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Riley Finnegan Jun 2013
I want all of you
I want your messy morning hair
Your sleepy smiles
Your tired eyes
Your sloppy kisses
I want to wake up with your arms around me
I want to wake up warm from your body heat
I want all of you
I want your soft pajama pants
I want your smell on my linen sheets
Your hand in mine
Your soft touch
Your anxieties and tangled thoughts.
I want to get up with you
I want your toothpaste lips
I want to watch you while you pick out your clothes
I want to watch you as you get ready
I want all of you.
I want your scrambled eggs in my tummy
Your freshly squeezed orange juice on my table
Your hum in my kitchen while you cook
Your silly morning things
I want a whole bunch of magnetic poetry words on our fridge
I want to see the silly things you put together
I want to see all the lovey things you wrote
I want all of you
I want to curl up with you
I want to lay by the fire
I want to paint our minds on the walls
I want all of you
Your warm kisses
Your fingers
Your skin so smooth
I want your passion
Your skin running against mine
Your fingers roaming
Your lips tracing
Your mind yearning
Your heart racing
Your exaggerated breaths
I want to be with you
I want to do things and know your mine
I want you to tell me everyday how much you need me, in person
I want to lay with you and watch movies all day
I want to lay under warm blankets and drink cocoa
I want to feel you touch me
I want to feel our two souls becoming one, our hearts beating in rhythm
I want to go on adventures
I want all of you
Your curiosities
Your wonders
Your fascinations
Your skills
I want to discover every inch of you
I want to conquer amazing things with you.
I want to hold your hand every day while we drive
I want to kiss you in the rain while we stop to watch it fall
I want all of you
Your ways of making me smile
Your ways of comforting me
Your beautiful eyes and your beautiful words
I want to shop with you
Picking out our favorite foods
Dancing through the isles
I want all of you
The way you pick out soaps
The way you push the cart
The way you gently place sodas to keep them from fizzing
The way you hand the cashier money
The way you politely give her a smile and make small talk
I want to spend every second with you by my side.
I want all of you
I want the way you sing to music in the car
Your walks
Your jumps
Your skips
Your hops
I want to dance with you at random times
I want to know that you care about me
I want all of you
The way you stick up for me
The way you do what I want
The way you're always there.
I want to go home and catch you staring at me while I'm sitting in our chair reading
I want to feel you kiss me randomly
I want to feel you lean against me
I want to know that I'll never lose you.
I want all of you.
The way you look when your scared
Your nerves
Your happiness
Your shakes
Your ponders
I want to garden with you.
I want to rake and **** with you
I want to watch you work and wonder how you became mine
The way you tenderly water plants
The way you pull weeds right from the roots
I want all of you
Your ***** hands
Your sweaty pores
Your delicious produce
Your never ending breaths
Your sunburnt nose
I want all of you
I want to cook dinner with you
I want to sit outside listening to crickets while I watch you grill
I want to talk to you when you chop vegetables
I want to set the table for two
I want to light candles and turn on music
I want all of you
The way you tenderly mix foods
Your ways of buttering breads
The condensation on your water glass
Your fork clinking
Your way of  making me laugh
The way you talk about your day even if I was there
I want to clean up with you
Washing dishes with your hands on my hips
I want to wipe the table and look at you
I want you to be my encouragement
I want to go for a drive to the beach
I want to hold your hand as we watch the sunset
I want all of you
Your glistening eyes in the sun
Your breath as you talk closely to me
Your giggles
Your frustrations
I want to put my feet in the water and feel you follow me
I want to wave goodbye to the sun, knowing it wouldn't matter if it came back or not, because I'd have you.
I want to listen to seagulls with you
I want you to tell me stories
I want all of you
Your creativity
Your needs
Your wants
Your pleasures
I want you to build a sand castle with me when the orangey glow of the sun is still around.
I want to go get ice cream with you
I want all of you
Your ice cream on your face
Your napkin hands
Your chilly tongue
I want to go home and do laundry with you
I want your way of separating darks from lights
Your clothes intermixed with mine
Your socks
Your detergent
Your breaths as you pick up socks
The way your fingers seem to dance as you fold clothes
I want to fall asleep with you
I want to crawl into the same bed as you
I want to lay on your chest
I want you to play with my hair and sing me sweet words
I want you, all of you
Your heart beating in my ear
Your closeness
Your hands tracing my bare skin
I want to kiss you before falling asleep.
I want to know you're right there with me
I want to trace hearts on your skin
I want to share cold feet and fluffy feather blankets
I want all of you
Your dreams
Your snores
Your beautiful eyelids
Your limp muscles
Your head soft on my pillow
I want all of you.
I don't just want you, I need you.
Perri Feb 2022
It's crazy how long we've had this tube
I've said to myself "when it's finished, I'll move"
We often go through three, four a year
But this tube is prolonging our time, my dear
Each brush of this paste is how I cope
A twice daily ritual, this tube is my trope
I predict enough squeezes to last us through March
And after one last squeeze
We'll inevitably depart

....

When I moved back home
The tube here was new
I think about you twice a day;
I'll always love you
Mike Essig Jul 2015
Do not squeeze
the life
out of your life
trying to follow
someone else's
principles of right
and wrong.

  ~mce
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2016
no, i don't need an outlet: talk to the public,
they tell you you're
either a well guised political machine,
a psychiatrist,
           or an oddity: come October time
propheteering rather than profiteering;
your choice, not mine:
   i look at poetry like
a plumber might look at a toilet:
go in and get the francophone out!
    so pardoning the French
is lost, as casual phrasing goes, woop,
  away away Superman included.

oh right, you might think i'm spelling
something Evangelical,
sure, i hope you do or d.p. as in
do please,
           what with the cool of Wall St.
sprechen d.l. (down low);
i had a few scribbled notes,
yes, Yanky, my laptop broke down
and i'm reduced to pen & paper
         like handcock & *******,
easy does the ****** of loser vill
           (can we drop the e
for the sake of autocorrect being right
when the big words matter? thanks) -
Platonism is plainly Thespian,
             Platonic thought is a Thespian
"espionage", get used to it,
you haven't matured into Aristotelian
         autism: you still want to act,
to puppeteer that shadows of people
without ever *being
the people,
don't take it as if it's supposed to be unlikely:
there's a boss around every corner:
whether you get paid or don't, which is fun,
because you state an authority but
still only play the cameo.
      reminiscent guise literature
of rewatching that t.v. phenomenon
that's billions -
             oh sure, t.v. these days overshadows
cinema, cinema is worth jack-****,
it's poverty is intrinsic in forming ideas
or reversed "Latin" grammar  idea-fermentation,
i said English loves to hyphenate
two kindred words,
    like that ego theory
             with the Germanic self-theorising,
self-enabling, self-interest, self-haemorrhaging
  gusto of the capital -
    what a way to finish, i as a prefix
toward robotic modula.

(i write pending, but ensure the enso,
            or Swahili wasabi sting of
green horseradish,
       same so, i live dangerously, or pretty
much on the sly,
           if i tell the taxpayers
  they're getting their money's worth
i'll bound to see a third runway at Heathrow:
got my nose in an Alsatians' buttocks mind you).

so...

i was going to end with it, but i'm afraid i must
begin with it, page entitled

a. a rebellion from the top?
    or right, it only comes from the bottom,
the guillotine and all,
  but never the despotic cupcake for an Antoinette,
right? wrong!
                coming from a worker's background,
i'd been happy doing the ******* roofs of
the Tate Gallery among other examples,
but i was educated as a chemist,
  and, i was told, you need toothpaste, or
am i wrong in that assumption?
     picture it thus:
a son of a roofer is real smart,
      goes to Edinburgh, gets his money's worth
in terms of tuition, over 30 hours year three
of his chemistry degree, when things were still
decent, ~£1,250 a year (one thousand two hundred
and fifty pounds): with words like that
you might sketch Dante and Donatello and
the Italian Renaissance in terms of clapping the ****
away at the gesture...
     but no, it was like that, study chemistry
and you get your money's worth in terms of tuition,
so how the **** did i descend from the "high" tier
of the sciences into the murk of poetry
and humanism?
       history of science and David Hume:
black swans to mind, also.
                          but the other kid in question
was a son of a doctor / radiologist,
and this talk of rebellion from the top?
he couldn't stomach a shifting hierarchy,
he couldn't stomach social progress,
     had i or hadn't i invested my pleasure
time in reading philosophy is no one's business,
had i made a professional wage from it,
sure, but i wasn't intending to do so:
      what's your favourite colour sort of
question and whether truant of the zeitgeist:
the ******* guillotine, mate!
            i just can't perpetuate this loaf of wording,
but it's necessary:
    of jealousy so corrosive, of jealousy so lined
with lice, only then a god is spawned -
           the person in question?
a skiving belittling camel jockey -
and that's me being polite...
       you can almost become auto-suggestive
of needing to cite: what Abel did next when
the roaring Milton God subsided and
     wanked a crucifix that later became 2000 years of
history: or in the making.

i can be a pompous and bombastic parrot
          that cites Polly this, Polly that,
but i can speak to a scaffolder and laugh: with him,
and not, at him...
                 because i know my bombastic mr. fantastic
behaviour about spending aeons in a library
   rather than sniffing bullseyes and ****
        is made to be the fo' sho' lingua rapper tinder
of something or other that doesn't require me
to foolishly date...
                         **** it, cheaper at the brothel.

