"transactional" poems
From her lessons in independence we learnt that everyone leaves,
Abandonment as sure a fact of life
as death.
We learnt that love was transactional,
A currency,
A receipted tit-for-tat tete-a-tete.
At the altar we were shown lies,
In the white dress a million yes’s but the question was never till death.
I could walk through darkness without worry,
I’d never been shown the danger,
Been encouraged to see an enemy in calories but not strangers.
We learnt to lie to avoid bruises,
Wooden spoons used for more than stirring soup,
The salt burning streaks down our faces when the *** boiled over the stove top.
Truths ignored and lies inelegant
We learnt to wield fists with tongues
Sparring for our lives.
Cautiously awaiting the
whistle pop
truth drop
wished unsaid
upon
impact.
Aug 5, 2022
Aug 5, 2022 at 3:01 PM UTC
It's hard for me to conceptualize the expectations you try to hide,
You're all so sneaky when you ask for my side.
When I say no, it's as if you think I'm being snide,
But all I'm trying to do is make strides.
Understanding that "no" is a full sentence for me,
Grew difficult as it was never an option, you see.
Anytime I could refuse, I would with glee,
Seeking control, even when tempted to agree.
The lack of boundaries harmed our natural bond,
I search for our connection, but when you're around, I tend to fawn.
I dislike this transactional, distant bond.
I ask for quality time and am met with fees,
Being fed a lie that your love language is acts of service, please.
Because I do nothing to help you out, it's decreed,
I must not care; I feel like a bad family member indeed.
Oct 12, 2023
Oct 12, 2023 at 8:43 AM UTC
My debt-ridden past,
More than I asked.
The transactional present
Less pleasure, more torment.
An easy-payments future
More payments not fewer.
So many give-aways
At a price I can never pay.
It's new-consumerism
With the soft bite of fascism.
And I'm badly infected now.
Aug 3, 2016
Aug 3, 2016 at 11:38 AM UTC
Sitting in a café waiting t̶o̶ ̶d̶(̶l̶i̶v̶e̶)̶i̶e̶. There is dogfood art on the wall and I’ve got nice coffee from a barista [Barbie] with tattoos. Pull in one [a(?)] direction already. Like a kite in a park with no kid attached. Gone, going, past. Compliments are t̶o̶o̶ ̶c̶h̶e̶a̶p̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶f̶e̶e̶l̶ valuable these days. “All the girls drink for free.”
**** **** FuckFuckFuck.”
******* Drink your sweet, dark-cherry stained lips. Dead eyes masked in mascara masquerading as more. “Bought with bourbon and goes down easy.”
Commodify, objectify, consume. Transactional romance drives a BMW.
Jul 17, 2016
Jul 17, 2016 at 7:32 PM UTC
Invocation
this call to peace
does not use words we know
it is beyond language
we launch it
into the thin air of hope
where no echo lives
this invocation issues from our lips
our hands our movements
it is wholly transactional
this call to peace
Conflict and Resolution
it starts with uncertainty
continues with doubt
Can black be white
is day night?
We can make it so
and so it is
we say we write until
it becomes our faith
our truth our right
and so resolved
that black is white
and day is night
we soon forget
that others might
see it
differently
so to live in some accord
we have to temper
our resolve
(that day is night
that black is white)
and live within a twilight zone
a chiaroscuro world.
The Instrument of Peace
plucked from silence
the note of the guitar
resonates round its body
brought so close to the heart
held as a lover in our arms
the hands make harmony
sound out chords
for the singer’s song
Oh instrument of peace
hanging on the wall
of our simple home
play for us now
The Peaceful Mind
a template of fingers
intersect each sounding string
and with every change of shape
fresh possibility ensues
those re-entrant tones held above
the resonance of open strings below
set up rich suspensions
peculiar with dissonance
gently struck arpeggios
revolve in patterned repetition
this loom-made garment of sound
to clothe the peaceful mind
Nov 9, 2013
Nov 9, 2013 at 8:18 AM UTC
For the last five hundred years, posh “society,” is where the wealthiest and most influential people in the world mingled, inter-married and conducted business. If you’ve ever watched “Downton Abbey”, “The Gilded Age” or even “Crazy Rich Asians” you’ll know what I mean.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs - a psychological pyramid that describes human fulfillment - states that part of our human nature (once your basic needs are met) is the desire to attain social position. Having mere wealth is just not enough once you are in the top levels of achievement.
In the 1970’s Arab money started pouring into the west. Arab petro-dollars bought swaths of land in the UK, in London and New York. The Arabs dazzled everyone with their wealth and bling but they never penetrated posh society.
