Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2016
sometimes you look at these people and think:
is it better me drinking whiskey, or is it better treating
them ontologically as zoological specimen
                                                  and worth of caging?
i think that the Aristotelian awe-principle
for the practice of philosophy was
overly-exaggerated with dues
that consider science, i think that science
confiscated the emotional
imprint of philosophy that's bound to awe
and said: willcommen unto die phobia-realm...
which i still ascribe to postcolonialism...
  the times' propaganda say:
             arachnophobia is perfectly suited
to match-up to a billionth remark of Islam,
which is why i find Islamophobia so weird...
   arachnophobia consists of only one spider...
minding the phobic in Islam?
                          it's not a case of one spider...
it's a case of spiders...
                             they can't reason with
the Big Brother opportunism, which exists...
turning the blind eye won't help...
  it will simply aggrivate such people...
and using this language has created such
frustrations... correctly? aggravate,
dance of vowels. phobias aren't big, they're small...
miniscule... tell people that something is
small when it's actually big enforcers
a postcolonial past more so...
   i see these children like the psychotic reaction
to a prophesy kindred ot Harold II's slaughter
of the innocents...
                  they're there to edorese someone...
      after all: who gives a **** about these people?
                                                         ­  (endorse)
the psychiatrist gets paid, the mental health nurse
gets paid... why would they give a **** in a way
that says: i wasn't paid for this bollocking!
  maybe up in Manchester... but down here in London,
they don't buy disguises, you're
labelled Romanian: you're bound home where
you could have been a plumber but are reduced
to a straitjacket because: some ******* said
you didn't **** her... Philip Collins and hey:
welcome to paradise.
                        down 'ere in Loon-town you get
your money's worth...      
                   i wish they took care of me...
   silence pays... you get your cringe's worth of ****
to the Kilimanjaro's worth of calling
               bottled crema-foam on a phallus
an anorexia... as i see it: anorexia in Freudian lingo
is an objection toward treating ****** artefacts
in culinary terms... means that paradox
of having a cake and eating it too...
                obviously you'll sexualise problems...
i think anorexia is a question of making
          ****** parts culinary aggregates...
                i'm not jotting: girl, aged, 16, ***-starved..
i mean in general... making ****** objects
equivalent toward a culinary status for a care
to make them more appealing in being ******...
the anorexic might start thinking: so i **** it,
and don't eat it?   penguin clap for an icecream cone!
ruffian yoga minus the slippers and the seal clapping...
the loudest revision of applause: i can guarantee....
cos the flippers were wet... hence the additional
aquatic acoustic.
                    this is very much akin to that quantum
theory of: tornado at coordinate a.,
         and a butterfly as coordinate b.,
          i can see anorexia as a substitute to sexualised
preferences in making body-parts partially edible...
            i see **** i think of the cow's ******-pouch / pillow...
    i don't know, maybe because being in my 30s
i can still fake arousal when looking at it...
       i am not the original alienist... some martian
took my title role...
          but i can understand anorexia as a way to rebel
against putting potato mash and a steak and a few
veggies with the same duty nod as one might put
a ******* object into one's mouth and having to
a Werther's Original suckling tactic on it and
never attach a bone to it, i.e. never eat it...
      anorexia by my standard is verily sexualised...
   you put something into an open space and
it's almost a trans-transgender movement...
      which is why i find the transgender "curiosities"
obstructs in art... post-transgender occupancies
           are not reserved for the easily pleased...
anorexics are such people...
             this is sexuality confused with dietary requirements...
this isn't a circumstance of pronouns politicised
and exploits of modern medicine...
                   i do tend to abuse seafood
whenever i am cringed by the suggested floral pattern
whenever i dare not see the benefits of cesarean...
and i just can't see islamophobia fitting the irrational
rationality of other conscripted phobias...
          poor choice of Greek to be honest...
                      i think they're referring to:
a subtler suggestion, minus the crusading empowerment
that's yet to be honed on...
                        well **** yeah...
once you've actually a philosophy book,
   you'll become immune to any writing advice...
                you'll actually become immune
to advice for writers.... bhy writers... because you'll
realise their opinions are disputable and therefore
disposable... because they forgot that the one thing
that democracy hates... is its subversion,
                     art is the foremost stealth-seeker of
despotism in democracy... because it simply loathes
plagiarism... art is despotism in democracy...
               and it knows it... it's just too "shy" (aah...
wee wee poo poo) to admit it...
                 from what i learned from athos?
the best advice? is to not give any advice.
                    athos? alex dumas, the three musketeers.
the moment you finish a philosophy book,
a creative writing workshop and a quote by
Hemingway will seems as nothing but a bad dream -
these quotes come from people who abhorred
the mere concept of spelling, due and through
it being an "inconvenience"...
this is from people who suggested you were always
an incapable narrator without a daydream to
escape into... these writers began sounding like
your english teachers...
              then again... is sexualising problem better
than abstracting them? personally, and
without due approval: and all the more happy for
such a circumstance having been presented for me...
            we know the sane are too numerous
because they are allowed to make too much sense
of their dreams...
                     i contend anorexia, not as an eating disorder,
but as a disorder of a culinary aversion toward
          sexualising non-culinary objects in culinary terms...
or adding cream to the phallus or melted chocolate
to the ****...
                 i find that certain culinary objects are
oversexualised...
   and this is the norm: that extends into what
quantifies as the norm, for the norm is always
a quantifiable parameter than a qualifiable
      exchange, since an exchange never appreciates
     a qualification, or a grocer's worth of norm
for a conversation of two quid's worth of earning
equates to 20 tomatoes...
    we have assumed to know it all
whereas we are congregating in a plughole
     of close proximity prefixes, i.e.
re-: reflect, reflection, reflexion, reflex,
  reiteration, reimagining, retraction, reaffirmation...
    it's a tsunami of language / lounging with too
many images... it's "lounging" with too many images...
it's the proximity of prefixes... twinned with
the opportunism of the genus of synonyms creating
a deaf-shaft of faking rhetoric...
     i still placard the whole circumstance
a dance of vowels, or the unforced deviation of
keeping up an aesthetic....
                     no, i can't claim schooling,
because i don't want to claim being indoctrinated...
     and perhaps my Freudian is a little-bit
copper-wired / ageist...
                  but isn't food for the anorexic
  a bit like turning a ****** object into food
          for the ennobled aggregational stereotype?
the jokes aren't jokes for anorexics...
  the cucumber is doubly manifest
                         as both edible, as both sexually
arrogant... and thirdly as "inspiration" for
an architectural project...
                      oh **** fame... little albino blondie
can **** on my testicular cancer for all i care...
               and say the bulge was: like
******* on a cowish ******...
                                      i like puppets anyway,
cos i'm a bit laxed in that way...
                         for all the things that might be
given, of the few things that can't be translated
from house or car, or a wife and 3.4 children statistic:
personal integrity.
        obviously certain people can only hum along
to the achievements of a zenith's worth of a house
and a car and a dog...
                            personal integrity is almost too much
for them, such "essential" components of being
a human rather than doing a human reaction
       later involve the cliche of the ultimate gamble...
and we all know how humans love to gamble...
well... few ever manage to gamble the stake of:
a leap of faith... and we all know how Nolan's inception
         ends...           that's me seeing the film a few years later...
      so how does man, the gambler fair
   when he's asked to gamble with the odds
  leap ratioed against a stumble?
                                      numbered is that 10:1?
it's just fascinating that vowels are the sole assured
                        proprietor of "dyslexia",
or as i care to mind: even with a language proficiency...
and tongue-tied waggle that's excusable for
anyone ready to write something down.
      i can appreciate being an individual,
but i can't celebrate it... i'll only utilise my individuality
to create a new plateau, a norm, the most
distinguished liberalism of my individualism;
     i will only utilise my individuality to create a new
norm - and anything that comes against it:
can burn in hell.
Matthew P Beron May 2014
Unforced Smile

this is just a warning
if you see me bite my lip
while staring into space
I'm probably deep in though
hearing a song
a hopeful melody
with two part harmony
imagining you and I
together again
if i squint my eyes
I'm sharpening focus
bringing you closer
than you've ever been
and if I shiver
I've felt your touch
maybe just a brush
across the shoulder
more than enough
for an unforced smile
Renee Jan 2015
For the first time in his life,
he was speechless
not a word to say
A thought unformed,
a bell not rang
silently staring,
mouth agape
at the woman who made him think
in different ways