...........................

                        oh­ i'm just getting started, hence
the title with (penting) in it: no, not really mr. tough-guy,
just a **** break and a smoke and all that's
necessary in terms of transparency, begging to
be revealed in all forms of literary composition...
  
let's just say: a new interpretation of the paragraph,
     for me reading books, a paragraph means Sunday,
1905... because of the constipation and what-not,
   a comma makes me feel like i need a pause to
hiccup or sneeze,
       a full-dot is never a full-dot unless it's a full-dot
and then it's a definite article of end, rather than
the intermediate an end: let's start over, once again;
       but when have you actually experienced
a Macgyver of what's otherwise a "work in progress"?
answer? never!
               you never have: you had to become
censored by publishers and editors for everything to
look the end-product squeaky-clean!
                   unless published posthumously...
and then... you might already be dead:
you never got to see a work in progress...
   and believe me, i have 8 pages worth of notes to
encode into something that's not
that fable about a boy waking up Barbarossa
from slumber and upon seeing crows
shouting: messerschmitt! messerschmitt! messerschmitt!
well, a diet of hanzel und gretyl will do that
to you, you get a fetish like Shpielberg and direct
the Indiana Jones franchise...
                       funny little me, "phony" Englishman
speaking a piquant variation of Essex banter,
8 years in Poland and of memories i speak of the fondest
in my life, and 22 years in this rotting *******...
                    i feel less organic, more inorganic,
i.e. metallic,
       it's like my insides were hollowed out
and i was faking that i am actually being -
   weird sensation, ask any displaced individual when
they have the organism of a Slavic, but a soul
of a German... feels, ******* weird...
                        i mean, Nietzsche and that complement
that the Poles are the French in the ethnic category?
what are the English in the Slav category then?
                          most likely Ukrainian.
i dare you to find a philosopher with a similar dilemma,
i dare you: in light of how this whole
gaining of fame works, not one wrote about
being displaced... well... unless you're talking about
Moses -

                (haven't even started, i need a drink).

there was no social tract anyway!
    to be forced into accepting insemination
        when the forward wording was:
       "i'm talking counter-contraceptive
measures" & 'i want you to *** in me'.
                 ditto encapsulating quote
for ambiguity, the otherwise: real life.
       is my ***** worth more than me?
have i not transcended a weak bladder / **** muscles?
       a pseudo-humanity, intrinsic in man
but not not in beast?
                    i call upon a reversal of what's
a staging of ****, or money grubbing -
                with a woman's twist of the Grimm tale:
as she said: i want this man,
              i will impose a moral grounding / battlefield,
judgement on him! entrapment!
and there's me apologising for the "****" / so-called,
in a fully-consenting intimacy:
   well, *****, why don't you? another Beethoven
is waiting? who's the whopper feminist these days?!
               me? you?! hardly you!
   i consented to a full intimacy,
        is ***** a foetus?
tissue would know,
    or a twisted fetish for ****** cream
advertisement in ****, huh?
              sure, my socks smell, but so does
your moral instinct.
                        the difference is that that i get to
say airy, while you get to say fairy.
                         it really takes a man respecting
a woman's freedom: i seriously thought you
were advocating the right to abort
as you might avert ****...
    sure: i'm sorry i inseminated you,
can you please treat it as a tear-jerker experience
of a rom-com that's actually a transvestite-rom
  and needs 50 years to ferment for the earthquakes
and heartaches and cha cha attacks?
              to me it's an apron needing a wash,
to you it a ******* moral dilemma needing
a ******'s rights to not father a child and you
needing your body to unnecessarily incubate it
so you get the Catholic nod... bonkers!
    yes, i impregnated a girl, at university:
i avoided white trash at school, sorry, but it's true,
i liked reading... let me stress that: i liked reading,
      or bold if italics and colon Gemini be antiquity...
she lacked the character judgements,
the 'why he didn't stay' method statement...
she called my friend and study buddy a troll
based on her aesthetic tastes...
          i could have had a family now, and all
the responsibilities, it just didn't fit into
a replica of Cleopatra and Anthony *******
when they honestly didn't have ******* to claim
as their own...
          jeez (replica of the hand-written transcript) -
writing this on pen + paper is like *******
a **** for reach a champagne fizz of ******
for an hour - thank you keyboard and the digital
pixel off blank: ******* is less painful
than writing with that oddity that's handwriting).
there was no social contract anyway!
     it's not like i was married, there's
no unwanted child joke in this: i do find abortion
abhorrent within a social contract, a marriage,
but outside of marriage? are you ******* kidding me?!
you an Irish priest or something?
       there was no social contract,
did i sign a social contract akin to marriage?
      am i in this for the shambles?
of course i didn't get married,
there was no +ring,
                     sure abortion is abhorrent,
but under a social contract,
  without a social contract (marriage)
i,    had,    no,         obligation.
      what, in order to practice a variation of Islam
on a woman's whim?
    *******.
                     plus i had the gross indecency
gay men have with surrogate mother prostitution;
oh wait, it isn't that? my bad.
            i always had a nicety divisiveness for
incubators... a 9 month ****, with dividends...
        really: feminism can **** itself!
because aren't we at a stage of rhetorically counter-validating
what we abhor in certain Asian communities?
oh sure, the patriarchs are gone,
forced marriages are gone too...
          but didn't i just describe a case
of forced marriage, where a western girl is given
all the powers to reign over a young man
as any despot might over a worker
so he can "think" and drink cocktails and
chuckle over his position between cocktails?
      
  i said abortion, yes, i didn't like the girl's aesthetic,
and you know what? that thing you call abortion,
apart from the fact that the foetus has no soul
the baby neither: not until the diaper is off...
to learn to strain the muscles outside the womb:
you really forgot that the implant of soul
or the later disputed notion of god
is only implantable once the memory kicks into
gear...
               only when you start to remember
is the human person born:
   beyond that it's still nature's brutalist lottery...
maybe a Beethoven might have been born,p
but who cares? we already have a Beethoven!
it's avoiding consented ****:
that's feminism and 9 months spared
the continuation of endured affair / "relationship",
i seriously thought that's what women
were campaigning for... obviously it's counter!
   i claim soul outside of a woman's body:
when the ****** thing passes the diaper gym
and learns to automate the bladder and the ****...
then i say: worthy an implant of a soul...
or chauvinistically that's counter and double-****
of 9 months and Bach with his 14 children,
and the Borgia Popes...
          but at least we have the surrogate "mothers"
and that pretty Disney scenario of two gay dads
to fictionalise into watchable Platonic cavemen
when the eyes aren't glued to the 2D.
why do you think such thoughts ferment in
the heterosexual imagining of actuality?
                your utopian counter-clockwise
has already extended into China being the only
provable state of physical activity...
    and the western zoo of mental philosophical
build-up-detachment? your mental health
scenario only suggests you created acid professions...
at least the physical "antiquity" of China
is compensated by a universal shortcoming:
death and mortality...
you created acid-baths: sport and completely mental
professions: YOU'RE SICK!
     honestly!
     people used to enjoy physical professions,
and the essence of such professions?
no immediate competitiveness!
         you replaced physical professions
with sports!
                  and compensated the need for
physical hands-on with the ****** gym!
no wonder you countered-Darwinism while
adapting the need to advertise it
            and made so many young people
mentally ill...
      because your whole mental estrangement
is the sauce or a broth that's currently on the boil!
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2016
not drunk enough to listen to classical music,
i dwell in stinking bogs of cheese and pop,
gorgon zoella and tartan elbow patches
on my suede dinner jacket persona.

