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I met him on the Amtrak line to Central Jersey. His name was Walker, and his surname Norris. I thought there was a certain charm to that. He was a Texas man, and he fell right into my image of what a Texas man should look like. Walker was tall, about 6’4”, with wide shoulders and blue eyes. He had semi-long hair, tied into a weak ponytail that hung down from the wide brim hat he wore on his head. As for the hat, you could tell it had seen better days, and the brim was starting to droop slightly from excessive wear. Walker had on a childish smile that he seemed to wear perpetually, as if he were entirely unmoved by the negative experiences of his own life. I have often thought back to this smile, and wondered if I would trade places with him, knowing that I could be so unaffected by my suffering. I always end up choosing despair, though, because I am a writer, and so despair to me is but a reservoir of creativity. Still, there is a certain romance to the way Walker braved the world’s slings and arrows, almost oblivious to the cruel intentions with which they were sent at him.
“I never think people are out to get me.” I remember him saying, in the thick, rich, southern drawl with which he spoke, “Some people just get confused sometimes. Ma’ momma always used to tell me, ‘There ain’t nothing wrong with trustin’ everyone, but soon as you don’t trust someone trustworthy, then you’ve got another problem on your hands.’”—He was full of little gems like that.
As it turns out, Walker had traveled all the way from his hometown in Texas, in pursuit of his runaway girlfriend, who in a fit of frenzy, had run off with his car…and his heart. The town that he lived in was a small rinky-**** miner’s village that had been abandoned for years and had recently begun to repopulate. It had no train station and no bus stop, and so when Walker’s girlfriend decided to leave with his car, he was left struggling for transportation. This did not phase Walker however, who set out to look for his runaway lover in the only place he thought she might go to—her mother’s house.
So Walker started walking, and with only a few prized possessions, he set out for the East Coast, where he knew his girlfriend’s family lived. On his back, Walker carried a canvas bag with a few clothes, some soap, water and his knife in it. In his pocket, he carried $300, or everything he had that Lisa (his girlfriend) hadn’t stolen. The first leg of Walker’s odyssey he described as “the easy part.” He set out on U.S. 87, the highway closest to his village, and started walking, looking for a ride. He walked about 40 or 50 miles south, without crossing a single car, and stopping only once to get some water. It was hot and dry, and the Texas sun beat down on Walker’s pale white skin, but he kept walking, without once complaining. After hours of trekking on U.S. 87, Walker reached the passage to Interstate 20, where he was picked up by a man in a rust-red pickup truck. The man was headed towards Dallas, and agreed o take Walker that far, an offer that Walker graciously accepted.
“We rode for **** near five and a half hours on the highway to Dallas,” Walker would later tell me. “We didn’t stop for food, or drink or nuthin’. At one point the driver had to stop for a pisscall, that is, to use the bathroom, or at least that’s why I reckon we stopped; he didn’t speak but maybe three words the whole ride. He just stopped at this roadside gas station, went in for a few minutes and then back into the car and back on the road we went again. Real funny character the driver was, big bearded fellow with a mean look on his brow, but I never would have made it to Dallas if not for him, so I guess he can’t have been all that mean, huh?”
Walker finally arrived in Dallas as the nighttime reached the peak of its darkness. The driver of the pickup truck dropped him off without a word, at a corner bus stop in the middle of the city. Walker had no place to stay, nobody to call, and worst of all, no idea where he was at all. He walked from the corner bus stop to a run-down inn on the side of the road, and got himself a room for the night for $5. The beds were hard and the sheets were *****, and the room itself had no bathroom, but it served its purpose and it kept Walker out of the streets for the night.
The next morning, Texas Walker Norris woke up to a growl. It was his stomach, and suddenly, Walker remembered that he hadn’t eaten in almost two days. He checked out of the inn he had slept in, and stepped into the streets of Dallas, wearing the same clothes as he wore the day before, and carrying the same canvas bag with the soap and the knife in it. After about an hour or so of walking around the city, Walker came up to a small ***** restaurant that served food within his price range. He ordered Chicken Fried Steak with a side of home fries, and devoured them in seconds flat. After that, Walker took a stroll around the city, so as to take in the sights before he left. Eventually, he found his way to the city bus station, where he boarded a Greyhound bus to Tallahassee. It took him 26 hours to get there, and at the end of everything he vowed to never take a bus like that again.
“See I’m from Texas, and in Texas, everything is real big and free and stuff. So I ain’t used to being cooped up in nothin’ for a stended period of time. I tell you, I came off that bus shaking, sweating, you name it. The poor woman sitting next to me thought I was gunna have a heart attack.” Walker laughed.
When Walker laughed, you understood why Texans are so proud of where they live. His was a low, rumbling bellow that built up into a thunderous, booming laugh, finally fizzling into the raspy chuckle of a man who had spent his whole life smoking, yet in perfect health. When Walker laughed, you felt something inside you shake and vibrate, both in fear and utter admiration of the giant Texan man in front of you. If men were measured by their laughs, Walker would certainly be hailed as king amongst men; but he wasn’t. No, he was just another man, a lowly man with a perpetual childish grin, despite the godliness of his bellowing laughter.
“When I finally got to Tallahassee I didn’t know what to do. I sure as hell didn’t have my wits about me, so I just stumbled all around the city like a chick without its head on. I swear, people must a thought I was a madman with the way I was walkin’, all wide-eyed and frazzled and stuff. One guy even tried to mug me, ‘till he saw I didn’t have no money on me. Well that and I got my knife out of my bag right on time.” Another laugh. “You know I knew one thing though, which was I needed to find a place to stay the night.”
So Walker found himself a little pub in Tallahassee, where he ordered one beer and a shot of tequila. To go with that, he got himself a burger, which he remembered as being one of the better burgers he’d ever had. Of course, this could have just been due to the fact that he hadn’t eaten a real meal in so long. At some point during this meal, Walker turned to the bartender, an Irish man with short red hair and muttonchops, and asked him if he knew where someone could find a place to spend the night in town.
“Well there are a few hotels in the downtown area but ah wouldn’t recommend stayin’ in them. That is unless ye got enough money to jus’ throw away like that, which ah know ye don’t because ah jus’ saw ye take yer money out to pay for the burger. That an’ the beer an’ shot. Anyway, ye could always stay in one of the cheap motels or inns in Tallahassee. That’ll only cost ye a few dollars for the night, but ye might end up with bug bites or worse. Frankly, I don’t see many an option for ye, less you wanna stay here for the night, which’ll only cost ye’, oh, about nine-dollars-whattaya-say?”
Walker was stunned by the quickness of the Irishman’s speech. He had never heard such a quick tongue in Texas, and everyone knew Texas was auction-ville. He didn’t know whether to trust the Irishman or not, but he didn’t have the energy or patience to do otherwise, and so Walker Norris paid nine dollars to spend the night in the back room of a Tallahassee pub.
As it turns out, the Irishman’s name was Jeremy O’Neill, and he had just come to America about a year and a half ago. He had left his hometown in Dublin, where he owned a bar very similar to the one he owned now, in search of a girl he had met that said she lived in Florida. As it turns out, Florida was a great deal larger than Jeremy had expected, and so he spent the better part of that first year working odd jobs and drinking his pay away. He had worked in over 25 different cities in Florida, and on well over 55 different jobs, before giving up his search and moving to Tallahassee. Jeremy wrote home to his brother, who had been manning his bar in Dublin the whole time Jeremy was away, and asked for some money to help start himself off. His brother sent him the money, and after working a while longer as a painter for a local construction company, he raised enough money to buy a small run down bar in central Tallahassee, the bar he now ran and operated. Unfortunately, the purchase had left him in terrible debt, and so Jeremy had set up a bed in the back room, where he often housed overly drunk customers for a price. This way, he could make back the money to pay for the rest of the bar.
Walker sympathized with the Irishman’s story. In Jeremy, he saw a bit of himself; the tired, broken traveler, in search of a runaway love. Jeremy’s story depressed Walker though, who was truly convinced his own would end differently. He knew, he felt, that he would find Lisa in the end.
Walker hardly slept that night, despite having paid nine dollars for a comfortable bed. Instead, he got drunk with Jeremy, as the two of them downed a bottle of whisky together, while sitting on the floor of the pub, talking. They talked about love, and life, and the existence of God. They discussed their childhoods and their respective journeys away from their homes. They laughed as they spoke of the women they loved and they cried as they listened to each other’s stories. By the time Walker had sobered up, it was already morning, and time for a brand new start. Jeremy gave Walker a free bottle of whiskey, which after serious protest, Walker put in his bag, next to his knife and the soap. In exchange, Walker tried to give Jeremy some money, but Jeremy stubbornly refused, like any Irishman would, instead telling Walker to go **** himself, and to send him a postcard when he got to New York. Walker thanked Jeremy for his hospitality, and left the bar, wishing deeply that he had slept, but not regretting a minute of the night.
Little time was spent in Tallahassee that day. As soon as Walker got out on the streets, he asked around to find out where the closest highway was. A kind old woman with a cane and bonnet told him where to go, and Walker made it out to the city limits in no time. He didn’t even stop to look around a single time.
Once at the city limits, Walker went into a small roadside gas station, where he had a microwavable burrito and a large 50-cent slushy for breakfast. He stocked up on chips and peanuts, knowing full well that this may have been his last meal that day, and set out once again, after filling up his water supply. Walker had no idea where to go from Tallahassee, but he knew that if he wanted to reach his girlfriend’s mother’s house, he had to go north. So Walker started walking north, on a road the gas station attendant called FL-61, or Thomasville Road. He walked for something like seven or eight miles, before a group of college kids driving a camper pulled up next to him. They were students at the University of Georgia and were heading back to Athens from a road trip they had taken to New Orleans. The students offered to take Walker that far, and Walker, knowing only that this took him north, agreed.
The students drove a large camper with a mini-bar built into it, which they had made themselves, and stacked with beer and water. They had been down in New Orleans for the Mardi Gras season, and were now returning, thought the party had hardly stopped for them. As they told Walker, they picked a new designated driver every day, and he was appointed the job of driving until he got bored, while all the others downed their beers in the back of the camper. Because their system relied on the driver’s patience, they had almost doubled the time they should have made on their trip, often stopping at roadside motels so that the driver could get his drink on too. These were their “pit-stops”, where they often made the decision to either eat or court some of the local girls drunkenly.
This leg of the trip Walker seemed to glaze over quickly. He didn’t talk much about the ride, the conversation, or the people, but from what I gathered, from his smile and the way his eyes wandered, I could tell it was a fun one. Basically, the college kids, of which I figure there were about five or six, got Walker drunk and drove him all the way to Athens, Georgia, where they took him to their campus and introduced him to all of their friends. The leader of the group, a tall, athletic boy with long brown hair and dimples, let him sleep in his dorm for the night, and set him up with a ride to the train station the next morning. There, Walker bought himself a ticket to Atlanta, and said his goodbyes. Apparently, the whole group of students followed him to the station, where they gave him some food and said goodbye to him. One student gave Walker his parent’s number, telling him to call them when he got to Atlanta, if he needed a place to sleep. Then, from one minute to the next, Walker was on the train and gone.
When Walker got to Atlanta, he did not call his friend’s family right away. Instead, he went to the first place he saw with food, which happened to be a small, rundown place that sold corndogs and coke for a dollar per item. Walker bought himself three corndogs and a coke, and strolled over to a nearby park, where, he sat down on a bench and ate. As Walker sat, dipping his corndogs into a paper plate covered in ketchup, an old woman took the seat directly next to him, and started writing in a paper notepad. He looked over at her, and tried to see what she was writing, but she covered up her pad and his efforts were wasted. Still, Walker kept trying, and eventually the woman got annoyed and mentioned it.
“Sir, I don’t mind if you are curious, but it is terribly, terribly rude to read over another person’s shoulder as they write.” The woman’s voice was rough and beautiful, changed by time, but bettered, like fine wine.
“I’m sorry ma’am, it’s just that I’ve been on the road for a while now, and I reckon I haven’t really read anything in, ****, probably longer than that. See I’m lookin’ to find my girlfriend up north, on account of she took my car and ran away from home and all.”
“Well that is certainly a shame, but I don’t see why that should rid you of your manners.” The woman scolded Walker.
“Yes ma’am, I’m sorry. What I meant to convey was that, I mean, I kind of just forgot I guess. I haven’t had too much time to exercise my manners and all, but I know my mother would have educated me better, so I apologize but I just wanted to read something, because I think that’s something important, you know? I’ll stop though, because I don’t want to annoy you, so sorry.”
The woman seemed amused by Walker, much as a parent finds amusement in the cuteness of another’s children. His childish, simple smile bore through her like a sword, and suddenly, her own smile softened, and she opened up to him.
“Oh, don’t be silly. All you had to do was ask, and not be so unnervingly discreet about it.” She replied, as she handed her pad over to Walker, so that he could read it. “I’m a poet, see, or rather, I like to write poetry, on my own time. It relaxes me, and makes me feel good about myself. Take a look.”
Walker took the pad from the woman’s hands. They were pale and wrinkly, but were held steady as a rock, almost as if the age displayed had not affected them at all. He opened the pad to a random page, and started reading one of the woman’s poems. I asked Walker to recite it for me, but he said he couldn’t remember it. He did, however, say that it was one of the most beautiful things he had ever read, a lyrical, flowing, ode to t
A Short Story 2008
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2016
it's this mentality of the old guard: rekindling the Renaissance of the 1950s and 1960s... they're the originators of English, but the last to receive it... their frustrations against Europe are frustrations against being antiques in the anglophile world dynamics... they're Victorian antiques in a silicon valley of usurped hopes... the easiest route is to blame the Romanian than the Californian... the Empire is long gone and there's nothing to bring it all back... hence the culinary fascination and the need to obstruct morality with plastic surgery... they actually hate American accents (after being saturated with American culture) more than French or Germany variations... i know they do because i came to hating them as much as they do... "they" isn't paranoid: the English! we're getting so much American culture it's only natural that we shun the everyday American accenting of what used to be posh bargaining of Oxford in Harvard... globalisation is another word for a monochromatic adjunct.*

