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Nat Lipstadt Dec 2015
contradiction, sorrow, and vulnerability,
a trine labeled as all mine,
yet, this triumvirate, well know & shared,
but more and moreover,
set aside if/when well dared

this comatose trilogy that so oft astrides,
when the beacon moon stands us up
with white lightening,

after hope  has washed away,
out to the sea deep of
crusty sleep,
newer versions of older stories uncovered,
re-revealed,
warmth, golden light and
hope above hope,
in the weakened human heart are,
must be,
unsealed...

a lovely one, a rising one, a revelatory,
a poem releasing secrets,
we can all, with time, all of us,
be healed...


1:40 am
nyc
one new day,
today
a tribute, an ode, to poet Excalibur,
patty m
daniela Apr 2016
they say in history,
behind every great man there’s an even greater woman.
so think of it like this:
do you know who marcia lucas is?
it’s okay if you don’t.
there’s a reason for that,
until a few months ago i didn’t know her name either.
but you probably know who george lucas is.
biographer dale ******* once said that marcia,
george lucas's first wife who he was married to throughout
the production of the original trilogy,
was his “secret weapon."
and the operative word in that sentence is secret.
because i have been watching star wars
for just about as long as i can remember;
growing up, my brother and i owned not only
half a dozen plastic lightsabers and a box set of both trilogies,
but my dad even likes to mimic yoda’s voice and speech patterns
when he gives me motivational life talks.
but i never once learned marcia lucas's name.
i know star wars super fans who can spout out more trivia
about wedge antilles,
an x-wing pilot with 2.5 total minutes of screen time in the entire saga,
than marcia lucas,
the women who edited the film together
into the cultural phenomenon we know.
marcia lucas is the woman who edited starwars
from a mess into a masterpiece.
the woman who has be described
as the “warmth and heart of the films”
who carved out her husband's characters into people
and developed with much of emotional resolution of the series,
coming up with the idea of killing off ben kenobi
when george lucas couldn’t resolve the plot line himself.
her fingerprints are all over these movies,
she shaped these stories and us with them
yet we never talk about her hands cutting the film.
the woman who edited the scene
where luke skywalker destroys the death star
from a 45 minutes crawl into the fast-paced moment
when the good guys win,
the woman who sewed together
the magic we watched on our screens
is nothing more than a footnote in the credits.
she has been erased from the narrative.
and as i write this poem,
i know that only some of you will never think of this name again.
and if you do it will probably be as trivia,
a fact to spout in a conversation about george lucas
or while you pop in a new hope into the DVD.
but sometimes you have to think about how many people’s lives
end up on the cutting room floor.
they say in history,
behind every great man there’s an even greater woman.
margaret hamilton is the lead software engineer
whose work took apollo 11 to the moon.
do you know her name?
you know the man on the moon but not the woman who put him there.
sybil ludington road twice as far as paul revere
to warn the local militia of the oncoming british attack,
fending off a band of highway robbers as she did.
do you know her name?
long before little richard and chuck berry
were ever even strumming at their guitars,
sister rosetta tharpe was pioneering a genre
with the first album ever labeled as rock’n’roll.
do you know her name?  
rose mccoy wrote the words to the song “i beg of you”
that elvis presley crooned,
along with countless more that other people sang.
do you know her name?
do you know any of their names?
maybe spotlights cast more shadows than they give off light.
we are a culture of people who forget everything out of sight.
they say in history,
behind every great man there’s an even greater woman.
we just... don't know her name,
no one ever bothered to teach us her name.
no one was supposed to.
history is not always about who you remember,
sometimes it is about who you forget.
originally written as part of a longer poem called “the bottleneck effect” that i’ve used at slams like LTABKC but i cut it from the first because it didn’t really fit and then turned it into something new and way longer
hollowings Nov 2015
I originally wrote "its funny" as the first line
however I dont think
its funny
I started liking you far too long ago
and I got stuck on the Argo sailing
in sorrow under the statue of Rhodes.
I started writing a poem a day
just to impress you and I realized that
i only ever impressed myself

You like our car side conversations
maybe because I keep good company
or maybe because you were actually interested
in the hopelessness that
I am.
I start to make you a black hole
and I am past the event horizon.
Sunlight only escapes through my words.
My open lips meet your parted sentences
cut short by the warmth of human breath.

