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Marge Redelicia Jun 2014
TNT
Ang mga bati mo
Ay laging may ngiti
At ang bawat bulaslas ng iyong labi
Ay may kasamang tawa
Na kay tamis sa pandinig
Pero
Nung tiningnan ko
Ang iyong mga kumikinang na mata
Aking napansin na ang mga ito'y sanay
Na pala sa luha at nung
Hinawakan ko
Ang iyong mga matipunong kamay
Naramdaman ko na ikaw pala'y
Nanginginig
Sa takot at galit

Ewan ko sa 'yo pero
Hindi ko na matiis ang iyong hinagpis.


Lumabas ka na sa iyong pagtatago.
Walang ikabubuti
Ang iyong makasariling pagsasarili
At
Higit sa lahat
Huwag na huwag
**** kakalimutan
Na ako ay para sa iyo at
Nandito lang ako palagi.
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2013
I mashup me, myself, and thee: Part II

Excerpts from my poems about poets, poetry and the process of composition. In chronological order, from the earliest to the most recent.
---------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­----


The three poems went about their business,
Bringing heaven to earth,
FYI, even Angels can't be everywhere, so,
God invented poems to do his ***** work,
Cleansing souls.

They rode in~out of town on a prankster wave,
A cheering throng was not around,
But a singular poet saw, recorded the vision,
And thus, this nameless poet,
Below unmasked, unsealed,
Cleansed one more soul,
And that soul, this soul, as required,
Paid it forward.
~
Nothing produced from this place
where routine means the gorge tastes bile,
When surcease is welcome relief,
Where dancing on ice in bare feet
Is step one to ripping your chest open by your own hands,
The toxins thus released rejuvenated by salted air,
Can be finally be transcribed onto paper
And realized.

Warn them once and then begin, you,
Get serious, delve, with hurricane unambiguity,
to torrential words upon the unsuspecting,
let them taste the rawness, only the truth provides,
let them know salt tears so briney,
They will flee this place, n'er to return.

~
One day she intro'd me as her fav poet,
To which I acknowledged by addressing her as
My number one fan,
Which seems to have stuck,
so I acknowledge her as such,
And always add a polite, respectful, winking,
Yes ma'am!
~
Like this new day,
there are always
new poems

Like last night's sunset,
day's efforts reviewed,
a special light,
a yellowed marker,
highlighting a few deserving

Take them home,
kiss them goodnight,
rest them in the poetry file
that is no file,
but a large fabric box where
sewing tools once stored

How appropriate and
how happy that makes me.

~
Yo! Yo!
Remember your first real high,
That moment
No absolution, no return.
That moment
When you admitted, confessed,
to yourself:

I am
Forever forward,
A home-grown poet.
I am
Soul enslaved to words.
The alphabet - My oxygen molecules,
I am both,
Addict and dealer
A ****** poet

Yo! Yo!
So you do recall,
The exact moment,
God-spark-within, ascendancy gained
You lost control,
Wept words instead of tears!
A ****** poet ******!

Yo! Yo!

Sophie's Choice.
You chose writing over breathing,
Worshiper of the purest pleaure,
******* in deep the smoke-high of
Head-nodding discontented contentment
Stealing anything you saw
For to satisfy the need, the craven
Craving.
****** poets!

Yo! Yo!

Don't you're ever sleep?
Hear that the city, the state,
Gonna methadone your kind
In a special program
Teach you only language to sign.
**** poets!

I am a ****** poet.

The first step taken.
Admission.
Poetry is my default rest position,

My drug of choice.
~
Have you noticed here

Each poet declaims his fellow
The better one, his teacher,
From whom they shall learn and gather up
Inspiration

Gonna run for Congress,
My first bill, Poetry-care,
Will make it a requirement that
All citizens must contribute,
Exchange once a day
To this peaceful place,
Even just a syllable, a single letter,

K?

~
Literally my eyes see words awaiting coordinating,
Poems flying by, needing plucking,
How a child eats his morning cereal,
His rituals informing, of the man yet to be,
How our bodies lay, hair unbrushed,
Tying us into a conjoined knot...

No matter that plain words are my ordinary tools,
With them I shall scribe the small,
Cherish the little, grab the middle,
Simplicity my golden rule,
Write they say, about what you know best,
Surely in the diurnal motions,
The arc of daily commotion,
Do we not all excel?
~
The ice of poetry,
glassine smooth
but
charged hardness,
hits you, ****** you,
unexpected snowball in the face,

the fire of poetry,
cherished phrase, a patois,
comfort food when
whole winter skies
swallow you bleak

mutual contradictions of poetry
savaging the soothed ego,
revealing the raging id

what's in a word anyway?

~
Please Pop, pick wise,
the life and lies, the faces and disguises,
I will need employ to achieve success
in the eyes of my reading beholders,
who own the liens on my soul
because of the promises I believed,
when you sang me
glowing lullabies of my future days,
how everyone would love my stories,
my poems, someday...
~
Place your ****** hands upon thy chest.
Let them melt thru and come to rest,
Inside, the battle ongoing, under thy breast.
Watch, eyes open, knowing, fearful.
Swiftly, with no hesitation, from within,
Rip open your body, exhaling the best,
And the worst of what you got.

The cool air rushes in,
Stirring the inside stew of:
Infected grime, shameful desires,
Secrets that should not have been exposed,
The ***** stuff that you alone know exists.

Contact with the atmosphere makes
Self-pity dies, blue blood turn red,
The TNT tightness explodes,
Ashamed, you have only one escape hatch.

Now, you are ready to write.

~
My life is on the boring side,
So welcome gents to look inside,
The surfed sites, the emails, hardly slimy,
But stay the fk away from my poetry!

Tis obvious from your midnight editing,
That my wordily, working body has been discretely
Simonized,
My data,
Googlized,
My poems,
Scrutinized,
A comma, a colon, a verb, out of place, capsized,
Little threads kept in door jambs, their alteration,
Your snooping presence, a confirming revelation
~
Where I write, here, all comes so easy,
Every glance a poem formed,
Every phrase a title to a poem served,
Every conversation overheard and those wind-lifted brought,
A seed, a germ, a word~worm hooked to the pole crook of
My finger saying, see man, time to get more ink and paper,
Go and catch us a few poems for dinner

The snapper weakfish word colors are
Running past my-by the thousands,
We will need a basket to catch but a fraction
Of what you see, more than more enough to share,
Only Happy Poems for all

It is this rhyming way I view the wold,
That is my freedom, is my-present essence,
How the poems come, how thy flow,
Peaking, I cannot berate, rarely eat,
Sleep a thing of the past (as you be aware, beware)
There is poetry in simply everything.

~
But if my aura be a comfort insufficient,
Let this surprise poetic gift awaiting your arrival,
Give you rest, from crying surcease!

For when the who, the why of me interrogatory posed,
Describe me in a brevity I ne'er possessed, say:
He was just a poet, and I,
Just, his lover, number one fan.

This truth eternal, never to change.
~
But I am open to learning, the arduous task
Of raising a teenage daughter,
After I have my head examined

Though I am just a bunch of eclectic electrons,
I got powers a few, like making life's happiness
Hearted happier, encouraging your forays into
You-know-what,
And when tables turn, a hasty retreat you beat,
For imaginary cappuccinos and poems we will meet,
Comparing notes on who felt lousier when...

But what I can do 100% is assure you
There is no lone nor lonely daughter extant,
Your voice not just clear but soft-edged,
For I have poetically adopted you,
Here and now, assuming you sign on the
.............................................................­line

~
Take these words at plain face,
and look not askance
at this fair warning,
for I am but a tragic,
empty vessel for you to fill,
you are the raconteur,
me, just a  
poet poseur extraordinaire,
street urchin, word merchant,
all my verbally, wordly goods expropriated
from the wind,  where your scattered thoughts
lie about, carelessly,
unattended
~
Guiltless in life, we but survived,
Hurting no one, no thing,
Yet, here we lie, ignored, unattended,
Yet, you fail again to see our connection?
You do not recognize us?

We are the shells, the husks of you,
Your poems unread, you labors unpreserved,
All wasted, for unless they are read, they die,
As you will too.
Some fast, by water, some slower, time-eroded,
All, ended, by drowning in the Sea of Who Cares!

~
What sourced this elegiac distich,
Too many poets, fully disclosing their downbeat, aroma of defeat?

The world is in a **** mood, not one of us, got nothing
Good to say, seems that love storms ripping hearts
With no trace of mercy, the radio has elected nonstop
Taylor Swift and Jonas Bro's
Just to make the point!

It is so easy to feel ******,
When the sun is unshining, elegant distich, **** me.

Thinking back, getting a good idea,
Found some long necked Corona overlooked,
Turn on the tv, pretend I'm a real cowboy,
And for god's sake, shut down poetry,
Good Bye Poetry, for the rest of the day.
~
once upon a time,
a traffic light rainbow,
stopped n' go, was a word design,
demarcated visions of spun sugar,
bodegas sold me
magic beans by the pound,
masterminded into cups of delight,
treasury's bounty overflowed,
now, dregs drain, sink stained,
as are my writing utensils,
my ink stained, us-less, fingers

come visit me, unknown stranger,
let us exchange fluidity, barbs,
a contest of kissing, eye lashing
wit ands shared vision stashing,
and together, once more,
write with our feet,
while holding hands,
becoming once more
poets of the street.

Only, come quickly.

~

But reading thy cries, an exercise,
Teeth-gnashing frustration.
It brings no relief.

So sad girl,
Write till you are righted,
May be it will snow on July 4th,
And tho unnatural,
So is thy grief.

Nonetheless, write me write me all about it,
Right us,
For tho snow falls, its loveliness,
Makes the heart rise up in gladness!
~
She brings me coffee in bed.
I propose a violin accompaniment.
Some babka, with nice-crumbly-in-bed
Streusel topping,
A concerto we could make!

Her derision snorted so loud,
The mollusks on the beach
From their shells come out.

"Good luck with that,
Put that fantasy on
Your **** poetry site,
Cause that is the closest you will ever get!"

~
For she will be my heroine for all time,

These words to expand with rhyme and verse,
T'is a welcome task, one familiar, but anew,
Each dawn each dusk, a daily trust, a love poem diurnal-birthed,
As if god created the world, but left upon completion,
With a grievous thirst, a new notion, he did burst.

