"tabs" poems
He opens his Star Wars: A New Hope lunch box
Inside a hippies dream.
**** in baggies that have the superman symbol
And Batman symbol on them
Tabs of LSD
And molly.
Hunter S. Thompson would have a field day
©Gambit '13
Aug 27, 2013
Aug 27, 2013 at 2:47 PM UTC
Seven shots with ****** knuckles,
four bottles of letting everyone down,
Eight hits from a disappointing life.
It only took me one trip to the rehab center called your touch. I used the medicine of your love to become sober.
now I am dependent on you, I need you every day and do not feel the same without you. I have an itch when I'm away and a warmth when I'm close. I became addicted to your love.
twelve tabs of compassion,
three pints of self-worth,
five pills of your warm embrace,
And one injection of beautiful passion.
I want you...
I need you...
I have you.
I love you.
Jan 27, 2017
Jan 27, 2017 at 1:41 PM UTC
Sleeplessness
Brought to you by sparkling espresso in a can
I have underestimated you yet again, oh humble coffee bean
But back to work
Eight tabs open, going back and forth
It's nothing short of a miracle if any given task is given more than a minute of attention at a time
Muscle spasms, trembling, fascinating
Overwhelming urge to mindlessly flex the muscles I don't have
Fake machissimo brought about by exhauation?
Or the exhileration of having to complete 8 projects in a day
While simultaneously trying to grasp a breaking down of my mind which hasn't happened since...forever
Hmm
These are the prime conditions to breed a taxing marathon of productivity
Or a chain of costly impulsive decisions to perpetuate procrastination.
Signs that someone is going crazy range from ****** to inability to stick to a single topic to excessive use of run on sentences
"How meta, acknowledging your insanity deconstructs the very notion of it if you normalize it within yourself and just look as everyone else as crazy! Ha.ha."
That made no sense, i don't think.
I like using big words to make myself sound smart you can make anyone believe anything if you use big words also it scares those
Hippopotomonstroesquipedaliophobixlcs
Grumble grumble
Good night/morning/whatever
Feb 21, 2013
Feb 21, 2013 at 11:55 PM UTC
Let's get some sunlight
Let's start a bar fight
We'll take our problems and forget we have to solve them
Let's take two tabs
Let's start a **** lab
We'll cover up insecurity with promiscuity
Let's sleep 'til Sunday
It's only Monday
I have to work at 2 but I think I have the bird flu
Let's call the drug store
Ask for a couple more
Insignificant reality crashes into banality
Let's make a hash pipe
Out of Brite Lites
We'll quote Pulp Fiction with Ezekiel's conviction
Let's start a fight club
Where we can make love
Punch me in the ear and then I'll disappear
Let's start a new life
But after midnight
There's a whole universe waiting to be uncovered first
Let's make a difference
Let's make new friends
Let's go where the wind blows but first I have to put on clothes
Aug 27, 2015
Aug 27, 2015 at 2:22 AM UTC
Take the knapsacks
and the utensils and washtubs
and the books of the Koran
and the army fatigues
and the tall tales and the torn soul
and whatever's left, bread or meat,
and kids running around like chickens in the village.
How many children do you have?
How many children did you have?
It's hard to keep tabs on kids in a situation like this.
Not like in the old country
in the shade of the mosque and the fig tree,
when the children the children would be shooed outside by day
and put to bed at night.
Put whatever isn't fragile into sacks,
clothes and blankets and bedding and diapers
and something for a souvenir
like a shiny artillery shell perhaps,
or some kind of useful tool,
and the babies with rheumy eyes
and the R.P.G. kids.
We want to see you in the water, sailing aimlessly
with no harbor and no shore.
You won't be accepted anywhere
You are banished human beings.
You are people who don't count
You are people who aren't needed
You are a pinch of lice
stinging and itching
to madness.
Translated from the original Hebrew by Karen Alkalay-Gut.
6.8k
We friended on Facebook,
Scrolled down our profile pages.
Lived together in a virtual world.