2 Texans looking for
de Wallen in Soho...
              London ain't no
Amsterdam:
  Russian oligarch said:
head to Dubai for answers...
    and so they built
the Zeno towers...
              how they never
reveal little mid-western
America to Europe,
the Harvard ponces are ashamed
of dialects -
     American dialect as in
non-celebratory Scoot -
                  aye            -ish
                         but never the redneck
in 'ollywood
                                   how how how -
never the true believers...
we welcome Disney every day,
we get culturally *****, every day,
you think we like Americans?
   we don't...
we're like the Vietnamese...
                    we threw the Jews out,
but the Muslims came...
              we didn't like that...
the Americans became the equivalent of
Jews...
               the English became the
two-faced concierge -
          we loved the cultural ****...
but when we heard American accents
we thought: thanks for the atom bomb
neurosis! the oh-oops message spreading
to North Korea... hey! you dropped
one first! why tell other people
to not do it?! at least the French
tested in aqua-insulators with Godzilla...
you tested the ******* thing in deserts...
oh sure... we love American cultural
exports...
                 we see a Texan in Soho
after a few drinks we're thinking:
                                                 lynch the
*******.
                          it's this disparity of
being fed a culture that represents
            the lowest ebb of pronunciation...
even the northerners in England
hate American accents more than Cockney;
are these plebs feeding us
the zeitgeist? seriously?
        they can't be serious...
                    they have enough enough
actors to be acclaimed as foreign affairs
policy makers by censoring the diversity
of the rainbow of American accents...
   even a Croat accent in English
         (famously part of a football team)
doesn't seem so annoying as a
    niche American accent spoken to
an Englishman...
            Texan for one...
                     hybrid Californian another...
Mid-Western and even though
i'm not English i'm titillated by
donning a red coat.
Ellis Reyes Oct 2014
Unforgiving heat
Cool drink
Giraffe,
Hippo,
Wildebeest,
Gazelle
Sip muddy water hole
Crouching low.