He created the Eighth Day, for celebration of his
Most cherished invention, the idea of love.
This is where, the secret writ Eleventh Commandment occurs,
Love thy Poetry Gods, Honor them with daily verbs.
~
Officer...you should see me gut a

Poem,

Slice its belly open,
Sometimes straight, sometimes Askew,
Feed the gulls them
****** insides on the dock, by-moonlight,
Can ya cut me some slack?

Mmm, I see here in your license,
You are a disabled guy,
A **** poet ******,
Who often does his best work
Legally all alone in the HOV lane,
So I'm gonna let you off this time
Just with a warning!

~
We can share words, we can grant tiny easements,
We can weep with you unseen tears,
We can etsy you little homemade gifts
Like this.

That you can take and keep, and break out in time of need knowing full well that these words will not spoil nor rancid turn, cannot be out grown,, or torn, or rent asunder in anyway for once they are shared
They are irrevocable.
~
When you write,
It as if you write upon our
One skin,
For I am your tablet,
Your sole/sol/soul composition.

So stop kissing me
and
Write upon us.

~
This will not be the hardest poem I e're wrote,
But if there is no inspiration
For you to smote,
And armpits refuse to provide perspiration,
To source juices for a new creation,
Try this trick,
I promise you
No one will lick your ice cream cone,
Nor mistake you for Leonard Cohen,
But when you are done,
You will be High Priest of
Hello Poetry for the rest of the day!
~
You think you can write?
Then employ  a word outside your comfort zone,
Go it alone,
And write four sentences that will make
The hopeful reader stand up and
you twice as much, and shout

Hallelujah
*******.

Work. Poetry is work. Hard work.
Don't fret. But, think on it. Have the sweetest dreams.
In the morning, when you but awake,
A poem will be aborning in thy mind,
And dare I say it, you will find a new freedom
In free verse.
(I know you will slip in a rhyme or two,
I can't help but do it too)

~
Had myself forgot,
That a poem needs a
Frame of jungle gym sounds,
An aural aura resonance unbound.
Purposed to make the heart lift
Your ears say:

Say what!

It needs a tune,
An internal music,
It needs a lilt!
A cadence, that both
Marches and swings,
Even when'd urgent dirge
grief pours forth.
~
This Sabbath day you fog-hide
Your gift of bay and beach
So quiet implore, beseech,
Keep the sailors safe,
And your poets saved.

I ask much.
But I ask for all of us,
There are so many such
That are booster-chair needy
That I am succumbed, overwhelmed,
Enormity fearsome needs help even from a deity.

Small words, big hopes.

If you cannot grant it,
Won't wait for intervention,
Do it myself, answer prayers one and all,
Best I can, starting now with this
Po-hymn.

~
I used to sleep
With pen and paper on my nighttime table.
Nowadays, my iPad tablet rests upon my chest,
Not only does it keep me warn,
It takes my poems from within, Fresh Direct,^
Edits, credits, and delivers them to your door,
While I'm still sleeping.

Which is why they come at all hours.
It is also why they call them,
Love's Labour's Lost saving devices.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
**So I spend my cold, hard time
laying down cold hard verse,
Can't stop, cause it's my daddy's dying curse.

I am both: Addict and dealer, a ****** poet ******.
Sam Temple Jul 2014
battling demons
or suffering PTSD
with ADHD
and OCD
on TCH
looking for LSD –
need a little TLC
from the FDA
the EPA
just went MIA
and the UN
blames the FBI
while the CIA
and the NSA
seek the PLO –
brb
LOL, IDK
the shizzle is cray cray
*****’s be trippin
er’ry day
like Ross say
“don’t **** wit me” –
the USA
in betrothed to the NRA
and OSHA
just gave me a passing score
at the same time as the AMA
failed my blood
stylistically, this is MLA
and functionally it’s more WWE
TNT
CNN
t’n’a --
To me you show choir is really cool. There are 16 singer dancers' 1 drummer' 1 piano' 1 guitar' And string instruments. Of course I am auditioning for drummer. Because I am one. Everyone will think I am phenomenal. Because I am. I will blow people's mind like tnt mixed with grenades ' bombs'C4' And Fire. I am that good. But is it only 7th and 8th graders. So next year they will need a drummer. And next year that part will be mine. And no one will take it for me.
I love bands.
ryn Nov 2014
\      .     /
   \   .    ^       /.. 
  =      <   •   >    =  
         /        V       \         
/  /
\ \
  | |
   \ \
   /  /

••••••••••
••••••••••
sparking at the end
•eating away at my wick•
forcing me into a backward bend•
now by the second I tick...•I am truly
seething•I am... TNT•I am so close to
exploding...•I am...incendiary•it feels
like a crime•but..............there isn't left
much room•it's just a matter of time•
before I finally decide to go...fizz...
fzzzs...sszz...fizzle...ssszzfzz...
KABOOM!
TEBABOH!
Michael Ryan Jul 2013
My world.
And my way of making friends.
If you can stand to get to know me,
then you already know I accept you.
That you were in my mind, my friend, after one word.
I was already willing to ask you to go to the end of the world with me.
Because I build bridges with TNT.
When I say hello and knock on your world I don't use my fist.
I don't use a hammer.
I don't use a sledge hammer.
I use one of those giant gigantic ***** that break down whole walls.
I'm tearing down this whole city of yours just to get to know you better,
because my world is an open canvas and anyone can paint my world red.
Any detail you could ever want to know is on the tip of my head.
It's not on my tongue, because my life never hides in the dark.
I will invade every crevasse of your being, if you let me.
Because to be honest I want to know everything.
You are special to me, even if I'm not special to you yet,
because to me I've already accepted you.
Since in my world you make friends by doing.
Even though you or I have just said Hi, I don't want to say goodbye.
I want to be able to see you in the future;
I want to know that everything has gone well for you.
That with my TNT bridge making skills, they jolted us into each others lives.
That after my first soft spoken words, you knew that you could trust me.
Even though we haven't met yet, since I'm still in my room right now.
And you are somewhere doing something I've made this for you.
  This will be here to let you know.
That we are already friends.
This is how I think friends should be made, this is how I try to make friends.  People are too afraid in my world, to accept that with hello I mean lets be friends.  Because if they could accept that then I think we'd both be happier.  (That maybe I wouldn't be so alone.)
Tnt
Silence always comes before the storm
One silently builds with steam
Until out explodes a storm.
Eyes glare as the emotions settle like rubble
From the "norm"
Inspiration fades while he sits in silence
Waiting for the hardship of long hours
And limited means...
Until their problems are mended
No one wins.
We are connected by life's energy chain.
One falls
One by one
So does the masses in equal blending.
Defusing a storm before it hits
Is a hurricane prevented from happening.
Stand together with the one
See past the rough exterior to see crying eyes
We can all use a hand to keep the flames from hitting anger's TNT's wick where it lies.
Richard Riddle Oct 2013
In late 1888, a Wells Fargo stage
Was relieved of its freight-
A strongbox, taken from its hold,
held thousands of dollars in coins of gold.

The brigands had a master plan,
To bury that box,
sit, and wait-
Then dig it up at a later date.

They found a spot on rock-hard ground-
Where it would lie, safe and sound,
So they sank it in a three foot hole-
to hide that box with coins of gold.

But what they didn’t realize,
that in the distance, sat a pair of eyes-
That had watched the whole event unfold-
and watched, as they buried that chest with gold.

Late that night, under a pale, lantern light-
a shovel's blade split those rocks-
and the hole was relieved-
of that strongbox.

William Nelson Riddle, owned that property-
And he lived with a basic philosophy-
“Since it was found, on my ground-
I guess it belongs to me.”

“Nelson” died in ’28, at age of 85-
He never said what happened to,
Or if, that chest survived-
And the "Legend of Riddle’s Gold"came alive.

As time passed, the story grew-
each year, a bit more grand-
That Nelson took that strongbox-
And hid it  elsewhere on his land

Greed is one of the “seven sins”-
"Everybody loses, and nobody wins"-
But the “want” for gold is a mighty strong thirst-
So his kin set out for a “family search.”

At morning’s dawn, the kinfolk came-
To search for gold, fortune, and fame-
They came with shovels, spades, and hoes-
And some “TNT”, so the story goes.

With disregard for propriety,
they descended upon the property-
Without a map, without a plan-
They spread out to search his land.  

Now, the rabbits and the coyotes,
and the gophers(one or two)-
Gathered on a little knoll,
To have a better view.

They knew what was going to happen-
It was just a matter of time-
When the dew had disappeared,
And the morning sun had reached it’s prime



They dug a hole here, and dug over there-
The morning sun was getting hot-
and everywhere they looked –
Was for naught.

Now, it isn't very clear
as who said what, to who-
But it must have been insult'n-
to start that ballyhoo.

There was push'n and shove'n
and calling names galore!
Yell'n and cuss'n
using words you ain't heard before!

And that was just the men-folk-
the women got in it too-
screaming heard, from north to south-
Those words should never come from a ladies mouth.

Fists being swung, shovels slung!
dust was kicked up in a ball-
nothing could be more entertaining-
than watching a family free-for-all!

Then suddenly, it came to a stop !
as quick as it began-
They gathered up all their gear-
and departed Nelson's land.

This is where the story ends-
all I know is what I'm told,
From my daddy, for he'd been sitting,
atop that little knoll.



Epilogue
(This is how I would like to have it end)

Somewhere in the "high above"-
at a table, two people sat-
One, wearing suit and tie-
and Nelson, with his beard and hat.

"Nelson, a lot of folks have you to thank,
for bringing that strongbox to the bank-
you saved a lot of folks their homes and farms."

