"thens" poems
No one has ever taken a chance with me
Some have danced with me
But most are quick to be real slick
And change their stance with me
Fake people making noise
And playing games
Calling names, pointing fingers
And placing blame
Little realize
While they're fixed on displacing shame
All this nonsense stays constantly
Suspended through my veins
They burst open with the worst notions Contorted emotions to mass explosions
Like mixing large proportions of gasoline
Fire driven moths-to-flames
And my response is to conjure
Create, contemplate, and maintain
So please run along and carry on
Like you never knew my name
Because saying it will curse you
When you mention it in vain
Don't react or erupt like 'this' was abrupt When you never said 'this' to my face
Don't act surprised or try to hide it
Like you missed it or tried to fight it
Like you have any right to deny it
Now that you've finally been erased
I'm tired of all the back-thens
And back-whens
You're a has-been, and I'm laughing
Coming out of the woodwork
Some leaving without a trace
Like a blank space could ever replace
Everything you didn't make work
In the end we didn't mend
So I guess I wasn't worth it
At best we could jest, try to forget
Let's say that I deserve it
I wasn't perfect and then again
I'm not a ******* servant
Should I reword it?
Use different verbage?
Change my perspective respective
Of your verdict on the time spent?
I wouldn't know
Because you never showed
And I'm too busy living in ('this') moment
Jun 20, 2019
Jun 20, 2019 at 6:48 AM UTC
i don’t know
the ifs and thens
the chance
the firsts and lasts
congrats
i’m slow
i see lacks
and scraps
the straw
the traps
and the grass
laughs
and the trees
dance
May 20, 2021
May 20, 2021 at 6:33 PM UTC
i,
I
am real
my gender is real
my sexuality is real
despite everything and everyone telling me that they're not —
I am real as ****
Maybe that's why you're confused by me.
Maybe it's because you're used to a resolution that's less than 8-bit.
Maybe it's because you're used to a pixelated existence.
Maybe it's because all that you can compute
are 0s and 1s.
***** and *****
lips and *****
Maybe that's why you're afraid of me.
Because you're afraid of what you're going to see in high resolution.
Because you're afraid to see exactly what you've been missing out on.
Becuase I'm not coded in binary, hexadecimal, Base32 or 64,
but Base∞
and I code myself in a language
that I am constantly learning
and creating simultaneously,
let's have an interesting conversation
...supurfluous, unnecessary, confusing...
words spoken by the able, the unwilling
to take a closer look at my pupils —
dilating in high definition.
In fact, the definition is so high
that you'll have climb from my genitals
all the way up into my heart to see me for who I am.
Yes, I realize that binary is necessary for the basis of computation.
But we're past that now.
We don't only have ifs and thens.
We've got ands, ors, buts, maybes, sometimes, always, and nevers.
We've got infinities.
We've got forevers.
Oct 19, 2015
Oct 19, 2015 at 9:26 PM UTC
Write every chance you get,
there aren't many.
Write when you
have a quiet moment
by yourself.
Write when you
are
in
the
queue;
life is about waiting.
Write when you are in bed;
take your pen
and
close your eyes.
By morning
you will have forgotten
more poems than you have written
but
you will still be a writer.
Write when you are getting a haircut;
all that hair has a story.
Write while you watch a woman.
Write while you watch a woman
lugging a rolling suitcase.
Imagine what is in there,
what is so important to her
that she must roll it around
in the darkness?
If you get the chance,
write in New York.
New York is writers writing about writers.
Write when the
most
beautiful
girl
turns around
and
gives you
heaven.
Write because heaven is costly;
heaven is elusive.
Write because heaven is rich
and know that you will be there
again.
Write because of anyways, well-fuck-it-thens, and don't-call-me-ever-agains.
Write when there is nothing
to write about,
there is always something
to write about.
If your writing is ****
feel freedom
instead of
disappointment.
We ****
to make space
for
reason.
Mar 27, 2012
Mar 27, 2012 at 3:52 PM UTC
When I first met love,
Love was... She waaaasss,
Well She was rude.