For the first time in her life,
she was speechless
to the woman who told her
she was beautiful
in so many different ways
she was speechless to the friends she had made
unable to formulate words,
chatterbox broken,
a record skipping

Like any other time in his life,
he was speechless,
not a word to say,
unforced words to people he'd never known
to people who don't care
until he's online,
with his fair share.

Like any other time in her life,
she was speechless,
but no,
not on paper,
her words flowed like a rushing river
but only on paper
to be unseen but to her.
Mol Dec 2022
Oh, hello itch,
I've not missed you!
Nor your pleading, uneasy,
Eager smile,
Wicked begging eyes,
And hungry open mouth.
I've quite enjoyed this past while,
Lacking your insistent whispers.
Your lustful face
Looming round each corner of my boxed up,
Broken brain -
'FRAGILE - Do Not Break'
Ignored by the world -
Allowing you unforced entry,
You made a home
Hidden in the shadow
Of my unconscious darkness.
Fitfully coming to light
To remind me
Of yours and therefore my own;
Plea to die.
It just doesn't work like that.  Like a big switch in my head,  (grubby and greasy with finger prints), buzzing and humming when turned on.  

Actually,  maybe it's just like that but...

the thing is,  if I were to ramble 'bout all the ways you are just so god ******....
well, that's the kind of **** that makes people want to throw up.

So if you could somehow just take my word for it that you are...

that poster that hung on my wall when I was twelve,

a wholesome dream as much as a pornographic one,

****** decadence all mixed up with kittens and puppy dogs,

well then

we could keep on loving and living well and forget about things as pretentious, narcissistic and nauseating as a poem.
untitled Aug 2018
those that see beauty in everything feel the most discontent.
there are extreme emotions that one who is creative must process--
an unforced authenticity and tenacity to stay focused on a subject,
and to devote the same amount of attention to each entity, that you lose a sense of self and a sense of the world around you.

we use stress as a way of pushing us forward,
and only in moments of extreme stress does an amazing happening occur.
and for this, we are deemed odd, as a normal person thrives where they are most comfortable.

the originality that visionaries possess is exhausting, yet we admire it.
we allow for many things to flow in our minds without halt,
all notions and ideas taking up precedence, and this may be our greatest fault.

day break to sunset, my mind is racing non-stop, constantly,
to the point that sleep does nothing to quell the overthinking brain,
as my lucid dreams act as a force to keep me awake at night.
my mind is in a perpetual state of fantasy, sometimes during everyday life in bouts of daydreams,
imaging new situations and being unable to describe it all.

when I try to silence the thoughts that persistently flux through my mind,
my talents feel wasted during this time of artistic deprivation,
and only do I feel truly sound when I create new artworks for a few to discern.

sometimes I feel as though my mind feeds off on my depressive states,
as it takes the deepest of emotions to generate proufound art.
while I wish to be happy, I have a need to be in a bit of a sustained disarray.
something I wrote in December
(after my finals)
Shari Forman Feb 2013
Give me your strength as a tennis player,
Your kindness and compassion too.

For learning from your consistency,
And having your jokes glued to me too.

Striving to become you,
You help me overcome frustration over a point too.

You teach me to try my best,
And use the right grip too.

I’m rolling on the floor,
Laughing to your ironic jokes too.

You’re a great friend,
And my tennis partner too.

Besides your jokes,
I admire the effort you present too.

You’re very honest and sincere,
And fun to be around too.

My jokes will never surpass yours,
As our friendship grows too.

You make me ecstatic,
The laughter and joy increases too.

You lift me up when I’m down,
Teaching me how to become a great tennis player too.

Watching you before my eyes,
Make me not only smile but really adore you.

You’re an inspiration,
And spontaneous too.

You would fight till your goal is reached,
And improve on your unforced errors too.

I’ve known you for eleven years,
As we played together too.

I’ve been timid around you at first,
Not even glancing at you too.

Over each year we’ve talked more,
Now we’re best friends too.

I hope these years will continue,
And we’ll see each other too.

We’ve been through exhilarant and complicated times,
But we’ve been through much excitement too.

I’m grateful to have met someone like you,
You make me feel worth while,
Playing a suspenseful game of tennis too.
John F McCullagh Jul 2017
There are several approaches to climbing Everest.
Some are easier than some others, none are easy.
This mountain is littered with discarded equipment
and the evidence of loss and unforced errors.
The cold here, at the top of the world,
pierces through your clothes
Like a million acupuncture needles.
The air is so thin
That hypoxia is a constant danger.
There is exhilaration at the summit
For those who reach the top
They stand where Mallory and Irvine stood
before they suffered their fatal drop.
We climb mountains because we are men.
We are addicted to the adrenaline rush.
We climb Everest because it is there.
We climb Everest because we must.
Andrew "Sandy" Comyn Irvine (8 April 1902 – 8 June 1924) was an English mountaineer who took part in the 1924 British Everest Expedition, the third British expedition to the world's highest (8,848 m) mountain, Mount Everest.

While attempting the first ascent of Mount Everest, he and his climbing partner George Mallory disappeared somewhere high on the mountain's northeast ridge. The pair were last sighted only a few hundred metres from the summit and it is unknown if the pair reached the summit before they perished. Mallory's body was found in 1999, but Irvine's body has never been found.
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2016
a google-whack for the ultimate news reel: #jigo'hudami.