Nelson, from his chair, arose-
standing *****, and proud-
Stroked his beard, then tweaked his nose,
smiled, and faded into the clouds.
(thanks folks for your patience)

Copyright September 16-2013 Richard Riddle





True story- sort of. Originally written in three parts.The holdup actually did occur, and witnessed by William Nelson Riddle.  Years later, believing he had hidden the strongbox elsewhere, relatives converged on the property to conduct a "massive" search. A story on this saga appeared in the San Diego Union newspaper on May 7, 1939. William Nelson Riddle is my great-grandfather and resided in Crowley, Johnson County, Tx. This piece was originally written in three parts.
T Jun 2018
Our love was like dynamite yes TNT
there was nothing better than you and I
We were two souls joined at the hip
Being together was such a trip
We sang and danced to all the songs we knew
That's just one reason our love always grew
All the things we did together were so much fun
Now that we are apart there is no more sun
There is just so much I will never understand
Just why we could not make one more stand
Maybe in the not too distant future
You and I will regain our magic
Because not being with my soulmate is so tragic
You and I will no longer fight
Us together again would be dynamite
#time has no meaning in love
Natasha Teller Apr 2015
1-- Legacy

This city was my ancestors' town.
We have laid tar on your horse-paths-
a university grew from Riverview roots-
you chopped firewood from the
great-great grandfathers
of these trees.

#2-- saint cloud sounds like

midnight, shoemaker: haunted cries.
munsinger's melody: scurries & chirps.
when TNT shatters granite at the quarry.
pucks' percussion at the brooks center.
buzz of summers on lake george's shore.
somalia & scandinavia, singing.
My city runs a contest each May; they engrave poems into portions of the sidewalk. This is the first year I've entered.
Jude kyrie Jul 2018
AS THE BOMBS FELL A CHILD IS BORN.
A TRUE STORY
BY JUDE KYRIE

The night I was born the air was filled with the acrid odors of cordite and fire. Even the charred blossoms of the out of place cherry tree in the dark inner city gadens lost their sweet fragrance,
It was 1942 the war raged on like the four horsemen wanted it too.
Bombers of the Luftwaffe decided to obliterate our home at that moment.
Manchester was on fire and my first breaths were made of its deadly acrid smoke.
Inside the small row house beneath its humble living quarters we were sheltered under the cellar stairs.
My heavily pregnant mother and three older sisters clung to each other tightly as the roar of hate and violence crescendoed above the small house.
Somehow even in the darkened days of hopeless war I had been conceived in defiance of all the  hate a small flickering candle of love burning brightly in the darkness.
Missing from the house were my six older brothers who were away fighting in distant lands in the royal marines.
Also missing , my father who had served his country in the first world war. Now he walked in the darkened blackout of a Manchester on fire.
His job to watch for injured people he was  now too old to serve in any other way.
The bomb whistled as It fell from the sky its whining harbinger of death and destruction a precursor to its death knell of explosion a few moments later.
A cat oblivious to war and destruction watched the scene from beneath a stoop. The fires from the detonated TNT reflected in its wide green eyes.
The sound of our best friend the very air that we breathe to live being compressed into a weapon that would try to destroy us.
the blast wall of compression hit the structure of our house causing the supporting walls to fall inward and slowly to bury us alive in our cellar refuge,

My father at that very moment stood in front of the old catholic church of which he was a member with nine children as proof and soon to be ten.
The nave was on fire even gods house was not spared this night.

Father O'Brien appeared at the door of his beloved church in his arms in a long white smock was his altar boy he did not move nor would he ever again.
Tears flowed down the face of the old Irish priest. God has forsaken us Frank he cried to my father.

And together they walked in the mayhem of war.
As they reached our street my father saw his house destroyed and
His heart sank the priest last lament ringing in his ears.
A crowd of neighbours were pulling at the rubble. Mixed with plaster bricks a broken dish, a picture, a *** now so dented almost unrecognizable.
For hours they pulled and worked to reach the cellar.then finally they got there.
Under the cellar steps inside the gloom of blackened night we were all there covered in dirt and grime. Yet alive in defiance of the grim reaper increased by one more,
my mother held me to her breast to nurture her new child her seventh son.

My father wept as we were lifted out one by one.
He held me close to his heart covering me with his coat.
My mother kissed him and said
Oh Frank we have lost everything.
He touched her hair softly and said.
That's not true Mary love,
I just found everything I ever wanted.

across the yard a cat sat watching the fires in its eyes extinguished
and the scene of a happy reunion reflected in its place with the promise of happier times to come.
A true piece of my family history
jude
Gossamer Jan 2014
I

I wish I’d seen it sooner, you are parallax,
Your lipstick fooled me for so long, you catalyst,
You trapped me in my own heart, you are Calypso,
I kept my fears hidden behind a mental citadel,
You tore it down, your touch was selcouth,
But only to me, you were too beautiful, you are kalopsia

II
Even your fingernails lied, you are kalopsia,
I shouldn’t come down from cloud nine, this parallax
Should’ve been more apparent, not selcouth,
Not how I thought it, you are TNT, a catalyst,
You demolish with your winks, even my citadel
Fell before you, but you still kept me in, you are Calypso.

III
Tell everyone you’re real, you are Calypso,
You are not a myth, you are simply kalopsia,
A breathtaking lie, you didn’t need a citadel,
Nobody could break you anyway, you are parallax,
But you’re evil at all angles, you are the catalyst
Of all things lonely, this no longer feels selcouth.

IV
You are kalopsia, the gorgeous catalyst.
You are parallax, wrecking citadels.
You are not selcouth; you are Calypso.
Shane Oltingir May 2014
Wonderland has an alleyway you know,
said Alice to her grandson of three.
It's not all shoes, and ships, and ceiling wax,
unbirthdays and cups of tea.

Where the white rabbit is on time for once.
From South Africa he ran,
To be tried before the red queen -
for shooting Mary Ann.

It's where the buildings are not simply filled
with cakes and cups of tea;
They explode - not from happiness -
but planes and TNT.

Where we need not paint the roses red
nor support the white knights plight.
For recently he lost his head -
Now they're painting England white...
Skylar Del Re May 2013
TNT
It's bad enough
When the one you ****
Is not the one you love
It's even worse
When you turn your face
Can't look into their eyes
You've got it bad
You've got the curse
He can probably feel your lies
Make him leave
If you please
There's the open door
So I guess I can
"Do it" again
But in your eyes
Is where I long to lye
But here I am
Alone again
With only regret
No heart in my chest
Cause only you can be
The thing that awakens me
Only you can put my heart back in
You are the only cure I see
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2013
My Night With Paul Simon

On the night train, the red eye plane,
Flying home to NYCeeeeeeeeeeeee,
From the city of Los Angeleeeeeeez

Feeling flush, dropped some cash,
Got me a seat in extra large first class

Seat 2C, plenty of room for my toes,
To wiggle  to dance,
lay down some poetry tracks,
pretending I'm a **** jive,
bad *** from the
make-believe west coast

A short guy, with fedora down low,
An older man,
looking about nine years older
than somebody I might know,
hiding his eyes @ 9pm
neath some excellent Raybans,
slip slides into 2D,
gives me a smile,
And says Hi, I'm Paul

I look once at his face and say,
Listen Rhymin' Simon,
I'd know you any place,
No worries, your secret,
with me is safe,
Cause dudes in row 2,
gottta stick together, be cool,
We're riding first class,
over the land of the free

What ya do for a living he asks,
A little of this and a little of that,
All of which, ain't no **** good at!
So I spend my cold, hard time
laying down cold hard verse,
Can't stop, cause it's my daddy's dying curse

He said that's cool,
I like to do that too.
Guitars on planes
drive passengers insane,
They take up too much
overhead compartment space,
I just scribble me some rhymes and
Let the music come
when I got two feet
on the ground in the city
we both come from.

Paul:  You got any stuff writ
on that yellow sheet,
or just pretty blue lines,
a big pad of nothing?

Dude: Man you may got diamonds
on the soles of your shoes,
But pay me some 'spect,  
you talking to the man who penned
Sad Eyed Teenagers of the Lowland
on Hello Poetry, gad ****!

Paul smiled and said
you can call me Al,
And if you feel like blowing some lines together,
We got five hours till we can see
the house that Ruth built.

Dude: Hit me with your best shot,
I'll show you what I got

Paul: And she said honey take me dancing
But they ended up by sleeping
In a doorway
By the bodegas and the lights on
Upper Broadway
Wearing diamonds on the soles of their shoes

Dude: Just cause the union of the  monkeys
in the Bronx Zoo done gone on strike,
Don't mean the lion ain't
still king of the hill
inside this New York city jail

Paul: And the sign said,
"The words of the prophets are written
on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered
in the sounds of silence

Dude: A home-grown poet.
I am, Soul enslaved to words.
The alphabet - My oxygen molecules,
I am both, Addict and dealer
A ****** poet ******

Paul: You don't need to be coy, Roy
Just listen to me
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don't need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free

Dude: Contact with the atmosphere
makes self pity die,
my blue blood turn red,
the TNT tightness in my chest exploded
I got no place  to store these words,
the cops think I'm some kind of Terrorist

On and on thru the night,
Riffing, rapping, rambling, and spitting,
Ditties and darts, couplets and barbs,
Single words and elegies,
Free verse and a lot of fking curse words,
It was a moment, a time
that deserved
to be preserved,
and so this poem got writ

*You may think this story apocryphal
Which is another way of saying untrue,
But I got his boarding pass and it is signed,
To this crazy poetry dude, long may you rasp,
And it is signed by Mr. P. Simon, a big fan,
And it has never since that day,
Left my grasp
Emily Rene Nov 2013
When I was a kid
I used to think that pork chops & karate chops
were the same thing
I thought they were both pork chops
& because my grandmother thought it was cute
& because they were my favorite,
she let me keep doing it

Not really a big deal

One day,
before I realized fat kids are not designed to climb trees
I fell out of a tree
& bruised the right side of my body

I didn't want to tell my grandmother about it
because I was afraid I'd get in trouble
for playing somewhere that I shouldn't have been

A few days later,
the gym teacher noticed the bruise
& I got sent to the principals office
From there I was sent to another small room
with a really nice lady
who asked me all kinds of questions
about my life at home

I saw no reason to lie
As far as I was concerned,
life was pretty good
I told her, "Whenever I'm sad,
my grandmother gives me karate chops!"