Unforgiving heat
Cool drink
Texans
Sip fridge-cooled Camelbacks
Crouching low.

Light breeze
Eggplant skies
Tall savannah grass
Sways
Masking movement.
Predators travel
Unseen.

Guns ready
trophies sighted
Giraffe
Hippo
Wildebeest
Gazelle

Bullet chambered
Trigger finger
trophies....

Running?

Cheetahs pouncing
Texans screaming
Law of Nature
End of Story.
This poem is the product of a poetry challenge laid down my 6th grade English students. The gave me the words, Giraffe, Hippo, Fridge, Eggplant, and Texas. My assignment was to create a poem that included surprise or astonishment and incorporated all of the given words. This poem is the product of that challenge.
The kid could throw, he really could throw

Scouts were watching back in high school

Arm like a rocket and vision like an owl

Smart too, had all the tools

He could pick apart a defense

He just knew what he could do

But he could throw, the kid could throw

He wasn't coached, the kid just knew

He was fourteen when first spotted

Junior ball in  Eastern Michigan

Throwing footballs, Setting records,

Just to break them all again

His mind was agile like his feet

He just knew how plays should go

He was gonna knock them dead in college

He was a sure thing for the show

He made the coaches look amazing

They never, ever  called a play

He'd run the team alone while playing

He knew just what he had  to say

Three perfect years in highschool

Undefeated every year

State champions...why naturally

The kid just had no fear

He was a leader with that football

He was a man amongst the boys

He sure could pick apart a defense

He broke 'em up like little toys

In third year scouts were knocking

Every college from the East

Full rides without a question

The schools all wanted this young beast

He settled on a team with promise

He knew he could help them win it all

The scouts and coaches stood in awe as

The **** kid could throw that ball

He kept his marks up to the level

That he needed to stay around

He wrote up plays instead of homework

Some in the air, some on the ground

The kid could throw the ****** football

The NFL already knew

He'd already broken most school records

The scouts just knew what he could do

It took two years to make a bowl game

On TV beneath the lights

The country knew of the boy wonder

And they would see it Sunday night

The one thing without question

Was the rocket they called his arm

The coaches built a line around him

They would keep him safe from harm

In third year he decided

He was turning pro that year

The pro scouts all knew of him

The price to get him would be dear

Deals were made through out the summer

Teams were phoning every day

The school was upset he was leaving

The league knew he was set to play

Two first round picks and a reciever

Went to Detroit for his rights

The Lions had the chance to grab him

But the Texans had him in their sights

The Texans proudly took him

He was gonna lead them all the way

The way that this kid threw a football

In Texas they sang "Happy Day"

Our father who are't in heaven

Hallowed be thy name

We lay this boy to rest before us

Before he even played a game

A celebration in a men's club

The boy had come so ****** far

When shots were fired in the crowd there

Two gunmen drove by in a car

He had the world in his possession

Man the kid could throw, really throw

But, fate had chose a different story

How good he was we'll never know
all of
America’s
gubmint hatin
yahoos, pining
to get their
country back,
should grab
yer rifles, stock
up on ammo
and giddy up
down  to Texas
to join the
secessionists
headin out
of the Union

Rick Perry
promises to
keep his promise
to close all the
gubmint departments
he can't remember
the names of

Ron Paul will
finally be liberated
from the tyranny
of his federal
paycheck and
can return to
his district to
practice medicine
unencumbered
by the acceptance
of medicare
payments

Ted Cruz will
move to coronate
his Cuban born
daddy as Viceroy
for life of the
western hemispheres
newest banana
republic

the last act of
of the Compartment
of Education will be
to turn every
public school
into a Holy Ghostin
Jehovah meetin
house

Judicial magistrates
will criminalize
poor people
or just make
them slaves
and all prisons
will be turned
into profit driven
plantations,
overseen by
the local
Sheriffs who
will be paid
time and a
half and 15%
of all profits

unfortunately
the Cowboy’s
will lose it’s
moniker as
America’s Team
if rattlesnake
booted
Jerry Jones
can’t make a
deal to turn
his stadium
into a sovereign
independent
territory as a
protectorate
of the USA

To assure
national purity
Texans will
build a Jericho
style wall to
define the boundaries
of their heavenly
kingdom and outlaw
all trumpet playing
within earshot
of their perturbed
borders

The Eyes of
Texas as the
state anthem
will need to
be reworded
The final stanza
will be changed
to "Until Gabriel
blows his nose"

keepin the ungodly
out and the chosen
people safely
insulated within
the shining
Lone Star State
will rise again
as a solitary
confederacy
of dunces