london, the great stink of 1858,
even the mayor of the city of london opposed
bazalgette's proposal for sewers,
saying he knew more about perfumery
than the parisian prostitutes,
said: '**** stinks for applause!'
well, we didn't get applause from the public,
but a mexican wave of some aztec king
playing the puppets of arousal:
monetaryzoomah the 2nd...
well there's that my sudden compromise:
i always loved organic chemistry,
i was really good at it,
but organic chemistry seemed futile in theory
with too much emphasis on tic-tac-toe
of those migrating diagrams,
trying to enforce the atomic visible
represented by C (carbon) attached to H (hydrogen)
with a tail of a carboxylic categorisation
O= (doubly bonded oxygen) and OH (the alcohol
bit), ****** futile... i just loved cooking
anaemic potions of clear like water,
sometimes scented, sometimes like sulphuric chick farts,
it was basically cooking, i didn't like physical
or inorganic chemistry, actually, university
almost felt like a museum, we weren't students
we were tourists, we were showed the basics,
the impracticalities of later application,
i was never asked to make a bottle of shampoo,
or a toothpaste, or a perfume, i was asked to
recreate theories and cul de sacs of application,
yet actual chemistry is your hoarding of chemical
products in the bathroom: starting with bleach...
never learned how to make bleach...
shame really... the workforce of chemists isn't
given a fair start, no mechanic implication:
ok ok, i'm not into having an existential crisis
in my early twenties, can you just make me robotic
so i can provide the instruments of dentistry
and hairdressing? no? well, here comes an existential
crisis aged 21...
but organic chemistry is still the bomb...
like that onion i smashed after it was dipped
in liquid nitrogen... felt like moses with the two
tablets thrown onto the ground... or a pirate's X...
here...
            it will begin and end *here
.
so every time i cook i think of an organic chemistry
experiment, although i've learned that cooking
is a more colourful chemistry, and poly-scented too,
today i made shanghai style braised pork belly
(CHONG SHAO ROU),
sugar, light and dark soya sauce, kashmiri chilli powder,
ginger-garlic paste (plenty of it), spring onions,
oil, balsamic vinegar (good if you don't have shaoxing
rice wine, same ****, different cover)...
cup or two of water... and then watching the water
evaporate and all the active ingredients starting to
cling to the pork belly slices, making it look
as if coated in glistening flour... nunchuks finger licking
smooth... yeah, i eat chinese cuisine using
nunchuks rather than chop sticks...
even comrade mao tse-tung would approve,
after al chong shao rou was his favourite dish.
in addition: **** remembering poems and scaring
children... remember recipes; job done.
Poetic T Apr 2020
Unblemished kisses,
      woven upon her  fragrance.

I close my eyes and we connect,
            

                 I then pull away and giggle.

"Why are you laughing...

I can taste your toothpaste!!
           She blushes with a smile,

And we continue..
Ellen Joyce Jun 2013
And she takes the book waiting on the shelf,
smelling of milk, toothpaste and goodnight kisses,
it's pages cracked, worn thin with birthday wishes,
wearing wrinkles wizened by the layers of fingerprints
that traced the silk of mama's voice on every word.

She turns to find him all tucked up in bed,
head cushioned by a mop of curly hair,
arms clutching tight a tattered teddy bear.
His sleepy eyes draw her to his side
and she leans in another once upon a time.

Her voice kisses the curve of every word,
calling to life a world she has to see,
moulding reality to what it ought to be;
a place with swings, slides and just five minutes more ,
sighs breathed to birth a need held deep inside.

A land where all the games are fair,
with candy houses but no cavities in sight,
where all evil is banished by the light.
The winds of time are soothed and still
listening to the clicks of a clock that never stops ticking.

Her child's eyes flutter to dance in dreams of his own
and the bedtime lies shatter behind her eyes.
It's not her son longing for a land where no one dies.
Children are borne of pixie dust and shooting stars
to a world of wonder built for each alone .

Once upon a time is a prayer whispered by mama's at night
to restrain the hurts and horrors of the earth
with the soul wrenching fear she's felt since she gave birth.
See she has to believe in forever and a day
for her love for her son is growing all the while.

She has to believe in love and life and laughter.
She has to hold close the hope of
happily
ever
after.
AK Jan 2016
.
Each sunday,
the owner's face lit up
as I popped in the neighborhood bodega
in need of paper towels, soap, toothpaste.

Occasionally, when I uttered the word “purple,”
his brown eyes glowed and he flashed me a smile
as he fetched the Trojan condoms behind the counter.

This week,
I came in on saturday,
he looked pleasantly surprised to see me,
earlier in the week.
until I reached the counter
holding tampons, desperate to stop my leaking body.

In my humanity,
I was no longer ****,
not worthy of a smile.
Nor the well wishes of a nice evening.

His greetings had always had an invisible price tag,
exchanged for a glimmer of hope.

The hope that his kind words would
earn him a discount in the time it took

for me to live up
to his fantasy
one day.
Mike Hauser Sep 2015
This seems to be a lifetime journey
I'm sure more than a few can relate
Doing my best in this formidable quest
In search of the perfect toothpaste

From grocery aisles to shopping malls
To mom and pop roadside stands
Standing in line at the 5 and dime
There's no corner that I haven't been

Looking for the flavor to which my teeth savor
From blue to green to red peppermint
I've tried bubblegum and for meat lovers, bacon
Even the new cinnamon no rinse

But it's not only the flavor that's concerning
It also has to do with the foam
While brushing my teeth in the morning
I look like a rabid dog on the roam

So it's back to the store in search of much more
I feel like Frodo Baggins the Hobbit
From top shelf to floor in this my Middle Earth
Until the elusive paste I have got it

Yes, my friend like you I'll keep trying
For the toothpaste that removes any doubt
But until then I'll toss them into the bin
Saved up for the day I caulk my house
Chansee Williams Apr 2015
you are like toothpaste
i stick on my face
that wont come off for a whole day
i wish you where the ending.
when i whipe it off
the pimples have gone away.
you are like my mind
you never shut up
I am a humming bird with a broken wing forming a geometric fall.
I am a conjoined twin with a foot in heaven and one in hell.
I am a geyser spewing out echoes from a stonewall well.
I am an open road stretched for miles paved with a murderous smile.
I am a man with a firm handshake who stands still on top of an earthquake.
I am a visionary man who slipped on fate and fell in love.
I am a preliminary hearing fallen on deaf ears.
I am the contribution to your retribution.
I am a person of depersonalization.
I am a one man army minus one man.
I am the desired taste of orange juice and toothpaste.
I am concentrated concentration.
I am the formation of your imagination.
I am the comma for your introductory clause.
I am the cause for your sudden pause.
I am the spatula that stirs up your anxiety.
I am the reaper who never leaves a clue.
I am the lace that always chokes the shoe.
I am the light that finds its way thru helping the little shrew.
I am the suburban white boy who sings the blues.
I am consistent inconsistency.
I am your assigned tour guide for your expiration exploration.
Eye-Browz-Art Aug 2014
So close to your scent, I feel I should pay rent.
Something you will not know you smell, until a time comes when you go.
And suddenly everything smells like that.
WHAT IS THAT SMELL?
And you calculate the ingredients to the potion of that smell..
A smell you know so well..
But you can not list it's properties
You are it's only property.
A smell you can not tell the smell of.
And when we're back again the smell almost goes, it gets camp set up and lost inside my nose.
You enter the world of this smell, it's warm and it's cozy, it's familiar and almost dusty.
It smells like skin.
Which smells like nothing.
It smells like hair
Which smells like something.
It smells like breath without a particular scent.
It smells like clothes and armpits.
It smells like a sample scent of another world.
Which I am nosing around
It smells like all of your belongings and all the things that you do put into one familiar you.
It smells like sawdust, it smells like dog walking, it smells like toast, it smells like early morning, it smells of the coast, it smells of laptop, it smells of toothpaste, it smells like tents.
It smells of carpets, It smells of washing powder, It smells of your house and your power shower, It smells like Apple shampoo and all the other things that you like to do.
It smells like you.
YOU SMELL.
martin Nov 2013
I've had enough of all this wind and reindeer
We otter go away
Holidays are important, my parents tortoise that
Weasel have to look on the internet
You know I can't bear the heat
But here's a spa hotel where I'm sure they would panda to your every need
Alpaca suitcase right away

Toothpaste tube, cattle class
Purple stripes, rows of lights
A newly formed castle white
In concrete, steel and glass

Cloud-high halls, giant pots
Re-charging bodies strewn around
Turning deeper shades of brown
Volcanic sand, hot black rock

We watch a floating city, blazing light
Like a dying star, fade into the night

                        -

Ali, where do these bananas go?
What kind of tree is this?
How far does this levada flow?

Ali takes the tourists out
He throws some breadcrumbs in the water
He likes to feed the trout

Madeira born in forty five
Ali told me many things
Ali, our levada walking guide

His family was very poor
He collected mussels from the shore
And sticks to burn for heat
For today his mother said
I have no food and we must eat
We have to eat

Ali, where are all the vines?
How long before your boots wear out?
Do you drink the local wine?

