Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Vidya Sep 2013
coyotes like
magenta-clad twentysomethings
screaming:
singing at the unearthly
hour when I
watched the desert
stars overhead and
now I wonder what else it is they’ve
killed

and maybe if I’d hung enough
dreamcatchers I would have
caught all the dreams that
pulled me past
you (step
into my parlor said the spider to the
fly

but what is it anyway that sticks between your eyelids when you
sleep when you
keep your eyes shut and your mouth
open does the sandman glue them
together to resign you to your own
blindness

be careful with your eyes sweetheart because
too many waterfalls leave
cataracts in their wake.
JM Romig Apr 2015
Across the court yard
The amorous twentysomethings
Open their window for the first time

They let the sun shine in -
They do not believe in curtains -
They let the sunshine in

He is Adonis
She is Mona Lisa
I hate them so much

It’s five in the morning
Our child screams us awake
Meanwhile, they sleep until noon

Passing by the window
I glimpse at the lovers entwined
“Not tonight” you yawn

Our friends are laughing
About what, we cannot tell
All we see is their love

He brings her breakfast in bed
Maybe it’s a birthday present? I suggest
Or he ******* up, bigtime - you reply cynically

They’ve become background noise
Only witnessed in passing
Or referenced in our idle conversation

A few weeks have passed
Their room is empty and still
We almost forget they were ever there

She sits on her bed and stares at nothing
She has not moved for hours –
A lonely still life

Adonis is waning
His eyes are sinking, and he’s losing hair
He’s become a walking skeleton

He does not move much these days
All of the time, she waits by his side
For whatever comes next

I keep telling you
That he will soon recover
I have to believe this

He's sitting up today
Telling jokes and laughing,
She's cracking that famous smile

The room is now full
With what must be family and friends
Saying their goodbyes

She is being cradled
by, I think, her mother – or aunt
We weep along

The guests are now long gone
The silence settles like dust
She holds his hand while he fades

Soon, it will be just her (and us)
Left in this quiet room
Alone
napowrimo2015  8/30
Liz Padalino Sep 2011
why do you talk like that?
like a schoolteacher
like your friends
like all the other twentysomethings

like you moved to a big city and here i am in a small town

i've known you your whole life
and now you tell me twice
you grabbed a drink last week

i could sense the tone as i read
it was not the you i knew

and i told you to get real

she said to me:
you've been reading too much of that guy
who wrote catcher in the rye


and i went silent and you were ****** right
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2016
it's rare, very rare that i have dream,
but sometimes it does happen,
a dolphin's nose-dive into the literal,
into the unknown, into the peaceful,
i never try to dream, but sometimes
punching a beehive reflects reality.

the content?
a cliche dream, very much a circumstance
of teenage despair,
hapless teens surrounded by the horror,
not out of vanity i will claim
the words: i am the horror.
a group of them, to my count
they number spelling out the word
S-A-N-I-T-Y (six then)
with the letters etched onto their foreheads,
i find one of the teens banging his
head on a metal door chanting some
obscure variation of a Buddhist mantra,
i am but a thick smog
   and a certainty of dasein -
a dasein of lost care and a gravity of
feeling entertained pulverising the vision...
it's a question of photon energy
in total darkness... a foxtrot sense of
spontaneity: out of nothing, out of sleep:
dreams... and given the adventure into
harnessed natural energy,
how they captured the wind with don Quixote
among cyclopean giants and wind-farms:
surely a day will come when
lightning will be harnessed, some future
Prometheus will bring down once more,
for too long lightning was ignored as engaging
our elemental techno, shrouded by a god -
what titan if not an Ōrāmetheus (oora'h me-theology /
imploring a hostile universe to think like a god:
the definition of being titan,
caged in the reality of Titus Andronicus) -
then how to harness lightning:
    the greatest favour for mankind,
   upon the altar of what's offered by either
world-by-chance or a gambling-deity;
petulence? that too; after all the world was created
out of petulence... given so many exact figurines
in mathematics, akin to the perpetual spiral of π,
all constants in science came from a petulant
argument for anything at all... a slight deviation
of the pristine Brahman's nonchalance
                 in what rhetoric could be overheard
prior to the rhetoric actual.
   then onto the reality check... can you really
read a newspaper these days seriously and not after
a whiskey-sharpshooter?
  can you live on these isles and not pretend to be
Philip Augustus playing off Scotland, Wales, England
and Ireland against each other like Henry II
John and Richard I?
                you probably can't...
                             you're either going to
gain some sense via Longshanks or the Confessor
into the dynamism... and if only Elizabeth was young
i'd say what Ali G said: bright-knockout-pokers
and edible ******* to boot...
                     but granny ****? n'ah mate, ****
that ****... i'm waiting on Charlie Chappers
              like a weasel, I R.
    but you can't read newspapers sober these days,
or what's called the 'the old get richer and the young get
poorer', the housing market... twentysomethings are
growing angry... a retired banker's daughter
is in puffy-fit frenzy of: ooh! grr!
   send in Mary 'blazin' Poppins!
                                     but it's always good to borrow
from genius... an exquisite part from *girls aloud