Then in the 90s the second, Asian wave, of new wealth washed eastward and they had a bit more success in society. But starting about 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russians started coming to the west with new money to invest - in the UK, in particular.
Russia became the billionaire capital of the world, oligarchs were everywhere buying anything not nailed down and eventually trying to insinuate themselves into posh “society”. Tatler (THE magazine of society) even began publishing a Russian version. If you were a wealthy Russian, you were moving up. By 2022, they weren’t too far from the edge of REAL success.
That’s what evaporated three weeks ago - with the invasion of Ukraine - Russia’s luxury infrastructure and their hopes of acceptance into posh society. Gucci, Chanel, Hermès, Dior, Apple and Tatler (just to name a few luxury brands) have left Russia to rot. If you’re Russian now, the chances of being admitted into posh society are gone for the next 20 years - at least.
You may say “so what?” Well, one way a dictator holds onto power is through mercantile largess. The granting of rights within the Russian sphere of influence - to control and distribute goods and services - is how oligarchs are created. The support of these oligarchs is important and transactional.
A man with a 100-million dollar yacht - looking at what chunks of their wealth may well be confiscated in the west - or lost to the Ruble’s collapse - could easily offer life-changing wealth to any henchman willing to end Putin one way or another.
Will this happen? I don’t know. But this is the system they’ve set up for themselves.
Mar 22, 2022
Mar 22, 2022 at 4:12 PM UTC
Slip a little something in my coffee.
Make me weak at the knees
and treat this disease,
because I am tired
of this hard-fought living,
this city of mortar,
my dungeon-held daughter.
I am tired of submitting to ***
like a calf to the slaughter,
or turning words over
like cigarette ends
by the homeless shelter,
by the beer garden,
where wine is thicker than water,
coursing through your veins,
as I lay your hair out
like a river delta.
For all I have written,
I have nothing left to say.
No promise of pay,
or an off-chance for loose change.
I have dug my hand
through every pocket,
through sofa cushions,
under coasters,
and a fork in the socket.
There are a million ways
to get yourself high,
to find those lights pirouetting
in the sky;
some pill-drawn lullaby
of amnesia haze
and ******* girls;
she concedes to the camera,
and even pulls a twirl.
Break your fingers at the piano.
Play me a tune
to enliven my moods,
some fast-paced chorus,
some prodigal son,
some forgotten chord
laid down by Horus.
The race isn't run,
though I faltered at the sound
of the starting gun,
I think I have found a rhythm,
I am hitting my stride,
I will cheer the **** up,
and not lay down to die.
Please, lend me a kindness,
as I pay off my debts,
either passionless crime,
or transactional ***
Nov 22, 2014
Nov 22, 2014 at 7:08 PM UTC
I was afraid of loving and being loved
I believed love meant consumption because I always let it consume me
I wrapped myself too tightly
around them
To be as close as humanly possible…
to ensure that it was love
Losing yourself in another
It was poetic and disgusting
I believe love was being everything
It was fear
It was a high
But that is addiction
Should love not be addictive?
Not transactional
I wanted to earn it
Now I am afraid I’m not enough
I always was
More so now that I know what love is not
Apr 28, 2022
Apr 28, 2022 at 11:34 PM UTC
she-
queen of innuendos,
I
cast sly looks,
she acts coy!
Dec 7, 2011
Dec 7, 2011 at 8:46 AM UTC
There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen
the night birds
do want to be saved from light
in the land of whispers
the toll of complexity is
their unchanged lament
trapped between layers
insecure inside the semiotic square:
what is real?
true?
imaginary?
what is true and not true? – the call of destruction
this terror, the impossibility of meaning, shut inside the
drawer with plastic bags
we made my house there
somebody had to play the fool
these are reality games
recognition games
language games
with no key for the other’s syntax
who is the subject in this grave of flesh?
reality should be transactional
but the silence turned its face away instead
the clear bodies without voice rejoice
nobody asked the body how difficult it is to bear a mind
“we all know it’s not true & don’t you dare recognize it”
“you should be happy with your life & happiness doesn’t exist
(look at my poor body)”
“you are on your own & don’t you dare disobey”
“you must prove yourself & you are no good without us”
the right to reality was still not invented
since we are mostly busy deciphering our own language
words are self-fulfilling
I’m caring my annihilation safe
in the silence of nails
in the exhaustion of tools
of axes
and all the other love words
Sep 6, 2015
Sep 6, 2015 at 3:58 PM UTC
My love tied to need is transactional
It is finite, renegotiable
But to love without need is unconditional
Limitless through time
So let need dissolve in this trust
And set love free
Freed from my cage of need
So that all may feel it
“What more can I give of myself?”