Our images and websites we shared
With Instagram incisiveness.
Meet all my friends.
Block any you do not like.
All busy we are, doing nothing.
Like if you agree.
Laptops were not enough.
Users subscribed to Smartphones,
Iphones, and God knows what.
Google them if you wish.
And if you like my words
Retweet them.
But beware!
I now use words like lol,
And even ***
Hehe.
Sometimes I multitask,
Flicking TV channels
Like a Subbuteo striker –
Gone virtual by now I guess.
Flicking and flipping while I scroll
My laptop page.
I make new tabs
As I message many friends:
Emoticons exploding
All along the way.
I’m Tivo-boxing clever
All the time,
King of my domain.
So get your VDU lit up
And monitor my words.
Download my thoughts
Into your memory banks.
I hope this all computes.
Paul Butters
Feb 5, 2015
Feb 5, 2015 at 4:10 PM UTC
Independence has a nice ring to it-
The cash register when I pay for myself,
The ding of the doors I open on my own.
I don't need anyone to be whole anymore-
I filled my potholes with my own hands,
In my own ways.
I found a way to be alone and be okay-
Though the nights can get long
And I miss trailing kisses trailing to the bedroom.
I can open my own doors and pay my own tabs,
Though I miss opening up to someone else
And independence has a price to pay;
The cold nights can't be filled by anyone
Because one night stands, friends with benefits
Won't fulfill the small void not even my own self could achieve.
I surely don't need anyone to survive,
But that doesn't mean I don't want someone,
Or yearn for a hand to hold other than my own.
Jan 19, 2015
Jan 19, 2015 at 11:18 PM UTC
To have them shipped across the sea,
sitting like ornamental drops
tinsel strung around your eyes
pocketed the tree
walking down sunset avenue
reeking of bamboo stalks and water chestnuts
looking for a place to submerge your treasure
with a rattling breath do you deflate
And the Oak trunk that grows unimpeded
hanging her branches
caressing the Spaniard shingles
the clay missionary tabs
touching the stucco with a golden blade
of sunlight
cutting a thousand little strips
to hang about the face
moving a thousand miles a second
stopped in place with the quiet repose
of a yoga state
humming and shimmering
yet let me be sweet oak tree.
And I wander through the canyon boulevard
between the rocky cliffs and the endless riff
of surf-rock echoed off skate parks
and riding the PC
highway hair bedraggled and snaked into next week
lingering bonfire on the cotton shirt
plant for plant
*** for tat
seed to breed
Now dance, you and me.
Insinuation
drooling salivary tongue full
bacon
pigging out on burgers
getting red-eyes from vegans
smoking plants
murderers
We squirt,
relish on the act of dying
all things dying
choking life second by second
dying to live.
Staring at neon fins lining the gravel lot
Koi flickering beneath the celestial night
Suspended pondwater
pondering
In surfce tension
the deep mysteries of life
Tracing the snake through the winding streams
we watch atop the rooftop
Gaia
Taking in the burgeoning
Ocean of incandescent tangerine
and Peyote-light
Cacti hidden somewhere between
the quiet slumber of mindless streets
aligned by formless hands
Drinking the mescaline
air
Twisting the nightly moments
as locks of hair
I curled them, slipping, within my fingertips
tracing the long winding road of Tao
along her shoulders
Enraptured by her sensual bliss
When I finally drifted along the clouded memories
of divine rumbling eyes
she disappeared into the sky
blinking along the Jet turbines
Never meant to be mine
for more than a night
Aug 7, 2018
Aug 7, 2018 at 12:25 AM UTC
When I hear the words "abusive relationship"
I think of the gruesome pictures of women
battered and bleeding
that they showed to us in health class.
They forget that not all wounds are so easily seen.
not MY relationship.
I would never fall victim to such a horrific cycle,
of emotional abuse.
Sure he screamed and called me every name in the book,
but at the end of every night he swore he loved me.
And sure he kept tabs on me at all times,
and my friendships began to fade into the background,
but he just worried, which meant he cared.