Do the tourists drive you mad
With all the questions that they ask?
Ali smiles, shuffles us aside
To let some others pass
"Everyone wants to be a little anorexic" she says

"You know, like, in a glamorous way, like fashion friendly anorexic"

I bite my cheek and nod, pretend to agree

All I can think of is waking up to stars dancing on the ceiling

Pale skin with bruises of unknown origins

And battered feet on and off the scale

Almonds in Ziploc baggies

Bite marks on fingers

Hair down the drain

Measuring crunches by the marks they leave on your spine

And battered feet on and off the scale

Enough water to turn organs into boats

Eating an apple with a fork and knife

Desperate hands grasping for ribs

And battered feet on and off the scale

Standing and the world going dark

Coughing around shots of apple cider vinegar

Carrying an emergency rice cake for weak spells

And battered feet on and off the scale

Enough green tea to drown organs

Sugar free gum to mask the smell of decaying organs

Whatever nail polish covers yellow and purple

And battered feet on and off the scale

How many calories are in toothpaste

Thinspo blogs

Pillows squeezed between thighs

And battered feet on and off the scale

Is today the day my heart gives out

Waking every day in a new body

Fingers clasped around wrists

And battered feet on and off the scale

Notebooks filled with numbers

Purple crescents under eyes

Fingers clasped around forearms

And battered feet on and off the scale

Elbows knocking into hipbones

Being scared of your own reflection

Lies to get out of dinner

And battered feet on and off the scale

The stench of *****

Oxygen that tastes of Splenda

Fingers clasped around biceps

And bleeding feet on and off the scale

 

If this is your idea of glamour

Then you can have it
Trigger Warning
I
Hear the story of our oil –
Hail to oil!
From the glory days of Drake well we recoil,
To see seabirds flap and shudder,
Dolphins, turtles flop and sputter
With collective dying groan.
Hear our population moan
When the gasoline price geysers to the sky.
Still we drive, drive, drive,
To keep consumer binge alive,
Amid a maritime disaster fast evolving from the spoil
Of the oil.
For the oil, oil, oil, oil,
Oil, oil, oil,
For the gushing and the oozing of the oil.

II
Smell the ancient dark crude oil
Stinking oil!
Engulf the products made refining from a boil:
Guzzle gasoline flambé,
Drive-through fast food every day,
Raise our carbonated toast to Arctic roast…
Then drill more oil!
GM corn and corn-fed beef --
Both born of oil,
The shaving cream I slather on my face is made from oil,
Toothpaste, vitamins and lipstick,
Tires, everlasting plastic,
Come from oil;
All American affliction
Petrolopium addiction –
Truth is stranger now than fiction
And it does not set us free;
We are prisoners of oil,
And as slaves to OPEC pricing we all toil,
For the tapping and the lapping
Of the oil.
For the oil, oil, oil, oil,
Oil, oil, oil,
For the drilling and the swilling of the oil.

III
Soak in news of spilling oil –
Offshore oil!
In grim images of damage that the television splays;
First blow-out slimed in sixty-nine at Santa Barbara Bay
Then ten years next blew Ixtoc
In the Gulf of Mexico,
Two-ninety day gush tick tock
Slick slopped thousand miles away
To Texas shores!
In Alaska’s Prince William Sound
Exxon Valdez ran aground in eighty-nine;
Full tanker load erupted,
Left the rocky coast corrupted –
Prudhoe crude!
Seals and otters stuck in goo
Seabirds suffered coatings too,
Cruising tourists supped in view
Of the oil, oil, oil,
Thickened slick encrusted oil
On the shore!
How it clings and clogs and covers;
All aquatic life it smothers
Marsh and beach are left in cataclysmic mire!
Still we “drill baby drill,”
All our gas tanks gotta fill,
We must shop, shop, shop,
Lest our wasteful lifestyle stop,
So we run, run, run,
Take our car vacation fun --
At the beach…
See the sheen -- how it shines!
Pretty rainbow-colored lines
From the oil!
We love our oil, oil, oil, oil,
Oil, oil, oil,
For economy cachinging in the oil!

IV
Hear the praise of offshore oil,
Miles deep oil!
For the goal of independence on our oceans now we toil,
Till ungraceful conflagration
Twenty April rocked the nation
On the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
Eleven lives were lost in blast
As the deep crude spewed out fast,
Gushing Hell!
Couldn’t stop it with top ****,
Junk shot, golf *****, caps wouldn’t still
Gushing well,
And the spreading, spreading, spreading
In a steady surging crawl,
Gulf coast residents all dreading
That their livelihoods might stall,
Now the fish and shrimp are ill,
Tourist business will be nil,
And still oil spews…
We must thank God that there’s *****,
For there’s nothing but bad news
And the ooze, ooze, ooze
Oily ooze.
Who will pay, who will pay?
Who will make this go away?
Who’s to blame? Who’s to shame?
Many pointy fingers aim –
Lefty points to rich BP,
Righty points to rock Obama,
And there’s six sticks pointing back at you and me!
We will pay, pay, pay,
At the gas pumps we will pay,
So we can drive, drive, drive,
And keep America alive;
Despite the grim disaster that arises from the spill,
The way we live and spend won’t easily end;
So we’ll still say “drill baby drill,”
Each time our gas tanks get a fill,
And we will shop, shop, shop
To do our patriotic duty --
Spend our *****, *****, *****
For the oil.
For the oil, oil, oil, oil,
Oil, oil, oil,
For the gushing and the oozing of the oil!

Drafted 6/8/10, revised 6/14/10
Best read to the "tune" of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Bells"....with apologies to Poe for repurposing his meter scheme for a theme less cheerful!
Nico Reznick Jan 2016
(In response to "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg)

I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by sanity,
seen bold new visionaries resign themselves to clinical long-haul deaths,
drug-numbed to their own suffering, and everyone else’s;
seen raving revolutionaries give up, retire to minimalist Swedish-designed armchairs,
and never move again;
seen the horizon dim and draw ever closer,
and the tenacious lunatics with the wanderlust to stray beyond
become fewer and further between.

There are uglier destructive forces than madness:
Consider cognitive rehabilitation.
Consider absolutely nothing immeasurable.
Consider utter rationality.

Ritalin, lithium, risperidone, duloxatine. [I thought I heard a man speaking in tongues,
then I realised he was simply reading out loud from a pharmaceutical directory.]
Imagine a generation of loan brokers and loss adjustors;
Hicks gone these past seventeen years and Leary still alive;
sharks floating in formaldehyde;
all true human significance lost in pretentious symbols,
and repetition
and repetition
and repetition,
and no one raging.
No one raging for real.

Where are Plato’s maniacs now?
Where are their lunatic songs?
I hear only the steady, rational tapping of the accountants’ calculators,
occasionally, some lost and lonely *** crying out for one more shot,
and the PA system calling the next patient through, the doctor will see you now,
or asking would the owner of a light blue Honda Civic please move their vehicle,
as it’s blocking in a black Lexus full of lawyers with an ambulance to chase.

Is there really nowhere between here
and the bellow and buzz, the shiver and shriek of the asylum?
Someplace between this sterile, static, silent, windowless room
and the fizzing frenzy of the electroconvulsion suite,
there must be somewhere we might have paused and breathed and set up shop,
where we could have been happy – if we’d wanted to be –
and no more or less sane than we chose.

Dr Thompson saw it coming: the dawn of this new Age of Equilibrium.
He knew that football season was over, for good this time, and made his ballistic decision
to go stalk peacocks and hound Nixon through the Kingdom Hereafter,
assuring us, ‘Relax – This won’t hurt’.
He was right.

Safe and stable and sanitized, we can no longer follow your desperate, ***** verse.
Straitjacketed by reason, we perceive our world only in terms
of quantum and co-efficiency, of the logical and logistical,
of what can be conjured in the duration of the average commercial break,
of what can be computed to at least two decimal places.

We are the chemically castrated.
We are lobotomised by mutual consent.
We are the perfect ones: regular and moderate and so healthy, so functional.
We are the white strobing smiles of the toothpaste ads,
the poster children for good mental hygiene,
the footsoldiers of no more conflict.

We have lost our skill for the alchemy
that once distilled genius from the seething crucible of lunacy.
We medicate those whose vision would otherwise put our own to shame,
leave them as myopic and blinkered as the rest of us,
the breadth and depth and distance of their sight no longer a worry to anyone.

Give us back our madmen: we need them.
Give us back our crazed anthems, our burning shrouds, our leprous one-man-bands.
Give us back the fire and the filth and the fornication that kept us howling through
those endlessly polluted nights of Windscale and Watergate, McCarthy and motorcades, Hanoi and Hiroshima.