Music Selection:
The Eyes of Texas

Oakland
11/18/13
jbm
11/19/13 marks the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address... to hold the article of freedom in such disdain sickens me...
Chris T Sep 2013
I once went to a poetry reading
At a café shop in old San Juan.
A tuesday night i believe,
The tourists, like cattle,
Down their cruise ship ramps,
And into the cobblestone streets;
White, bloated stomachs, burnt skin,
In their sandals and Hawaiian shirts,
Or sandals and short skirts, short pants,
Invaded the capital city streets.
The sun was setting.
They were still out and hungry for more
As tourists are for sights, and they'd stop
In the plazas where the pigeons play,
And they'd yell to their misbehaving kids,
And to "look at that!" at their uninterested teens
Who text and text and chew gum non-stop.
So there it was, the café, a quaint little place,
With coffee and pastries fresh and a shop
On the side specializing in art and poetry objects,
And a in the back a space with a set tiny stage
Where poets come and bard and have a drink
And discuss their affairs in the most
Pretentious way that is only possible to
Be achieved by poets, that air of superiority.
A man in a beret and a black shirt and jeans
Was the first to go and he read about
The flowers and the rivers and the beauty
Of this, our land, in a way that wasn't true,
In a poetic way, and then after applause
Another went on, wine red hoodie, jeans,
Young and unkempt and he read about
The Americans and their imperial ways
And about patriotism and independence
And dreams that us young kids feel,
The need to rebel against our oppressors
Because our spirits have not been beaten yet
By the disappointments reached through a
Lifetime of political wrath and corruption
And propaganda and all sorts of things,
The young poet received a great ovation,
Writers here have strong spirits and
Even the elder ones still believe in the cause.
Some Americans, a few europeans
(a Spanish couple and a ****** face German),
Had gone in the shop, probably for a drink
But stayed for the poetry, and they stood,
With uneasy faces that, even if they didn't
Understand the words, they felt
The vibrations of their meaning,
And it was wonderful, and i was glad,
Know the truth and that the cause isn't dead,
It simply crawls in backs of shops,
It hangs with the young people,
And one day it'll explode,
One day the people will awaken
And get rid of these demons.
This time a poetess came up,
And she read in English a rhyme;
While she gave her show some teenagers
And their parents, Americans,
Texans by their accents, began talking,
Interrupting the reading, and the blonde
Woman reading the poem stopped and struggled,
Until at last she said "be quiet, gringos."
In a voice that was strangely soothing,
And the americans scoffed and silent they were,
And she finished her reading and got off the stage
And sat her purple t-shirt, skirt, dressed self
Near the people she'd just told to settle down,
Grinning. I don't remember what her poem was about,
I only remember her action, it was one
That served as reminder to everyone there
That this is our land and not theirs, that we make the rules
And the outsiders should be the ones respecting them,
Not the other way around, that the fight should continue.
I left the cool café and walked into the humid streets,
The moon above San Juan and the bay,
And El Morro
And La Perla
And Capitolio
And the bums and the dogs and cats
and the tourists and all of us;
The proud city, centuries old, that holds a prison
Were our poets and our fighters  and thinkers
were once held,
And i thought: The dream is still alive.
Alright, so i wrote this one when i was about 16 so... yea, not too good. I'm posting it cause i found it and thought it was sorta cool. Again, thoughts of a 16 year old. Things have changed. The ideal is the same but slightly different way of going on about it.
The Broken Poet Jun 2015
If y'all were to go to Heaven
Y'all would be sent down to The South
In a little town called Texas
Where the tea is sweeter
Where chivalry still exists
Where we all drive muddy pickups
And dance in the rain in our cowboy boots
Where we all say howdy
And say ain't like it's not meant for over yonder
There isn't a single stranger in Texas
We all know each other
We are a tight knit town always waiting to give a lending hand
If we were to secede
The other states would miss us
There would be a big gaping hole on the map
The heart and the fist of The United States of America
We are Texans
You mess with one
You get the whole can of whoopass
We could be your worst nightmare
Or your best dream
Just don't talk smack from where I'm from
We will get on you with our whips and shotguns
We are Texans
We don't settle
And we don't keep calm
We are God- Fearin', Constituional- lovin', Gun- Bearin' Republicans.
David Ehrgott May 2016
Bills, Browns, Chicago Bears
Broncos, Bengals, Buccaneers
Raiders, Ravens, Rams, and Redskins
Giants, Eagles, Texans, Titans
Falcons, Jaquars, Jets, and Dolphins
Niners, Vikings, Pats and Lions
Seahawks, Saints, The Colts and Chargers
Cowboys, Chiefs, The Green Bay Packers
Cardinals, Steelers and The Panthers
Now, it's time to watch what matters
Hope you have an awesome year
I'll be watching with my beer
Riley Nov 2017
What happened today was horrible
no words can express how bad
but we stand together because thats what we do
we push through this day becoming stronger than the last
all we can do is spread our love not our hate
because when we choose to spread hate instead of love
we have lost the fight that these kind of people want to start
when we hate we give them the power they so desperately desire
when we spread love we win
we stand together a united state and a united nation
one for the great or good of the people
so however you spread your love
whether it be donating or helping out clean up
or even writing like me
stay strong and know that we can get through this
i love you all
As a texan what happened today was heart breaking. I wrote this for anyone else affected.
devante moore Jan 2015
The Texans
Hot sauce
The color red
Art
Poetry
Pizza
Mexican food
Music
Eminen
Movies
My shoes
Fruit
FOOD!
Ummm I'm sure there's more just can't think of anymore atm...
Hahah I'm sorry I don't really know to many people on this site sooooo I decided I add my own lil twist :D
SøułSurvivør May 2015
anagram**

TEXANS? NONE!
AX NON TEENS!
A NEON'S NEXT
AN OXEN NEST
TEN NASONEX


SoulSurvivor
Would you like to try?
There's one condition

YOU CAN'T USE THE WORD
***!!!
Dara Brown Dec 2014
You say
Talk to me

And I say
how I love love love
The way you make me laugh until my sides hurt
And so many tears
come from my eyes
I could quench the entire Sahara

I say
How I love love love
to look at you
like a priceless Monet
Just cause
You're that beautiful
To me

Then I say
Just how many ways
That
I love love love that familiar space
You know, the one
In the crook of your arms
where I fit snugly
Like the last missing piece to a puzzle

I say
How I love love love
the way your kisses
make my toes curl back
faster than an over stretched spring
Recoiling
And how spooning
with you
is all the security blanket
That this one girl  needs

Then I say
how I'm going to I look up
and tell
How much I am beginning
to love love
you

till you say
Talk to me

And I say
About what
Cause
all my words
They've  faded
As if they were tiny grains of sand
Washed away
From the shore,
slowly

You see,
these words
They're there
Inside my head
Speaking out
So loudly
You just can't hear me say

So Instead  
I say some corny joke
Make small talk
To mask my awkward speech
&
break the silence

How bout them Texans?!
Boy, this Sunday
they really did score....
Folks, I want to tell you a story
About some brave men, men who gave
          their lives
For the cause of Freedom, men who
          left wives
And children, so that people like you
          and me
Could breathe air rich with the glory
Of human sacrifice given for their
          fellow
Man: --- Folks, the story of the Alamo!

      In Eighteen hundred and Thirty-
          six,
In San Antonio, Texas,
A hundred and eighty-some-odd men,
In late winter of that year, would try
          to fend
Off some four thousand Mexican
          troops
At an old, former Catholic church
          called the Alamo.
Headed by the shrimp, Generalissimo
Santa Anna, the Mexicans, camped in
          groups
Around the makeshift fortress, were
          determined
To capture it, and it concerned them
Not whether the takeo'er was done
          thru surrender
Or destruction. The Texans would
          defender her,
Howe'er, down to the very last man,
And it would be the Alamo's last stand.
          ---

     The cause of the battle may be
          stated briefly
For it was a reason as old as
          Humanity:
A tyrant declares the freedoms of old
          are abolished
And his new powers must be
          acknowledged:
The Constitution of Eighteen twenty-
          four
Was swept away and replaced with a
          dictator sore:
The men of the Alamo then showed
         their defiance,
With God and Right for their Reliance.
         ---

     Now, tho the situation was
        hopeless,
And the Alamo was certain to fall,
Three fiercely independent men
        would stand tall,
And lead the defenders, and with a
         boldness
Hardly equaled in the annals of
         Human History,
They all valorously engaged the
         hateful enemy.
        