Just by the way she looked at me,
The tone of voice she used
The feeling that she bared was crude
But I could never elude
Does the inconsistent affection define her?
The every now and thens
The almosts
The barelys
Hardlys
The healings then the scarring
The massages then sparring
The statements
Like ******** and darlings???
Her, and hate always seemed to be divided by a single line
Overall I got use to her, but
I don't know I jus got annoyed by the intimacy alloy
It was hard to mix because she didn't give a ****
...And I gave roses
And when I sent flowers
She sent some back
The same dozen ...
to be exact
The confusion
The illusion
The tears that kept oozing
And almost in the same emotion we gave a sense of devotion
Question!
If we close our hearts,
Could our minds stay open?
And if we lost interest,
Could our hearts stay focused?
Love was hell of an experience
Since I dealt with her I have confidence with anyone else
...
I think my past can bring a present to my future
...
I thought of deviating from her
But I know she don't come with only one person
There's others that carry her, similar to mothers
With innocence that will greet you to her,
Similar to ushers
Dec 14, 2012
Dec 14, 2012 at 1:20 AM UTC
She was called a pollyanna.
Positive exclamation addicted
she high-stepped and varied her pace
through life's shifting textures.
Retrieving sea glass and a scallop-cut piece of shell
from the day's foam ruffled waves
at the edge of iridescent aquamarine.
She lived as a greeter.
Always expectant, rounding each corner
to meet until-now unfound friends or catch
a coin's shiny glint from the sidewalk's crevasse.
A collector too, she gathered smiles as she
walked past and sometimes toward faces
moving to their meeting places for the day.
She said regrets lead backward.
Ruminations rehash long ago or too current
memories looking for what-ifs and what-thens
not in her mind the stuff of collectibles.
She chose to live today
and dream tomorrow
always loving forward.
May 14, 2015
May 14, 2015 at 8:44 AM UTC
Have you ever wondered?
... Out of all them people,
Who is the ONE that you wish you were still with today?
Then, until now...
Still hanging around
Maintaining
Yea yea yea, "everything happens for a reason, what goes around comes around, or he works in mysterious ways"
I AIN'T TRYNA HEAR ALL THAT ****
...
SHE'S GONE
She left, doing the only thing that was right
She was down, but had to get up and go
Even though we moved on; I want her back
If this world was mine, she'll be the bodies of water and the lush that fill my map
And instead of trying to dig up dirt
I'll float her boat
Right alone the coasts, the rivers
Offer coats, when she shivers
...
I wonder where is she now?
Now since I have my act together
How can I assure her that deviation is not directing my intentions this time?
That I'm not just trying to make a scene?
I'm not about to settle for another cameo role!
Nor am I trying to win a Oscar
I have more than general hospitality
I want her to have all my children
So we can cherish the days of our lives
Lasting longer than a soap opera
... Before I just wanted to be a show stopper
Not really making change
When she was hurt, I just wanted to assist her
Not be the nurse
But at first I didn't realize; I didn't register for that
I posed to be more than what I seemed
Not being actuality to what she dreamed
She didn't get ideas from out the blue
I really said them things
But it's not until now that I really mean them
Now and thens are different
Every now and then I wish she knew that
Only if I was like this from the gates
...
But since I wasn't its too late
Dec 21, 2012
Dec 21, 2012 at 5:37 PM UTC
we used to be friends
i guess those were the thens
that left me with the nows
still riding the waves of past tides.
its almost like i have the bends
i got pulled under for so long
im still feeling the effects of a deluge.
im sick of the constant reminders.
im sick of my windows into the past.
its one or the other in real life
but in this blue tinted subaqueous world
its always transient floating through water walls dancing with particles and plankton.
the ins and outs.
cant go forward without cutting ties from behind
Aug 4, 2012
Aug 4, 2012 at 1:52 PM UTC
It was the night of the thundersnow,
Meteorological harpie normally reserved for our northern brethren.
She stood grimly at the window,
In wait for a dawn which would not come
Save for the odd light, the incongruous rumbling,
Mock forbearer of those easy languid evenings of August.