Please.  Give us back our madmen.
I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by sanity.
This poem is featured in my collection, "Over Glassy Horizons", available here: > tinyurl.com/amz-ogh
Today I realized the world has gone mad,
Still lending bills to penniless debtors,
But now sending in knights with armor clad
So no one messes with debt collectors.
This is it—my Sunday epiphany,
That somehow could rattle my state of mind.
Yet looking back, it’s not very holy.
I’m starting my day, and no longer blind.
Even their stuff sneaks over the border.
Look, toothpaste! Made down south in Mexico!
They laugh at the sign “Welcome to Mordor,”
And they **** the man asking “Friend or foe?”
  Dear Congressman, answer me this, big guy.
  I’m confused – where does our allegiance lie?

  Is our friendship with China just a fling?
  I thought we trusted them with everything!

  “You can make our computers, shirts, and toys.
  Oh, our toothpaste? We hired that country’s boys.”
Now there’s a just reason to start a war.
Some racist fear of lead-infested paste,
No care for the kids sweating on the floor,
More worried that our nation’d come to waste.
Ignorance is bliss; knowledge is power.  
A slavery that no one speaks about
Will never reach its final hour
unless I stand on a street corner, shout,
and wave around my poorly crafted sign.
Commercials are about money, and lots of it,
Not kids working in a factory line.
A modest proposal: destroy all profit!
  
  We should either be poor or go down fighting,
  At least we’ll have honor while we’re dying.
edited 2/15/14
C S Cizek May 2014
Blankets, pillows, a black dog, and a cell phone.
Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Gmail, and Instagram.
Shampoo, soap bar, toothbrush,
toothpaste, temperature, and time.
Shaving cream, razor, running water,
advertisements, sensitivity, precision, and cuts.
Burned tongue, empty stomach, loose tie,
missing shirt buttons, beating the clock,
wallet, briefcase, and car keys.
Ballpoint pens, scented trees, fast food wrappers,
loose change, lighters, citations, ***** clothes,
CDs, and napkins.
Red lights, pedestrians, homeless people,
newspapers, billboards, pets on leashes, sewer
grates, crosswalks, skyscrapers, and garbage.
Faxes, printers, memorandums, break room,
prestige, cubicles, customer service, paperweights,
filing cabinets, stocks, and corporate.
Wipers, streetlights, rain coats, dive bars,
and home.
Blankets, pillows, a black dog, and a cell phone.
Amber Grey Jul 2013
The summer I interned in New York, I fell in love with someone I'd only seen from a balcony window.

I'd fallen in love with strangers before, on buses and in lines, watching their shoulders straighten and their faces grimace in half-sunlight. I fell in love with these people the way you could fall in love with a poem, finding personality in the way that their eyes flicker nervously from left to right, tiny instances where their stanzas throw you into a daze. But this time was different. For once, I wished to know a stranger without the brim of my sunglasses, for once I felt something when I knew I'd never see him again.

His apartment was cluttered, bottles of water and the empty cans of energy drinks piled in a corner where a conscious person would have fit them in a bin. There were clothes on the floor, and although I knew his high rise box was laid out just as mine, he must have used the expected closet space for something else - his clothes were everywhere, crumpled in heaps on the floor that were too erratically placed to not have some sort of lingering system. Posters of people were taped to the wall, covering the matte eggshell white, edges falling occasionally to show signs that he wouldn’t always live there. I hoped that if he ever owned a home, that those staring portraits would be stapled or pasted thick to his walls, just because he would be the sort of person who wouldn’t change his mind about what he liked or what he wanted.

I would watch him from the same eggshell white room of mine, with nothing on the walls and not a scrap of anything on the floor. From my blow up mattress to my suitcase of clothes, kitchen stocked of single servings and a solitary set of dishware. I had no curtains and no carpets, no television or pictures of friends huddled in an unexpected embrace. For all anyone knew, I could have been squatting. I would look out at him from the window spanning the entire north facing wall, aware that if he ever looked out, if his eyes ever darted south, he would see me cross legged on the tiled marble floor, hovering over an overheated laptop and cardboard coffee.

I would get home at seven forty-five, shower in the New York water that tasted like dust and gin, and towel off, walking to the balcony. He, just like I, had a long, narrow balcony spanning about four feet on the right edge of his loft, and I would lean on the edge of the concrete slab, smelling the foul city air, taxi music floating from the lumpy yellow marsh below. That was when he would unlock his door suddenly, sometime between eight and eight-ten. He would step with his entire body and move into his crowded room and stand still for a moment, as if to collect himself; restrain from tearing faces off the walls and pummeling fabric into the floor. Sometimes he'd shut the door closed with a twitch of his foot, untying the half apron around his waist with one hand and pulling the red tie strapped flat onto a black dress shirt loose with the other. Once, he did all that in succession and proceeded to slide against the shut door until he hit the ground, falling into himself like a dropped jack's ladder and rubbing his fingers from his jawline to his eyes, up into his hair and back over.

But most of the time, he would just force off his shoes, never untying the laces, and move to the balcony just as I did. He would go out to the balcony too, but he would always keep going, moving to sit on the edge of the short wall, socked feet dangling over the city. His legs would be splayed wide, hands placed right in front of him, flat on the ledge. He would look down at the golden sea below, and when he was done with it, spit a flickering cigarette into the glittering bank.

He would also smoke when he woke up. He got up at six, like clockwork, and would stumble back out into the smogged pilot's seat in a plaid bathrobe, hazy faced and staring down. I don’t think he was ever late. He would get dressed slowly and fix himself in the mirror for a good half hour at the left of his room, until finally turning around just to watch the door for a moment. Sometimes I could swear that he watched for so long that he must have thought it would up and race away.

He slept with the lights on. He never came home late. He didn’t go out at night, never blundered in at two in the morning with a lithe model girl, long hair framing icicle eyes. On weekends he would sleep all day, rising every few hours to go back on the edge of his balcony and smoke. He would stare at the faces on his walls, the callouses on his palms, the murmur below; but never, ever at the empty loft across the way, dotted with a blue plastic bed and a speck of a person.

I left New York in September, on a red eye flight vastly cheaper than the rest. I put my toothbrush and toothpaste into the front pocket of my luggage, squeezed the air out of my mattress, and left. I hadn't left a trace in that home of mine, and it didn’t leave any on me either. When I left New York, I felt nothing. It was almost like I had never set foot in the city, forgetting to socialize with the locals the way someone could leave their hat at a bar.

I never knew if the man across the canyon hated coming home to a loft like I did. I wondered if it bothered him too, the lack of walls or rooms to compartmentalize the space. I wondered if he didn’t like to eat at home, if he felt sick when he watched the sunrise. I wondered if when he looked at the tidepooled city, if he also saw salvation. If he wondered every day from eight to eight-ten about what a dangly thing of a human would seem like to the loft across if it was spit from the edge of a narrow, four foot balcony.
A bit long, I suppose. Thought I'd post some prose.
***
One of the most abused gifts of life,
Even toothpaste commercials use it to advertise,
Brings pleasure whilst leaving others in deep strife,
Its one thing that creates soul ties,
It deserves more than just physical feelings to be undergone,
Though,it seems in this area we have chosen to be ignorant and to harden our hearts like stone,
As long as we satisfy our momental desires..
And when the deed is done,our conscience fights itself then retires..

It retires from caring who the deed is done with later on..
Be careful how you use or view ***,its not as easy as its spelling; when it comes to what it leaves within you..---->speaking from what I've seen around,observed and realised..
Marine Andreson Apr 2012
All I wanted to do was dance
now I am faced with a squeaky keyboard

All I wanted to do was dance
but how can particles in a tube of toothpaste dance?

All I wanted to do was dance
Alone.

Unwanted contact from all angles.
Beer rained down from the sky, but it was refreshing in our hot tube of toothpaste

Who smokes in a mosh pit?
Who are you.

PS sorry to the man who's hat I tried to steal
But seriously, why would you ever wear a hat to a dance party if you didn't want it to get stolen

Didn't you know that a hat is like a drunk-nip to a drunk person?
Who are you ?

All I wanted to do was dance
and jump up and down and fist pump the night away

But then the night became cold
My only options were to shiver the night away or drink the cold away

Didn't you ever wonder how people survive in Russia?

So I was no longer cold
But that was not the first part

But was it the worst part?

Touch.
Oh, you.
You're a silly verb.