and not another Shakespeare to come, #blues,
and not another Milton to come, #blues,
and not another Beckett to come, #blues,
an not another unforced Bukowski to come, #blues,
and not another papa Ginsberg to come, #blues,
and not another fusion of poetry and jazz, #blues -
not another, the lost interest in jazz,
the it's been done, and only in America, #blues -
and not another Dostoyevsky to come, #blues,
and no one is digging digital trenches like at Ypres
             capitalising on the gambling of
giving it all, even if it means giving it for nothing
imagining daymares of homelessness, #blues -
and no more fusion worked from the stale juggernauts
of voice in the wilderness, or voice among aghast silence -
and no one is writing intoxicated odes in a Dionysian
woodland shade naked or at least half naked - #blues,
and no one new knows how having voyeuristic eyes
not looking at your poetry on the internet feels like,
before the broadband hyper super hyper mega tron
optic wires before the ancient tee p p **** dial to
connect - rotary dial telephones and aesthetic patience -
dial-a-meaning now, collect, appropriate, discard -
super-communicative efficiency like the Chinese
but in lesser number - lesser number - a moment to
unwind - choose a graphic for the front-cover -
Dali? really? quote: morbid and dark and a surrealist?
surrealists wrote their poetry at the beginning of the
20th century - again, what a treat, cook up a 21st century
manifesto - overshoot the mark - the macabre non-Gothic,
and so no angel with a sword near the chapel entrance
but a gargoyle - a gargantuan bore - agreed...
and not another william blake to come, #blues,
and not another richard brautigan to come, #blues,
dual citizen of the world - from one underworld to another,
Morse code typescript, or telegram poetry -
poetry telegramic - the reinvention of the cut-up technique,
but less paper clippings of single words shoved in
a hat like someone about to wear latex gloves and write
a ransom letter - telegramic poetry - the cut up is more
linear, less word from newspapers cut and then picked
at random, hoping for the big winner - conscious of
the river course - telegram! - opening page from
l'Étranger (e.g.):
mother died - - - - - - - telegram - - - - - - - at Marengo - - -
2 days leave - - - - - absurd already, apologies for death -
- - - - - (yes, a reader, not the narrator, and not - - - - - - - -
explicitly like a telegram) - - - - (self-explanatory auto-) -
- exactly, at every turn some excuse, but what a grand
excuse, god's turn, excuses after the fashionable 15 minutes -
nothing prior - - - - lunch at Céleste’s restaurant - - - - -
starting to look anti-autobigraphical (i.e. written much too
late, not day-by-day, *Kronos
Witold Gombrowicz) - - -
calls Emmanuel to be lent a black tie - - - joke, karate - -
not so funny - - - d'uh, belt - - - mourning band - - - - - - -
with a white ******* rotated 45° from that famous
re-interpretation - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - good something -
running for the bus - - - soldier's shoulder, sleep - - - - -
warden absent, waiting with a chatty doorman - - - - - - - -.
well it could work -this telegram style, it's the easiest style
to read, the Nova Express proves it, the Soft Machine
proves it, Naked Lunch proves it - the incoherent distraction,
well, coherently incoherent - sometimes you want to
see a tornado rather than an open stretch of road in a desert -
a ****** tornado - whirling and whirling with Loki
playing a flute - and something about the great milkman
being choked by a marshmallow monster in the sky -
or, of course, with the sensible people - an Ikea assembly
manual for a chair - with one but the most crucial ***** missing:
metaphor for the 10% books, that's 10% in, 20% up on sales
of audiobooks - hyper-readers, ages: 18-24 - 24-35 (21%) -
and then thick mud ahead, an opera of yawns and a gym
membership one tier above the no-fun zone of sometimes
an index wet and a judo flick of the page - or any other
comparison - but on the plus - and not another Walt Whitman
to come - #bangersandmash, and not another Pound
to come - #blues - in with the pretentious you say out
with the feral? maybe... maybe not - but all of this for only
one sentence: to be nervous over ethnicity and vocabulary -
shouldn't exist - to pursue active censorship of a person's
vocabulary is to undermine them completely -
when corporations copyright words because they're logos
i can understand - but people copyright words something's
obviously wrong, somehow i imagine corporate influence
at having taught this lesson - it should exist - or... in what tone?
but already, people what inoffensive and frail - they
want cushions but don't want stones - and it's every single
time - where once words flowed freely no words stumble
against everyone being politicised - it's hard to do your job
these days, whatever it might be - some would say once
the figurehead a throng of courtesans and you knew of importance,
you were so far away from the seat of power you enjoyed
one sq. mile rather than daydreaming about if you ruled
the world - cost-effective inefficiency of politics -
life? unaffected - and it's not even some glorious technique
behind it - the same children that lied have simply
learned to evolve lying into negation - ah, whatever, #blues,
#Rakı.
jeffrey robin Jun 2013
The simple
Uncomplicated

Unforced

Accepted

Movement of Spirit

The rising
The falling

Fullness
The gentleness

Of holy life

YOUR BREATH

-------
Imagine a

Lifeguard
(You)

Giving

Artificial respiration

To every human being
-----

Well
In
Truth

It is not imagination !
It is not artificial !
----
Now

Everyone that you inspire is doing the
Same
To you and to everyone!

--ENORMOUS--
The amount of power
The amount of *******
That is truly here

Truly possible

If we knew it
If we would not abuse it!
---

We must have TRUE KNOWLEDGE
TRUE WISDOM

ALL else is merely petty

A else
Is living in darkness
Nena Twedell Sep 2014
There's a hole deep down inside of me
That cannot be filled
No matter how hard I try
Self medicating only makes the bottom deeper

This hole is much like a black hole
It will **** everything good that seems to come close inside
to never be seen again

Afraid to see what is down at the bottom of the hole
Afraid that it will be forever there
I search for something more
Something to fill it in with
Spiritual rituals become dull
And life leaves me complacent
Searching searching searching

Hoping that some day the hole will soon be filled again
That a smile will be across my face unforced
Searching searching searching to fill this deep deep dark hole inside of me.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2016
poetry can resemble a jackson ******* method - but it can also resemble sitting on the stairs in the garden, just when winter starts to dig into it's cold at night (but still not cold enough) for a man drinking beer and smoking cigarettes to feel the skin etch out in itches from the mild freeze, and imagining himself holding the beer bottle with skeletal fingers... then the thoughts come... nothing is really planned by a narrator working out a fictional linear process, it's more like that soviet invention of a game of tetris, thoughts come, the ego disappears, thoughts arrange for a brief narrative, then disappear, new thoughts come, then a randomisation process takes over, until ex nihil complete dispersion, the faculty of thinking is exiled, and the faculty of memory takes over.*

after watching two grand movies in one day,
it felt really sour to return to the grand stasis of things,
the only constellations that are visible
without any ******* notion of light pollution
are scorpio and the big dipper...
the litter dipper is more dim this year,
so dim i mistook the earth's celestial geographic
route as spring summer the big dipper is
when in autumn winter the big dipper is
the small dipper... but seeing the two in the night
once i became aspirational in my error -
if only the prefix aspi- existed, derived from
aspen to the added continuance of the word
left: rational: rationality based upon unforced error?
but these two films: kingsman: the secret service
& the hobbit: the desolation of smaug
you get penetrated by so many active ingredients
for the narration via images, that when you
un-glue your eyes from plato's cave (actors
are the best conclusive interpretation of shadows,
no rabbits in the hand to be mistaken for the real things)
you get this drawback sensation of having to focus
on inanimate things in stasis -
and it can & does become pretty glum,
esp. if you want to return to the realm of using
phonetic symbols, to not speak in reserve for
an up-and-coming stage performance
but to see the glaring starry composition of hidden
things in the things already seen...
so there with the beer, scorpio elsewhere
the big dipper only thing providing me with
a workable dynamic: in schematic
          
       .         .
                    
                       .
                .

       .
            .