...right?
not MY relationship.
Sometimes we become so invested and fall so deeply in love,
that we become numb to the pain.
The abnormal becomes normal.
And the punishment that you so often receive,
you begin to believe is deserved.
MY relationship.
I hesitate to call it abusive,
maybe because it has such a horrifying ring to it.
Maybe it's denial.
But whatever it is,
it took me 3 years to finally break the cycle.
Jun 8, 2014
Jun 8, 2014 at 2:53 PM UTC
Red haired dame
black roots
dark brown eyes
thin lips
but smiles neat
handles the cell phone
between thin fingers
nails chewed
adding tabs
suggesting networks
that work best
thin tattooed arms
small busted
maybe less expensive
but it's better
she says
Johnny smiles
notes the small stud
in her lower lip
knows her cell phones well
that's for sure
he knows
next to nowt
just to switch
on and off
and send a text or two
and call
now and then
but it's Johnny daughter
who's buying
not he
he's just the onlooker
taking notes
for a poem
just like this
mental note as poets do
to catch the essence
before it takes flight
like some rare moth
into the night.
Jun 29, 2015
Jun 29, 2015 at 1:34 PM UTC
"Has it not never occurred to you," he said, eyes rolling like dice,
"The grab to bake cannot be left undone?
The neck to slip will save the top of leg?
When they lift we ****** the rotten *****
Six trots can win the flat softball netting?
Lost rocks find tabs undone by the grandpas?
It's like unbecomingphilomancy!"
You know what I mean?
Mar 26, 2014
Mar 26, 2014 at 10:48 PM UTC
The moth with newspaper wings sat under the arrow lungs of the eyeless
blood dripped falcon, more whole than the super-glued roman sculpture.
Next door a 50’s con held up church with a roulette table in the kitchen,
and boarded up the massage parlor
downstairs.
The eye of the man was a centrifuge of ducks, mallard and hen, spiraling
outward into evaporated roach-ground
asphalt.
Next door, slits in the picket fence displayed perfectly formed **** & broach,
empty shoes made of feet below, blending
fields.
The marble foundation formed from twine lollipops and fuzzy candy tabs,
ice-etched to the frequency of splintered seashell
angels.
Next door through the forest of knives a spaceship bearing gargoyles peaked
bodies through collages of faces in technicolor sepia
mitosis.
The heiress molted into tiled pieces, her own dog and sunhat caught in blizzard
cuneiform, kaliedescoping again to fractalled inchworms cemented in motion.
Jan 15, 2013
Jan 15, 2013 at 9:55 AM UTC
lost in this world created on a screen,
I can't even see things that really matter to me,
I miss the rawness of your voice,
the pen to the paper,
now we have an abundance of choice.
I can type without looking,
I can manage five tabs while ordering food,
--whats cooking?
everything is so instant.
we are the impatient,
the damaged,
and the distant.
adaptation creates us to be dynamic,
but I can't seem to not panic.
you are high and dry,
but you're glorified.
you keep staring at your phone
I am just begging to know
why
Nov 12, 2018
Nov 12, 2018 at 10:30 PM UTC
it seems my entire life is defined by drinks.
mother's milk out the womb.
(and maybe those suckles were sweet - it's not like i remember - but her words, for the rest of my life, certainly weren't.)
an hour-long debate, with my best friend at twelve years old - apple or orange juice?
(orange, obviously, is the right answer. we rehash the argument sometimes to this day.)
the day i turn 19, a beer in my hands.