At once so innocent,
but so easily are the bullets loaded, turning a word into a gun

Can you show us on the doll what happened?
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2016
i hate it when a ~haiku is forced upon me, but such
is the case, and it's not a case of dittoing out
a mechanical aspect of that body that's
known as vocabulary:
thus, suddenly, as if a ****, or
a reflex the tongue commanded
the entire body -
left-wing obstructions gave way to
right-wing rebelliousness -
    the left said the tongue was no dagger,
the right said: merely a dagger -
the gyroid: or the muscles we never thought
existed! lanky tendons, etc.
    never the microscopic proof reductionism
and never the telescopic proof           ",
always somewhere in the middle:
and that's about right.
               i wrote a poem, it sounded about right
and then i get the wanked-over shoulder
calling it life-support dandruff
because of the many sprouts possible -
as ever: some come and give a voice unto
the people, and some come and give an ought
unto the people.
               a choice that's mutually inclusive
of thought and choice as a battleground
for the mechanisation of language into
sulphur gas and bayonets
and a thousand wildcards charging and screaming
lost toward the bewilderment of
   forgotten sexting.
      what a mighty affair:
the only country delving the prospect of
an atom bomb being dropped again doesn't believe
in munition economics and doesn't see
that the paranoia can be stopped when the capitalist
sober-heads enter and say: but where's the profit?
there's not profit in an atom bomb:
it ends too soon,
     you never got a Hollywood chapter yoyo
      concerning Hiroshima or Nagasaki...
you got one about Pearl Harbor...
a competent act of war... but not like our
civilians really matter: we civilians got the treatment
of being active members of the army,
while the army personnel were given civilian
Pilate status, the army was given civilian status
and the Japanese civilians were given army status...
oh forget the noodle swindler -
that handwritten hoola-hoop spinster of
carbohydrates is long gone...
          or the greatest paranoia against all other
nations comes from a nation that actually used the weapon!
       i could write a haiku version of what i lost,
but i'll still have to write something about you-tube
vloggers and how they are the newest version
of the objective propaganda machine that's in
the Islamic camp of merchants...
       prophet-merchant? give me a break:
if his word doesn't sell, then who's does?
my endorsement? less of a cosmetic light-touch surgeon
attitude, my endorsement is that of
Morphy Richards' Soup Maker...
cooking pumpkin soup...
  pumpkin... well: it's hardly an easy peel when it
comes to cooking butternut squash...
it's a disaster! a hell to endure! no wonder it's the veg
that frighten offs the ghouls and the ghost
you can't peel it, you have to Apache skin it
like getting a colonial wig: scalping your way into
the high court, albeit minus the greyish curls -
******* is a king of culinary demises
that were sought out expeditions -
you have to knife your way beneath the snail-like
shell and then there's that cobweb of mush
with intrinsic fake seeds / flies lodged in
the orange cobweb - for all that effort
i appreciate it more as a lampshade than a food
source... but then the advertised starving Africans
as anti-colonial compensation for "our"
grandfather's recollection of monochromatic cultures,
before globalisation took off.. hmm.
the soup? pumpkin, potato, onion, garlic,
nutmeg, paprika, chicken stock,
salt and pepper to taste...
tomorrow? a pumpkin risotto...
hey! seasonal abundance, Spanish strawberries
in late winter are too watery anyway...
   people forgot that certain things taste better
in season, that's namely fruits and vegetables...
   go outside your fancy, outside your whim,
you'll finally have to say: my eyes eat
at the very credibility of such things being
there without the season... but my tongue does not
taste the thing that requires a pentagonal sense
honing in toward an agreed to democracy:
it ain't there... as ever autumnal fruits make their
way toward the culinary redcarpet -
                   apples, pears....
     but the real ice brokers remain tangled in
the gnostics of dairy *****: you only see the *****
when the milk turns sour...
              and the two segregate
their cauliflower bergs and that pristine seethrough
        matrix -
then it's like watching the 1054 schism:
          aquasal herring
                               and aquadulci tench -
as painful as listening to my father speak english:
it's just ****** painful,
i write english and speak it like an Anglo
   and he speaks it like an Arab:
with me it's: left right left right left right
and his is an ancient form of actual Latin
              right left right left right left -
of the tongues that appropriated the Latin lingua
optics that weren't conquered it's the same as it was
for Seneca of Virgil, e.g. red beast / proof of all
scientific generic category principle: **** sapiens
                  upright man / bestia rufus -
and that's still orange beast - then aliq for yellow:
then liquid and runny khaki - a monetary equivalent
of money.
          but of the tongues
                      which is why i kept my mother tongue,
i can't imagine what would have been the case
had i not kept it intact... i'd be whitey boy bleached
into an anaemic Arian with those rubbery red
             lost for words rabbit crazy irises that
albinos sport when on the sociopathic treadmill:
that's a daily commute for most people.
i should have anticipated something better coming
out of a forced bad gateway message when
i tried to published and didn't save the outcry...
but it was never a reality when defined by a few
people... it always necessarily the many,
the market square, the hustle and bustle,
     then again few took to ****** to say love...
understandable: if something is called private
it's not called reality, because so many people
have so much **** to say in public that they
treat private life as a tabernacle -
reverse that and suddenly you find people
who possess a "voice for the multitude",
but not (not oddly enough) a thought -
ah the caring scream when not bound to
the horror genre of politics: it's too late!
               end here: a prior to rather than, a
desirably said to appease and conform:
by now we're all cited as having only said
an onomatopoeia of what words should sound like -
we're found hacking a door to shreds with
an axe, rather than merely curling our hands
so the knuckles can be used to knock on the door.
still, i made pumpkin soup today,
tomorrow i'll make a pumpkin risotto -
and the pumpkin is, rightfully, the halloween king
of all vegetables: i am not surprised it's the perfect
lampshade people leave outdoors -
hell of a thing to peel, a butternut squash
would have been simpler to make...
but for the first time in my life:
  i actually appreciate the colour orange...
as said: cooker orange is beyond that fluorescent
acidity of a citrus fruit:
  cooked orange is actually grand...
raw citrus orange?                and a handful
of creepy crawlies.
    funny how the spectrum necessarily made me
endorse a soup maker, rather than the next
big thing in the realm of toothpaste and mascara.
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2016
obviously to think and enjoy it
you have to turn your mind
into a mollusc in an oyster shell,
slow... slow... (yawn)... slower...
then you suddenly get electrocuted!
boom! now you're thinking,
you're not as tense as a running
cheetah, hard rock heart muscle,
not too eager on karaoke of karate,
you're the tortoise outrunning
achilles; because the brain enables
such functioning, it's not exactly
an eager heart in the university of
the body - and why is it that domestic
life has completely succumbed to
the gratifications of chemistry with
toothpaste and bleach and other
cleaning materials; i wouldn't
be against doping athletes, i'd tell them
to embrace it... let's synthesise another
world record sprint in the olympics,
because an analysis would mean
talking about 9.58 / 9.51...
and that would be as interesting as looking
at the rosetta stone for clarification
of ancient egyptian: owl, big fish, little fish
carbohydrates boxed;
and still a flea could outrun you,
a flea, yeah, never mind the cheetah.
olivia go Apr 2014
Today I found your toothbrush
Sitting in the same cup as mine
I stared at it
Remembering that you were
Here only a week ago
With a bad case of morning breath
And my toothpaste tucked in the corner
Of your smile.
Hesitantly waking up
I stared at it
Remembering that you were
Here only a week ago
My concept of time
Now revolving around the way
You touched me
Only a week ago
The way you loved me
Only a week ago
This toothbrush
This blue toothbrush I bought from the dollar store
Brushing along the tremors of my
Uneven breath threatened to
Defeat me
Threatened to put me back to sleep and
Try again tomorrow
Resolve the reoccurring bouts
Of sadness tomorrow.
But instead
I looked at it
I looked at your toothbrush with a certain familiarity
I looked at your toothbrush with a sincere smile
And remembered that
I was lucky enough to share my space
With someone
Only a week ago
I was lucky enough to fill my room with
Comfort and soft conversations
Only a week ago
I was lucky enough to
See you again
Lucky enough to touch you again
Lucky enough to bother you again
Only a week ago
And for the first time
For the very first time
I looked at everything I gained
Instead of my impending losses
My expired emptiness and hollow thoughts.
Because I realized
Only a week ago
The entire world unfolded itself in front of me
And gave me
Two toothbrushes.
C S Cizek Nov 2014
Pure cane sugartar that sits on teeth,
sits on a canine porch swing
and swings too far, kicking the enamel
siding, wood knots, and greying-thin
windows. More exposed than Brad
Pitt's marriage or JonBenét Ramsay
on the cover of Old World News Daily
in the dentist's office. And there we
are. We're bleached white and burning
beneath paparazzi bulbs and a
a ****** case. Brief case money/
two thousand fourteen and it's still
relevant, still useful blood money.
Novocain lightning flash; burn a tree.
Cali home tucked behind parsley
palms. Fortune teller, baby, O.J. didn't
do it. Not The Juice, not him.
The gloves. The gloves. The gloves.
Comfort of picket fence rainbrushed
paint stripping. Raymour retail
of a mocha-cushion couch half-off
'cause the back's spattered with
toothpaste and taxpayer juice
like Grandma's cancer handbag.
Put your feet up, stay a while.
Don't leave.
certifiednutcase Dec 2018
This is the first
Ordinary good
One
Thing that has
Happened.
Please, don’t
Attribute it to fate but
Seize
The moment before
Everything fades.
Tloml made me buy toothpaste for him so i wrote this cringe-y poem
JP Mantler Jan 2015
The attention-grubbing *****
Will sit out on the floor
Waiting to be ****** by a
Siamese sock puppet duck