     Jim Bowie was there, knife and all,
Leading a rag-tag band of volunteers,
And tho he was sickly, bedrid, too, his
         peers
Would stand by him and come
         running to his call.
     Davy Crockett, a legend in his own
         time,
From Tennessee he came to fight
         alongside
The Texan Revolutionaries,
And become one of Law and Order's
         luminaries.
     William Travis, at age twenty-six,
         he
Was the young colonel, who, with the
         fateful breath
Of courage, laid down the sentiment
         tingly
Of all those Patriots with the fearless
         words, "Victory or Death!"

     Now, come Sunday, the Sixth of
         March, ere dawn,
In ice-cold weather, the hell-bent foe,
Prodded by a pulsating but fruitless
         siege
That caused not one of those gallants
         to cringe,
Launched a mindless, all-out assault
         on the Alamo.
With cannons and rifles flaring, with
         swords drawn,
Heroically, the men inside the battered
         mission
Were putting scores of Mexicans out of
         commission
As they greeted the tumultuous
         onslaught.
O! the bloodletting that was spilt as
         they fought!
The tidal wave of red uniforms scaling
The walls and being pushed back! --
         Failing! -- Failing! --
But then succeeding! as their great
         numbers
O'ercame the valiant but
         undermanned resistance.
Like an army of ants, the prodigious,
         pernicious persistence
Of the Mexicans paid off, as the
         Alamo's cumbers
They poured o'er. Hand-to-hand
         combat ensued,
 Until every single Texan stalwart was
         pursued,
And kilt! For ninety minutes, the Earth
         shook
On her axis, as the early mornin' Sun
         would brook
No interference of his sharp gaze
That on the momentous event he sent
         his rays
Faithful upon for want of deserved
         praise.

     The end had finally come: all the
         Texan
Warriors had died at the hands of the
         Mexican
Hostiles, but they did not perish
In vain! for, a deathblow was
         administered
On the abhorrent adversary --
         considered
One of the most repugnantly feverish
Armies e'er assembled -- in a
         Samsonian form,
For, for each Texan who the Jordan
         crossed and the Gates of Trust
Passed through, eight Mexicans bit the
         dust: ---
The Alamo fell, 'tis true, but Texas was
         born!

Now, my friends, no story about the
         Alamo would be complete
If the battle of the following month
         'twern't
Included: At the San Jacinto,
The Mexicans were taking a siesta,
When the Texan Army, under the
         tactical sheet
Of surprise, stormed them, and what
         that resting outfit heard,
Besides the fire of arms, was a war cry,
         cried
Louder and more powerful than that
         rising, sleepy-eyed
Belligerent could have e'er dreamed
         of, for --- lo! ---
It 'twere the God-like war cry of ... ----
         "Remember the Alamo!"

                         ---rmjt
Andrew Duggan Sep 2017
Have you read the news today

44 Texans dead, 32 000 in shelters
Withering and falling like an autumn leaf in this season of grief.
Warm memories left to shed light into the darkness.
Bitter cold sadness consumes a nation.
Each day the news reports the loss  
of your gentle understanding ways.

But what of the others who's stories need to be told?

In the same season 1,200 people fought
for every breath they took, 40 million people
feel the pain of isolation as the tears of heaven fall
down in India, Nepal, Bangladesh , Pakistan and places
not easily found on the classroom walls in Bose, Idaho.

One dead in Texas equals 10 dead in London equals 100 dead in Turkey equals 1000 dead in Pakistan equals 10,000 dead in China.
Media coating news like sugar on a rotten apple
High arts to disfigure truth and news
Much easier to know about Kim Kardashian's Cher-Inspired Photo Shoot, than ask why  Colin Kaepernick cannot play football?


