Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Joseph S C Pope Feb 2013
I

Wonderlandia, torn off the submerged lung
of a daydream diary.                   Reoccurs
as she does with silver eyes, weary Alice
during tea time--bullets burning past her
                                     like flowing nations.
Everyday similar tsunamis fund
                                     the lack of 20/20.
Nose to tail--the surge of angry engines
splits the ends of her blonde strands.
    Each one the last witness to maddening hospitality
--utopia never sweats as it talks and withers.
Amnesia blots,
new aspirin machines
vaporize apples and ***
on the other end of spectrum,
                                                     trans-positional labels--

Guillotine gargling teapots
       have no patience
         to the bushes of Olympus opiates
                                      bound in yellow barrier tape,
                     five o' clock traffic
               welcomes her back to what we are facing.


II


Dreary weather of late fall                       and her beautiful,
              powdered face

great mouth of atomic hell,
         when she speaks--80,000 deficiencies boil alive
                                                   --Trinity's teething test
                                                           on the tired bones
                                                   of a story-teller's raspy cards--

"None the wiser," she speaks,
                                "during the transition of ships
                   vermin turn into krakens culturing
                               on the surface of a raindrop.
    Heroes, villains, animals frozen together
                 after now eating for four days.
     The transition of one genocide
                                                        ­  to the other,
                the delineation of cat-and-mouse,
   mingle too long
   with the dead
   and its necrophilia."

                 Blind Alice wanders off the highway,
leaves her brewed cup of steamy static
on top of the unimportant saucer, sticks pins in her *******,
             and enjoys the sound of Cleopatra
             rolling over in reincarnation.


III

      Dear Alice smells
sunbathing, studded tangerines
                      assimilating liquor within the vast,
       empty, glowing nausea that is--
                        the warm germ

Oil                                    and                 ­          water
               rippled glass too silly for skulls
              made humid by distant salt water,

blood, acid, enzymes,
cheating probability
that runners with drunk kids
have blood between their toes.
                                                      Death­ to the distillation within
                                                    --the chronic diamond too polished
                                                       in *** to see the roses in her *****
    She curses these wood songs,
             heritage patriots with the pelts of wild lions
             with antlers over their heads,
                                                  faces advertising war paint
                                                applied by gargoyle hands
                    --sad memoirs always drink people
                                                  that use God as a cookie jar.


IV


  Gorgeous names
  on graffiti institutions give her a home
                                                         a market
                                                         a nickname
           still                  Alice only accepts Alice.

Grace periods where she misses tyranny
                  rise and fall like endorsed breathing.
    Now Alice feels her dress fall off,
                                  extinct years message future occupancy
                                  about what to wear.
New era, this era, past eras plead guilty
in a      clinic museum
             of forcing demons
              down the medical
              throats
of first graders. Court adjourns at 9:01 PM, Saturday

             The populus can sleep now,
                          but not her.
                 No one gave her clothes
                 to cover up the drained monochrome.


V

Instead she celebrates her flesh,
                                        the broken glass,
   and quakes and leads off to expose
           others to its potential vital prosperity.

         Instead
                     headlines like bumper cars read
                     about the beheading of weeks,
                     failing rescue missions,
                     and debates on teenage tolerance.

Nicotine intoxication points Alice
to over-extended memories--wards of music
sequenced to point out the extinction of marble tigers.
                        Only 550 expected to understand
                         tethered to millions able to survive.

  Flood waters look at moral standards, a mean hurricane
                                   that collapses the death toll
     all patented 50 states
     have a dating service
     and huff paint as a way
                              to pray to art.
                                                      Double­-canvas faces
                                                      dyed in pixel     hope
                                                       that the media levees hold,
             but volunteer to herd sheep into poppy seed fields.
                                            She refuses to stay,
                    to watch the long night
                    of castration on men with mud-covered ankles.
                                      Television says eunuchs want
                                       to be prodigal's children,
                                       everyone wants to come back home
                                       to mom and dad, safe zones, away
                                       from themselves.
                                                     ­                 It says our ancestors want
                                                            ­          this for all of us. They worked
                                                          ­            so hard to tie up the hair
                                                            ­          out of Aphrodite's face.