At last, no answer comes.
Feb 8, 2021
Feb 8, 2021 at 2:16 AM UTC
Death begins the day the newborn cries
Not its choice, grew up believing
Clinging to futility on death's bed
As if another life brings the dead to life
Affirmed as gods, life stroked, seduced
Painful dissonance yet believing
Chance is king but Will supreme
Striving to the death for one more chance
Failures chastised, pride conceals, boastfully
Offering ashes, gods obliged, believing
Truly only Money matters, Chance *******
Life ransomed too, not today, surely tomorrow
Love or transactional *** legal or not
Life's answer or preachers' lies believing
Perhaps only masturbatory self love is true
Justified indulgence entirely in one's own hands
Meaninglessness, life’s honest and brave end
Else denial and delusion, make believing
This moment till death has despair to work
Alas many flail cowardly, ironic futility grasping
Will strong, flesh betrays, in hypocrisy
Peter wept, shamelessness hardens believing
Death discerns not its own stench
Life's fragrance repulsive and offends
Life imposed freely from the beginning
Conned and chose to pay for believing
A shadow of what will be but tempted to be
And the Accuser justified and God ******
Apr 12, 2021
Apr 12, 2021 at 11:31 PM UTC
My roommates and I
always have something to say.
We talk incessantly, like chirping birds.
We’re all reading the same large print here, and It suggests that college is almost over.
We’re bleeding time and there are dreams in need of scheming.
It’s time to stack our chips with transactional relationships and hoard the things that matter most.
I have to admire the sheer attitude and bravado of these girls—their defiant strides,
as they face the invisible indignities and constant obstacles of job hunting.
(Where they’re required to behave while they’re observed and evaluated).
They have their resumes and they’re complaisantly ready to flex their appealing gregariousness.
All of the major playas are passing through—from established giants like (Amgen, Bayer and Genentech)
to biotech startups and research Institutes—to cull through the herd of Yale biomedical graduates.
I don’t get to play (interview) this time and it’s rough just watching the signs and plays from the sidelines.
I can’t help the feeling that I’m underperforming—even though my ‘Master of Public Health (MPH)’ program starts 10 days after we graduate. ‘Baby, I was born to run’— to steal a line from Bruce Springsteen.
Despite our separate paths—we’re like cats getting ready to jump in all directions—a bouillabaisse of intoxicating and terrifying excitement for the future is brewing, and we still have the constrictions of our current curriculum to deal with—like a snake, it still wraps around every aspect of our lives.
.
.
Songs for this:
born to run by Bruce Springstein
Time by Tom Waits
.
Oh, and a Christmas playlist because—it’s December!:
https://daweb.us/xmas/Christmas_03.mp3
Dec 7, 2024
Dec 7, 2024 at 10:42 PM UTC
Tinted glasses
In a lightless room
She reaches and grabs where she can
But it’s always a shallow effort
Transactional love
But that’s not the love I want to receive
I want to know you trust me
I want to feel you support me
Not take and take and take
I learn to cut the strings for people who are great at wasting my time.
But I mourn each thread of the girl I used to be.
The little girl who hugged lonely looking people in the grocery store.
Sep 21, 2024
Sep 21, 2024 at 3:38 AM UTC
the brethren gathered round
after word had gotten out
dented ping pong *****
usually accepted the reality
of a dent and what it meant
no more ping ponging around
or getting flung around
at warp speed Chinese style
no more the thrill
of the short under-spin
or the super-wide side-spin
the kicker or the ghost serve
fast down the line
the hook serve
(Mirano and Ito) style
or the thrill
of just slightly grazing
the net ever so fleetingly
in a mad dash
to the corner
of the table
sure clipping the net
and going over
is considered to be
a faux pas
or in proper parlance
a let that serves no purpose
other than a let service
who knew it would all
be so transitory
so transactional
sure there was hope
the boiling frog scenario
that was possible
but not mid-game
the solution was more trouble
than it was worth
the core of a throwaway culture
is so embedded
that just reaching out
for a new three star
fresh out of the box
replacement with the bounce
and ****** only a virginal ball
could provide not unsurprisingly
so satisfyingly that who could resist
so as the brethren gathered round
and looked up at their forlorn brother
teetering on the edge of the table
they knew and felt the inevitability
another dent and there would be
no coming back
"Don't do it"
"Somebody get a net"
"Go for it"
"Boiling water will bring you back"
suddenly
as if in slow motion
the ball flung itself
over the edge
into the blackhole
of an uncontrolled freefall
of top-spins side-spins back-spins
under-spins back top-spins
reverse back-spins
there was some kind of tunnel
a rapidly approaching light at the end
a shiny bright and luminous light
it was getting closer and closer
the brethren scrambled
in a nanosecond
the reel had been loaded
its life flashed before it
on some kind of cosmic screen
then the put-away stroke
set over
game over
Sep 12, 2024
Sep 12, 2024 at 4:36 PM UTC
We were (Leong, Peter, Anna and I) eating at a popular Italian eatery (outdoors) and the check arrived - I swooped across the table and grabbed the check from the waiter. Peter whispers, “You can’t pay for everything the entire weekend.” “Why not?” I say, “It makes me happy.” “There’s no reason to,” he says. “I need a REASON??” I snort, which always makes Leong laugh. “Have you MET me?” I say, shaking my head dubiously. “I’ve met you,” he pronounces, “and you’re a NUT.“ “Thank you,” he says, indicating the check exasperatedly.