               .


i had to active this arrangement of stars
to negated feeding my exposure to
so many images...
i began by coupling the stars: three couplets
one star the odd one out...
then i started to create a dynamic
on the basis of geometry, a geometric
non-linear representation of infinity,
but the constellation into a circle,
and therefore thought of infinity as not
beginning                         sequence                    end,
after all, infinity as a constant interchange
of 10 distinctions 0 - 9 can be ridiculous,
whereby infinity just becomes a randomisation:
either 14123480345792340834 etc.
or 12300984393657499393030, etc.
so using geometry i need to acquire
a infinite parallelism, infinite parallelism
implied as non-convergence.... two points
small enough (atoms, sub-atomic particles,
stars) to interact in parallel, but never converge,
for if convergence was possible...
i wonder: me being conscious of being
the olympic gold swimmer to the ****?
i hardly think so.
i can perceive atoms via the greek imagination
or with the galileo of small-print via the microscope,
but i can't individuate an atom of some sort
to a specified functional guarantee: well yeah,
sulphur stinks... but i could technically
atomise the one unit in my capacity to a state
of an atom... my self... given the number of people
and all the chance interactions in an environment
big enough to all a minuteness of the atomised self...
which is perhaps the counter to that old chestnut
known as solipsism: how to get the right phonetically
chemical concoction to get an etymologically word
out of this? atomipsism? no philology in me just
yet to open the bible of philology (the dictionary)
or bother thesaurus rex for comparative literature.
but anyway, as things go i was musing this other thing,
the fame of achilles with the modern fame machinery...
back then you really had to push the right buttons,
and your actual fame was post-mortem, in order
that you might be glorified in some way...
modern fame seems like a bad orwellian joke...
it's translated into our modern themes of catchphrases
slogans and trademarks as c.c.t.v., a ****** camera
on your shoulder... it actually is a bad orwellian joke...
no double think i rephrased into:
there are more c.c.t.v. cameras in england than in
all of europe put together... so the double think
is as this:
a. should i be bothered, or
b. should i not be bothered?
i'll answer with my usual enigmatic methodology by
just changing the subject -
we left the realm of philosophic doubt and thinking,
we entered the realm of modern denial and thinking,
i dare say i prefer doubt to denial,
it makes all our apprehensions, petty fears and
all petty concerns a bit smaller - via the maxim:
the only fear to fear is fear itself... denial doesn't
provide what doubt provides, doubt is like
cushioned fear... if there's a fear to fear as simply itself
doubt puts a lid on it, a spontaneity,
a kantian noumenon by definition, fear-in-itself.
Deb Nixon Nov 2011
Into the Seasons of my mind I wander.
The gentle laughter that teased my tender ears,
Of my grandmother and her friends meeting,
Like ladies used to do.

The aroma of fresh baked cookies, cakes and pies,
Wafting in the cool Autumn breeze.
Back when women baked and were proud of it,
Back when there was Time...

Time to gather and just be glad to be together.
No harmful gossip, just the joy of friends
Willing to help each other through trials
That Life throws.

The strength of velvet bonds
Tied together for the common good of all.
Leading by examples, not needing to pontificate
On the deportment young ladies should show.

And me, proud to be included.
My Grandma's Shadow, adding my
Youth and exuberance to the occasion.
Learning about Life on that vine covered porch.

My apron was sized for my small frame,
I wore a dress, like the ladies present always did.
My hair coiffed, just because
I wanted to make my Grandma proud.

Oh yes, those were the days.
Before emails and internet,
When we spoke to each other and
Learned how important communication truly is.

Days, when it was good for girls to look like girls
And be proud of approaching womanhood.
Not subservient, but a partnership
That made men proud.

Yes, those were the Days!
Unforced laughter,
Able to face the world without fear,
Because we knew "Good" would win.

I'm grown now,  I don't always wear a dress.
I live in  a "Man's" world, contrary to my early years.
But I still smell the baking cookies, pies and cakes.
I still sit on my front porch .

My heart remembers my childhood
Though I must adjust to this fast moving Life,
I will always carry in my Soul,
As I long for the days of Poise and Ivy.

Deb Nixon
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2016
i think i chose the wrong artistic medium
to express myself,
i'm expressing, that's undoubted,
but as we all know success in the marketplace
needs you to be tacky, cheap,
ready for the tourist memorabilia,
too many professions attacked poetry,
first the philosophers, then the psychiatrists,
it became a beehive of femininity and teaching;
no, i definitely chose the wrong medium,
there's no raw product, the un-popularity
of poetry is due to the memory-market of
vocabulary, there are no raw materials used,
no paints or brushes, just backward experiences
used for the banking of investment,
poetry is either cheap or priceless,
a poet can confuse someone like a tarantula
what a philosopher must do in dialogue or paragraph.
my father was never taught german,
i rekindle the strangeness of germany on the autobahns,
eerie feelings feed the warmth of former home;
and they do, every winter i remember travelling east
from west germany always appealed to me for its
melancholia unforced where rome's light never shone,
britain is the perfect historical satellite,
it's moaning like a ***** when rome ***** her
and she becomes nostalgic... the ideal ***** i say,
she wishes rome's return like a boomerang.
'killed the wallaby?'
'aye and koala too.'
'**** the Tasmanian devil?'
'if only there was an angel to counter
freckled ****-in-boots readied dodo.'
capitalism is really heavy on poetic shoulders,
given that poetry doesn't sell, it's a near-identity of
dodo, near extinction, what will remain of poetry
in terms of language expressing poetic technique is rhyme,
the other rhetoric, rhyme the other rhetoric, sounds good,
nothing like couplets making you speak more, or more
persuasively: and all will be song, and no volatile
singled-out voice in the wilderness speaking,
whether actual with honey and locust diet
or homed wilderness of click click pixel algorithm.
poetry is almost like classical music these days,
with bach's wedding cake layering: there's a difference
concerning poetry and classical music:
classical music is almost non-vox, whereas poetry
is almost pure vox,
polyphony must be translated - the layering,
poetry must listen to bach, instead of sounds it
must be a poly- of subject matters, after all polyphony
is impossible given symbiotic otherwise chiral
resemblance: cat, kettle, knife (silent k),
                        psychology (silent p), gnostic (silent g)
                        pseudo (silent p), wrath (silent w), etc.
πολoιθεμα (many subjects, rather than sounds if poetry
was music, but it isn't): anecdote,
in england your ability to engage many subjects in
a conversation (the only antidote to engage with dialectics)
is summarised and thanked for by: you need a girlfriend;
good to be appreciated.
poetry has to change, it can't be as monochromatic and scarce
as it allowed itself to be, it has become akin to atlas
holding up the globe of the monochromatic theme of love,
modern poetry idealises too much, itself not the ideal medium,
after all, poets don't invest in oil paint, canvases,
brushes, studios, these compact artists need to escape
the sheered sheep laziness when engaging with the world,
first of all, they need the shield of honesty,
and a sword cutting through their comfort zone of scarceness
duping them into an adequacy of expected productivity.
and what will keep πολoιθεμα sustained?
the once famous enemy and murderer of poets, kant,
and the concept that fuels this poetic project:
per se, poetry has to become a relief, tentacles of an octopus,
range beyond the vector of safe coordination,
the only subject of relevance of poets is poetry in itself,
make poetry scarce in terms of aesthetics... but make
it distracting, distracting enough to be engaging.
what i mean by the poetic aesthetic is that
it's written with scarceness in my - but so much
blank space is left for so little wording,
it's almost like a telescope enlarging a needle-head,
of course you can keep it terse, keep it neat,
but will you vouch to keep it remotely relevant?
prose is far more economically sound in terms
of ink use and two-dimensional wood compressed,
it's economic to write prose, and less economic
to write poetry, and due to a forced interaction
with poetry, many more songs are heard
by impasse of laziness than poems are uvula coupled
for a sunday feast: where sabbath laziness was replaced
with a need for prayer; odd.
see these gesticulating lunatics before a non-existent
subject they poured so much attention at,
so many subjects appear so the non-existent object
can be gratified in the mimic or mute fluency:
not a sound mind among them, yet still the need to
assert some direction worthy of both prayer and
sacrifice... their salah is like a whirlwind of
cognitive contraception: put a ****** on your head
and be safeguarded against the thought of
refrigerators / frozen meats... and with prayer
all hope withstanding cancer; ******* lunatics;
islam is the best example of prayer, i could handle
the christian need for ******* at the stump of the crucifix,
but muslims mumble when raising their *****
to be ****** by shadow satans, and it's peculiar
to see them in their psychiatric asylum known as the mosque
freely going about their daily business
(personal reasons for criticism - given the pervasive
spirit of a few that tried to convert me, one that
almost killed me - and this need to be literate from
only one book, rather than many - this inherent
perception of a superiority of any monotheism,
which evidently implodes and provides schisms,
a bit like a w. b. yeats poem: things fall apart;
                                            the centre cannot hold).