                                     They treasure the silver eyes of Alice,
                                          but call them blue,
                                                  they issue her high cholesterol
                                          but pump sweet ****** into he stomach,
                                                  they tell her to put down the drill,
                                            so she can finish their orchestra--

her lightning
    is
     a
  string
     of
  souls



VI


     She decides to depart Sunday,
to discover the ordinary beginning,
                        painting WHY? on its delirium.
re-arrangeable viewers become
                      inserted sounds under percussion and piano.

       Caging various important charts
                                          undetermined
   ­                           as finished attention.
                                                      ­              Three movements in flux
open end the people                     vacuuming
                            craftsmanship blocks
                   from                                dogs and zen.

                                                 The
                                 suspended letter               is happening in 1951
   drenched in existential white                                            spacing
        ­                                                   the viewer
                        from integrated architecture.

Down
the
bell is a structure called
"the quarantined wheelchair."
                               Dead ignorance changes pattern
                               after six movements of the second hand.
Alice speaks, "To you all, know
                                       that this is an un-dramatic situation.
          Everyday windows with the same
           participants have girls drinking
                                                     orange juice, activate fluid,
                    both exist as objects
                    and caught propaganda."

                                                   ­                      Six tunnel
                                                          ­      audiences are watching
                                                        ­        drown in the plastic silk
   her                                                       built by the motorized collage
                                                         ­                                        spider.

          Alice, a kinetic mannequin pop star
                        is limp in the glass point.
             Rhythmic flux is objectified war torture
                         censored in fitness magazines
by simple toilet literature.

                                        Six tunnels worth of eyes
                                 latch to the *******
                                           as a way to bury **** protesting.
                                  A coat of pepper spray
                                   works in front of the exhibition.
This stage is shaded by moans.


VII


      Alice the female, has a door-to-door friend
                                                          ­    over the sea
of the cathedral's ceiling               who died of disemboweled
pulchritude             at the mutilated nuclear other-place.
                     Her friend was a synthesized example
                     of staged catastrophes. Her friend is her, silver-eyed
                                                     ­                                             Alice.

            ­                     She performs herself and herself
                                 but they are played by polished, scored poets.

Everyone of them incorporates the events
                                 of a dancing gunshot. Everything rests
                                                           ­ at an intermission

               but after fifty minutes of pondering,
          the lost audience remembers
         her name is Alice.
                   So it comes back on with a shower of sweat
                  and this clear
                                  substance
               ­                                 called
                         ­                              patience.
       This composing, peering vulnerability
                        psychologically destroys the flux tension
              like analog genocidal dictators.
                                   Ultimately this is dream liquor

     commentating war to the war tree
      using trauma and chairs as humor.



VIII


               Patience on the water level lives translucent
                                            on networks that brand flesh
                                            with displaced identity.
Alice convinces us all that pickled ***
                                                             ­               takes eight years
                     to ****** and we accuse it
                                         of being fake. Afterwards, her character dies
in confident silence.


IX


     Not majestic, but she does cough
                  to mock the earth.
        The seeds of Alice are ripe,
                        harvested early, and now her children come out and dine
        like speaking tongues on gibberish.
                          The room is fat with hair

and kindness. Feeble, mundane hands chew on each other,
                                                         feet stand proud.
We even call her Alice or "the beautiful *******,
                                             a black cloud feasting
                                             in orange."
                       Everyone feasts on the nectar
                                                         she has, but never the rye
which makes her round. Juice is squeaking and her children laugh
                         as in competition.

     It's a distinguishable game as the mixed
                                                           ­      couple up front
              begin to play whistles as
                                         everyone eats
                   the pride of the silver-eyed Alice's children.


X

                                                ­ The children's souls
                                                       bow and say
                                           "Thank you for barely growing."
                                                   and dissipate after five minutes.