Peter’s transfinancial: a rich man trapped in a poor man’s body. He has taste but he exists on a grant and a meager stipend. We’re just friends but I’m holding a bag and he’s not. Besides, he needs a new laptop - badly - and shouldn’t be squandering his grips on me.
Greek-life is on the rise. Maybe it's because those groups offer planned social events or because, with COVID winding down (covid smovid) there’s more going on. There’s a pressure here - to be your most authentic self - to be top academically, socially - to have your calendar filled out. There’s a frantic nature to it. I’m being lowkey rushed for a fraternity (for next year) but I love my roommate situation and I think I’d druther stick with this set I love.
Which begs the question about social time. Should it be methodical, relentless, super planned out? Super planned interactions can seem transactional and not easy going and natural. College social life is so different from high school. College life is so much more charged in every way. The range of people you meet, the broader perspectives, the available options for activities.
I find myself in a search for balance. Private time vs social time. Before covid, you’d go to school and then you’d come home to your room, where you could just hang out. It was a self care place.
At university, a dorm room is less of a “home” where you can be alone and spend that healing time. You never know who's going to be in your living room and what they’re up to. I get claustrophobic when my door is closed so I rely a lot on noise-canceling technology.
A dorm room can seem like those covid lockdown days - there’s little or no separation between academic and private space. I’m just unpacking some thoughts. shrug
Apr 8, 2022
Apr 8, 2022 at 10:21 AM UTC
You’ve discovered that the forces of gravity are enormous
But to explain why they are not, physicists needed a new theory
A new vision of the atom
Constant overlapping and splitting through time
Transactional existence
What might have been an abstraction
Remains a perpetual possibility
Jul 21, 2014
Jul 21, 2014 at 11:18 AM UTC
My debt-ridden past,
more than I asked.
The transactional present,
less pleasure, more torment.
An easy-payments future,
more payments not fewer.
So many give-aways,
at a price I cannot pay.
It's neo-consumerism,
with the soft bite of fascism.
We're infected by the bug,
so we take
the offered
drugs.
Oct 21, 2017
Oct 21, 2017 at 5:23 PM UTC
my love is conditional
something to be earned
you withhold and yet attempt
awkward silence purchase
misunderstood transactional
I deserve to have needs met
needs not wishes, for survival
even when my want is you
when you dream love elusive
for such deceit I’ll never fall
I will not love in reasonless
never lean on stranger trust fall
trust complete but not naively
you dream trust illusory
my dream established neatly
you expect love unconditional
you could have all you desire
when I love I love completely
standard terms and conditions
but you are above such requisitions
Jan 18, 2025
Jan 18, 2025 at 8:07 PM UTC
Love is not carrying a ****** in your wallet.
“Just in case.”
Love is not deceiving her to get your way.
“I promise”
Love is not convincing her to break a boundary.
“It’ll only take a few minutes.”
“We’re going to get married anyways.”
“Why not? Don’t you love me?”
Yes. I loved you,
but your “love” ruined me.
Jan 4, 2025
Jan 4, 2025 at 12:50 AM UTC
When you bought me flowers
every petal felt like a debt,
a heavy weight in a fragile vase.
Sunflowers, because they were yellow
I said they were my favorite like the color—
perhaps just to comply, to appease.
But truly, I like roses
in all their simplicity,
no hidden promises.
Will a bouquet ever feel the same
or are all flowers
just silent obligations?
I shy from kindness offered too quickly
wondering what it's meant to buy.
Jun 20, 2025
Jun 20, 2025 at 1:39 AM UTC
She was a Messiah, with boys bowed at her knees.
But when their mouths a-gaped, she'd close them quickly, begging them not to speak.
She'd keep them close to fill a void. But no matter how many, it could never be solved.
So she took, and she took, never letting them touch.