(i'm sat around a campfire with my closest friends, birthdays all older than me - the beer tastes disgusting, as cheap alcohol is, but i'm glad to be there.)
yesterday, i had 1 coffee and 2 mugs of lemon honey tea, 4 glasses of water.
today, no tea, but 2 cups of coffee, a glass of milk, and 3 glasses of water.
i bite at my nails when i'm nervous, swallow down the spit that comes with it, the bile that rises.
last summer, i visited pei, had a raspberry cordial - my favourite drink to date - then bought a case of 4 more to take home with me.
last summer, when i lived in new brunswick, my friends in the same building knew me as the one who would always have a drink in hand - a milk tea, or maybe a pink lemonade, maybe that obscure korean soda i liked.
when i left new brunswick, i took a photo of my 2 trash cans, of the way they were both filled to the brim with empty bottles and cans and jugs.
i still miss the apple cider they made there.
my life is defined by drinks, sips, swallows, taking five minutes to breathe by making myself a nice whipped coffee, trawling the internet for pretty coasters and glassware for an hour in lieu of doing actual work.
Eventually, i close the shopping tabs, take a sip of coffee, and resume with the rest of my life.
Nov 5, 2023
Nov 5, 2023 at 7:38 PM UTC
blunt tips of bent cigarettes
were incisive as razors -
sliced wrists weeping
bright red sentences,
spattered unborn to blank paper
and turned into statues
so the dead would always remember
what they did,
never safe in the graves
in which they'd took refuge
but blue on blue
was ever her color;
blue on blues
seeping from old sins,
deep, hidden within spidery veins
that traced pale, soft *******
finally filling mute lips as she slept,
subsumed in oceans of color,
blues that gave stories, as waves to shore
subsided, reclaiming their pain,
and cleansed sand once more
What end to life!
a collection of furies like stone turtles
arranged on the mantle -
just a few dozen last words
tucked among ads for
Old Spice and Polident tabs
unread, used to line
litter boxes in Cambridge
or wrap fresh fish at Hay Market;
then, someone pausing to wave at the sky
missed saving the drowning woman
by years, if he'd tried,
finding questions in every answer;
child curled in hard lap of his mother,
her cold affections of words
blew from dead lips like old wishes
without tender touch or wet kisses;
but that life continued,
if lived only blue on blue
Jun 27, 2010
Jun 27, 2010 at 6:02 PM UTC
As the magic morning coffee beans take hold,
My thoughts turn into windows
That sprout like flowers or weeds
Across my screen until by lunch time
There’s sixteen or seventeen or eighteen
Links and tabs dividing me
Into minute long thoughts
That grab me for a second
Before being blown away
By a swish of fingers
On the trackpad
I can’t
Keep
Track.
Of…
Help.
I…
I need another coffee.
Oct 9, 2012
Oct 9, 2012 at 4:54 AM UTC
The bed is cold when you turn in at night
because the frigid winter winds have settled in too
and like a fool you left the window open all day
You take a dab of speed as the lamp goes dim
its the only thing to keep tumescence
when you make love to a lover you no longer love
******* is no longer sport, only a chore
and the night birds at the window sing a song of sadness
beady eyes keeping tabs on the city boy's blues
When the day is done the television screeches, unreality television
you're so depressed and you have nothing, not even sleep
and the cold body beside you snores through the night
Even on rare occasions of sleep, you only dream of dying
fiery bus brought with peasant's tokens is burning
as it flies over some cliff face and you remain stoic
Waking only in afternoon sunsets with a sore head and dry mouth
stumble down the stairs to an empty kitchen and the cat has **** again
you clean the mess and make a sandwich, no topping just butter
How many days can pass before you crawl to the shop to buy food
and you contemplate suicide as you scrape the tub of butter again
falling upstairs in a somber stupor, vomiting after eating
She comes home from work and calls it off, packing her bags
you roll another joint without words being spoken
she closes the door and the already broken window breaks more
Smoking on your herbal solitude and preparing the last hit
that sweet tender brown in a spoon you found
it hits the vein and you feel happiness, first and final time
Sitting in some trash-found chair and reading Camus
these are the final moments, surely you cannot hold on
Abner Jay is playing and you fall asleep forever
Nov 21, 2013
Nov 21, 2013 at 12:08 PM UTC
It's a confusing puzzle,
But still holds true:
You can't live with me;
I can't live without you.
Life is but a journey,
I chose to go through with you;
But now that you won't have me,
It's hard for me to continue.
