty
As the laggards play dominoes on quaint tables frittering at the surface
Foment the disregarded rage and wrangled page into a classic Ace of Base
But who really is Walter White?
Does he live in camouflaged tents next to trees daring an alien but mutual fright?
Is he the kind of Wizard that never had consanguinity with alarmist rite and expeditious lies that aleatory fate is somehow too proximal to become in lambent sight?
Questions answer themselves over time with droned litanies of every conceivable tome
Forgotten in an ash heap in Alexandria more so than Rome
Supersonic flight that hedges prizes qualified kites
Encyclopedias of knowledge won’t even decode ghastly ghoulish capes of an off-color might
Now we simper at the glowering ignorance of menial men
Swimming with sharks and synchronized with the obnoxious hen
They won’t learn nearly as much from the Sun as warmth as they would the Moon for guidance
They won’t plaster Paris with the vandalism as counseling for pilfered tridents
So maybe the Anglophones have a menagerie yet seen
Maybe the game was introduced so early the royalty knows explicitly of beatific beams.
All is lost can never be forgiven in the land before time
In the land before precise minutes, seconds and momentary fragrance of threadbare design
So horology is horrific, when the jaws of the aliens in time thresh galloping headless horsemen Revered in this part of town
The imperial switchboard was stocked to the brim
The counterbalance of a Washington winter was equally grim
Embittered by the bellicose autonomy of fledgling families with endless land but limited prosperity
The dragooned riposte resounded among church bells with alarmism in sincerity
But the attrition of winter and the conditions of every primordial printer
Staged the coup that led to the walloped whimper
As the world shrank and wealth enlarged
As the shark tank of time plowed through shares like an ice threshing barge
We found that history is the caretaker of fringe reason becoming indomitable arbitrage
And for ever space that exists from now to the beginning of time there has always been space that begins with a luxurious spa and thereafter credit charged.
Iris Weary Feb 2013
Pulse echoing in the hollow canal of my ear,
A sweet, persuasive sound that initiates the craving,
I want to taste you in the sickest of ways,
Like itchy centipede legs discovering the back of your throat,
A discomfort only a thousand sips could quell,
I’d like to think I could resist,
I know better; I’m only realtime flesh,
Slowly rub your cheek against my chin,
I’ll dip my nose into your neck and use my tongue to caress each striation,
Until I can taste the carotid reaching toward the holy switchboard,
My jaws will not be denied, closing vehemently,
Penetrating the silky dermis, ragged vents meant to pourpourpour
Vital lifeblood and sustenance out into useful globs of passive alertness,
You are a beautiful, tormented creature in which I can bear to look at no longer.
I cannot see you as you are meant to be, I am deluded and biased..
Sent to realize truth, only to find no definitive,
I will relish bringing about your end as much as my own.
Phyyt phoo, two aqueous lenses peeling through, the oxygen layers.
Pupils turn as they unfold, hungrier for light behind burnt sand barriers.
The switchboard like a carnivorous plant field independently moves points
And compacted, segmented panels respond like exoskeletal joints
There come the staccato screams of steam one at a time, puff, lining the door  
Capsule, contaminated with air, is cleaned when the beetles wing lifts the floor
The boy I was, offers a raised thumb from the ground, science disciple
With Helium fission equations on a sheet hanging from a bible.
My eyes behind a visor open slowly, it’s time to take control
Still tears slowly lift from my face like a violin bow rising to sing low
Now in a place where time means nothing I can’t regret a thing
I just wish this clinical empty cold on all, to take the warmth that lies bring
With Creaking myofibril strings so imperfect in this black vacuum dream
I shake the hand of god; with polystyrene gloves as his work is so unclean.
Mikaila Sep 2013
I
If I could, like a switchboard, dark my heart,
Flip the levers one by one inside my mind,
And watch the stillness creep forth part by part
Painting my scalding senses sweetly blind,

I think that I could live without my lungs.
Pass each day the faded spaces on my walls
Where portraits of my heart's desires hung,
And peeled away, powdered to dust within their fall.

I think I'd like to be an empty house,
My loves all dark and cool and draped in sheets,
And cobwebs strung across my hopes and vows,
The dust in drifts, the solitude complete.

If I could turn away my love and flee,
I would be tempted, for perhaps then I would be free.

II

The burning embers of my love would dim,
And my eyes like empty windows dark would yawn,
And nobody could hurt me on a whim,
My defeat and fear and shame all dead and gone.

And footsteps in my empty rooms would echo
Murmuring the strife and longing past,
And all this complex, painful ecstasy would go,
And I would sigh, able to breathe at last.

Perhaps I would forsake my yearning soul
And give up all my wild joy for blankness.
Stop reaching, always striving to be whole,
And strip away my passion and my frankness

And in relinquishing my quest to get it back,
Forget to miss the passion that I lack.
RyanMJenkins Aug 2015
Momento Mori encourages you to paint your own story
Listening to that broken record mind is painful and boring.
Silence the chatter and climb the chakra ladder to yourself for real glory.