Until now,
Where we have nothing.
And now I am no Messiah, more like the off grid Wise-Women.
Hidden within the thickets, on the edge of the forest.
Some still travel, and they do find me. But it's not the same as before.
They come to me for ailments of the mind and heart.
To listen to their woes of a past they can't leave behind.
When I out-stretch caring arms, they take a step back. Begging me not to come closer.
They take and they take, never letting me touch.
Because inside, they have nothing.
What a cruel turn of fate for the girl who fought her way through years of the past to be in the present once again.
Some may call it karma for my younger self's mistakes.
Now destined to starve the heart that was once filled till day-break.
So I sit awake at night full of other's worries in my mind.
Because if I cannot be desired, at least I can be useful.
I guess the young girl never learned how to simply exist.
Without the presence of transactional love, she may as well be extinct.
This is no way to live.
You will never feel whole if there is still a quiet, constant longing to fix or be fixed by someone else's soul.
So I sit in the stillness of my isolated garden.
With nothing more than the damp, mossed floor and early dawn chorus.
I may be on my own, but I am never lonely.
I am one with the world around me.
I am the Wise-Women.
Jun 7, 2023
Jun 7, 2023 at 4:49 PM UTC
⚠Trigger Warning: the following poem contains religious allusions that some might find offensive⚠
Memories belittled by dust,
preserved, taxidermal fashion
inside an anthology
of vintage photographs.
Though,
I am aware that
"vintage"
is only a euphemism
for a possession
that was once beautiful.
Your treason
has turned all the photographs
ugly,
their corners curling up
like the spiral of a chameleon's tail.
Vivacious colours devolve
into lacklustre,
sepia tones,
blending in with
the palette of my
surrounding melancholy.
Ensnared in a dilemma:
Do I miss you?
or
Do I hate you?
(perhaps a bit of both,
but never
I love you--
not anymore.)
Apertures mewl,
bruising the gallery walls
with tears.
I frame your
betrayals
with gold and
garlands of daisies
in an attempt to soften
our past
(it never works).
These
vacant
hallways
trap your phantom footprints
beneath the cobblestone.
Was it really
such a guiltless task
to walk away from me?
Embedded
across the rungs of my spine
are the scuff marks
from where you wiped the dirt
off your boots only after
wrenching the welcome mat
from underneath me.
I have accepted that
our friendship was
merely transactional
to you;
I served up
all the love I had to
give
like John the Baptist's head
was served up upon a silver platter.
You feasted
while
I starved.
Yet,
full is this menagerie
of lost things.
I know
I should burn
the polaroids
in the name of closure.
Perhaps
I am just afraid there will be no art--
no poetry--
left to sculpt
from the cinders that
remain.
Apr 23, 2020
Apr 23, 2020 at 9:12 PM UTC
Mores the fool, me
To reach out without setting expectations
To harbor burgeoning hope
For planting the seedlings of love
Mores the fool, me
To hope for romance in a sea of transactional lust
To give port to the illusion
For watering my attraction
Mores the fool, me
To trust your words despite the signal flags
To give you berthing
For sheltering you against the storm
Mores the fool, me
To allow myself to fall for the obvious lies
To try and tie you to the dock
For bringing you upon my island
Mores the fool, me
Apr 4, 2025
Apr 4, 2025 at 5:05 AM UTC
The seediest part of the seediest place in town. A place where dreams go to die. A place where all relationships are transactional and all are doomed to last less than a night.There's a special type of misery here. A specific sadness that is at once heartbreaking but also insanely addictive. Tens of people seated in a dingy noisy sorry excuse for a bar sharing an experience called loss. Maybe the loss of a loved one, maybe the loss of innocence. More likely the loss of something of financial value.
Human nature is such that we loathe and crave company. We wish to be alone but are painfully drawn towards each other. Hating that we are but unable to separate ourselves from a deep dark primeval fear... The fear of loneliness. For as evolution has taught us, think hundreds of bespectacled scientists, many speaking with the current prestige accent of our respective languages, are fond of telling us, it's because back in the day when were stuck in t' savannah, the last one left behind was often prey to t'lions, leopards or sabertooth tigers.
There's some truth in this... But as much as we would like to think everything can be magicked away by science and evolution, life is rarely that simple.
More likely as alluded to, there's something invisible inside us all that draws us to each other. Sometimes like souls to like souls, other times opposites attract. Maybe it's our innate hopefulness that there's someone out there who understands you or in the luckier cases loves you. A little voice that drives you to keep going. What happens when you finally shut out that voice?
What will be left keeping you going?
Jul 24, 2019
Jul 24, 2019 at 10:41 AM UTC