                                                         *θ = φ.
Andrew Jun 2010
Gimmicks and shenanigans
Are altogether lame.
Overt meanings of a poem
Are meant to be more tamed.

Puns and plays on ev'ry word,
Or rhymes and playground taunts,
Lack a subtle nature;
Alliteration flaunts.

For free lines feel unforced,
And poems portray with power.
But not with gaudy gilding,
Like petals on a flower.

No, poems are not much better
When written tongue-in-cheek.
In fact, for all those reasons,
This one's considered weak.
June 2010
Marshal Gebbie Mar 2020
Jottings from David Bagerow's "Quickie"

Shame on she, the selfless *****
Who caused your temperature to fire,
caressed your sandy, sweated brow
To rivers of desire,
Tho she fled at poignant time
To leave you in the lurch.
Best you weave your magic touch
And promise her, the church.
Then woo her and caress her
In your happy, carefree way
Then at that moment of exultance,
Laugh and run away.

David Lessar's "To an Unread Poet"

Dave, You are right ,of course, once committed you raise an expectation and once that expectation is released to the world you are obliged to maintain face...but that damnable thing called "Life" intervenes and totally stuffs up the programme. Take the current interlude of coronavirus...the whole world has been taken by the scruff of the neck and jammed, inconveniently and complaining, into seclusion, all systems ground to a halt, production lines vacated, malls and city centres deserted, blown newspaper cascading across the deserted pavement...a testament to mans ultimate frailty when his house of cards collapses, without a whimper.
So you see, as life intervenes...we are excused from maintaining face.
But fear not, like McArthur, we shall return.
Cheers mate M.

Fawn's "Happy Trails"

Were it not the touch profound
That doth caress my feathered ear
Would thou wish a thousandfold
That I should shed a tear?

A glistened tear suspended there
in iridescent light,
While you, my love, with parted lips
Await, the ruby night.

Victoria's "Wherefore Art Thou"

Strides, he does, through corridors of lust bound lessers,
through forests of small penised dwarfs, through canyons of would be's who could be.....just to countenance the promise within your words....Dear Vix!

Terry O'Leary's "Sweet Butterfly"

You enter the portals of entomology where bugs, flies,butterflies and moths are the true rulers of the planet.
A world vastly magnified by compound eyes, of lightening lifetimes and vivid, saturated colour. A world where life and death are synonomous with the culmination of a single ****** union and the reproduction of a batch of precious pearly eggs. Yea Brother thee hath entered the portal...rejoice!
M.

Fun with Terry O'Leary

"Buried in the Sand" by Terry O’Leary

A beggar clump adorns a dump, his pencil box in hand -
With sightless eyes upon the skies he’s lying there unmanned.

He’s fallen down in Shantytown, his knees too weak to stand,
With no relief and bitter grief too dark to understand.

The Bowery blight is hid from sight, it’s covered up and bland,
And Robin Hood and Brother Hood lie buried in the sand.

"A Rebuttal" by Marshalg

So Hood lied low, despite the show ensueing without help,
One would have thought a British sort would spring forth with a yelp!

Would spring ***** to help deflect contusions which occurred
When beggar Clump adorned the dump confusing all deferred.

Whilst sister Ant, attired in scant, ran forth on spindly legs
And brother Frog with shaggy dog said "****" and drank the dregs.

It all became too much, as such, a meelee did ensue,
So all called HALT and as one did BOLT...to the local for a brew!

Phew...that was FUN & hard work!
M.

Singing the Devil's Song*

There is no Makers formula
This life depends on chance,
The way you play your given cards
Depicts your daily dance.

Oh dogma flows in utterance
From pulpits far and wide
From those who claim to understand
Eternity's vast hide.
From those who hold damnation
As a weapon from on high,
From those who claim a judgement
As their finger points to sky.
The good, the bad are absolute,
The right bedevils wrong,
Redeemed shall live eternally
The bad shall singe for long.

Old men stand in pulpits
Across this Sunday's land
To threaten with damnation
If you should cross God's hand.
"Belief" is now their catchword
Abomination's wrong
Is to seek to proffer proof of claim
....to Sing the Devil's Song.

So gather all ye faithfull
Go listen to your man,
Sing the Gospel loud and long
And pay your tithe, as planned.
...But should you find you're dying
From cancer's frozen claw
And the the Godly fail to sweep you
To eternity's gold door?
Remember my clear message
Your life depends on chance,
You live within your own good sphere
....There is no Maker's Dance.

Marshalg
After an overdose of Pulpit hogwash.
10 March 2013

Singing the Song of Angels:
A Response to Marshal Gebbie's "Singing the Devil's Song"
By Luca Anselm
There’s a church in the city with pillars of stone
And windows like sea-glass, still and alone,
A fountain, and cloisters of ivy, away
From the noise of the street, and the hum of the day.
There my father would tell me of Christ, how he died
Surrounded by soldiers and thieves, crucified,
How he wept for the women, and fell in the sands,
And loved those who hammered the nails in his hands.  

Marshal, dear poet, you have heard the priests tell
Of a god who left heaven to walk into hell?
Of a god who wept softly for men he had known?
Of a god who dripped blood in a garden alone?
Of a god who sent men with book and with sword
With eyes bright as fire for love of their Lord,
With limbs dressed in black, on altars of stone
By windows of sea-glass, still and alone?

So they give up their lives for a lie, as we say,
And toiled for centuries, long as each day--
And our money built palaces, lofty and tall
With frescoes and candlesticks, gold on the wall--
They preach with words awful and deadly and free,
Of gorgons and hell-fire, worms and the sea,
Of the last day of judgment, and mankind amassed
By the wailing of angels and bright trumpet blasts…

But Marshal, they preach something sweeter and kind--
Of a mother’s soft love, of a father resigned,
Of a still, soft voice, that comes with a light,
And gives hope to the hopeless, and conquers the night.
Of charity, piety, sweetness and love
Like fiery ***-cakes, but soft as a dove,
Spicy as Christmas, solemn and grand--
(Like throne-rooms or magic or the roar of the strand)
Then you wake, and the house smells of peppermint-pine,
And a child is laid in the crèche, now a shrine.  

And all that I long for, dear Marshal, you see,
Are the gold-blooming gardens that soar by the sea,
The mountains and dragons, the prophets and kings
And Icarus falling with fire-fraught wings,
The grey-shifting sea-lanes, the flutter of sails,
Temples on mountaintops, graves in the vales,
And Dido who bleeds from her breast as she cries
For her Love, and stares helplessly into the skies.
But more than the shadows of worlds that might be
Of fairies or phantoms or rocks by the sea,
Dear Marshal, I long for who made me a man.
And would love and give glory as best as I can.