Fate is a bitter cruel harpy,
With her sisters she conspires
For the death of my Love,
As your Love for me transpires!
Hope is a painful therapy,
It burns while nursing Time's stabs;
But the scars strengthen Experience,
As it assists to keep Reason's tabs.
Love and Reason are antithesis,
That can't co-exist;
But their affinity is such
That to be together they persist.
Perfection in Love is when
There is room for Reason;
But when Reason and Logic court,
Love calls it Treason!
Love is unfair and immature,
And still as pure as a dove;
But there's no use of Reason,
With the death of Love.
This poem is an analogy:
Which in life stands true;
It's no use of me loving you,
If there's no hope for you to love me too.
Jun 13, 2014
Jun 13, 2014 at 1:00 AM UTC
You sit in busy subway cars
and start tabs at the ****** bars
in search of girls with wider hips
to trace in the air with your fingertips
You look for love in silhouettes
but find it in your cigarettes
and when you think your love life's back on track
you're reaching for another pack
Your denim sofa is a shrine
for sequins and for cheap red wine
which stains the fabric every night
but won't clean off, try as you might
You stroll down backstreets and alleys on end
hoping you will find a friend
in a girl who sells herself to you
because you know she needs friendship too
Nov 5, 2013
Nov 5, 2013 at 9:54 PM UTC
Instead of foraging around making connections
with cables and wireless systems that
bluetooth and sync their way
into our pocket technologies
and portable screens
(tablets of which we self-prescribe
and regulate through overdose
and comatose keenings of stillness
and waking dreams)
why, instead
don’t we fool around
making connections
with others of like mind and brainwaves
instead of radiowaves and
the mastered minds of computer waves
and lift an arm and
really wave
beyond our windows to
real people
in real time
rather than peeping
like a holographic Tom through
tabs and browsing windows,
multi-tasking time in a state of mime
like it’s about to expire
(like the wireless wires will break)
and all that we’ll have is
all we can physically take
from this moment awake we call ‘life’
– a mistake.
What else is left now
in this vegetative
one man one woman state
where we live to close our eyes
and shut our minds and wait for
the modem-router to re-dial and
get our avatar back online and
our friends back into our
multi-dimensional realer-than-time
time?
Pseudonyms solving identity changes
emerge without birth
with designer non-faces, as
now that we no longer need imperfection
or meaning or privacy
or even perception
we alter ourselves to impress our connections
with whom we connect without really connecting
by hiding as one almost nearing detection
and tip-toeing straight past
concern or reflection
(invisible firewalls at our protection)
our own walls around us
with keys we can capslock,
screening ourselves from unfriended friends,
and playfully sated by charm and ‘pretends’
that will mean next to nothing
when fantasy ends.
Where ARE the connections we make
in this digital age
that we rarely turn off since
the internet craze has become a new God
that we dial to be saved
as we sacrifice friends we once made
face to face
with those we are longing to meet
as we race across networks
with hunger and haste and
with spambots and data and viruses made
to detect and infect
and reject, just for starters,
and that’s not to mention
the ads and the logins and
passwords that lock us
from somewhere far yonder
that doesn’t exist
as we grow ever fonder
of pics and of pixels and
texts of expression
– the reality of which
we could lose in a second.
Jul 10, 2015
Jul 10, 2015 at 7:13 PM UTC
I’m never ever going to get any work done sitting at a computer
rather than with a pen in my hand and a thought on my mind.
In Arial black I will waste away my time
by sitting on a website designed to keep my mouth shut and my eyes glued
to the glowing screen of the worlds media, that I don’t really care about,
but yet I care too much about.
I open all of the tabs and write down very few words
and what ever happened to writing complete and utter nonsense
just for the hell of it?
And why did I ever open this laptop to write a poem
that will be cut off by a website calling for me to look at its pretty pictures
and witty text posts.
And why will this drivel make me feel so **** happy
when all it does is waste my time and lower my grades
and destroy my self esteem
that has already been mostly deleted?