This led to a full scale investigation
& I was removed from the house for three days
until they finally decided to ask how I got the bruise

News of this silly little story quickly spread through the school
& I earned my first nickname

Pork Chop

To this day
I hate pork chops

I'm not the only kid
who grew up this way
Surrounded by people who used to say
that rhyme about sticks & stones
as if broken bones
hurt more than the names we got called
& we got called them all
So we grew up believing no one
would ever fall in love with us
That we'd be lonely forever
That we'd never meet someone
to make us feel like the sun
was something they built for us
in their tool shed
so broken heart strings bled the blues
as we tried to empty ourselves
so we would feel nothing
Don't tell me that hurts less than a broken bone
That an ingrown life
is something surgeons can cut away
That there's no way for it to metastasize

It does

She was eight years old
our first day of grade three
when she got called ugly
We both got moved to the back of the class
so we would stop getting bombarded by spit *****
but the school halls were a battleground
where we found ourselves outnumbered day after wretched day
We used to stay inside for recess
because outside was worse
Outside we'd have to rehearse running away
or learn to stay still like statues giving no clues that we were there
In grade five,
they taped a sign to her desk that read
Beware Of Dog

To this day,
despite a loving husband,
she doesn't think she's beautiful
because of a birthmark
that takes up a little less than half of her face
Kids used to say she looks like a wrong answer
that someone tried to erase
but couldn't quite get the job done
& they'll never understand
that she's raising two kids
whose definition of beauty
begins with the word mom
because they see her heart
before they see her skin
because she's only ever always been amazing

He
was a broken branch
grafted onto a different family tree
Adopted
Not because his parents opted for a different destiny
He was three when he became a mixed drink
of one part left alone
& two parts tragedy
Started therapy in 8th grade
Had a personality made up of tests & pills.
Lived like the uphills were moutains
& the downhills were cliffs
Four fifths suicidal
A tidal wave of anti depressants
& an adolescence of being called Popper
One part because of the pills,
ninety nine parts because of the cruelty
He tried to **** himself in grade ten
when a kid who could still go home to mom & dad
had the audacity to tell him "Get over it," as if depression
is something that can be remedied
by any of the contents fround in a first aid kit

To this day
he is a stick of TNT lit from both ends
Could describe to you in detail the way the sky bends
in the moments before it's about to fall
& despite an army of friends
who all call him an inspiration,
he remains a conversation piece between people
who can't understand
Sometimes becoming drug free
has less to do with addiction
& more to do with sanity

We weren't the only kids who grew up this way

To this day
kids are still being called names
The classics were
hey stupid
hey spaz
Seems like each school has an arsenal of names
getting updated every year
& if a kid breaks in a school
& no one around chooses to hear,
do they make a sound?
Are they just the background noise
of a soundtrack stuck on repeat
when people say things like
kids can be cruel?
Every school was a big top circus tent
& the pecking order went
from acrobats to lion tamers
from clowns to carnies
All of these were miles ahead of who we were
We were freaks
Lobster claw boys & bearded ladies
Oddities
juggling depression & loneliness playing solitaire, spin the bottle
trying to kiss the wounded parts of ourselves & heal
But at night
while the others slept
we kept walking the tightrope
It was practice
& yes
some of us fell

But I want to tell them
that all of this ****
is just debris
leftover when we finally decide to smash all the things we thought
we used to be
& if you can't see anything beautiful about yourself,
get a better mirror
look a little closer
stare a little longer
because there's something inside you
that made you keep trying
Despite everyone who told you to quit
you built a cast around your broken heart
& signed it yourself
You signed it,
"They were wrong!"
because maybe you didn't belong to a group or a clique
Maybe they decided to pick you last for basketball or everything
Maybe you used to bring bruises & broken teeth
to show & tell but never told
because how can you hold your ground
if everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it
You have to believe that they were wrong

They have to be wrong

Why else would we still be here?
We grew up learning to cheer on the underdog
because we see ourselves in them
We stem from a root planted in the belief
that we are not what we were called
We are not abandoned cars stalled out &
sitting empty on a highway
& if in some way we are
don't worry
We only got out to walk & get gas
We are graduating members from the class of
we made it
Not the faded echoes of voices crying out
Names will never hurt me

Of course
they did

But our lives will only ever always
continue to be
a balancing act
that has less to do with pain
& more to do with *beauty
To This Day , I continue reading this poem to myself every time I feel used or unworthy.
Rhianna OReilly Sep 2011
TNT
Then you gave me hot stars, with your beautiful eyes;
you made a symphony, warm body harmony, an explosion of
fires, stars, flames.
You hold my hand, read my mind, and squeeze my heart.
You gave me stars.
The most beautiful gift that most can’t give.
Beautiful enough to make my soul stutter,
my mind grow wings and flutter,
to make my eyes grow wide in wonder.

You think so heavily, like water, with expressions of poetry;
this makes you so strange that
you make perfect sense to me.
You’re so different— I dived into another world
when you made love to me…
You gave me stars, and a love grenade,
we made music, a concerto of painful and delicious,
you inside of me.
While you look back at me and read my mind,
you take my breath;
you rocked everything I thought. I never know what to expect.
All you had to do was kiss me like a prince,
and you lit me up
like fireworks in the dark. You gave me a galaxy,
a stringed symphony of stars.
The riddle of me
Is bullets of art
Shooting ink stains
In your heart
So you'll always love me
And my mentality
Is a mental breakdown
Of three things
Words, beats and rhymes
Ahead of my time
Thinking of blasting stars
Around your head
Knocked down
Out for the count
Going old school
Wylie getting chased around
On the road running
Laps at the speed of sound
Dropping TNT
Boom
Anvils like beats
Flattening you out
Gettin dizzy quickly
Spinnin and spinnin
Thinking freely
It's my territory
Down a black hole
Following the white
Rabid junk dealing
Cat selling smiles
Getting mad feeling
The wheels are turnin
Inside out
A needle sewn
Through the vane
Injection infection
Man in the mirror
It's a sight to see
Through the glass
Pictures like a memory
Before my rhymes crash
And you see the other side of me
Revealing my destiny
Going insane
I'm the only one to blame
The ink stains
They're smothering me
Slithering inside me
Covering my body
The only thing to see
Is my heart exposed
But you all love me
With these rhymes
And flows
A new era
Another time
A blast from the past
But I'm heading to the future
89 miles an hour
And I'll return
Brake checkin
With tire tracks that burn
With doc in an urn
To lure you in
Back to where it all begins
Tattoos of a heart
Deep within my skin
To replace the oxygen
Breathing nitrogen
Ink stained again
Graffiti trigger
Spraying art
Deadly sins
Bullets tearin you apart
But these are my words
And they come from the heart
This was originally written as a rap and a friend of mine recorded it,  if you like it please listen to the song.  Thanks
Here's the link...

http://soundcloud.com/dtorr77/ink-stains-feat-melz-spooklive-music
Samantha Vaughn Aug 2013
Slow sips of cyanide, to complete my sweet suicide.
Adamant about absolution,
My mind has masterminded a revolution.
Addicted to anarchy and aggression,
Nobodies kept voted for nomination.
Tasty tar-treats, flavored of TNT,
Humor my hallucinations of this God-forsaken nation.
Abandoned, alone and arrested,
I* give up on this Vindication
Wrote this during one of my 2011 lows...
(c) Samantha Vaughn
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2013
Cusp

Once I wrote these words:

Place your ****** hands upon thy chest.
Let them melt thru and come to rest,
Inside, the battle ongoing, under thy breast.
Watch, eyes open, knowing, fearful.
Swiftly, with no hesitation, from within,
Rip open your body, exhaling the best,
And the worst of what you got.

The cool air rushes in,
Stirring the inside stew of:
Infected grime, shameful desires,
Secrets that should not have been exposed,
The ***** stuff of about your life
that you alone know exists.

Contact with the atmosphere makes
Self-pity dies, blue blood turn red,
The TNT tightness explodes,
Ashamed, you have only one escape hatch.

Now, you are ready to write.

(http://hellopoetry.com/poem/now-you-are-ready-to-write/)

so here I am, hands on my chest,
so unready, incapable of writing,

the battle site changed,
sledding to the top of my head,
moved northwards, mush, mush.

just don't have what's required
to melt that mush open,
just don't have the anymore
to finish this Iditarod race
called my Idiot life.

nobody knows the silences
kept in my treasure box.
nobody knows the nail-beds
slept, bloodied, by this
mthrfking depression,
unexpectedly returned to sender,
unable now,
to write, free and clear.

suffused, this words reappears,
you don't get it, the twilight twinkies
below laughing, twinkling,
middle ******* me,
so not suffused,
nah nah nah nah
you don't got it,
you got nothing.

the words supply, torn and  tired
reappears, now escapee prisoners
before flatlining, crashing
as I am currently 20,000 feet over
somewhere above the Eastern Seaboard;

we may land smooth,
but not in any groove
that fits me anymore.

Here's the sorest, sorriest laugh,
what you are about to read
was eons ago born, and today
birthed.

Happy M.F'ing  Birthday #0
don't even, can't complain fresh,
reusing unused words that never got
devoured, so now, used up too,
like me.

cut by thicket's branches
(that in their defense, maim only to self-protect)
calluses of experience
not enough to survive
what is now needed,
new chapters required.

choruses of repetitive choirs fresh,
inspire but land on surfaces
heart-hardened by fear contagion.

who will know and
who will care and who
will make them all go away,
but me...

so touch my self,  
reminder to self is emailed,
beat the odds so man-many times,
one more time, what's the big deal?


fresh differences,
maybe,

words that are new
not in my vocabulary,
maybe.

Struggle, long lived,
is the status quo,
** **, don't you know,
nobody tole ya?

world's axis is tilted
you can fall off
a familiar horse,
get off course,
so east easy
a gravitational force so subtle,
clueless you're drowning
till the riptide
has liberated your
pockets possessions,
pathetic borrowings
of unoriginal thoughts
you thought you actually owned!
now you realize
new inspirational how to books
keep getting writ,
published for experienced suckers
like you.

so here at the pointed cusp
a crescent shaped tangent,
lines crossed, intersection of a curveball
turning inwards, retracing prior paths,
familiar but tho the forecasts predict
being on the cusp of something,
crystal ball reveals nothing at all.

I fold the little have learned
into a handkerchief
folded three times over,
tied cusp to cusp
with a trefoil knot,
which while
mathematically correct,  
is too easy as my hanky is almost empty
and hobo heart journey scary is thinking
done.
Cusp:

point, apex: as
a :  a point of transition (as from one historical period to the next) :  
turning point; also :  edge, verge
b :  either horn of a crescent moon
c :  a fixed point on a mathematical curve at which a point tracing the curve would exactly reverse its direction of motion
d :  an ornamental pointed projection formed by or arising from the intersection of two arcs or foils
e (1) :  a point on the grinding surface of a tooth (2) :  a fold or flap of a cardiac valve
TnT
Here is the difference between the t and the t:
Although they are alike, here is what you don't see.
You could see both in this war fought amongst leaves;
One's made from being crumbled while the other's from being beat.