I made you into poetry
but I should have followed my sisters advice
and not smashed you into my poetry books
I should not have swirled the words of your
glassy blue eyes into golden threads
binding ancient books.
Thats where I went wrong.
I cared to much.
Our path wasnt a lambda where two paths meet to make one
we were an x
bold on the page but
only crossing for a mere moment.

I dont regret any of it. I just wish
you knew that I meant all of it.
Pretty poems
and movies on weeknights.

Masquerades hiding our feelings.
I never even asked where you stood.
What your mask meant.
What it was hiding.
I showed up to the ball dressed like art
and you were cinderella
waiting for her prince charming.
I shatter glass slippers.
and arrange the fresh fragments into
an ugly spectacle
of futility.

We are schrodingers cat
locked in a box.
Im just afraid that I am pandora
and that the hope of us died
when I observed the radioactivity within.
Cancer cells on skin
you called them cute moles.

I guess I kinda just wanted you to be mine,
and I always knew
that
Good guys
stay stuck at home
watching star wars box trilogies.
Dreaming of their Leia.
Id rather be George Lucas. I think.

This stopped making sense to me the moment
That I decided to make it about you
so Im going to end it

here.
SRS
Aaron LaLux Jul 2017
The Fillmore

It’s cold these days,
just ask a stranger,
saw a show tonight at The Fillmore,
Dave Chapelle with John Mayer,

Dave mentioned the show,
when I saw him at The SF MOMA,
John signed my Frieda poetry book,
that I got today from The SF MOMA,

how am I so in the In Scene,
yet at the same time such a Goner,

come on we’re,
trying to make Greatness,
so there’s no time for the Procrastinators,
and all of their lateness,

got Volume 2,
of The HH Trilogy,
coming soon,
5/5/17,

thought I’d put you on notice,

I’ve noticed,
they’ve noticed me,
more than they used to,
before The Trilogies,

came back to America,
from a few months in Australia,
now I find when I go out,
people recognize me,

not sure when it happened,
when my works became bigger than me,
all I know is it happened,
now people approach me like they know me,

“Haven’t I seen you before?”,

that’s a common one,
I guess I’m somewhere between,
Famous as Fck,
and quasi-obsolete,

I’ll probably be,
gone but not forgotten,
pardon me,
I’m lost it happens often,
caught up in the moment,
high off life and coughin’,
in the light trying to focus,
off my head and on one,

*******,
God blessed,
on with the show,
and off with his head,

and that’s cold,
cold as a guillotine’s steel,
cold as Chicago in the winter,
when it’s 20˚ below before the wind chill,

for real,

it’s cold these days,
just ask a stranger,
saw a show tonight at The Fillmore,
Dave Chapelle with John Mayer,

Dave mentioned the show,
when I saw him at The SF MOMA,
John signed my Frieda poetry book,
that I got today from The SF MOMA,

how am I so in the In Scene,
yet at the same time such a Goner,

come on we’re,
trying to make Greatness,
so there’s no time for the Procrastinators,
and all of their lateness,

got Volume 2,
of The HH Trilogy,
coming soon,
5/5/17…

∆ Aaron LA Lux ∆
author of multiple best selling poetry books and publisher of more poems than any other living poet.

Zack Feb 2014
Some nights I spend sleeping
Other nights I’ll spend resting my head down on a keyboard
Drowning in updates and refreshing pages
Trying to find reasons for being up
so **** late
Lately, these nights that I worked a long eight hour shift
Waiting to escape retail in hopes
My friends aren’t busy, wanting to retell some stories
The nights my friends hop restaurant to restaurant

“We have no place to go"


We’ve been riding these desert streets for hours
Resurfacing our stories to heal our wounds
Or maybe our laughter only masks it
And we like to think it’s both