She'd made some noise approximating a sigh,
Then returned to undress,
I hurriedly unlacing my boots, removing my pants,
(My feigned nonchalance a foolish, pitiable thing)
And I remember her ******* as oddly demure,
Her ******* bewitching gumdrops,
The triangle below her waist downy, almost kittenish.
I'd broken her maiden clumsily, eagerly, all unheeding haste.
We'd lain next to each other for a short while afterwards
(The schools already closed for the next day,
Her father recently gone to the boneyard on Ludlow Hill,
She soon to be shuttled off to some spinster aunt in Dillsboro.)
I'd nattered on about summer vacations and thens and laters;
She'd said little, simply studying me with the bemused half-smile
One saves for sad dreamers not intimate with the knowledge
That notions of tomorrow and forever are strictly for suckers,
And as I strolled home come mid-morning,
The sun implacably straddled the sky,
Leaving the sidewalks and shoulders of the road
Completely dry, as if the night before had been a thing
Of perhaps-only, of dreams and tales for a later time.
Mar 7, 2018
Mar 7, 2018 at 8:54 AM UTC
On Youtube,
from the Camera holder POV,
- we, the living, we are first to have these eyes,
augmented us,
memory arrays of instants
with days and hours and minutes and
just nows
between them and us/nows
and whens
thens
this becomes, in a trickle or a flood, a sense
I know the good is done, being
directly from the sense
we call common.
May 20, 2022
May 20, 2022 at 6:19 PM UTC
Such raiments would be the province
Of those gated and corniced places
Up on the hillside, and even that milieu
Living on residue and recollection,
The glories of the past
Fading like so many past-peak October leaves,
Beautiful in the sense of such colors
They heretofore possessed,
Though in any case, the whys and wherefores
And relative merits of thens and nows
Secondary to more prosaic matters:
The price per gallon at the Gulf station down on Route 17,
Seasonal temps at Bear Mountain
Trying line up some other gig or side-hustle
Once the land locks and the leaf-peepers and hikers go home,
Those hoping corroded propane tanks and curled shingles
Can make it just one more winter,
And if the worried and wondering
Enjoyed the luxury of philosophic musing,
They might ponder upon what those earlier residents
Who had lived at the apex of Manhattan society
(And possibly even those earlier residents,
Jumbles of Patroon and Lenape blood
Who crouched forlornly in the Palisades
As that skyline came into being)
Would think of what became of this place,
Yet as they look up there are no ghosts of the ancients,
But merely the impassive, lazily circling turkey vultures,
Implacable, enduring, constant.
Oct 14, 2022
Oct 14, 2022 at 4:09 PM UTC
The How does not explain the Why
No more than a cloud
Explains the sky
We are born by birth
And weighted with worth
But this does not explain why
No more than sight
Explains the eye
We breathe because of breath
And die due to death
But this does not explain why
No more than flight
Explains the fly
Though there is use within the Hows
They only live within the Nows
Thens are not of their concern
So what use are the Hows we learn?
If Whys are what you want to find
You must look within your mind
Hows and Whos and Whens all change
(they operate within a range)
Whys are hard to understand
If your mind is like an ampersand
Bent out of shape to connect things together
That sound like they should be
(like lead and leather)
Whys can be easy to see
If you just allow them to be
And don’t bother with the How
For no time is shorter than a Jow
A how cannot explain a Why
Only problems arise
When you try.
Jan 5, 2014
Jan 5, 2014 at 10:37 AM UTC
Subtle waves make similar sounds to the desires
Drowning amid our fascination with the
"What If's" in life
The spastic sensations navigating our spines
Like fingertips navigating a writhing map
Curling as they make their way up and down
And so if we leave the "Ifs" for "thens"
Then they no longer sway but sit still
Our bodies lie dormant, separate and sensationless
Thus a hand in your hand says in silence
That "What If's" occupy no space
Between our clasped palms
Clouds disappear as soon as we find
No need for the moons slight shine
Exploring from behind closed eyes
No space between our lips to contest
The absence of space between our bodies
Nervously sailing above the waters wake
The air was cool no vessels to shield from the wind
For the boats had given us our privacy
To teach each other of music and dance
And music is the melody that drifts lightly
Upon your skin and your legs and your neck
Whispers softly in your ear so you fall victim to its passion
Suddenly pressing yourself against another
Heartbeats swiften and bodies move in unison
Caressing into shimmering heat that strips on every beat
Hands fall safely on chests
And suddenly the song descends into silence
The only sound is made by locked gazes
And breaths of amazement.