Tyranny or teams, threats or truce,
Time, tattles, the, tame, though, this, tells, the, truth.
T is meant for drawing while t is meant to lose,
They both wanted peace; just one couldn't choose.

One gave you a gift and that gift was a cup.
It said "World's #1", but number 1 what...?
T, too, gave a present and this was your relief.
This gift was so grand that you let out a big scream!

I hope you guess the riddle and I hope this makes you think.
Because, t, is, the, tinker, the, tocker, in, the, tick.
T, thinks, thought, politely, through, thin, than, through, thick.
Or t doesn't think at all. Now isn't that a trick?
Answers are...






tea and tampons
i am a resentment factory.
i build and construct my resentments by manual labor
                                                                                                with fine tuned finger movements.
but then the industrial age happened, and i started
mass producing my resentments.

a great sage from galaxy far far away once said
"fear leads to anger. anger leads to hate. hate leads to suffering."

o how true that's been for me.  my factory of resentment leads to
anger, and mass production of anger leads to self hatred.
i am left with a box full of resentments and anger that just sit in storage.

the beauty of all of this is that my factory is run on fear, the main power source.

i need to shut the power  off and blow up the factory.
anybody got some TNT?
Trying something new.
Mateuš Conrad May 2016
i don't have a conspiracy theory... i just have an encyclopaedia of adverts... western intelligence is squandered on pub quizzes and trivia knowledge shows... spies are like magicians, although a spy's audience is a bunch of journalists high on tarantula venom, quote: (uh... what's going on?) take any stoner to speak that bracket.*

when my parents were eight, they were still
blossoming in a natural environment,
using the inherited tongue like a hammer:
here's the nail, here's a plank of wood,
now hammer that thought of yours in.
aged eight i was thrown into the deep end,
having to learn a new language, as somehow
unlearn my mother's tongue, i didn't budge,
i kept it scheming, rather than subconscious,
i didn't repress it... thrown into the deep end
i didn't become like most migrants
"assimilated", i.e. losing heritage... i kept it
(just in case)... now the chameleon of me
is about... suit & tie... then tracksuit bottoms...
no little russian kakashka (little ****)
would dare **** me, all the information i have
is useless... it's too personal...
i was supposed to be the rebound guy...
she sort of faked using anti-contraceptives...
i ended up a boomerang after seeing all
the possibilities of education...
that's the thing with the west and education,
it, just, doesn't, work... because all the menial
jobs have been exported, the west is sort
of puzzle-box tied in terms of hands able,
with hands actually disabled...
this excess outpouring of poetry is one sign,
the obvious one, excess poetry as deviation
from a chronology of illiteracy and books left
in the shadows and dust and crematoriums...
you tend to write poetry when you're either
illiterate or haven't read much that's on offer...
read the least number of books, then you get
to write poetry, simple as Victoria sponge or
bechamel sauce for a lasagne, motto being:
just keep stirring that flour into the frying butter,
just keep stirring, then slowly keep adding
onion bay leaf nutmeg infused milk slowly...
just keep on stirring...
western society likes bureaucracy, by way of
exporting the ideal that's democracy,
but it's so ******* n'ah! keep slang as an expression
of encrypted onomatopoeia, keep slang
as disguised nouns in onomatopoeias...
russians love poetry, hence they tend to send poets
into the gulag... in western society they
take poets to be raw meat and send a dozen flies in
to **** sperms into it, to clarify:
pornographic actors get paid, poets don't...
O masters of this glorious sphere, what will
this Eden Project prove? a third eye that's Voyeurism
en masse? when the blow-over fringe was running
for president i just said (no, no hindsight):
i wouldn't laugh... imagine a female pope!
women are not supposed to wear the Kippah...
western society in crisis; today i was watching the
film Cleopatra (1963) and there was so much dialogue!
take a movie from 2015 or 2016 and the dialogue
you get is: TNT BOOM BOOM BOOM!
CGI that's a fake of pixels being arable for the original
intention... the great decline... it only too one hit...
one ******* hit... and it ended up being a K.O.
you'd think they'd be able to take more... but Islam
became a Mike Tyson... *******... take one more hit!
what you're seeing now is what's called
the paradox of treating democracy as Utopia,
democracy isn't Utopia (Churchill said)...
but this is the unravelling, treat democracy as
the sole expression of utopia and then watch when
something alien hits it... one smack and you're out...
treating democracy as utopian politics is false,
too many self interests and too much bureaucracy;
or i can example my father for you...
two Lithuanian labourers employed by a company
****** up his drill... they weren't electrocuted
(the drill was wet), because if they were
the effect of electrocution would be like that of
an electron cloud the glue of keeping the proton
and neutron nucleus intact, the thing electrocuting
would be like a crocodile's jaw snap, you wouldn't
be able to let go... instead they became Lithuanian
vandals... smashed the thing... and what about
being self-employed and having his wages cut
once in a while? self-employment is the norm in western
societies... because the boss of BHS took a big fat
pay-cheque for a yacht with Kate Moss on it
while employee pensions went down the drain or
into Hawking's theory of black holes colliding...
zero hour contracts to match up the statistics...
western powers are mad to export their ideals...
i wouldn't trust them with a water-pistol,
and you know why? they'd just want an Iraqi to
wear Nike trainers and eat a Big Mac.
I am the past and I am the present. I am the digger of graves and the conveyance to them.
I am the string; connected to the puppets that wield my blows.

I am the thing they call, “Havoc” I am the Blue Monkey.

The key to my cage, that which sets me free is your disinterest, your apathy and hate. My freedom to roam unabated is your ignorance, and retribution’s ****** slate.  Man’s violence upon himself is my ignorant inspiration, and I revel in the thought of his de-creation.

I can be found in city and town, in far flung reaches around the world. I can be seen in newscast scenes, I can be found in the eyes of a starving child. My name is celebrated in ball ammo flight, and the pungent aroma of smoke and cordite.

I am the flame set to irreverent crosses; lighting the sky with racist delights, I am the tailor of white sheeted banners so bias. I am the unjustified 13 knots of retribution, fashioned on the hangman’s noose.

I am the thing they call “Havoc” I am the Blue Monkey.

Complacency is my friend, Revenge, my *****. Blood letting my delight, to even senseless scores. My hands are soiled with the lives of many, and I have been given freedoms in place of your outrage. Look around in farm and town, in village and city streets, my presence is everywhere…

Keep sleeping; keep sleeping,
For when you awake, I shall have to go.

I am the vehement articulations of opinion and rhetoric, and in spite of your diatribes,
It is they that give me wing. I am the developer of future battlefields. I was the architect of the Auschwitz oven, the builder of the Berlin wall. I was the sharpened blade of Tutsi, Hutu cleansings. I am the mix master of Jim Jones’s cool aide. I am confusion; I am disassociation, alienation and empty pride.

I am the thing they call “Havoc” I am The Blue Monkey.

You will find me in back alley shooting dens, on skid row’s bleeding pavement.
You will find me in lonely fields and dark forests, within the graves of the murdered unknown. You will see my reflection in broken mirrors, for I celebrate their fall,
And I will revel in the screams of your unheard call.
They call me destruction; I am your neutron bomb. I am the wings of the Enola Gay at thirty thousand feet, reaching out to touch you. With nuclear, holocaust treats.
I am dynamite, TNT, I am the thought imposed in political superiority. I am the IED
On the path of Man’s sacred journey.  I am travail and tribulation.

I am the thing they call “Havoc” I am the Blue Monkey.

I am the summation of all your perceived wrongs, and yet you tarry about,
Clanging self-righteous gongs,
You see, but you are blind, you listen but do not hear. Instead you wallow in the pits of self loathing and determinate fear. And in that fear, it becomes quite clear that indeed your hearts are closed, for to open them wide would cause your heart to collide with the awful truth about me.

Yes, keep sleeping; and sleep well,
For when you awake, I shall have to go.

For I am the thing they call “Havoc” I am the Blue Monkey…
Lorem Ipsum Nov 2017
When I was a kid
I used to think that pork chops and karate chops
Were the same thing
I thought they were both pork chops
And because my grandmother thought it was cute
And because they were my favourite
She let me keep doing it

Not really a big deal

One day
Before I realized fat kids are not designed to climb trees
I fell out of a tree
And bruised the right side of my body

I didn’t want to tell my grandmother about it
Because I was afraid I’d get in trouble
For playing somewhere that I shouldn’t have been

A few days later the gym teacher noticed the bruise
And I got sent to the principal’s office
From there I was sent to another small room
With a really nice lady
Who asked me all kinds of questions
About my life at home


I saw no reason to lie
As far as I was concerned
Life was pretty good
I told her, “Whenever I’m sad
My grandmother gives me karate chops”

This led to a full scale investigation
And I was removed from the house for three days
Until they finally decided to ask how I got the bruises

News of this silly little story quickly spread through the school
And I earned my first nickname

Pork Chop

To this day
I hate pork chops

I’m not the only kid
Who grew up this way
Surrounded by people who used to say
That rhyme about sticks and stones
As if broken bones
Hurt more than the names we got called
And we got called them all
So we grew up believing no one
Would ever fall in love with us
That we’d be lonely forever
That we’d never meet someone
To make us feel like the sun
Was something they built for us
In their tool shed
So broken heart strings bled the blues
As we tried to empty ourselves
So we would feel nothing
Don’t tell me that hurts less than a broken bone
That an ingrown life
Is something surgeons can cut away
That there’s no way for it to metastasize


It does

She was eight years old
Our first day of grade three
When she got called ugly
We both got moved to the back of the class
So we would stop get bombarded by spit *****
But the school halls were a battleground
Where we found ourselves outnumbered day after wretched day
We used to stay inside for recess
Because outside was worse
Outside we’d have to rehearse running away
Or learn to stay still like statues giving no clues that we were there
In grade five they taped a sign to her desk
That read beware of dog