You can ride these streets as fast as you like, trying to forget,
but tonight,


we write
we ride
we eat
we share

tonight, the moon plays catch-up with us, it’s desert wonderers
the sun, tonight she’ll rest
tonight, the roadrunner
walked
crossed the street with a lizard in its mouth
looked me in the eye and swallowed it
The desert bird didn’t serve its name’s purpose
We’ve realized that sometimes, society, doesn’t serve it’s intentions


but when so
"we have no place to go"
We’ll turn parking lots into neighborhoods
Cars into homes, with kickbacks and house parties
Turn songs into poems
Become poetry ourselves
Become trilogies of our most battered loved lives
Find excuses for where the stars lie
And sometimes we’ll swear they lie in our ex’s eyes
And we’ll become what we don’t want to be in the dark

vulnerable


walking roadrunners


poets who don’t write

but in that moment, were just teenagers


"with no place to go"


We swear this summer is ours,
That growing up doesn’t have to be synonymous with change
That human beings aren’t equivalent to seasons
That poems actually can be never ending
if only we have the courage to
write the beginning

That Denny’s will always be a hotspot
Cafe’s are temporary
Dollar Menu’s are forever
We’re everything but hungry

Only starving
For inspiration in a wasteland
Unquenchable thirst for dreams of doing
something in empty parking lots
Trying to fill voids.

Tonight,
We replace our heartbreaks with these nights
The nights we walk across roads
Unknowing the other side, with lizards halfway down our throats

Tonight
We write, without looking both ways


~
matt bates Apr 2015
ink
I used to think lying down was therapeutic.
Well, I still do,
It's just that I recognize how comforting
Standing on my own can be
Looking above the ***** of dust
That litter the ***** tile underneath the bookcase
Allows an entirely new point of view
And ability to notice the picture frames
With pictures that hold so much action
In squares that don't move.
Before, those pictures were only to be seen
When a strong breeze came through the window
And knocked them onto the ground
But now, from this perspective
There's really no way to know
Whether the picture is hard to see because of the cracks after it fell
Or from you fading from my memories so much that even pictures are unfamiliar.
It's almost as if instead of a photo collection,
My newfound view has allowed me to stumble into a library,
One I created myself, but filled with stories of somebody else,
And just like the layer of dust that has made itself at home atop the glass screen of the frames
I have to blow on each separate page as I turn through
This vaguely familiar story
With characters I kind of recognize
And places I feel like I've been
And as I go deeper and deeper into the library
I begin to realize how many short stories are buried deep in the back corners
In comparison to the couple of epic poems that still lie wide open in the front
As if I had just finished reading them
Whether I meant to or not.
And with each row of books I find myself immersed in
I become more and more interested
and even though they're cloudy, the pictures my mind creates from the stories
Become more and more vivid inside my head
Almost jumping off the page
With characters so real I could imagine myself there
Which made a desire start to form rapidly and intensely inside of me
To write another book
Because when I look at the author of each of these books
Even their name sounds like a sound I've heard before
Something I've heard my whole life
And it makes me want to be like them
And create books like these myself
So while my conscious mind gently lets my body wipe the dust off these old photos
And finally put them away for good
My subconscious being lets me close down this library for good
And the two finally meet together at the coffee shop down the street from my house
And at the park across town
And at the local restaurant with friends who look like they might have been the ones in the pictures long ago
Who've already written dozens of trilogies since
And who invite me to become a character in theirs
And finally, I feel like there's a fresh new bookcase, and a empty camera roll that need to be filled
So the next chapter is finally here
And I'm excited to turn these pages for once.
B J Clement Jun 2014
Once I had a Trilogy-a curious little thing
it had but three tiny legs and a little wing,
it used to flutter round the floor, in a manner most amusing
and settle snugly on my lap when 'ere it felt like snoozing.
It's little eye would follow me as I went about my duties,
and all my friends admired it, for it had a curious beauty.
But now the little fellow's gone to a better place,
which abounds with Trilogies, that curious three legged race.
Ken Voltaire Jul 2019
Fresh, sour,
Cowardly and brave,
All lives within.
Tales of fear and valour,
Novels that turn into trilogies that turn into mysteries.
None shall tell the tale.
Not mind,
Nor face,
Nor body.
I am life,
And I am a mystery.
Hello again!
poetryaccident Aug 2017
In waking life I have a dream
of three slugs put to skull
this is a fantasy I'll admit
because only one would do the trick

in my dreams I find escape
calm is found with visitors
transients blurred by shifting scenes
seeming normal in nightly realms

then I wake from torpid bliss
find myself within the chains
ternary dreads await the soul
that drifts among the lucky ones

the sleeping hours ignore this theme
the trilogies are heavenly
with no taint of deepest angst
asking balm by three times fired.