          "Curiouser                                   ­                                      and
           Curiouser"                                                       ­                   they
           say                                                              ­                        as
           they                                                             ­                       leave
           this                                                             ­                         homage.
                  The decimal backbone
                     of each of sweet Alice's
                                   blonde strands
                   divorced by the gust/ of a green light's/ allowance.


XI Epilogue*


  The day crawls away
                   a vigilant pest
     of the nocturnal project
                   --suns beam down still, like
                  stomachs of grinning felines
                           at Valentine's day.

toxic-dyed fingers
                        soldered
to bodies pittering across rainy streets

--legionnaires with hearts on stones
                         we are waiting for her orders,

     thistled-teeth clench,
                                         but did she
                                          actually
          ­                                ever come?
Every blade of grass
Fed by rays from space
Each color refracted
An afternoon complete
With swing set
Barefoot strolling
Impartial recognition
Nihilism’s shadow
Hides seeds supplanting thistle
Frail beginnings
Awkward stems
Reaching for our earth
And a life left behind
Leaching nourishment
Acknowledged
By their voices
But glances are more telling
Lonely wanderer,
Man imbued
Disparate hopes
Discouraged and disheartened
As the sun shines down
His blades reflect
Refracted radioactivity
Thistled leaves snapping
Thorny twigs grasping
At our earth
At our voices
At anything
Our serendipity
MMX
Skaidrum Aug 2015
The stars aren't as tasteful
       as I'd hoped they'd be,
You fickle moon,
You eclipse of a lover.

           Vinegar.  That's what
those cosmic light bulbs we
call stars taste like.          Raw
and savoring, bold & eccentric.
          Kissing summer on winter's lips
          The cheek of spring still stings from autumn's hand

And I'm marooned in this fine
                            red wine hour,
  nostalgic in the art of reading
          The hum of dragons pulse~
The whisper of the wolven breath,
                         This time around your blood
                                        was thinner than ice.
Twisting the tendrils of our thistled love
across my snowy throat,
            Crimson is so ******* beautiful
It was your job to swallow sunsets and it
was mine to throw up sunrises.           We
followed the commandments branded on
my cheeks.  
                         It was the only bible we had,
                         Because my scars were worth
                                                         "s­omething"

When the roof of the sky meets the jaw of
the sun, the teeth are the clouds & constellations.
I fed the world my spine because it was starving.
         chinking off marrow, and mouthfuls of my flesh,
Devour me.
                    And in my wake you shifted the lapis void,
                     forcing my eyes open as gold tears spilt

Streetlamps groaning at midnight,
will you watch the ravens with me at 3 a.m?
I'm not one for fate but,
          destiny is mine for the taking.
Bones wish they're bending,
     yet promise they're not breaking.
I bargained my soul and sins with Lupus,
and now I am his poet.
                       A daughter of aurora borealis,
                     buckets full of silver  sloshing admist
                           my eyes.
                      When I no longer love you,
                               it will be silent,
                                and tragic.
.
This one's for you,
my wolf girl.
I'm sorry that I am
the reason you're
suffering.


© Copywrite Skaidrum
Jai Rho Feb 2010
Along the river's edge
a figure bends
to dip his earthen pots
into its vital flow

they sip the precious liquid
shimmering and crystalline
like diamonds floating
above the eclipse of the sun

they become transformed
from dormant vessels
wearing the dull
pallor of mud
to vibrant cisterns
radiating the glow
of polished jade

they breathe away
exhaustion
in frothy currents
rushing
past swollen lips

to join the constant stream

till he bows low
and receives their treasure
suspended from a wooden frame
with frayed and twisted rope
solidified not yet petrified
soaking yet and squeezing still
the moisture dripping
from their fill

he lifts the wooden frame
upon his shoulders
and keeps its balance
with his arms
his back strains
his legs straighten
as they raise their heavy load

he looks up
with eyes set deep
beneath his furrowed brow
thick parchment skin
and thistled hair
are all that shield him
here and now

he sees the road
that he will take
this time around
and sets one foot
before the other