Have you read the news today?
A Youthful Texas Sojourn
At a feeding barn near Houston Texas, we drank lone star beer
and ate giant size hamburgers and king sized hot dogs
Perhaps it is the Stetson hats, but Texans appear bigger than normal,
but they were engagingly civil towards us and to other patrons,
armed people tend to be polite.
As beer bottle after bottle were sunk into
prominent stomachs  that wearers thought
of as chests, there was this mechanical bull to ride
….3 seconds I lasted on that blood bull.
An enormous woman with a hat big as
a life- boat, took  a shine to me and
dragged me into the dancefloor, whispered promises of a lustful nature
something about she riding me till dawn,
am I a horse?
The lady had to go and powder her nose; she said that  
That was the change for me to get out, take a taxi; she had a gun in her purse
not a lady to let down.
Somehow I ended up in Mexican neighbourhood and had great fun
till the rangers came, bulky men oozing of authority   light grey suits and
the ubiquitous hats were checking papers.
A woman of short stature and big heart named Rosita took care of me
we made love on her mother's sofa in the living room.
She drove me on board when the air was still dawn chilly and I polite as
ever promised to marry her, she kissed me gently and didn't
believe a word of what I said
Jonathan Foreman, Daily Mail (London), August 18, 2013
The 16-year-old girl’s once-beautiful face was grotesque.
She had been disfigured beyond all recognition in the 18 months she had been held captive by the Comanche Indians.
Now, she was being offered back to the Texan authorities by Indian chiefs as part of a peace negotiation.
To gasps of horror from the watching crowds, the Indians presented her at the Council House in the ranching town of San Antonio in 1840, the year Queen Victoria married Prince Albert.
‘Her head, arms and face were full of bruises and sores,’ wrote one witness, Mary Maverick. ‘And her nose was actually burnt off to the bone. Both nostrils were wide open and denuded of flesh.’
Once handed over, Matilda Lockhart broke down as she described the horrors she had endured—the ****, the relentless ****** humiliation and the way Comanche squaws had tortured her with fire. It wasn’t just her nose, her thin body was hideously scarred all over with burns.
When she mentioned she thought there were 15 other white captives at the Indians’ camp, all of them being subjected to a similar fate, the Texan lawmakers and officials said they were detaining the Comanche chiefs while they rescued the others.
It was a decision that prompted one of the most brutal slaughters in the history of the Wild West—and showed just how bloodthirsty the Comanche could be in revenge.
S C Gwynne, author of Empire Of The Summer Moon about the rise and fall of the Comanche, says simply: ‘No tribe in the history of the Spanish, French, Mexican, Texan, and American occupations of this land had ever caused so much havoc and death. None was even a close second.’
He refers to the ‘demonic immorality’ of Comanche attacks on white settlers, the way in which torture, killings and gang-rapes were routine. ‘The logic of Comanche raids was straightforward,’ he explains.
‘All the men were killed, and any men who were captured alive were tortured; the captive women were gang *****. Babies were invariably killed.’
Not that you would know this from the new Lone Ranger movie, starring Johnny Depp as the Indian Tonto.
For reasons best know to themselves, the film-makers have changed Tonto’s tribe to Comanche—in the original TV version, he was a member of the comparatively peace-loving Potowatomi tribe.
And yet he and his fellow native Americans are presented in the film as saintly victims of a Old West where it is the white settlers—the men who built America—who represent nothing but exploitation, brutality, environmental destruction and genocide.
Depp has said he wanted to play Tonto in order to portray Native Americans in a more sympathetic light. But the Comanche never showed sympathy themselves.
When that Indian delegation to San Antonio realised they were to be detained, they tried to fight their way out with bows and arrows and knives—killing any Texan they could get at. In turn, Texan soldiers opened fire, slaughtering 35 Comanche, injuring many more and taking 29 prisoner.
But the Comanche tribe’s furious response knew no bounds. When the Texans suggested they swap the Comanche prisoners for their captives, the Indians tortured every one of those captives to death instead.
‘One by one, the children and young women were pegged out naked beside the camp fire,’ according to a contemporary account. ‘They were skinned, sliced, and horribly mutilated, and finally burned alive by vengeful women determined to wring the last shriek and convulsion from their agonised bodies. Matilda Lockhart’s six-year-old sister was among these unfortunates who died screaming under the high plains moon.’
Not only were the Comanche specialists in torture, they were also the most ferocious and successful warriors—indeed, they become known as ‘Lords of the Plains’.
They were as imperialist and genocidal as the white settlers who eventually vanquished them.
When they first migrated to the great plains of the American South in the late 18th century from the Rocky Mountains, not only did they achieve dominance over the tribes there, they almost exterminated the Apaches, among the greatest horse warriors in the world.
The key to the Comanche’s brutal success was that they adapted to the horse even more skilfully than the Apaches.
There were no horses at all in the Americas until the Spanish conquerors brought them. And the Comanche were a small, relatively primitive tribe roaming the area that is now Wyoming and Montana, until around 1700, when a migration southwards introduced them to escaped Spanish mustangs from Mexico.
The first Indians to take up the horse, they had an aptitude for horsemanship akin to that of Genghis Khan’s Mongols. Combined with their remarkable ferocity, this enabled them to dominate more territory than any other Indian tribe: what the Spanish called Comancheria spread over at least 250,000 miles.
They terrorised Mexico and brought the expansion of Spanish colonisation of America to a halt. They stole horses to ride and cattle to sell, often in return for firearms.
Other livestock they slaughtered along with babies and the elderly (older women were usually ***** before being killed), leaving what one Mexican called ‘a thousand deserts’. When their warriors were killed they felt honour-bound to exact a revenge that involved torture and death.
Settlers in Texas were utterly terrified of the Comanche, who would travel almost a thousand miles to slaughter a single white family.
The historian T R Fehrenbach, author of Comanche: The History Of A People, tells of a raid on an early settler family called the Parkers, who with other families had set up a stockade known as Fort Parker. In 1836, 100 mounted Comanche warriors appeared outside the fort’s walls, one of them waving a white flag to trick the Parkers.
‘Benjamin Parker went outside the gate to parley with the Comanche,’ he says. ‘The people inside the fort saw the riders suddenly surround him and drive their lances into him. Then with loud whoops, mounted warriors dashed for the gate. Silas Parker was cut down before he could bar their entry; horsemen poured inside the walls.’
Survivors described the slaughter: ‘The two Frosts, father and son, died in front of the women; Elder John Parker, his wife ‘Granny’ and others tried to flee. The warriors scattered and rode them down.
‘John Parker was pinned to the ground, he was scalped and his genitals ripped off. Then he was killed. Granny Parker was stripped and fixed to the earth with a lance driven through her flesh. Several warriors ***** her while she screamed.
‘Silas Parker’s wife Lucy fled through the gate with her four small children. But the Comanche overtook them near the river. They threw her and the four children over their horses to take them as captives.’
So intimidating was Comanche cruelty, almost all raids by Indians were blamed on them. Texans, Mexicans and other Indians living in the region all developed a particular dread of the full moon—still known as a ‘Comanche Moon’ in Texas—because that was when the Comanche came for cattle, horses and captives.
They were infamous for their inventive tortures, and women were usually in charge of the torture process.
The Comanche roasted captive American and Mexican soldiers to death over open fires. Others were castrated and scalped while alive. The most agonising Comanche tortures included burying captives up to the chin and cutting off their eyelids so their eyes were seared by the burning sun before they starved to death.
Contemporary accounts also describe them staking out male captives spread-eagled and naked over a red-ant bed. Sometimes this was done after excising the victim’s private parts, putting them in his mouth and then sewing his lips together.
One band sewed up captives in untanned leather and left them out in the sun. The green rawhide would slowly shrink and squeeze the prisoner to death.
T R Fehrenbach quotes a Spanish account that has Comanche torturing Tonkawa Indian captives by burning their hands and feet until the nerves in them were destroyed, then amputating these extremities and starting the fire treatment again on the fresh wounds. Scalped alive, the Tonkawas had their tongues torn out to stop the screaming.
The Comanche always fought to the death, because they expected to be treated like their captives. Babies were almost invariably killed in raids, though it should be said that soldiers and settlers were likely to ****** Comanche women and children if they came upon them.
Comanche boys—including captives—were raised to be warriors and had to endure ****** rites of passage. Women often fought alongside the men.
It’s possible the viciousness of the Comanche was in part a by-product of their violent encounters with notoriously cruel Spanish colonists and then with Mexican bandits and soldiers.
But a more persuasive theory is that the Comanche’s lack of central leadership prompted much of their cruelty. The Comanche bands were loose associations of warrior-raiders, like a confederation of small street gangs.
In every society, teenage and twenty-something youths are the most violent, and even if they had wanted to, Comanche tribal chiefs had no way of stopping their young men from raiding.
But the Comanche found their match with the Texas Rangers. Brilliantly portrayed in the Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove books, the Rangers began to be recruited in 1823, specifically to fight the Comanche and their allies. They were a tough guerilla force, as merciless as their Comanche opponents.
They also respected them. As one of McMurtry’s Ranger characters wryly tells a man who claims to have seen a thousand-strong band of Comanche: ‘If there’d ever been a thousand Comanche in a band they’d have taken Washington DC.”
The Texas Rangers often fared badly against their enemy until they learned how to fight like them, and until they were given the new Colt revolver.
During the Civil War, when the Rangers left to fight for the Confederacy, the Comanche rolled back the American frontier and white settlements by 100 miles.
Even after the Rangers came back and the U.S. Army joined the campaigns against Comanche raiders, Texas lost an average of 200 settlers a year until the Red River War of 1874, where the full might of the Army—and the destruction of great buffalo herds on which they depended—ended Commanche depredations.
Interestingly the Comanche, though hostile to all competing tribes and people they came across, had no sense of race. They supplemented their numbers with young American or Mexican captives, who could become full-fledged members of the tribe if they had warrior potential and could survive initiation rites.
Weaker captives might be sold to Mexican traders as slaves, but more often were slaughtered. But despite the cruelty, some of the young captives who were subsequently ransomed found themselves unable to adapt to settled ‘civilised life and ran away to rejoin their brothers.
One of the great chiefs, Quanah, was the son of the white captive Cynthia Ann Parker. His father was killed in a raid by Texas Rangers that resulted in her being rescued from the tribe. She never adjusted to life back in civilisation and starved herself to death.
Quanah surrendered to the Army in 1874. He adapted well to life in a reservation, and indeed the Comanche, rather amazingly, become one of the most economically successful and best assimilated tribes.
As a result, the main Comanche reservation was closed in 1901, and Comanche soldiers served in the U.S. Army with distinction in the World Wars. Even today they are among the most prosperous native Americans, with a reputation for education.
By casting the cruelest, most aggressive tribe of Indians as mere saps and victims of oppression, Johnny Depp’s Lone Ranger perpetuates the patronising and ignorant cartoon of the ‘noble savage’.
Not only is it a travesty of the truth, it does no favours to the Indians Depp is so keen to support.
Mateuš Conrad May 2018
from experience,
Alzheimer's in males is
more bearable
than in females,
given the example of
my grandfather,
there are always
dasein coordinates
of memory laying
siege to the inanimate
present...
under a veil and curtain
of solipsism
and schizophrenia
(respectively)...
"i" play truant...
      not that there is
a gender neutrality of
pronouns, there is also
a neutrality of pluralism...
thesaurus subtleties;
bull riddling *******!
males deflect
memory and coordination
of the present,
hence the "presumptive"
"thought"...
       that,
even if Elijah is to return:
a son's heart will turn
to his father's...
we both share a nostalgia,
me and Joseph...
   how we used to ride bicycles
and went fishing...
now he sleeps, and
I'm bound to drinking
till sunrise I wish will
never come...
irony... the anomaly of
premature "Alzheimer's",
namely the calculative
mind, a Macchievelian
"syndrome":
  Venetian contra
Milanese familiar...
    what? talk! talk!
"he" sure as **** will not
climb down off a cross and
give his Judas due
to another iconoclasm project
akin to: Metallica's
before it sleeps...
      a game of chess
between a schizophrenic
and an Alzheimer's project
uno...
      guess who's bluffing
toying with solipsism...
mind you, both are jacked up
on pharma placebos,
which are, so short of the true
psychedelic escapades...
     then they throw IN
a ******* in a wheelchair to
balance the books,
get a medium,
    churn out a no man's land...
get all body-realistic
and shove the brain
from basic piston dynamics
into artificial intelligence
webbing custard,
which later becomes
dog food, cartilage for
prosthetics,
         and a canvas for
medical students...
     since the blood never gushes
out of grey... mint...  
not even if I tried,
given that certain mental illnesses
are pure pilitoco...
there's market on easily accessible
terminology,
  again, borrowed from the medical
profession...
   the reason they are taboo,
is because they are too politically
useful, unless of course,
the "surprising" happens,
akin to a Texans shootout...
    straight away, gobs into the trough,
eyes into the precursor *******'
worth of **** stipends at
the Vatican...
                   if only...
       **** could run the world...
you ******* donning a bow-tie
to talk such plain-policed-talk?
apparently there's a tomorrow...
to be honest,
to me that only means
a yesterday that just happened
today...
   memory,
outside the schooldays living
plasticine...
   head in a churner,
and the sick vogue of
peacocking psychopathy,
before, the glued eyes to the void
starts swerving his
multifaceted scream of ideas...
see em, dull eyes...
toad eyes... eaten by amphibian
apathy...
    saliva on the oculus...
     and twice the venom
akin to an immovable statue...
like a copper statue of Montgomery,
so too, the one pence,
two pence in the pavement...
copper herald: the screeching
shaman of the collective death...
while tomorrow,
the dead night in sloth's *****
awaiting suckling for a dream...
a kite was flown,
an ice cream was turned into
a fancy quasi-arctic inverted
dollop...
               empire strikes back:
the Rolling Stones / the Beatles
SCHIZOPHRENIA
         was debated by the titilated
public...
         unless you're not
bilingual...
imagine...
       Pacquiau vs. Klitschko...
honey... your depression
narrative isn't going to be some
David contra Goliath anomaly...
    like that *****-whiff of a man
'aving a pint,
sliding into tango...
   while me 'aving a 50cl of *****,
doing an hour's worth of
Buckingham duck-snap
       salutations in:
                         'eet up! 'ed do'n!
sorry...
    there are too many exceptions
at the zenith that are a
turkey-feeding antithesis of
bulimia made believable...
as ever... too few exceptions at
the nadir, that are somehow
precursors to
a grief upon the plateau,
communal...
    altogether worrying...
slyly, rather than shyly,
within e.g., trying to...
      do you know that Rasputin
gave me an old Tsar rüble banknote
from the grave,  via
a Jew, that earned a Monte Casino
cross for bravery?
    the Poles still think
the Mongols are coming...
   like the Arabs...
who still think water is
       a...
                  whatever happens
in Las Vegas...
              doesn't leave Las Vegas?
about time "they" figured
out how to water the plants
with dog ****...
mind you, with a back
to the future hindsight 100 years on...
it wasn't so much that
we were ignorant,
but rather that we were:
                       misinformed...
catch you next time,
experiencing a barage of
information,
and interacting with
a self-modified
          censor-***-filter...
"thing".
John F McCullagh Sep 2017
I saw my neighbor standing in disbelief.
He seemed to be in shock
He stared at the ruins of his home
as the waters of Harvey  receded from his land.
He had his wife, but that was all.
They had nothing to look forward to now but fighting mud and mold.
“ I came into this life with nothing and I leave it with nothing.”
He muttered this more to himself than to me.
“I will help you.” I said. “We will help each other.”
Then he seemed to recall that he was a Texan;
Born and raised.
and we  Texans do not allow ourselves to become discouraged
by a little adversity.
“We will rebuild.” he told his wife. “Don’t you worry.”
Then, like Greek Sisyphus with his shoulder against the stone,
He began to pick and sort through the wreckage of his time.
Hurricane Harvey destroys our homes but not our spirit
The Fire Burns Sep 2017
Though our streets are flooded,
towns and cities destroyed,
we will rebuild,
lots of help has been deployed.