"Remember that you have to die" was planted with Latin roots.
If only you could let go of your leaves, you wouldn't torment yourself with monotonous abuse.
It seems we were trained to forget how to breathe.
Switchboard recalibrated to go on autopilot against the breeze.
Instead of asking why, we look to the neon lights for relief.  
Out of single file one man screamed with grief, " End the misery pretty please!  The doctor says I gotta up the dosage unless I wanna be deceased. Oh master, do I not give you what you claim you need?  I have kids to feed with no more means to deplete.  You can take my seat, I'll work on my feet forever... **** you for shaping my life - No more, my ties to you I sever.  Remember that you are going to die.  Yes, even you, the self-proclaimed 'most high'.  Go hide when you cry, in that same pit of hell where you forge all your lies.  Get ready to fry, unless you face yourself long enough to stop opposing the divine."

Momento Mori, my life I stopped forcing.  Spine aligned, no longer contorting.  Inhale as I stretch at my own leisure while I jot down my own story.  The words come, only in the moment.  I read the lines at the time you do,  with our collective pages eternally unfolding.
preservationman Jun 2014
Boy meets girl
His heart begins to swirl
He states his name in being Earl
The woman states her name in being world
They both hold hand in hand
They are the happiest in the land
As the years rolled on
They both went their separate ways in moving along
The romance became sour
It reached that point in being the hour
Love became more of a struggle
The feeling was move like football in a huddle
It was love doesn’t live here anymore
It’s time for both of us to go and explore
Our love being like an switchboard in being put on hole
Two mates were no longer a loving soul.
She is painted in Do not Touch signs  That stems from the Caution tape that now holds her heart together....
She hasnt smiled with glee in years now her Smirk is as close to genuine as I can see....
She lets her hair down around me and fills the room with memories of a better time When her beauty was still maintained....
As I lay next to her I hold her close to make her feel safe So nightmares I cant comprehend stay outside our embrace.....
She wont close her eyes when we kiss like she needs to believe someone actually shows her affection...
How her hands feel weathered and strong like she tried too many times to hold onto comfort .....
I think she takes what she wants only because the world took so much from her without permission...
Her emotions are on a switchboard of needs she controls at will and her needs are only escape routes now....
Everybody tells me to run away from her and save myself but I cant be her next reason to hurt herself.....
I wont be the next evacuee from a disaster she never asked for and only grew when people turned there backs...
Why cant people see the beauty under her armour or see she dosent belong in the places she ends up?
She is beauty wrapped in pain.... Laughter muted by lies..... And judged only because she learned to survive....
She....... She is not broken to me... She isnt the picture everyone paints... Or the rumours they twist out of spite....
She is the scared damaged angel .... that needed love.... And trusts me to hold her every night....
we're all just after
the space where we plug in

over and over
mismatched switchboard
unfit cords and sockets

you can jam it in forcibly
breaking both parts
not meant to collide

but sometimes
two tools magnetize
gravitational field owned

by both

like the driver
screws itself in
compelled
intuitive spin

genius designs, aligned
moving compulsive

tugged hypnotic
beyond mind
Salmabanu Hatim May 2018
He is a pen,
I am paper,
Great ideas we create.
He is the bow,
I am the arrow,
Cupid's love is our cup.
He is the current,
I am the switchboard,
Our love flows without a hitch.
He is the hand,
I am the glove,
Nothing can separate us.
He is the melody,
I am the lyric,
Together we make a beautiful song.
He is the strength,
I am the love,
We face life with courage.
He is the body,
I am the soul,
A harmonious whole,
Soul mates.
Jake muler Aug 2015
The light at the intersection switched to go for like ten seconds\ than I started to go and what happens\ I'm stuck again by same light getting switched back to red such a scheme




Think some guy behind the switchboard is saying well here comes the Italiano again hit the switch so we can snag him up
Wonder who's all behind this smorgasbord!
There are 2 major vitamin-deficiency diseases that cause suicidal depression. One is beriberi. It's a chronic vitamin B1 deficit and the other malady is pellagra, which causes a melancholia that's even worse. Pellagra (sour skin) is a vitamin B3 deficit known for it's 3-D's: diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia.
There are 2 major vitamin-deficiency diseases that cause suicidal depression. One is beriberi. It's a chronic vitamin B1 deficit and the other malady is pellagra, which causes a melancholia that's even worse. Pellagra (sour skin) is a B3 deficit
JaxSpade Aug 2019
Letters formed in the vision of the world
They were an illusion of representation
As photons of light became electrochemical signals in the eye

The construction of the world unfolds
In a visual pathway through a neurological
Switchboard in our thalamus
Of interpretation in realitys time

We can switch on our functional magnetic resonance imaging machines
And see the rate of blood releasing oxygen
To the brains stream of life

This neuronal activity
Is a human ability
And our tendency to error is detected by
Our anterior cingulate cortex habitually

While our perceptual fragments fit together
And the prefrontal cortices flex their right
Words apear in the poets mirror
And we begin to see the flight of a bee around a pomegranate

We dream down the hole of a rabbit

You may develop Alice in wonderland syndrome
And the world becomes bigger than;
or the smallest planet

Words are a habit

Each pen drawing a quills magic
Hocus pocuses an abbra cadabbric

The focus is the lens binoculars
Telescopic under a microscopes optic

The neurons fire
And we just can't stop it
BOLD
(Blood Oxygen Level Dependent)

— The End —