Its quirky little smile
Will show only for a while
Toothpaste soda and Hot Gin Sour
It's all up and about in a stour

Poor sodding toothless *****
Goes to playpen and dances around
Empirical     to   the   idea'r    of
the crowd  wanting    a     ****
Mike Bergeron Dec 2012
In a world full of ugly people,
A city made of hideous faces,
A phone call means everything.
It means a voice, free from
Its crooked nose, its wrinkled skin,
And its gapped, stained, crooked teeth.
It means a connection.
With another, with yourself,
And with the ability to disconnect
At the push of a button.
I take out my scratched, chipped cellphone
With its cracked face,
And call Helen.
Her voice swims through the mud
Inside my skull when she answers,
Stirring and churning
Until I'm weak and dizzy.
"How 'bout you just come
On over now, Big Fella?"
And I do.
I turn off the squawking television,
Don a pair of food-stained pants,
Drag a comb through my
Overgrown hair,
And descend the stairs to my
Waiting Oldsmobile.
The turn of the key in the ignition
Only produces a hollow click,
One click two click three click six,
Then a partial start,
But the beast fails to come alive.
I get out to replace
The fried starter fuse,
Then do this dance four more times
Before the old ***** clears her throat
And starts to idle.
It's a short ride,
Pawtucket is small,
And my only companion
On these post-midnight streets
Is the white noise
Issuing from the broken radio.
I pass the house I grew out of,
The crumbling schools
That taught me the value
Of impartial numbness,
The cemetery my father used to visit
To perpetrate the lie
He lives;
The role of a child
And the permanence
Of parents.
I pass abandoned factories
And abandoned hope
And abandoned pets
And abandoned storefronts.
In a world of full of past relics,
In a city full of ghosts,
A crumbling façade means everything.
It means bricks freed from their mortar,
Separated from their history,
Left to be picked up and thrown through plate glass windows.
Buildings are never empty,
Just quiet.
I pass the CVS at Newport and Armistice,
With its twenty four hour pharmacy,  
Dispensing the one a.m. hydrocodone,
The one thirty a.m. dextroamphetamine,
The two a.m. oxycodone,
The two thirty a.m. alprazolam,
The three a.m. dextromethorphan,
The three thirty a.m. methylphenidate,
The four a.m. eszopiclone,
The four thirty a.m. benzodiazeprine,
The five a.m. phenylpropanolamine.
I drive past the clinic in the old senior center
With its six a.m. methadone ready to go
In pre measured cups.
Buildings can be quiet, but not empty.
Helen lives on the third floor of a three story house
Built sometime in the forties,
Forgotten sometime in the eighties.
The two bottom floors are vacant,
The windows are boarded,
The driveway is choked with weeds,
And two lounging cats don’t flinch
When I walk by them
On my way to the door in the rear of the building.
The door is always unlocked,
So I let myself in
And begin the rickety climb to the top.
The higher I go,
The louder Amy Winehouse’s voice gets.
“What kind of fuckery is this?”
Seems an adequate question.
There are ****** handprints on the railings,
The walls,
Drops polka dot the stairs.
I don’t bother knocking,
I never do.
She’s seated in a La-Z-Boy in the kitchen
Facing the door,
In a cloud of cigarette smoke.
In place of exchanged pleasantries
I say I need to use the bathroom
And she nods,
Eyes locked on mine.
I take a look at my sallow image
In the mirror,
With specks of toothpaste and hairspray
Pocking my face like acne.
The toilet bowl is still streaked
With the last man’s ****.
I ****, wash my hands,
And take another look at myself.
Helen is no longer in the chair,
But I know where to find her.
She’s sprawled on the bed,
With a new cigarette in her mouth,
The toys spread out on one side,
The tools on the other.
I tell her I’ll forgive her for stabbing me the other night
If I can get a freebee now.
She shakes her head once,
Exhales a cloud,
“Not gonna happen, Champ,”
And I take what I can get.
j f Feb 2012
The privacy of a bathroom stall and
And two roommates
A triple by any other name

so closely identifying with
the toothpaste **** in
the sink
its like a skin, you know
the grime
it keeps things warm
but the conclusion, forever missing
the ever elusive reason why
(akin to opening a door to an empty room)
is mysteriously absent

the room is empty and I can throw my head against the wall with abandon

sighing, of course
to the ever present accompaniment
of fallen beauty products on a
gross tile floor slick with intentions

the room is occupied and I lift my head from the wall with cautious precision

these walls are thin and I hear
the meaningless sounds of people going about their day
the trite sound of a dropping book
or a sweatshirt being unzipped

the room is empty again, and will be for a while,  and the poster behind my shoulder curls in protest as I shift my shoulders to think better
Harmony Sapphire May 2016
Mail order groom.
I want to know you.
The sound of your voice.
The smell of your perfume.
Your handwriting.
Your habits.
Favorite food.
Your favorite place.
Hobbies.
Your flaws.
Your goals.
The things you like
Things you hate.
Who you love.
What makes you happy.
What makes you mad.
What you spend money and time on.
Who you love.
Who you hate.
Your favorite color.
Your biggest fear.
Your worst nightmare.
Your dreams.
Your beliefs.
Your qualities.
Your favorite games, books, movies or TV shows.
What size ring you wear.
What size shoe you wear.
Your favorite toothpaste, shampoo, & soap.
What's your most prized possession?
What are your skills?
Your allergies?
Do you have patience?
Respect?
Admiration?
Confidence?
Knowledge?
Intelligenc­e?
Greed?
Are you generous?
Charming?
Or do you make trouble?
Are you careful?
Or careless?
Are you sentimental?
Are you spoiled?
Do you brag?
Do you gossip?
Can you keep secrets?
Do you have shame?
Are you shy?
Are you a private person?
Does anything you do offend anyone?
Do you insult or compliment?
Do you glance or stare?
Do you tip?
Are you kind of mean?
Do you have manners?
What do you eat?
Are you a neat freak?
Or sloppy or neat?
Clean or *****?
Do you swear?
What do you have wear?
Do you sleep naked?
Do you lie, cheat or steal?
Are you honest and dependable? Trustworthy, helpful, and considerate?
Obnoxious?
Sober?
Drunk?
Do you cook?
Are you hard working?
Or lazy?
Do you eat meat?
Brush and wash daily?
Wash your own clothes?
Shop yourself?
Drive?
Mow your own lawn?
Vacuum?
Wash dishes?
Are you a licensed driver?
Do you have a car and health insurance?
Do you own property?
What are your assets?
Do you work full time?
Are you educated?
Do you respect women?
Do you like children & pets?
Are you mature?
Do you own a car?
Do you rent or own?
Do you exercise?
Are you fat?
Do you smoke?
Are you a handyman?
Can you fix cars?
Plumbing?
Paint?
Are you creative or an artist?
Are you nosy?
Do you read a lot?
What are you know that you
Do you mind your business?
Do you have a temper or anger management problems?
Are you violent & controlling?
Are you obsessed with *** or *******?
Are you a pervert?
Are you sane?
Are you busy?
Do you have a lot of free time?
Are you religious?
Do you vote?
Are you a loner?
A mama's boy?
An alcoholic?
Obsessive compulsive?
Do you speed?
Do you use sarcasm?
Are you a good driver?
Are you a lawbreaker?
Do you kiss and tell?
Are you a tattle tell?
Are you selfish?
Are you a rebel?
Are you conceited or ******?
Are you desperate or needy?
Are you nice and fun?
Are you bitter, creepy, scary, nervous, impatient, cruel, hateful, abusive, or sick?
Do you collect anything?
Are you well-dressed?
Well-spoken?
Do you make wise investments?
Are you an overachiever?
Are you responsible?
Convincing?
Do you like to argue?
Are you positive?
Or pessimistic?
Are you adventurous?
Or reserved?
Do you like to be the center of attention?
Or a Wallflower?
Do you blame others for your problems? Do you admit to fault ?
Do you need help financially, medically,  physically, mentally or sexually?
Do you like to have *** with the lights on and off?
Do you bathe or shower alone?
Do you shave, trim your nails, wear clean socks  & underwear?
Do you open other peoples mail?
Do you dig through the trash?
Do you always flush the toilet?
Do you snore?
Do you use deodorant, toothpaste,
Do have tattoos?
How do you wear your hair?
Do your clothes have holes, stains, or tears?
Do you need glasses, hearing aids, crutches, wheelchairs, walkers, braces or insulin?
Are you at are you obese, scizo, diabetic?
Do you have bad credit?
Do you have any injuries or surgeries?
Do you color your hair or tan?
Do you moisturize?
Floss?
Do you check the oil?
Do you barbecue?
Do you ****, burp, or pick your nose?
Do you cut in line?
Have you ever been arrested?
Are you a Penny Pincher?
Coupon Clipper?
Are you cheap?
Do you complain a lot?
Do you call people names?
Have you ever done anything to trick or con someone?
Are you understanding & forgiving?
Are you a cheater?
Have you ever been arrested?
Have you ever treated anyone cruly?
Are you rude or brutal?
Do you have any abnormal fetishes?
Are you flirty, friendly, persistent, or immoral?
Are you ambitious, determined, motivated, & successful?
Are you confused, depressed, anxious, poor, angry, or unemployed?
What are your values, concerns, goals and plans?
It’s been a whirlwind of days. I’m writing after being inspired again by a Gonzo documentary. This revolutionary style is the contribution of journalist within the story journalism. Which is magic. Sticky, delicious connectedness. Because to write a good story, you have to be an interesting writer. And an interesting writer must be an interesting person with interesting experiences and thoughts. Lame people write lame stories and great people write great stories. It’s just that if your lame you’ll like the lame story and think it’s great. No classifications are really necessary, you drooling evolutionary creature. As your spirit sings to the addition of added information to your consciousness. So, gonzo journalism- now you suddenly added a wildly interesting character to your story. Yourself. It’s a fool proof plan. Because each one of us know that we are the best. But how far would the individual go for their own story? It's an every day test. And yet, how authentic can you continue to be. Not to say that Hunter Thompson didn’t fabricate stories. But he matched a level of absurdity that by logic made the truth and fabrication indecipherable. A terrible, carnival maestro puppeteer planting questions in place for the reader to suddenly wonder about the writer, did that really happen? We could never be sure. Because even if the writer confirms in person of the account, we can still never be sure because we do not have the concrete ability to tell what that specific experience was. We cannot tell because in this world there are truths and lies and it doesn’t ******* matter any way because it’s all the same. It’s all a creation. It’s all one, whole thing chillin together in a small plot of city grass hidden by a paint peeling fence in a sunburst alley in some stinking city. While we separate our books into categories- what is real section, what is not real section, this section, that section, and other stuff. Mostly because we always want to know what we are in for. Because if we know what we are in for, then we get something. knowing. Like a lousy christmas gift. Which has no practical application. It’s an acorn swimming in a sea of acorns and walnuts and the squirrel god just likes eating nuts in general. He doesn’t give a ****. To be frank, he’d actually like if there was an even bigger variety of nuts.