To this day
Despite a loving husband
She doesn’t think she’s beautiful
Because of a birthmark
That takes up a little less than half of her face
Kids used to say she looks like a wrong answer
That someone tried to erase
But couldn’t quite get the job done
And they’ll never understand
That she’s raising two kids
Whose definition of beauty
Begins with the word mom
Because they see her heart
Before they see her skin
Because she’s only ever always been amazing


He
Was a broken branch
Grafted onto a different family tree
Adopted
Not because his parents opted for a different destiny
He was three when he became a mixed drink
Of one part left alone
And two parts tragedy
Started therapy in 8th grade
Had a personality made up of tests and pills
Lived like the uphills were mountains
And the downhills were cliffs
Four fifths suicidal
A tidal wave of anti depressants
And an adolescence of being called popper
One part because of the pills
Ninety nine parts because of the cruelty
He tried to **** himself in grade ten
When a kid who could still go home to mom and dad
Had the audacity to tell him “get over it” as if depression
Is something that can be remedied
By any of the contents found in a first aid kit

To this day
He is a stick of TNT lit from both ends
Could describe to you in detail the way the sky bends
In the moments before it’s about to fall
And despite an army of friends
Who all call him an inspiration
He remains a conversation piece between people
Who can’t understand
Sometimes becoming drug free
Has less to do with addiction
And more to do with sanity

We weren’t the only kids who grew up this way
To this day
Kids are still being called names
The classics were
Hey stupid
Hey spaz
Seems like each school has an arsenal of names
Getting updated every year
And if a kid breaks in a school
And no one around chooses to hear
Do they make a sound?
Are they just the background noise
Of a soundtrack stuck on repeat
When people say things like
Kids can be cruel?
Every school was a big top circus tent
And the pecking order went
From acrobats to lion tamers
From clowns to carnies
All of these were miles ahead of who we were
We were freaks
Lobster claw boys and bearded ladies
Oddities
Juggling depression and loneliness playing solitaire spin the bottle
Trying to kiss the wounded parts of ourselves and heal
But at night
While the others slept
We kept walking the tightrope
It was practice
And yes
Some of us fell

But I want to tell them
That all of this ****
Is just debris
Leftover when we finally decide to smash all the things we thought
We used to be
And if you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself
Get a better mirror
Look a little closer
Stare a little longer
Because there’s something inside you
That made you keep trying
Despite everyone who told you to quit
You built a cast around your broken heart
And signed it yourself
You signed it
“They were wrong”
Because maybe you didn’t belong to a group or a clique
Maybe they decided to pick you last for basketball or everything
Maybe you used to bring bruises and broken teeth
To show and tell but never told
Because how can you hold your ground
If everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it
You have to believe that they were wrong

They have to be wrong

Why else would we still be here?
We grew up learning to cheer on the underdog
Because we see ourselves in them
We stem from a root planted in the belief
That we are not what we were called
We are not abandoned cars stalled out and
Sitting empty on a highway
And if in some way we are
Don’t worry
We only got out to walk and get gas
We are graduating members from the class of ******* We Made It
Not the faded echoes of voices crying out
Names will never hurt me

Of course
They did

But our lives will only ever always
Continue to be
A balancing act
That has less to do with pain
And more to do with beauty

-Shane Koyczan
Shane L. Koyczan is a Canadian spoken word poet, writer, and member of the group Tons of Fun University. He is known for writing about issues like bullying, cancer, death, and eating disorders. (Wikipedia)
T Oct 2017
TNT
Our love is strong
Something I knew along
There are changes that we must endure
We go through these things so our love grows more
I love you so much and I really miss your touch
As the days go by I realise that you are the only one that I ever loved
Your eyes and your beautiful smile
That's just a couple of things that make melt
All of these feelings that I have inside are something I have never felt
I need you in my life the past means nothing to me the future with you is all I see.

Our love is like dynamite it's ticking like a time bomb that will only explode when the time is right you and I till there is no more light
You stole my heart like a thief in the night.
I remember this on a hot day in August right.
I think of you over and over and again and again I do not think that will ever end
If the light forgets to shine
Our love will rise and show the way
It is that strong day after day
We might see somethings in a different light
It is never as bad as it seems
Before it falls apart at the seams.
We pick it up and the flame still burns
Our love survives lesson learned

Life and love are but a song and the lyrics must be still written
Our story hopefully it will be a long one might be rewritten many times
Long and short with plenty of rhymes  
With this being said
In time all our stories and lyrics will be read.
Inspired by Tricia Casella
Universal Thrum Oct 2014
Staring off into the distance of a ***** carpet ridden with living trails of ants, a crawling black river of desolate hunger, counting days of visions, wandering naked in the lake treading water, kissing, spitting out lips and liquid
shifted in dreams
memories poke like a cactus needle open to a room of steam heat and *****
flooding with words that digest imagination and burn eyelids, a cigarette held too close to a crowning flame
incinerating eyelashes and clattering TNT onto the serene image of our drunken antics while the rest of the world is howling for us to see ourselves for the raving lunatics we are, their tired look of exasperation an exhausted mother left alone to raise a hopeless child, wicked only for his ignorance
The last speakers of the paleolithic age journey forth from the depths of the amazonian jungle to heal our souls nailed to the cross as drug dealers because ingested plants grow in the ground

I saw the most beautiful soul weep in fear against a diner booth at midnight
amid plates of burgers, fries and green beans laid on the lineoleum table with no signs of starvation or danger
yet the signs of the apocalypse resonate in all psyches because reptilian brains would rather die than change, conform than bring forth the messianic transformation of our own radical self acceptance as God
and we shun those who are insane on the streets
***** outcasts, poor filth and ugliness
human animals unfit for this society of plastic and image, a mirage over substance
I cross the street rather than look the beggar in the eye because he stinks of desperation, and tell him no no no, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry, I can't share with you all
MOLOCH!
The holy yell
flooding the empty headed street
we abandoned our mother and forsaken our selves to flickering images of lust and prestige, **** and *****, ****** and ***, thick wads
idolizing our own form,
the sirens of the modern age, the golden calves danced around in supermarket check out lines,
capturing us on the jagged cliffs of inattention, glories husked and barren, cultivate likes and followers sweet nicotine in the bloodstream, social media mogul reigning over a grand bazaar of ghosts in a room, talking to other ghosts in rooms of faraway lands, ignoring the living flesh in front of their twitchy eyes, cast down for a screen, forgetting themselves for a profile, a small picture in a corner, an Ignominious massacre of life cast through a digital lens, concerts meant for full expression of a cathartic moment of ****** movement, lost to a sea of hand held recording devices to remember how you didn't feel at that moment  with other people milling about as cattle who would rather document and never watch again then dance and live and be a part of the happening, look, Rip Van Winkles throwing pins with revolutionary prussian ghosts in a sleepy Catskill hollow, zombies behind wheels typing to ****, these words will not save you, they will not fill the siphon hole,
I am with you in this burning sodium night on my back in the grass of a night with no darkness
I am with you where the army of madness will overthrow the living dead and shake their working class dreams to the core with the sudden eternal war of nothingness and contemplation and silence screaming out for someone to save us
Everything is HOLY!

Throw open the church doors
think nothing of paying for poison, (as advertised)
but refuse to confront your self possessed greed because the man holding the cup is tired and desperate and I am tired and desperate

A truck hauls a horse
broken wilderness, cleaved concrete, cracked spines wretched scars,
killing anything that isn't hard, impermanent and futile, the land reclaims
but no land to ride, only the black road with its machines spewing the smokey remains of dead ancient animals
nature perverted, mobility imprisoned inside a metal box to be driven when it can run
so apt
for the potential inside coffins of daily lives
talking of dreams gutless to pursue
settling instead for the easy cruise of routine
******* our own hands

We all matter
but this world doesn't work without slaves
so take pride in your nine to five
get some ***** with that job title
and two sentence description
of how you can make the dreams come true, in the suburbs with three kids a couch and security from whatever danger lurks outside of us on TV
our own kind
murderous and malicious
homicidal tribalists
merrymaking nihilists
The fear The Fear
the light the light

I grab her hand and stare into dark eyes deadlocked on the momentary plane, a revealed saint testifying to God's truth Mary Maria, she tells me there is something beautiful outside this current mode of existence, but she's only had a fleeting glimpse
WIP
ShuckFacedGirl May 2015
To This Day
When I was a kid
I used to think that pork chops and karate chops
were the same thing
I thought they were both pork chops
and because my grandmother thought it was cute
and because they were my favourite
she let me keep doing it

not really a big deal

one day
before I realized fat kids are not designed to climb trees
I fell out of a tree
and bruised the right side of my body

I didn’t want to tell my grandmother about it
because I was afraid I’d get in trouble
for playing somewhere that I shouldn’t have been

a few days later the gym teacher noticed the bruise
and I got sent to the principal’s office
from there I was sent to another small room
with a really nice lady
who asked me all kinds of questions
about my life at home

I saw no reason to lie
as far as I was concerned
life was pretty good
I told her “whenever I’m sad
my grandmother gives me karate chops”

this led to a full scale investigation
and I was removed from the house for three days
until they finally decided to ask how I got the bruises

news of this silly little story quickly spread through the school
and I earned my first nickname

pork chop

to this day
I hate pork chops

I’m not the only kid
who grew up this way
surrounded by people who used to say
that rhyme about sticks and stones
as if broken bones
hurt more than the names we got called
and we got called them all
so we grew up believing no one
would ever fall in love with us
that we’d be lonely forever
that we’d never meet someone
to make us feel like the sun
was something they built for us
in their tool shed
so broken heart strings bled the blues
as we tried to empty ourselves
so we would feel nothing
don’t tell me that hurts less than a broken bone
that an ingrown life
is something surgeons can cut away
that there’s no way for it to metastasize

it does

she was eight years old
our first day of grade three
when she got called ugly
we both got moved to the back of the class
so we would stop get bombarded by spit *****
but the school halls were a battleground
where we found ourselves outnumbered day after wretched day
we used to stay inside for recess
because outside was worse
outside we’d have to rehearse running away
or learn to stay still like statues giving no clues that we were there
in grade five they taped a sign to her desk
that read beware of dog

to this day
despite a loving husband
she doesn’t think she’s beautiful
because of a birthmark
that takes up a little less than half of her face
kids used to say she looks like a wrong answer
that someone tried to erase
but couldn’t quite get the job done
and they’ll never understand
that she’s raising two kids
whose definition of beauty
begins with the word mom
because they see her heart
before they see her skin
that she’s only ever always been amazing