Harvey brought it's wrath,
but Texans fight with heart,
though it will take a while,
there will be a brand new start.

From Rockport to Beaumont,
and the towns in between,
soon we'll be back on the beach,
drinking beer, wearing sunscreen.

With the sounds of hammers,
and of saws and drills,
don't worry about Texas,
be assured she will heal.
This long time doodling Yankee 
(who calls Southeastern Montgomery, Pennsylvania LV
plus III four seasons visited 
upon swath of topography to see
and hear flora and fauna over run 
via industrialization he doth experience pity
sympathy, humanity deafening cacophony undermining 
once abundant bounty, which mutiny 
upon bounty outwits mother nature
in this REAL LIFE “GAME” of jeopardy 
where survival of the fattest dominates avast geography
thence a tempest in a global teapot doth brew
which phenomena Gaia foments,
inducing meteorologists due
tee fully issuing catastrophic fallout
asper category 5 carved foo
tang clan along Gulf Coast 
reserving special vengeance (alas domino effect) 
for oil derricks hue mans insatiably drill into 
ever more difficult to access reservoirs sans fossil fuels, but Jew
blintz echoes across watery expanse when excavator loo
king for liquid gold hit a mother lode
(or off shoot) exciting new
man hick pumps furiously fracking gnome hatter 
watching grim faced absent magic spells such as phew 
fi foe...aghast at the rapacious, pernicious, malicious....rue
th less ness heaped upon Planet Earth, 
where tipping point 
re: specifically **** Sapiens over population will true
lee interrogate meteorological altercations, conflagrations, and
exterminations of multitudinous
botanical and animal genus or species 
as wrath of monster storms akin to a oceanic brigand
wreaking loss of life and limb, additionally bringing destruction 
as megadeath metal lick ha - monstrous maelstrom 
mercilessly muscles itself when making land
fall, where record rainfall submerges
once smug Texans man
dated to evacuate far from the pan
demon harum-scarum as retribution
for incessant lambasting wan
ton ness exploiting terrestrial resources selfishly that will eventually ban
hush the dominant primate requisitioned to become extinct – anon