But these days oh! sad days, the loss and the shame
In which all of my loveliness falls into flame--
Where gardens have withered, and sails have been furled,
And kings plodded off in the dust of the world.
Our cities rise higher, and burn through the night
And rear into heaven with noise and with light,
The palisades echo with horns and sound
And the churches with voices and quarrels resound.
But the statues sit silent, and some say they cry
For the shame of the sins against children. Oh! My God, Why?

And those old men—well—they taught me the loveliest things
Of my gardens of gold, and the sunsets of things,
They told me of kindness, and honor, a way
That winds to the West, where the end of the day
Breaks bright like fresh bread, and crimson like wine,
And the sun sets to purple and green in the brine.

And still I remember their words and their songs
And the churches which taught me so well and so long--
Though I’ve turned my head, to the lands where the sun
Will rise again brighter when starlight is spun,
Somewhere fresher and pale, where the cold and the air
Spreads the dew like a lawn paved of crystal, and there,
In the meadows of silver, with light in my eyes,
I will honor my god in the dome of the skies.

Marshal Gebbie's poem "Singing the Devil's Song" inspired this. It's in anapestic tetrameter, for you metric buffs. If you haven't, you should absolutely check out Marshal's stuff--it's awesome and poetry-inspiring--seriously amazing. Thanks again, Marshal!

Sepia Sown

Sepia sown as best it can
Where you and I, as one, once ran
Across, beyond a savored sea
Where lust became reality.
Where spiraled lust, entwined, entrenched
Left you gasping, pale, en benched...
a figment of a thought, now lost
Forever..at what cost, what cost?
M.

Addenum to "obituary" by V

So no one notices, at all
When golden greys of aged fall?
Except perhaps, for those who stay
To blend with every ordinary day

Plus you and I as time flies by
And too, those starlings flocking high.
That old man loitering in street,
Who eyes the million passing feet.
And she too at corner store,
Toothless face and wrinkled maw,
Exchanging cigarettes for coin
(With surreptitious scratch of groin).
Mailman, fat, long, loop mustache
Complaining long and rather harsh,
That they, gone, without a word,
Should vanish into air...absurd!

Someone in their every day
Feels the absence in the way
Details don't fall into place
And warmth is absent from the face.
M.

The Kraken Arises

From blue tranquillity where turquoise waters wash white golden sand, where brilliant fish school in myriad colour and shape, where magnificent squadrons of sleek tarpon and barracuda dash in perfect formation, grazing schools of silver mackeral through diamond flecked deep green shallows, to plunge vertically down to the depths of the black abyss and security.

Calm tropical waters which shimmer like aqua blue glass in the mid day heat and turn to simmering,red fire at the setting of the enormous, ovate, orange sun.

Sea birds flock above wind blown waves, their sharp cries a symphony of the sea, to suddenly wheel and dive en mass, to dine amidst teeming schools of flashing, shiny minnows.

The idyllic picture of a calm blue infinity of ocean framed, in brilliant sunshine, by white sands and gracefully bowed coconut palms.....and suddenly, at the horizon, a thin black line appears, It approaches with steadily, mounting speed, the coastline surf recedes dramatically seaward leaving exposed coral, mountains of seaweed and frantic flapping, beached fish everywhere. A sudden, oppressive silence becomes a distant roar. The sea birds, as one, take panicked flight... and a massive wall of water rears up and rises like a giant beast, to rush headlong, raging, at the coastline.

What once was blue and serene is now a huge cascade of violent black death and destruction, gigantically it destroys the coast, snapping huge trees like twigs, surging ashore, a tsunami of unimaginable violence it obliterates, housing, streets, bridges, vehicles, shipping, aircraft and people, thousands of panicked, helpless, struggling people, killed in a titanic, black, swirling maelstrom of inexorable violence. The wave is followed by another...and another, extending right along the coastline and beyond. Each wave larger and more violent than the last...surging inland for miles  until defeated by the accident of gravity in rising land.

Those who have survived, on high land, on tall buildings, in treetops....cling to each other and look on in horror and utter helplessness. They can only wait, in fear, for the monster to retreat before venturing down to the devastation below to render help where ever they possibly can.

Twice in the space of the last forty thousand years the Kraken has awaken and risen from the depths of the Tasman Sea to the west of New Zealand. It has risen to gigantic proportions and driven right across the Auckland isthmus to the Pacific Ocean. It has twice flattened gigantic primeval Kauri forests laying them waste, all lying in one direction, each time beneath twenty feet of debris and black mud.

Born in innocence from a natural tectonic adjustment of the earth plates, the Kraken doth arise at any time, in any place to wreak it's dreadful work upon we, who reside in our comfortable, seemingly secure and beautiful coastal idylls.

Marshalg
Dedicated to all the coastal population exposed to the threat of inevitable tectonic induced tsunami.
JAPAN. WEST COAST, USA. WEST COAST, SOUTH AMERICA. ALL PACIFIC ISLANDS. NEW ZEALAND. INDONESIA. AUSTRALIA. SOUTH AFRICA. EAST COAST, CHINA. MALAYSIA.
KOREA. THAILAND. PAPUA NEW GUINEA, VIETNAM. PHILIPPINES. TAIWAN. BURMA.

Part of My Job (A love Poem) by Nat Lipstadt

A little embarrassed by all the attention but great to hear from you Sweetheart...all fine and dandy, here...except for being forbidden to go to the beach and the park..and anywhere else except in cases of dire need..(And on punishment of prison time if caught out!)...but hey, I'm not really complaining...All for he common good, aint that right?
M.

Bridges Burnt....

Bridges burnt in Winter rain
Holds a saddened felt refrain,
Holds a touch of muted horn
Blown in passion unadorned.
Blown away in errant winds
Where no truthlessness rescinds,
Where a lie begat the night
Interceding lost love's plight.

Bridges burnt in Winter rain
Sacraments of loss remain,
Sacraments fragmented drift
Redemption clad in bloodied shift,
Redemption worn as wrong slays right
Till wrongfulness blots out the night,
Till no return this path can be
Until they torch eternity.

M.
SE Reimer's words float before me in his impassioned poem "Bridges"
allowing me to wallow in this, my own dark tangential refrain.
M.

Perchance, in a Bus Shelter

Here I sit amidst the ruin of a white winters' day
Convulsive rain and harsh wind outside, contribute tumult.
And in here, in this small shelter, there is a tension in the air.

We two sit apart, uncommunicative, remote and quite detached.
Not for any reason other than the fact that we are strangers,
We have never met, nor are we ever likely to.
She has an elegance and a stylish angularity whilst I am bald, bearded, unfashionable and somewhat overweight.
She is singularly indifferent to my presence, whilst I am uncomfortable with the circumstance that placed us in this small proximity.
We would, in truth, rather both be elsewhere.

I break the ice in throwing her a small smile and complain about the weather,
Her eyes flick across my face and immediately resume their distant focus on the rain,
She adjusts her seating to face,ever so slightly, askance.
Her choice of course, to assume an air of indifference or superiority...or adopt a measure of defense..or perhaps a combination of a bit all three.  
Regardless... I wipe my backside in exactly the same manner as does she, I  am definitely no less a person for my dumpy demeanor and friendly overture
And I really feel that I don't have to share my space with coldness and impertinence,
Better, I think, to be wet and content with my own company
..So, donning my cap and jacket, I stride out into the deluge to leave the remote and uncommunicative young woman alone and dry with her thoughts.