song the show -
            should'a known, should'a cared
should'a hung around the kitchen in my underwear
                                                                  acting like a lady
you should'a made me, oh
should'a jumped a little higher
should'a fluttered my mascara like a butterfly
instead of being lazy, that would have saved me
,
and that's hardly a blue oyster gay bar sorta tune...
gay bars are weird, you end up walking in there
   and snogging some Brazilian, high on the atmosphere
    and *****; and yes,
  pop has that infectious tendency for creating
universal appeal... pop is ******* when all
other genres are *** (no one admits to it, or finds himself
boasting about it)... and find me a poncy geek
greedy with salivating overly toward tendencies of listening
to prog rock within a mile-radius from when you hear
the prelude and the postlude... because that isn't
exactly as chorus.
      in china three generations live under one roof...
in western society - should'a thrown less
                                                 teenage tantrums
...
     well, isn't it humbling to actually have parents?
        cool kid, dar she blows! plonk...
timber!  if the Jews said in Poland prior to 1939
    your streets, our tenements...
   a lot of Arabs are saying of London: your streets,
our tenements
... but then it could also be the nuo-rich
Russians too...                and boy... look how
the far right arose in the 20th century... here we go again.
Carl Velasco Aug 2017
When we lose
There comes to be a reversal process;
a rapid prototype souped into bitten rhythm.
And then you collide, like
light particles melting film to form
some replica of an inner war. What is it
about trying; what does attempt do –
Pacify? Resize? Boost the morale
of twentysomethings clinging
to past participles like the sting of a bee?
What can you do to stop the ache
of feeling like ****? What is there to grasp
when no light appears?
But then a day comes.
It’s all fine, with friends, with music, with
anything other than self-flagellation.
At which point I fight the fight not to stay
a mere summary.
The last prescient perspicacious politician,
who presided at the White House
ran out of office despite victorious landslide win
most Democrats gave their signed,
sealed, and delivered grudging approval,
but could not stem the crowdsourced
riptide of repudiation, a buzzfeeding,
and deafening chorus
of dyed in the wool rambunctious raconteur
Norwegian bachelor farmers
linkedin to radical reprobates,
hence subsequently our boy
from Scranton, Pennsylvania
found himself exiled to Uranus.

Tis now the time for
Forty sixth American president
to best relinquish figurative reins
as commander in chief
cognitive delays erupt frequently
fostering speculation
as to his wherewithal to serve
as oldest commander in chief
(since inception of North American republic)
being an octogenarian
launching a second administration,
I strongly encourage him
to harken back

circa nearly two hundred
and fifty years ago,
when founding fathers
took the global stage
surrendering mantle to Young Turk
such tapping qualified
representative of Generation X
Millennials or Generation
failing to forget at two score and four
constitutes average age of Founding Fathers
some less than 40 years ol in 1776
with several qualifying as founding teenagers
and twentysomethings.

Young Caucasian men all
most of the Founding Fathers genealogy
traced back thru English ancestry
many could attest family roots
extending across various regions
of the British Isles, including Scotland
Wales, and Ireland.

Fraternization among the wealthiest people
in the Colonies when they drafted
and signed the Constitution,
they pretty much expected vested gentry
to continue to guide the young nation.

None of the storied lives
of the newly formed patriarchal government
predicated upon The Articles of Confederation,
prepared by John Dickinson,
and the Declaration of Independence,
drafted by Thomas Jefferson,
both contain the phrase
"United States of America,"
which name officially adopted
by the second Continental Congress
on September 9, 1776.

Hard fought pitched battles would ensue
(and still spark fiery protestations)
eventually securing enfranchisement
for sidelined populations meaning
White Anglo Saxon Protestant men
no longer the exclusive voting bloc...

Unless das auld Don brooks
no Barron naked lady,
and by hook or by crook wins carpe momentum
snags, nabs, clinches, et cetera
courtesy political landscape gerrymandered
to twerk a Republican landslide,
⁦Tuesday, November 5, 2024⁩
choice for forty seventh commander in chief
(the 60th quadrennial presidential election)
securing the mantle of führer -
taking a page from Mein Kampf playbook.

Welcome to triumphant Trump land,
a webbed wide world demanding fidelity
courtesy his totalitarian crushing paws
wielding ineradicable, indestructible,
incontrovertible ******* *******,
whereat trampling colossal pachyderm
crushing into pulp
competitors, (especially contenders
braying, fearing, and opposing Donkeyhotey)
on the playing (né killing) ****** fields
little absolute zero vestige of democracy.

Existential nihilism of mine
would get ratcheted to the max,
cuz autocracy will punish as a crime
any nonestablishmentarian characteristics
diametrically divergent
from the credo declaring
fealty to the national socialism
(a form of nationalism
with socialist characteristics
sometimes referred to as nationalist socialism -

paving thee way for ******,
a form of German nationalism
and fascism promoted in Germany
by the **** Party de rigueur paradigm
guaranteeing for life self declared dictator
and his iron maiden,
who will hastily usher legislation
decreeing unquestionable obeisance
to the prophet (profit) of money
the twin principles

(with a twenty first century
twist and shout) eminent domain
and manifest destiny,
particularly within the realm
describing the outer limits
of the solar system, where dark shadows
witness colonization of the Earth's moon,
and other planets'
promising natural satellites.

Where yours truly predice dystopia
the cut throat machiavellian methodologies,
he (who luxuriates in the role of tyrant)
and his cronies will bleed the electorate dry
proving the maxim
you can't get blood out of a stone
totally false, and fueling, jump/
kickstarting, and orchestrating
(videre licet burning fossil fuels
at the expense of Gaia)
foisting horrendous impetus
on third rock from the sun
maximum destruction the name of the game
far from whatever loss of life and limb
concerning rendering extinct
multitudinous genus and species
constituting the biosphere.

Fast forward bajillion years
Terra Mater Prada raiment she wears.

— The End —