Why do I decide to waste all of these moments with wishes
when I could go out and make them realities?
I sit on this computer and stare at the blankness of other peoples thoughts
and mock the imbeciles for wasting all of their time coming up with stupid rhymes
and sarcastic remarks that they think are hilarious ,
but really they are pointless.
And though I laugh at their foolishness;
they are no worse
than I.
Jun 21, 2013
Jun 21, 2013 at 5:52 PM UTC
My idea of a good night is staying in
And technology serves as my friend
With a glass of wine or bottle of brew in my hand
Talking to a list of favorable foes on the web
Where conversations boarder between flirty and scholarly lines
And typed dialogues lead way to theoretical thoughts and inspirational designs
Pondering ignites a spark that surges in my mind
I’ll begin to research the fast array of thoughts that run through my brain
Fixated on scientific data, predicted trends and worldly traits
Eventually it’s not enough for my thought
I’ll try to fight the inevitable feeling that starts to form in my gut
Leading way to the breeding ground for butterflies
Factual documents begin to get lost in the shuffle
As my attentions now caught by an excerpt or rousing photo
New tabs are opened over the old
And I always find myself ending at the same place
Looking up poems about love and images elapsed from past days
Aug 13, 2013
Aug 13, 2013 at 6:20 AM UTC
As dreadful as an eruption
Deceased like winter
Chest tightening
And fists clenching
As roses ***** right in the throat
Used razor blade on one hand
And tabs of acid on the other
A vast and lonesome world
Population: one-half
Two mindsets coming in unison
Psychedelic tendencies, suicidal thoughts
Insanity occupying a dystopic atmosphere
Swirling smokes, colourful spheres
Intensifying a bloodshed scene
Three, two, one, a blue-green string cut
"Don't do it!" they yelled
"It's not worth it!" they said
But too late, Death grinned at their faces
No pulse, no heartbeat, no memories
No single presence of bliss
Just a cold, pale,
Lifeless
Body in the dark abyss
-djs
May 16, 2013
May 16, 2013 at 1:09 PM UTC
For Sam Cook and Michael Lee
While standing at Marshall and 140th
the lightning over the horizon begs me to come to it
it's like the flickering streetlights, seeming like silent firefights,
simply asking to be looked for.
When I still elementary,
I used to watch the sky as the bolts shocked the earth
and I'd count:
one
two
three
Until I heard the boom and crack of thunder
three miles away, at least, the fourth graders said each second was a mile
it could have been true, it could have not, yet still I watch the light.
The flickering of the fading streetlamp tells me that this moment is not going to last forever
that it will not be heavenly or touchable, but it is there
and it wants you to touch the light as it flickers like a strobe light
like kids playing with the tabs of flashlights
and like the first discovery of light switches
and I'm reaching out so far.
Trying to grab hold of a piece of simplicity,
of normal,
of what I can always find:
Mistakes and wounds
and trying to hold on
Because lately, it seems like the only places we want to flicker are in the clubs.
Standing on a planet where illness and difference are cause enough to torch cities.
We like to light the fires and we like to watch them burn,
but we could care less about what their burning
and it seems like the dark ages came and stayed,
But like tributes to Guy Fawkes say:
*A man can be killed and forgotten,
but four hundred years later an idea can still change the world*
So I think as I stand at that intersection
watching the streetlights and the night's light bulbs flicker on and off like the light in my head
I can feel my fingertips prickle and I seize that moment to reach for the lamppost and final destination
those kids are flipping tabs faster and faster
my hair is at attention
and I can feel the race.
For a second,
everything slows down.
The streetlight stops flickering as my fingertips come upon it
and the lightning illuminates the sky
I can feel the breeze push my hair to this minutes path
and for a second,
I have something.
I pull my fingers away from the light and it returns to its flicker
the lightning fades away
and the boom comes in.
And here, standing at what once for me was Marshall and 140th
I realize,
that all I have
is all
I'll ever claim to know
Oct 21, 2012
Oct 21, 2012 at 6:48 AM UTC