© 2017. Sean Green. All Rights Reserved. 20170731.
“Three Slugs” is a very dark poem contrasting the struggle of waking life with that of calming sleep.
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2022
title - jack, shoot!
body - join
the barber shop
brigade:
best start?
at an afro.     502 bad gateway bypass


nothing ever good came from thinking of oneself
as being good...
nothing! zilch! it's only dawning on me...
not that this fact is dawning upon me...
i knew this already, almost "always"...
   nothing good ever came from thinking oneself
as being good...
like i explained to Khedra: but she insisted:
you're good... yeah... but i don't think i'm good...
why would i? i also don't want to feel happy...
happiness doesn't allow you to be reflective...
it makes you reflexive: you're living in the moment:
lost to it... melancholy gives one a higher purpose...
it enlarges your capacity for memory...
anything that erodes the acidity of pedagogy...
pointless facts and rubrics and arithmetic that
poisons the minds of men and women who end up...
performing menial tasks of labour...
what has 1 + 1 = 2 got to do with anything when
stacking shelves at a supermarket?!
  absolutely **** all!
                      the psychological schematic
dissection of parts and pieces... of...
well... if "god" does not exist...
     why should a soul exist... and why should there
even be a logic behind it?
    and so... in vitro? in the dimension of glass...
in dimension of mirrors and smoke...
because where is the agony of fire?
                 oh, those cigarette burns on my knuckles
of my left arm are nicely healing...
stigma surrounding a man harrowing
his libido through a brothel...
   didn't the English girls leave double-standards
lying about? too hard to get? ******* nuns...
the best i ever got was...
this girl's dog... licking my ears...
      but i told it: not the face... sure... lick my ears...
then the licking of the knuckle wounds...
oh sweet pain... the highest form of sensation...
mind you: i couldn't possible exercise giving
pain that i myself couldn't ingest...
oculus per oculus: an eye for an eye...
           it resounds... echoes: fair...
primitive... but...         n'ah... none of this modern
secular *******... it's "humane" for delaying
punishment...
    oh man... she should have come out with it
in the beginning... i gave off a scent of being appealing...
thump! the accusation! get me fired!
#metoo... she liked me immediately...
             stupid girl... got tangled up in...
a tactic that backfired... self-sabotage...
            well... can't back away from this one...
i did mention along the way:
   i wouldn't date anyone i worked with...
sort of unprofessional...
                    if she wanted to date me... i offered her
the prospect... so she got herself fired...
blocks me on all avenues of communication...
how's that going to work?!
there's playing coy... there's playing hard-to-get...
and then there's: just the plain daft: impossible...
madwoman territory...
  what?! i'm going to raise a kid by one man...
and also... pay off the debt that another man racked up?!
we're not dealing with antiques...
we're dealing with broken women...
women broken by men who were probably raised
by women like her...
       stigma about going to the brothel...
no... i'm sort of immune to that...
last time i went... after an hour...
i was walking down the stairs...
   she was walking ahead of me... she took the time
to walk down the stairs quickly and turn
around... and feast her eyes on me...
what i was wearing... she smacked her lips...
nice... just what i was expecting...
  hmm... in the name of the father and of the son
and the holy ghost...
well... trilogies... trinities... triads?!
              i'm starting to suspect that... i have all the traits
of being... THAT guy...
            spending so much time in German thought...
it's almost, very refreshing ti delve into French thinking...
via translation.... it's very much a "word salad":
a clash of conjunctions & prepositions...
       that's how i see it... it's not like ancient Latin...
odd... whenever the Hebrew deity went...
either the subservient minor (deities) joined the host...
became fallen angels: Ba'al...
   Beelzebub... to name but a few.... Moloch...
                    but like the scripts of the people...
who derided the Hebrews... the script of the Egyptians...
the hieroglyphs... the cuneiform of the Babylonians...
well... the Romans plagiarised the deities
of the Greeks... but... hmm... their text is still
intact... seems like... the Hebrews bewildered
themselves... over 2000 years...
why can't this alphabet, simply, die?!
     oh... this alphabet... it's not going anywhere...
it has become entombed in technology...
  in coding... scribble your little Indu-'Ebrew