away from solid ground

he goes to bring
to those who
find him
the lading
in his care

he goes to meet them
in that place

past faith
past dreams
past hope
Tammy Boehm Oct 2013
chiaroscuro moment
molten chords
in golden glow
titian ringlets cascade
from linen shoulders
as your hands bring liquid color
to idle black and white
chorded words of three parts
Not easily broken
Ebb and flow as breath over water
a shift in timbre
resonant teak fettered in silver
heady scent of resin and balsam reeds
echoed drones the cantored dance begins
Taking flight the quiet arias rise
coursing low over open moors
Eyes veiled green
a fog shrouded shoreline
We leave transient prints
In damp sand...
Sonorous notes
From kilted pipers
A flash of tartan on thistled field
Drummers pulse the motion of life
You raise the standard
This ancient song is yours
and mine.

Open eyes to desert sky
Burning blue and empty
As fresh pages fall un-inked
on thorny ground
Only the ache of a melody remains
Lost refrains
broken notes in my DNA
Inspiration drifts away

I used to have a recurring dream of me, and two other friends - in a recording studio with the complete sheets of music in front of us - which we were singing...and when I wake up...I can never remember the song.
03/2008
© 2008 TL Boehm
*in high school I had the opportunity to play a bagpipe that had been made in Pakistan....the drones (for those of you unfamiliar with the instrument - drones are the three pipes sticking out from the top of the bagpipe) were made of teak with silver joints. In each drone there is a reed and you tune the drone by adjusting the wood pieces at the joint. the lining of the bag - and the joints of the drones are resined - so a set of pipes has a specific scent to it. - Pipes are instruments of WAR....and I loved playing them)
ΟΥΤΙΣ Feb 2015
in the temple at delphi

upon the steps afront

my crown of wire lay



a pile of birds

sat crossed in thirds

my lungs resigned in splay



phobos’ kiss afflicts with bliss

amongst the thistled dirt

the sowing of a new isle



what once was old

and now is true

are a bygone from the blue
Born Jul 2015
These stars sim darker
These heart was just massacred
These thoughts are forever taunting
These life is worse than death

Tell you something you don't know
these soul can be thistled
keep, keeping running and landing on thorns
your stared with thoughts of being devoured

decades ago
he sang you tales of stealth
but darkness, can be stronger
this is war
and cowards, are the only ones who are possessed with fear

They will write anthems of your courage
sing songs of your strength
perform poems to your broken widows
your progeny, will know of your suffering and sacrifice
'a beautiful dalliance indeed'

You armor yourself with solitude
instead of golds they offer you
they are gone
but they took you with them "it Sims"

The bishop says
your just a devil among angels
but deep, deep down
he knows your an angel among demons
Tasked today with thorning
thistled favor over reigns,
we drained the shot that scored
the weak on board
and shattered crystal pain.
Who drops us off white rockets
pulled from earth like swede from stone
to jet to planes above?
The fuel we love, abundant every turn:
advice in our good ands. Disseminating
buts like rice, exceptions
unto every goal,
obscuring each clear picture
in the way. Re-light
and curse the days

you fight it, pining, elbows up,
some cheap romance whose pages
wear you thin. You render
heartache on the blow -
skid-crushing, woeful throes
of counterpoint dispatched to swallow
lightness from the shore.
Wise up

and ask for more.
Be stronger - shed your brightness
on the bay. Delay those saturated
hoodwinks. Gamble on discreetless
balconies where broke your fall
from order. Signal wholeness
of your cause, re-bolster lack of laws
with blinding arrows to your neck -
revise, rehone the wherewithal
to do what’s due: respect.
Sam Lawrence Nov 2020
underneath Kentish Town
the fine Fleet flows down
sneaking out dammed ponds
slidden across the thistled Heath
the source that took relief
hidden, next to Anglers Lane
a vanishing of oyster shells
flicked by idle ghosts of fishermen
who spit a murmured gargle
deep below in sewage world
a water's roar
silenced to hush
by the concrete poured
over centuries of bricks

— The End —