So why stray from possibilities
Why think of "What if's"
When one look and one touch
Led to music like this?
Jul 8, 2014
Jul 8, 2014 at 12:12 AM UTC
Sand and stone under my feet
Walk slow nothing to reach
Paint the scenery with my eyes
All my favourite shades and colours I like
Don’t look too close
Don’t look to close
I don’t want to see
What I’ve been hiding
I had a plan
I had a plan
What’s this place?
Nothing is as it seems
So I tell the stones
All of the things that I can’t show
I’ve lost my way
No one can know
Guide my feet
it’s been a long time for me
The words tied up set free
As I converse with the earth below my feet
Seems the grass is always greener
Will I ever stop my dreaming
He offers me almost everything
Why thens my heart always bleeding?
Show me the way
My fickle heart and brain
Show me the way
Out of this
Tied down where are my wings
Words need saying will you listen in?
As I Tell the stones
Jan 4, 2018
Jan 4, 2018 at 5:28 PM UTC
at each juncture there has been this choice,
at each, I made a guess, right or wrong,
leave a mark, breadcrumbs work here,
we, me and thee, thou und Ich.
We have sector Bravo in the realm of or and if with optional whens and thens,
leading to now at any given point,
on a wave,
in the grand skein, not scheme, of
things, plain ol' ano-nomenal imaginary players who play by
rules, we imagined we will be
determined to bind into
a line anchor
and allusion to
string theory can work from here up,
we've been weaving options to unbelivable lies with single strand
single use spider wings, believed to be electro magic-ish
by the rule
we
made up. And that was the tic. We made up rules,
and survived.
Opposition to tyranny is obediance to God. Jefferson's,
under whom we stand nationally alliegiant, globally benes wise,
we owe earth our pledges,
those agreements, when you know what the ideas cost,
the idea in alliances for safety, with
treason to be the cost of rearing a child,
who witnessed the naked Noah
reflected in the window
of the U.N.
oh, we are tangled in religion as defined by priests.
Lest us slip the sureely slippery bands of earth and touch the masked
face of God, who winks.
Hiyo, silver, away... time slips are a benefit of fifty years of
seconds guessed worth noting as wonderful, Kodak Moments or Ahas,
here, one of those buys you days and days of retelling the same story,
until today. When we both got here at the same time. A-team meme.
And a wink from the programmer who bet it would loop.
See, as the Joker said to the Thief, in Boston, there must be
some kinder way outa here.
Apr 6, 2020
Apr 6, 2020 at 6:50 PM UTC
droplets raked the dirt
pouring
pounding the sleep from our eyes
the kind that Netflix and Hollywood send to sets
where the ground is scorched
where we mourn the hads and thens
the eds and the whens
and we dance in the puddles
and the creeks
and wish for sunnier days
May 16, 2020
May 16, 2020 at 12:52 PM UTC
I canʼt erase the feeling of your lips
Trailing their way up and down my thighs
The way your teeth dig into my hips
The playful smirk while staring in your eyes
My mind still constantly thinks of you
The way you feel pressed against my back
I know Iʼm really not supposed to
But I miss your fingertips dancing around my neck
I donʼt know how you have such a hold on me
I canʼt even control my own thoughts
Itʼs getting harder for me to even see
The if thens and the what nots
Your eyes, they take me to a place
I really think they do.
No, I think we need some space,
Baby, that's all you.
You laugh, you scream, you cry.
Embarrassed I'm seeing you this way,
You're beautiful with tears in your eyes.
I don't know what else to say.
Nov 10, 2019
Nov 10, 2019 at 3:27 PM UTC