And then....
Howling rain and shards of wind
Pelt me as I walk
Along the foreshore wild and white
As hovered seagulls squark.
When all at once she's by my side
Walking pace for pace,
Her linen suit a sodden mess
Hair plastered to her face.

"Thought I ought to make it right"
She told me with a smile
I threw my coat upon her back
And walked another mile.
We called into a coffee shop
And sat down by the fire
And sipped a steaming latte
As she told her story dire,

"The cancer's all but killed me
My husband's left the home,
The baby's gone to mother
And I'm facing death alone."
We quietly spoke for ages
I held her hand in mine
Then suddenly she stood to leave
And thanked me for my time.

I sat there in a stupor
Recalling how it played
And felt the guilt impact on me
For judgements I had made.
Those callow, shallow judgements
Made in ignorance, my friend,
Will haunt me as she girds herself
To boldly meet her end.

Marshalg
On a bleak and blustery cold winters day.
Titirangi
5th September 2010

The Old Café by Steve Yocum

It's my go to place,
has been for years,
The Wildwood Café,
an eclectic tiny place
with a mix of old dinette
tables and mismatched chairs.
the cutlery also unmatched
and well used, old photos
and signs adorn the walls
and there is usually a line
of people waiting patiently
on benches outside.

Best of all there is this pleasant
girl, always wearing a welcoming
smile, who seems to know us all.
She knows my order by heart,
Ham and eggs over medium,
a half ration of potatoes, home baked
slice of bread, well toasted, well buttered,
home made salsa on the side, a cup of
"hot" Black English Tea. Tall water no ice.

If I arrive between the busy times, she may
sit down at my table and we talk a while,
It's not a big thing, just chitchat, I'm old
enough to be her grandfather, it's the
dessert before my meal served with genuine
friendliness and unforced civility, not often
encountered in these strange days and times, it's a slice of small town America at it's purest best, she and folks like her help sustain my belief that basic human decency is far from dead.

The food is always good, but it's the comforting embrace of familiarity and
simple warm kindness that assures my frequent return.
It's the little things in life that make living
wonderful, small moments in time felt and
recorded, this is but one of those.
written by Steve Yocum

It's the little things in life that make living
wonderful, small moments in time felt and
recorded, this is but one of those

Marshal Gebbie
  That old world touch suits you Stevo,
When I come visit your beautiful state of Oregon, We shall partake this delightful repast in the company of your fair maid.... and we shall tip her well!
M.

Scoot the Streak
One must believe in something be he misanthrope or gambler
In tomorrows omniscience or the future proof of God
The penance in a drunk's decay sets self destruct's imposer
Wether speaker phone's on disconnect or cellphone's in the bog.

Conveyance of a threat to adherents of St Selfwise
Show atheist's are proof here, in belief of disbelief,
Haunted by the images painting painful retribution
Picture sympathetic **** star's allocated hand relief.

A moments allocation of a syllogist abstraction
Shows perspective of the caliber we now reserve for Saints
A paradox regarded as autistic fascination
In a one act play of living disregarding all restraints.

Deliberately indicative of fraternal heat's expression
Notebook at the ready and deep frowning at the brow,
Question definition's collage of confusion's contribution
Do we sit it out pretending or just catch the late bus now?

Marshalg
13 February 2014
© 2014 Marshal Gebbie
Marshal Gebbie
Written by

victoria  Intriguing work...so I search the comments for help... Ah
0
Feb 2014
Terry O'Leary  Marshal, I kinda like this (I read it several times since yesterday)... but I'm still not sure what it says... maybe I'll down a shot tonight and try again... ;-)) Terry
0

3 replies

Feb 2014
Marshal Gebbie
Marshal Gebbie   A confession Terrance.. I was half cut when I wrote it!
I have no idea what it means.
Feb 2014
Terry O'Leary   :-)) Great... I'll be back in a bit... T
Feb 2014
Terry O'Leary   Well, in the meantime I've had a few shots... now I think I know what it means... hic°°.... hope I remember in the morning... ;-)) Terry
Feb 2014

Pradip Chattopadhyay
Residues
By the night one long dark road
the houses are deep in slumber.

Lucky I'm alive and awake,
can see the stars
in their vast magnitude of silence
gentle and not drunk
have love to count upon
filled with a will to live
feeling I'm almost done.

Having a life is a great reward
and with the residues
gets more valuable.

I won't cry over the lost years
would rather think
have been blessed with enough.

The stars grow blurry dots
as I slip into dreams.

I had a once upon place
and I'm grateful.

With dewy eyes
I hurry to the warmest space
beside her.

You slip into your years well, Pradip.
Your woman must relish your peace, your contentment.
Cheers mate
M.


Tony Grannell
Autumn's Sonneteer
Behold, upon yon ivy bunch, my darling blackbird sings;
I know not why nor shall I try to understand such things.
For born this morning on a song, pray hark, her sweet refrain;
to chance a sigh, oh, dare not I, for this is God's domain.

Out of the night the art of song in tuning in the day;
unknowed afore or evermore such music on display.
'Tis love begad, a lover's song, a diva, I declare,
in soaring o'er both vale and moor, this morning's love affair.

In wonder's charm, this precious bird in song to comfort me.
Alone I stroll, no proffered soul to share my company.
Yet rare this morn, in splendours all, true love like none afore;
let passions roll, in song extol, in verse the morn's rapport.

Be succour in such music found for autumn ails me so,
when summer's run, the harvest done, to rest my scythe and ***.
Of idle lands and nowt ado, to wait without employ.
Yet, hail the sun, my kingdom won, when sings that bird of joy.

Behold her charm and charmed, I am while autumn leaves still fall.
'Tis life anew, a sweeter brew when hear the songstress call.
Though winter’s nigh, with strength and will, we’ll bear our pain and fear;
'tis all to do, good hearts and true, sings autumn's sonneteer.

Written by
Tony Grannell  62/M/Spain

Marshal Gebbie  I stood out at the rock wall and gazed at the splendour of Autumn in Taranaki, as I read, aloud, your sonnet.
...and my heart sang.
M.

Dr Peter Lim
When?
When is the when
of when?  
rampant still is the ravage
which will not relent-

the claustrophobic shut-in
hearts toward gloomy moods they bend
no happy voices of kids heard outdoors
the green fields do not comfort lend-

the downcast look, the sinking feeling
are the joys and delights of yesterday years all spent?
the spectre of pain brings bitterest tears
in the faces of every continent-

oh, when is the when
of when?
such a wash-down
we could never comprehend.

Marshal Gebbie:  But isn't that the way, Dr Pete? Mankind builds his castles in the air, thrusts out his chest and proclaims himself, King of all!
...to be decimated, in an instant, by a microbe of infinitesimal stature. Oh! the fragility of it all.
Life cometh, life goeth....but somewhere, down the track, life shall come again.
M.


Al Drood
The Merman of Orford Ness

So long ago in King Hal’s time, our nets we cast upon the wave;
and drawing in did stand a-feared at what we’d caught in Orford Bay.

Entangled ‘midst our dripping catch, with eyes that stared all hellish green,
enscaléd like some creature deep, a Merman writhed as one obscene.

All webbéd were his hands and feet, his body dripped with ocean bile;
upon his head the ****-wrack grew, green-bearded was this demon vile.

Fast to the shore with awful haste we sped before the wind and tide;
Lord Glanville for to summon forth, the Merman’s fate all to decide.

Upon the quay his Lordship stood with men at arms and shriven priest,
and all did cross themselves in fear before this strange unholy beast.