In the process, should a writer ever really delete and edit what they say while they are writing? You said something and suddenly you don’t want to say it anymore- delete. A cohesive piece to your **** storm brain’s thought process, gone. Will the reader understand you less or more now? Does that really even matter. Does the reader matter? More than anything. The readers hold all of the knowledge. They seek out and absorb information from their personally groomed selections as predictable as a trophy wife in a tennis skirt. Words, like toothpaste oozing from a toothpaste tube, will not go back in. Unless you have the technology to put in back in, to prove a grueling point to a close friend that you have to win the argument over. This is the 21st century for crying out loud you ******* idiot. We can do whatever we want.

So this is all frank language. Because brilliant men, are mad. And brilliant women, are beautiful. And it comes off matter of fact when in another universe I am writing the antithesis to every word delivered to this page. Like my evil twin. The dark matter to my matter. While I’m the one on Earth writing the coupe de grais of bathroom poetry. Words- the trying, conniving, carefully plotted seeds of rash giving plants. Affecting everything they touch, spreading thought and emotion feverishly, plaguing us nationally, while they remain the same. Genderless lines, basic shapes, swirling into a vortex of time when you could not yet read but still saw words. We keep words around, always around, kept close within reach, always in eye sight. Just look around.
Amanda Jan 2014
Is this how happiness feel like?

Oh, the way my lips gently curve upwards is like..

Sleepy eyes kissed airily by sunshine,
                                                                ­               buttering toast on a bitter cold winter's day.
                                                   When it is so very cold,                                                            ­                
every breath feels like toothpaste and mint.    
It is the worries being unknotted.                                                       ­ 

                                                               ­                  Little inexplicable sparks that can light even the darkest        souls.
There we go! Smile sweetheart.

x
Genevieve Leake Jun 2015
It's 2 am in a hotel room,
In a not so foreign place,
With some bafflingly strange toothpaste,
And duck soap which smells like oranges,

And to think
That I would be,

Thinking of you.
The shower is very nice here.
Johnny Zhivago Jun 2013
Alarm at 9:30, wake up at 8:30, stretch in bed, go downstairs to kitchen, make omelette, give a quater to a freind, eat the rest, alarm goes off, cycle in to uni, shuffle the word order of an essay, print it, muck around, go to the bar, glance at a man giggling to himself, smoke a dovetail, go back in, slice an orange, eat it then, go through, the print out, crossing ****, out, Daniel walks up, hey hows it going, fast talking scurry walking you know what i mean man, he starts up, ive heard this one before... i havent drunk for 3 years, now i just smoke ****, cos i always smoke it,  got a girlfriend? I had a girlfriend, she was my best friend, then she went crazy though, made me insany, i said to her listen:
im thirty its simple you with me or no?
You stay or you go? Is that simple or no?
This was a while ago, she said i dunno, i felt mad as mud, and i came to the bar, just human beings, and there was my girl, with a korean! I smiled in surprise, he switched up the convo, you had a girl, well did you like her?
I stopped him right there, im going for a ****, dont mean to diss,
ok he said bye,
and walked through the door,
of him we'll say no more.
I got to the ******, a sense of achievement, sense of a glorified victory for me, i fumbled my fly, which was hooked with a paperclip, which was bent round the button, to stop from fly diving, and as this was happening my eyesight went whitey i tingled my fingers, i staggered aboutey, my foots were a-wobbling inside of my shoe, my knees were a-jiving to knee-jiggler tune, i flopped on my bag on the back of my back, twitched and i break-danced until my foot tore loose, and suddenly a boot, an invisible boot, and invisible foot, and invisible man, kicked me my jaw, and back snapped my neck, left me there sprawled. cripped by pain, blinded by white, starved of control, but over at last, i hobbled back out, morosely sat down, high brows of eyes, did you goosey gander, oh my Amanda, he looked like a mortal
when he went in
but then he came out
limping with sin
that boy was me, i met with a girl, and cycled back home, certain my tendons, were torn off the bone, i told her i fainted in the toilet and fought with an invisible man, she said can you be normal for once and tell me wagwan, why were you painting the toilet, and who was the man, i told her again that i fainted not painted, and she looked confused. i lost my essay, and im wearing glasses and your saying nothing, except nonsense and nothing, i told her id noticed her glasses but had seen no essay, as she let me go she kissed me but i asked for a hug, a hugs more important if youre stuck in the mud, i went to my house and told all my flatfriends the truth, why my foot hurts and my disturbance of duelling that man, they acted surprised and then went to bed, i made i some tea, and then spent the rest of the night smoking down my confusion.
Healing gently but still some weak patches


it rained then shone then hailed then snowed
and she'd forgot her coat
and it poured on her throat
later passed the day
and we cycled back northways
carlights lamps and moon hit your face
smiling with your long as a boot-face
hail-bones sparkly white as toothpaste
england is a sock and we live in a bootlace

her 'guy' lived with her
so she came round early arva-,
i accidentally injected her
with a deadly kind of larvae.
she went to a farmer-cist
to get an antidote,
a little white little pea that
went floating down her throat.
merrily merrily merrily merrily,
right under the belly
it knocked the nest out from the tree
and stamp the eggs to jelly

mama pigeon was away
magpie made jelly-egg
stampy stampy crush crush
heavy evil mag-leg
Leocardo Reis Jun 2021
I throw away
a tube of toothpaste
to discover
it was the last one.
In bitter defeat
I fish the toothpaste out of the trash
and attempt to squeeze out,
once more,
a morsel
of toothpaste.

— The End —