miss lee as voluntarism spontaneously spawned and spun off from Biblical deluge
strangers reaching out to rescue folks unbeknownst to them without a wince
forever prompting that age old question asper why do person only evince
good Sammaritism during disasters proof  
mortal camaraderie, defensiveness, from giving, generating 
kudzu offshoots providing salutary assistance doth convince.
humanity amidst adversity.
preservationman May 2020
Spaniards voice
Culture scents
San Antonio, Texas was my vacation
My account being my personal proclamation
The enriched history inspired me being pure rejuvenation
Here is my presentation
Do you know what San Antonio in Texas means?
Saint Anthony
So what’s in a name could be a person born with the same
My exploration took me on tour of all the highlights that made San Antonio, and why it is a major city
It was Medical Centers, Universities, and San Antonio Zoo, which I witnessed from an Aerial view
I even visited the famous, “ALAMO”
The Mexican Spanish War fighting for independence
But there is a unique side of San Antonio, and it is the “RIVERWALK”
It’s those floating taxi’s that bring the Riverwalk alive and extends into the suburbs
Yet, there is a European atmosphere culture at the Café’s at the Riverwalk edge
You hear the serene tempo music of Violin’s acquaint sunset going down and the evening air sets the stage for a romantic evening under the stars and moon
This is all happening at all Café’s tables as you wine and dine
Enchanted as I was, I took in all the San Antonio accord
I stayed Seven days at the Holiday Inn Riverwalk in Downtown San Antonio, Texas
So you know my Folio
It was a venture of delight
Those Texans know how to shed light
Friendly citizens within San Antonio, the city
Having to return back home to New York City was my pity.
Mateuš Conrad May 2018
what do you call a spider without a spiderweb?
    hardly a beef eating tarantula,
came the spider from his web
and scuttled along the pave- like
a missing shoe in a tsunami of
Oxford St. shoppers,
   alternatively (like) a crack-******* addict
i happened to observe, with
a lightbulb in a red phone box
with me standing in it eyeing him
before the hyena dealers buchered
his *** for copper?
    5am London is a twilight zone...
but hell, the tarantula lost
the ability to be arcitecturally
sound, dropped to the floor like
the ape off a tree with a pulsating
lilac mushroom...
     and that psychedelic enzyme
theory of the fungus is...
   wait for it... another way to sieve
through what has the San Francisco
stamp of approval for a Saturday
night in...
                   drinking beer and laughing
at your own jokes in a post-communist
****-show of a "democratised"
society... well... isn't,  exactly to everyone's
taste...
    'cos that: bang bang Nancy riding
horses made of sticks into Santa Fe...
     went by like: woosh!
           watcha know,  Texans not too
lady-bi titillating **** rhetoric...
            and in other news...
that chubby moon-key worth of
every subsequent Monday dropped
from a tree, with a tarantula kippah...
if the fungus took a free ride
so did the ****** spider,
    who... had the gift of prophesisng
its future as, cushty,
   conspired with the fungus...
    'hell, this monkey will someday
build lavish aquariums for us,
feed us... pet us...'
    hence the beef-eating venture...
and the missing spiderweb production
missing like footprints on a beach...
can't tell you that I don't see
             a similarity, but there's a vital
bit missing...
no, because you don't exactly sit
around drinking beer waiting for something
like this...
    it just drops out of nowhere
and your hands start moving out of their
own will, idle only a minute prior..
hardly a sort of conversation you might
have, drinking in a bar,
with someone, other than...
   at this point even your own shadow would
run away and hide in a shadow of a tree,
forge peek-ah-boo, ******'s way gone,
and yes, only second beer in...
    a blocked toilet that began with
a translation of English
    soap operas of 40 years...
   opery mydlane...
        mydło = soap...
     yes yes, sure, Finnegans Wake
   "is": translatable...
         a little bit of bilingualism doesn't
hurt...
       unless it comes from monolingual
bureaucrats who deem it a:
   split-eddie...
          heart on my heart,
I've sat with dangerous psychopaths
doing an arithmetic exam,
while learning a lesson in empathy
at a St. John's Cross course for
first aiders...
      one even laughed about bashing his
head against a wall,
and running naked with a sword
into the street...
      but we had a laugh:
    I started to think whar prison must be
like, esp. with the Imams...
            soap operas though...
elsewhere they're known as
    tele-novellas...
                        all in all...
this is just shy from my usual escapade...
into the zamarki / technicalities
of language,
    notably in translation,
but notably in words that never made
it into the rigid rubric of ideology...
only recently i wrote something and
stashed it into a draft compartment...
    niche intrest...
          if i could counter the cartesian
res cogitans with res vanus...
  surely I could counter Heidegger's
dasein with... daseit...
     a tiny diffrence...
  the poem remains abandoned like
a public grotto for grafitti,
waiting less for a nurse to heal it,
but for a squatter to move into
the abandoned space,
   and become like a tarantula
          trying to remember how it was
to weave, a titanium silk thread into
snowflake lace...
      if only to find the squatter
  to occupy
   the scribble I might dare to call poem
that possesses all the qualities
of an abandoned house...
     and like a doormouse:
not a peep-squeak out of me in
any fathomable elaboration of due
narrative,
    when the difference is based upon
alternating the meditation invested
in daseiN prior, and now... ha ha...
     daseiT...
                       i'm sure heidegger had
in mind 's (ist) within the da-sein compound,
     as much as isn't (ist nicht)...
       given there's the "talk" of time,
I subscribe to the being and form of time,
rather than to being and formlessness of nothing
(which, becomes non-being
   and the form of nothingness)...
    already a meditative language ensues,
much akin to my current
reading material...
       dropping ashes on the buddha:
   the teachings of Zen master seung sahn

by stephen mitchell  (grove / atlantic Inc.)...
  i'm sure I'll find a squatter
who will enter this abandoned house
of a "poem",
        and elaborate on,
any inconveniences,
     notably the missing conventionality
of: a poem is not a poem
without a rhyme...
         yeah yeah...
and those poems that aim to
be "songs"...
     seriously, Shakespeare?
     Robbie Burns, zee baßtard,
   has 'em singing ****** numb-skulled
silly, every Hogmanay and even
by the Thames, each year...
at precisely, circa, mid-night...
                 even if quoted a million
times, a millionth celt and 'glican will
know             a one more
                               d'moor...
                                      tip of tear
having exhaled a line from auld lang syne.
Bob B Aug 2021
Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis
Are leading the lemmings into the fire.
The two governors are throwing more
Wood onto the funeral pyre.

Each is hoping that voters will give him
Praise for his cringeworthy COVID response,
Which was never very aggressive
And always displayed more nonchalance.

Partners in carnage, they hope to score
Political points while people get sick.
And people are dying. Can't these two
Numbskulls do their arithmetic?

COVID numbers are rising again.
The delta variant is spreading fast.
And yet the two behave as though
COVID is a thing of the past.

Banning mandates for masks in schools
When numbers of cases are rising? What?
Their irresponsible, heartless, and thoughtless
Behavior is a punch in the gut.

It's all about choice, DeSantis says,
Which shows his reasoning's not so keen.
Kids don't have a choice in the matter,
For kids under twelve can't get the vaccine!

The two Republican ideologues
Do not want government "intrusion."
They are entrenched in hypocrisy
And have abandoned truth for illusion.

Patients are filling the hospitals
In both of their states--an indication
That they have a serious health crisis.
What a frightening situation!

Younger people are losing their lives
In greater numbers than before.
It makes no sense to abandon reason
And common sense as numbers soar.

DeSantis and Abbott have blood on their hands.
But, obviously, they don't care.
I'm glad they’re not my governor.
Floridians and Texans beware.

-by Bob B (8-11-21)

— The End —