schmiggles... sure... add some Arabic wiggles of
you desert people... shame the pig...
                learn to wear shoes that are not made
from pig: leather... keep your pants on without
the use of pig leather used on belts...
                         but... usually... what happened was...
the text of the people would be overcome
by the Hebrew deity...
             lost to time... how adamant of "us" to have
kept it...
sure... but the Runes succumbed to a sense
of sensibility... as this the Glagolitic Script...
      ⰏⰀ: m'ah... he / she (has)
              ᛗᚨ: also m'ah (the H is a surd...
a vowel-catcher... or... the instigator of / for
laughter... thereby a vowel-generator)...
  fair enough... these two alphabets disappeared...
they weren't practical...
even with the Holocaust... how is the Latin
script supposed to simply: "*******"?!
now i see the reemergence of the Egyptian hieroglyphs
with the emoticons...
       are you, absolutely sure... that...
almost everyone has been liberated from the shackles
of illiteracy? you sure?
   i don't think so... i have good reason to not think
so...
           but there's this "feel" among:
but it's the 21st century man... like, what?
that's somehow an opening for enacting
a 2nd year zero scenario?!
           what sort of an excuse is it to give to people
when saying: but it's the 21st century man!
and... human nature... switched off...
from its primordial vectors... overnight...
things suddenly changed when the 20th century
came to a closure? **** me... i thought i was naive...
guess this fox has plenty of chicken shacks
to choose from...
            21st century my ***...
                       it's a bit like that **** myth...
the thousand year *****! ha ha... it sounds... exactly:
just like that... all i hear is "excuses"...
but people are not like x, y & z...
no... people are exactly like the x, y & z
that you don't have the stomach for: digesting...
we're cold... we're calculating...
we're everything we wish we shouldn't be...
               and all the while people scream: oh god!
oh god! why me!
and god replies... but i made you, this way...
because i am, of this nature... of this disposition...
that's how man fell... he tried to overcome
the strict obligations of nature:
for something to exist in the first place...
it must be ruthless... kindness wouldn't bring
any of this to exist in the first place...
              STRIFE... what's the German equivalent?
STREIT... i prefer the English version...
                   if there's no struggle: there's no will...
if there's no will... there's no life...
to hell with freedom per se...
                  freedom akin to happiness is an unsatisfying
concept to want to uphold...
it's: illusionary...
it breeds incompetence... it breeds:
counter-productive-animosity...
                   superficial social standards of:
"invasion of one's personal space":
i haven't hit you yet, just tapped you on the shoulder...
etc.
                such a shame though...
i really fancied her... but off she went looking to be
an abused teenage girl in Rotherham...
waiting for her next Pakistani ****...
                      i tried... guess my words did ring true
in the end... liars don't walk on stilts...
i don't even think i manipulated anyone...
i just waited... i did make sure that my shirts were
properly ironed... that my trousers were too...
that i was properly pampered with the usual suspects
of creams, perfumes... etc.,
         once more: isn't slander... liable in H'america?!
can't you be put in court for... insinuating
a falsehood about someone?
                you know... trying to get them fired...
if she fancied me... but didn't want to work with me...
****'s sake... she SWIPED REAL LEFT this time...
she was swiping left left, left left... while i was working
a shift with her... no wonder i can only get a hard-on
in a brothel... what ******* reality ar we talking about
when it was as easy as going to a bar
and picking up a girl? the 1950s?! and i was accused
of being "out of reach of reality"... really?!
these girls are unavailable... they're talking to you
while also swiping rejection slips on a dating app...
******* herr doktor meister psychologyst...
and... being a hermit for so long...
i thought i'd be the one... telling strangers of my woes...
i remained reserved... and what did i hear?
what i didn't want to hear...
there was no talk about movies... music...
Heidegger's hammer... past relationships... past regrets...
and all... from women! it's almost as if...
something was stolen... the past 20 years...
almost insinuating: and where were you?!
hey... choice is a freedom afforded to us all...
it's this accusative tone... insinuated... covert...
   but, but... but... but...
      yeah... **** happens... that happy ship has sailed;
life.

— The End —