he
was a broken branch
grafted onto a different family tree
adopted
but not because his parents opted for a different destiny
he was three when he became a mixed drink
of one part left alone
and two parts tragedy
started therapy in 8th grade
had a personality made up of tests and pills
lived like the uphills were mountains
and the downhills were cliffs
four fifths suicidal
a tidal wave of anti depressants
and an adolescence of being called popper
one part because of the pills
and ninety nine parts because of the cruelty
he tried to **** himself in grade ten
when a kid who still had his mom and dad
had the audacity to tell him “get over it” as if depression
is something that can be remedied
by any of the contents found in a first aid kit

to this day
he is a stick on TNT lit from both ends
could describe to you in detail the way the sky bends
in the moments before it’s about to fall
and despite an army of friends
who all call him an inspiration
he remains a conversation piece between people
who can’t understand
sometimes becoming drug free
has less to do with addiction
and more to do with sanity

we weren’t the only kids who grew up this way
to this day
kids are still being called names
the classics were
hey stupid
hey spaz
seems like each school has an arsenal of names
getting updated every year
and if a kid breaks in a school
and no one around chooses to hear
do they make a sound?
are they just the background noise
of a soundtrack stuck on repeat
when people say things like
kids can be cruel?
every school was a big top circus tent
and the pecking order went
from acrobats to lion tamers
from clowns to carnies
all of these were miles ahead of who we were
we were freaks
lobster claw boys and bearded ladies
oddities
juggling depression and loneliness playing solitaire spin the bottle
trying to kiss the wounded parts of ourselves and heal
but at night
while the others slept
we kept walking the tightrope
it was practice
and yeah
some of us fell

but I want to tell them
that all of this ****
is just debris
leftover when we finally decide to smash all the things we thought
we used to be
and if you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself
get a better mirror
look a little closer
stare a little longer
because there’s something inside you
that made you keep trying
despite everyone who told you to quit
you built a cast around your broken heart
and signed it yourself
you signed it
“they were wrong”
because maybe you didn’t belong to a group or a click
maybe they decided to pick you last for basketball or everything
maybe you used to bring bruises and broken teeth
to show and tell but never told
because how can you hold your ground
if everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it
you have to believe that they were wrong

they have to be wrong

why else would we still be here?
we grew up learning to cheer on the underdog
because we see ourselves in them
we stem from a root planted in the belief
that we are not what we were called we are not abandoned cars stalled out and sitting empty on a highway
and if in some way we are
don’t worry
we only got out to walk and get gas
we are graduating members from the class of
******* we made it
not the faded echoes of voices crying out
names will never hurt me

of course
they did

but our lives will only ever always
continue to be
a balancing act
that has less to do with pain
and more to do with beauty.
My ABSOLUTE favorite poem! Check it out here: www.tothisdayproject.com
When I was a kid
I used to think that pork chops and karate chops
were the same thing
I thought they were both pork chops
and because my grandmother thought it was cute
and because they were my favorite
she let me keep doing it

not really a big deal

one day
before I realized fat kids are not designed to climb trees
I fell out of a tree
and bruised the right side of my body

I didn't want to tell my grandmother about it
because I was afraid I'd get in trouble
for playing somewhere that I shouldn't have been

a few days later the gym teacher noticed the bruise
and I got sent to the principal's office
from there I was sent to another small room
with a really nice lady
who asked me all kinds of questions
about my life at home

I saw no reason to lie
as far as I was concerned
life was pretty good
I told her "whenever I'm sad
my grandmother gives me karate chops"

this led to a full scale investigation
and I was removed from the house for three days
until they finally decided to ask how I got the bruises

news of this silly story quickly spread through the school
and I earned my first nickname

pork chop

to this day
I hate pork chops

I'm not the only kid
who grew up this way
surrounded by people who used to say
that rhyme about sticks and stones
as if broken bones
hurt more than the names we got called
and we got called them all
so we grew up believing no one
would ever fall in love with us
that we'd be lonely forever
that we'd never meet someone
to make us feel like the sun
was something they built for us
in their tool shed
so broken heart strings bled the blues
as we tried to empty ourselves
so we would feel nothing
don't tell me that hurts less than a broken bone
that an ingrown life
is something that surgeons can cut away
that there's no way for it to metastasize

it does

she was eight years old
our first day of grade three
when she got called ugly
we both got moved to the back of the class
so we would stop getting bombarded by spit *****
but the school halls were a battleground
where we found ourselves outnumbered day after wretched day
we used to stay inside for recess
because outside was worse
outside we'd have to rehearse running away
or learn to stay still like statues giving no clues that we were there
in grade five they taped a sign to her desk
that read beware of dog

to this day
despite a loving husband
she doesn't think she's beautiful
because of a birthmark
that takes up a little less than half of her face
kids used to say she looks like a wrong answer
that someone tried to erase
but couldn't quite get the job done
and they'll never understand
that she's raising two kids
whose definition of beauty
begins with the word mom
because they see her heart
before they see her skin
that she's only ever always been amazing

he
was a broken branch
grafted onto a different family tree
adopted
but not because his parents opted for a different destiny
he was three when he became a mixed drink
of one part left alone
and two parts tragedy
started therapy in 8th grade
had a personality made up of tests and pills
lived like the uphills were mountains
and the downhills were cliffs
four fifths suicidal
a tidal wave of anti depressants
and an adolescence of being called popper
one part because of the pills
and ninety nine parts because of the cruelty
he tried to **** himself in grade ten
when a kid who still had his mom and dad
had the audacity to tell him "get over it" as if depression
is something that can be remedied
by any of the contents found in a first aid kit

to this day
he is a stick of TNT lit from both ends
could describe to you in details the way the sky bends
in the moments before it's about to fall
and despite an army of friends
who all call him an inspiration
he remains a conversation piece between people
who can't understand
sometimes becoming drug free
has less to do with addiction
and more to do with sanity

we weren't the only kids who grew up this way
to this day
kids are still being called names
the classics were
hey stupid
hey spaz
seems like each school has an arsenal of names
getting updated every year
and if a kid breaks in school
and no one around chooses to hear
do they make a sound?
are they just the background noise
of a soundtrack stuck on repeat
when people say things like
kids can be cruel?
every school was a big top circus tent
and the pecking order went
from acrobats to lion tamers
from clowns to carnies
all of these were miles ahead of who we were
we were freaks
lobster claw boys and bearded ladies
oddities
juggling depression and loneliness playing solitaire spin the bottle
trying to kiss the wounded parts of ourselves and heal
but at night
while the others slept
we kept walking the tightrope
it was practice
and yeah
some of us fell

but I want to tell them
that all of this ****
is just debris
leftover when we finally decide to smash all the things we thought
we used to be
and if you can't see anything beautiful about yourself
get a better mirror
look a little closer
stare a little longer
because there's something inside you
that made you keep trying
despite everyone who told you to quit
you built a cast around your broken heart
and signed it yourself
you signed it
"they were wrong"
because maybe you didn't belong to a group or a clique
maybe they decided to pick you last for basketball or everything
maybe you used to bring bruises and broken teeth
to show and tell but never told
because how can you hold your ground
if everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it
you have to believe that they were wrong

they have to be wrong

why else would we still be here?
we grew up learning to cheer on the underdog
because we see ourselves in them
we stem from a root planted in the belief
that we are not what we were called we are not abandoned cars stalled out and sitting
empty on a highway
and if in some way we are
don't worry
we only got out to walk and get gas
we are graduating members from the class of
******* we made it
not the faded echoes of voices crying out
names will never hurt me

of course
they did

but our lives will only ever always
continue to be
a balancing act
that has less to do with pain
and more to do with beauty
I absolutely love this poem. I wanted to share it on here. To hear him reading the poem and find out more about him and this poem, please please visit www.tothisdayproject.com
Kody Banda Sep 2015
The other day I passed by a homeless family
All 10 sitting under a mango tree
They didn't have much but they seemed happy
Now here we learn a valuable lesson
We don't need money to solve everything
Maybe peace is a lot more simpler
Smile show a simple or two
Or try to have a conversation with someone new
We all co exist in a world that was meant to be limitless
But now we engage in a never ending conflict
That's so sick, it makes me nauseous
So let's be cautious
Of how we let the young kids talk
It can go from a computer screen to a life long sentence and a death row walk
Cause look ignorance is bliss
And we can't pass this
We learn to respect and prioritize
But we fail to realize that this can also lead to carelessness
It's nothing less than how we carry ourselves
We minimize this never ending flow or we criticize
So *** it who cares what he's wearing
Your tearing this kid apart with his tagged clothes
But you don't know the story
Never had anything like a young Kody
Grew up in the projects a 12 story building
Moms a crack addict never tried rehabilitatin
Dad works 9-5 trying to fulfill his families ever needs
Living off of food stamps and EBT
This **** is no acting like TNT
Plenty was never in his vocabulary
He prays to god and at times asks "why me"
Feels like he's being beat
Feels like everything is getting worse in this universe
So next time you think you are cursed with having it worse
Listen to my words and every verse
Cause world peace is key
It helps us create an ideal reality
Rae La Feb 2014
To This Day by Shane Koyczan

To This Day
When I was a kid
I used to think that pork chops and karate chops
were the same thing
I thought they were both pork chops
and because my grandmother thought it was cute
and because they were my favourite
she let me keep doing it

not really a big deal

one day
before I realized fat kids are not designed to climb trees
I fell out of a tree
and bruised the right side of my body

I didn’t want to tell my grandmother about it
because I was afraid I’d get in trouble
for playing somewhere that I shouldn’t have been

a few days later the gym teacher noticed the bruise
and I got sent to the principal’s office
from there I was sent to another small room
with a really nice lady
who asked me all kinds of questions
about my life at home

I saw no reason to lie
as far as I was concerned
life was pretty good
I told her “whenever I’m sad
my grandmother gives me karate chops”

this led to a full scale investigation
and I was removed from the house for three days
until they finally decided to ask how I got the bruises

news of this silly little story quickly spread through the school
and I earned my first nickname

pork chop

to this day
I hate pork chops

I’m not the only kid
who grew up this way
surrounded by people who used to say
that rhyme about sticks and stones
as if broken bones
hurt more than the names we got called
and we got called them all
so we grew up believing no one
would ever fall in love with us
that we’d be lonely forever
that we’d never meet someone
to make us feel like the sun
was something they built for us
in their tool shed
so broken heart strings bled the blues
as we tried to empty ourselves
so we would feel nothing
don’t tell me that hurts less than a broken bone
that an ingrown life
is something surgeons can cut away
that there’s no way for it to metastasize

it does

she was eight years old
our first day of grade three
when she got called ugly
we both got moved to the back of the class
so we would stop get bombarded by spit *****
but the school halls were a battleground
where we found ourselves outnumbered day after wretched day
we used to stay inside for recess
because outside was worse
outside we’d have to rehearse running away
or learn to stay still like statues giving no clues that we were there
in grade five they taped a sign to her desk
that read beware of dog

to this day
despite a loving husband
she doesn’t think she’s beautiful
because of a birthmark
that takes up a little less than half of her face
kids used to say she looks like a wrong answer
that someone tried to erase
but couldn’t quite get the job done
and they’ll never understand
that she’s raising two kids
whose definition of beauty
begins with the word mom
because they see her heart
before they see her skin
that she’s only ever always been amazing

he
was a broken branch
grafted onto a different family tree
adopted
but not because his parents opted for a different destiny
he was three when he became a mixed drink
of one part left alone
and two parts tragedy
started therapy in 8th grade
had a personality made up of tests and pills
lived like the uphills were mountains
and the downhills were cliffs
four fifths suicidal
a tidal wave of anti depressants
and an adolescence of being called popper
one part because of the pills
and ninety nine parts because of the cruelty
he tried to **** himself in grade ten
when a kid who still had his mom and dad
had the audacity to tell him “get over it” as if depression
is something that can be remedied
by any of the contents found in a first aid kit

to this day
he is a stick on TNT lit from both ends
could describe to you in detail the way the sky bends
in the moments before it’s about to fall
and despite an army of friends
who all call him an inspiration
he remains a conversation piece between people
who can’t understand
sometimes becoming drug free
has less to do with addiction
and more to do with sanity

we weren’t the only kids who grew up this way
to this day
kids are still being called names
the classics were
hey stupid
hey spaz
seems like each school has an arsenal of names
getting updated every year
and if a kid breaks in a school
and no one around chooses to hear
do they make a sound?
are they just the background noise
of a soundtrack stuck on repeat
when people say things like
kids can be cruel?
every school was a big top circus tent
and the pecking order went
from acrobats to lion tamers
from clowns to carnies
all of these were miles ahead of who we were
we were freaks
lobster claw boys and bearded ladies
oddities
juggling depression and loneliness playing solitaire spin the bottle
trying to kiss the wounded parts of ourselves and heal
but at night
while the others slept
we kept walking the tightrope
it was practice
and yeah
some of us fell

but I want to tell them
that all of this ****
is just debris
leftover when we finally decide to smash all the things we thought
we used to be
and if you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself
get a better mirror
look a little closer
stare a little longer
because there’s something inside you
that made you keep trying
despite everyone who told you to quit
you built a cast around your broken heart
and signed it yourself
you signed it
“they were wrong”
because maybe you didn’t belong to a group or a click
maybe they decided to pick you last for basketball or everything
maybe you used to bring bruises and broken teeth
to show and tell but never told
because how can you hold your ground
if everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it
you have to believe that they were wrong

they have to be wrong

why else would we still be here?
we grew up learning to cheer on the underdog
because we see ourselves in them
we stem from a root planted in the belief
that we are not what we were called we are not abandoned cars stalled out and sitting empty on a highway
and if in some way we are
don’t worry
we only got out to walk and get gas
we are graduating members from the class of
******* we made it
not the faded echoes of voices crying out
names will never hurt me

of course
they did

but our lives will only ever always
continue to be
a balancing act
that has less to do with pain
and more to do with beauty
My favorite poem, enjoy it.
Ally Ann Jul 2018
I look at you
eyes red with regret
and longing for the someone
that didn’t love you like you wanted.
You shift under the world you are holding
with your shaking hands
as you begin to fold under the pressure
you weren’t meant to endure.
I see you lock the doors to your heart
pushing everyone away
like you are TNT
that is waiting to explode.
Satisfaction loses meaning
when all you wanted
was never allowed
and you still taste
what could have been
but wasn’t.
These days you find nothing
in a world that is trying to save you,
you chop away open arms
like branches from your favorite trees
and you lose yourself in loneliness
and self prescribed misery.
You stopped seeing beauty
and I am trying to understand how
I could make you love yourself again
even though he couldn’t.
When I look at you
the glass in my bones shifts
and open new wounds
because you hurting is synonymous
with me drowning
in all the ways I wish I could save you.
So I just sit here
hoping you make it
through ground shattering pain
like I did,
but I cannot tell the future
and all I can do is wait.
TigerEyes Nov 2014
In my dreams I'm trying to remember who's chasing me
I remember now it's Miss TNT holding a grenade
She's about to blow
n'  I don't know
when..
I'm kicking my feet ...
My Nikes are moving so fast down the street
I glance back over my shoulders briefly n' then face the street again
n' the street has turned into a track field in front of me
I can hear Miss TNT's cleats pounding n' I turn and, then I see
A monster with big scary claws
n' her teeth are sharp and, pointing out of her scary jaw
and, she's out for blood because I've ****** her off in the past
n' the hatred in her eyes feels like it's going to last n' last...
I'm wishing that she'd just get a life n' leave me alone...
I yell out, "******* ***** go chew on a bone!"
Her scary jaw opens up n' there's blood in her mouth
I realize now it's all gone South
cause she's crunching down on me now with glee in her eyes
so happy that she's eaten the person that she so despised.
© 2014 Krisselle S. Cosgrove
Richard Riddle Feb 2015
In late 1888, a Wells Fargo stage
Was relieved of its freight-
A strongbox, taken from its hold,
held thousands of dollars in coins of gold.

The brigands had a master plan,
To bury that box,
sit, and wait-
Then dig it up at a later date.

They found a spot on rock-hard ground-
Where it would lie, safe and sound,
So they sank it in a three foot hole-
to hide that box with coins of gold.

But what they didn’t realize,
that in the distance, sat a pair of eyes-
That had watched the whole event unfold-
and watched, as they buried that chest with gold.

Late that night, under a pale, lantern, light-
a shovel's blade split those rocks-
and the hole was relieved-
of that strongbox.

William Nelson Riddle, owned that property-
And he lived with a basic philosophy-
“Since it was found, on my ground-
I guess it belongs to me.”

“Nelson” died in ’28, at age of 85-
He never said what happened to,
Or if, that chest survived-
And the "Legend of Riddle’s Gold"came alive.

As time passed, the story grew-
each year, a bit more grand-
That Nelson took that strongbox-
And hid it  elsewhere on his land

Greed is one of the “seven sins”-
"Everybody loses, and nobody wins"-
But the “want” for gold is a mighty strong thirst-
So his kin set out for a “family search.”

At morning’s dawn, the kinfolk came-
To search for gold, fortune, and fame-
They came with shovels, spades, and hoes-
And some “TNT”, so the story goes.

With disregard for propriety,
they descended upon the property-
Without a map, without a plan-
They spread out to search his land.  

Now, the rabbits and the coyotes,
and the gophers(one or two)-
Gathered on a little knoll,
To have a better view.

They knew what was going to happen-
It was just a matter of time-
When the dew had disappeared,
And the morning sun had reached it’s prime



They dug a hole here, and dug over there-
The morning sun was getting hot-
and everywhere they looked –
Was for naught.

Now, it isn't very clear
as who said what, to who-
But it must have been insult'n-
to start that ballyhoo.

There was push'n and shove'n
and calling names galore!
Yell'n and cuss'n
using words you ain't heard before!

And that was just the men-folk-
the women got in it too-
screaming heard, from north to south-
Those words should never come from a ladies mouth.

Fists being swung, shovels slung!
dust was kicked up in a ball-
nothing could be more entertaining-
than watching a family free-for-all!

Then suddenly, it came to a stop !
as quick as it began-
They gathered up all their gear-
and departed Nelson's land.

This is where the story ends-
all I know is what I'm told,
From my daddy, for he'd been sitting,
atop that little knoll.



Epilogue
(This is how I would like to have it end)

Somewhere in the "high above"-
at a table, two people sat-
One, wearing suit and tie-
and Nelson, with his beard and hat.

"Nelson, a lot of folks have you to thank,
for bringing that strongbox to the bank-
you saved a lot of folks their homes and farms."

Nelson, from his chair, arose-
standing *****, and proud-
Stroked his beard, then tweaked his nose,
smiled, and faded into the clouds.

(thanks folks for your patience)

Copyright September 16-2013 Richard Riddle






True story- sort of. Originally written in three parts.The holdup actually did occur, and witnessed by William Nelson Riddle.  Years later, believing he had hidden the strongbox elsewhere, relatives converged on the property to conduct a "massive" search. A story on this saga appeared in the San Diego Union newspaper on May 7, 1939. William Nelson Riddle is my great-grandfather and resided in Crowley, Johnson County, Tx.
Anne Cameron Oct 2009
I May Be Small and Tiny in all Things...
I have Friends that Love and Trust Me
If you MESS with my Friends
You MESS with ME...
I will Walk with Them Every Step of the Way...
If YOU MESS with My Family
You WILL Wish You Were Never Born.
For I Will Die For Them.
Don't Mess With Me...
Remember TNT and Dynamite Comes In Very Small Packages.
And I Am A Very Small Package....
11/16/08/ac
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2013
Place your ****** hands upon thy chest.
Let them melt thru and come to rest,
Inside, the battle ongoing, under thy breast.
Watch, eyes open, knowing, fearful.
Swiftly, with no hesitation, from within,
Rip open your body, exhaling the best,
And the worst of what you got.

The cool air rushes in,
Stirring the inside stew of:
Infected grime, shameful desires,
Secrets that should not have been exposed,
The ***** stuff that you alone know exists.

Contact with the atmosphere makes
Self-pity dies, blue blood turn red,
The TNT tightness explodes,
Ashamed, you have only one escape hatch.

Now, you are ready to write.
Muse's hands choke my neck.
Fluids released from organs!
5-7-5 obeyed


In the files, hanging about.

— The End —