“Enchain it,” cried Lord Glanville loud, “then to God’s Kirk with all good speed!”
The shriven priest prayed long and hard as to the church we did proceed.

With Holy Water, cross of gold, with candle and with testament,
the priest then exorcised the beast, who knew not what was done nor meant.

To all’s dismay he would not bow before the Host on bended knee;
and so to dungeon was he dragged to dwell upon his blasphemy!

The silent Merman beaten was, and hung in chains in for seven weeks,
and fed was he on fish and shells, yet never did he sleep nor speak.

And so at length his Lordship said, “Across the harbour tie a net,
and we shall see how he shall swim, but by his ankles chainéd, yet!”

The net a-fixed, the village folk came down to see the Merman’s plight;
into the sea they threw him then, with foam and wavelet flashing white.

He vanished ‘neath the waters like some seabird in pursuit of prey,
then surfaced laughing, chain in hand, and to his Lordship he did say;

“You thought to make me such as you, who walk in blindness o’er the land!
You’d punish me for difference!  You thought to treat me like a Man!”

So long ago in King Hal’s time our nets we cast upon the wave;
and drawing in did stand a-feared at what we’d caught in Orford Bay.
Al Drood
Written by
Al Drood  M/North Yorkshire

Marshal Gebbie:  Tones here of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.
An original work in time honoured rhyme and metre.
I devoured every syllable..Bravo!
M.

G Alan Johnson
Kafka's Bug

When I shed the last skin
last year
there was left a hardened shell
protecting a patched up heart
and a petrified husk
of a soul.

You can throw your bombs
if you wish
and they will hurt inside
but I will just eat them
and **** them out
flushed and forgotten.

Sometimes my antennae
come out in a social setting
and people look at me
with an odd expression
or look off into space
a kind of awkward acceptance,
(the ones that know me).

My mandibles will at times
spit out a divine stupidity
a slacker kind of opinion
and no amount of saliva
can dissolve it
so it sits in the heavy air
stinking like a butterfly corpse.

It was an attempt
at transformation
that failed
(I'm too weak with ego),
and I'm glad that I tried
otherwise I would always wonder.

Vincent Price in a cheap suit
and a lost puppy daydream
a world full of flies, wasps and failed caterpillars
patient spiders and polished leeches...
and all I can do is write.
Written by
G Alan Johnson  65/M/USA

Response by Marshal Gebbie

Pelting rain adheres to soil
As spiders sprint and earthworms roil,
World in turmoil stinkbugs, stink
And Satan beetles disgorge ink
But thee, my budding, sodden flea,
Hath entertained quiescent....me.
M.

Nat Lipstadt
Pandemic Poems: Unclaimed bodies, There’s ain’t no anonymity in heaven.

There are more poems inside me, but I intuit it is longer fair to impose on you by sharing more.  The deep seeded infection of my spirit waxes and wanes, and there is no antidote, and unlike the virus itself, there never will be, a future cure, an inexpensive replacement cost for the spirit spent, the time and futures spirited away.

Perhaps you recall I was one mile away from Ground Zero on September 11th.  Rarely do I walk there.

The coronavirus poetry inserts itself unaided, never asking permission, a like minded, but a contra-cousin to the coronavirus.

I live in New York City, the epicenter where now, close to 800 die daily.

Normally, about 25 bodies a week are interred on Hart island, mostly for people whose families can't afford a funeral, or who go unclaimed by relatives.  In recent days, though, burial operations have increased from one day a week to five days a week, with around 24 burials each day.^^

Each dies with no last words, no Kaddish recited, Last Rites, too late, no Ṣalāt al-Janāzah or Om Namo Narayanaya.  Each one, a numbered pine coffin, and each one will have at the very least, a poem of their own, so help me god.

Buried side by side in large trench, room plenty for new arrivals,
I hear the banging, protesting, resisting, this is not the way, I was promised, my ears left pounding!  Hillel, the great scholar in this dream, reminds that “the time is short, and the work is great.”          

He paraphrases, though, “the bodies many, the poems too few.”

There ain’t no anonymity in heaven, but I’ll reconfirm that with you later.

Written by
Nat Lipstadt

Marshal Gebbie
God! It's harrowing to feel the raw spirit in a New York City man's soul.

You speak for the dead, the ailing and the fearful.

You speak for beggar in the street, the broker, quaking in his plenty, imprisoned on the 14th floor.

You speak for the cop, in face mask, on 24th and Vine, doing, as always what he must, with authority.

And you speak for the White Clad Angels who carry the dead to Hart Island and who forgive you, your fear and safer seclusion.

You speak also for we, who watch and sorrow from afar your agony, in our own fear and seclusion.
M.

Nat Lipstadt
raw is the word, oft need to lie down midday to escape the the viral infection of every outlet we use to pass these days. don’t know when i’ll go outside again, because the virus kills and wounds in horrible ways... thank u MG for the kind appreciation natty

Sally A Bayan
Conduits
In distance and in proximity...in despair
and joy...in existing and in dying...in the
bliss of love reciprocated, and in the pain
of love unrequitted...verses dance and call,
awaiting......

poetry has its own pulse, its own heartbeat,
it calls, taps the shoulders any moment,
awake, or adrift, it just can't be ignored...
even in a tangled, or weird circumstance,
it sparks like a bulb or a comet, curving
in a rainbow...riotous some days, teasing, fleeing,
then, turning up at unexpected times and places.

in every bit and breath of life, in every seed,
in every drop of dew, in every ember burning,
there is poetry birthing, growing...

deep within us flows green, purple, red,
glum gray, darkened inspirations...fleeting,
but, when time is ripe, they linger long,
giving us time to capture them all
.............................................
we sense them...we give space
we speak them, or we write them,
:::::::we are conduits:::::::


Sally

©Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
February 11, 2020

Marshal Gebbie

  A touch, so light,
So sensitively slight
As to be caress,
In dead of night


Don Bouchard
And then
We become old men
And old women, and

We look back wistfully, and
We look forward hopefully, and

We wonder....


Written by
Don Bouchard  60/M/Minnesota

Marshal Gebbie
  Slipped betwixt the then and now
Methinks, with finger on the brow,
Thee needs a shot of earthy ***
And a wanton ****, to rub your tum.
Thee needs a cheery pick me up,
Some hairy mates to help you sup
Elixir from the joy of life
To salve tomorrows' threat of strife.
Cheers mate M.
0
Tommy Randell
From a young man's parlance, tripping from an old man's tongue; Right On, brother, Right On!
Natasha Ivory May 2014
I go to sleep, lonely.
When I open my eyes, the loneliness has grown and my heart hurts, it's heavy. There's a space in my heart that grows wider and deeper with every sunset and sunrise.
Invisible. I don't exist in my own life. With every inhale and exhale I fade away more. Without him even noticing. The pain is so intense, I've become numb. Dead to my own memories, insignificant in every small detail. I'm screaming, screaming from the bottom of a bottomless pit. He can't hear me.
Every touch to his body is without emotion. When he needs to fulfill himself, I'm only a body. No more than when I was paid to sell my soul.
Destitute. When I look in the mirror, there are remnants of a woman.

I long for the days when one caress lit up my insides. When a smile put chills down my spine and love could be made with eye contact. The scent of fresh made me want to crawl in bed and laugh and never emerge from the covers again. Where conversation could last for days, never in a hurry, because the most important people or things, were right there with us.

Hollow. Drowning and desperate.
I cry in random places at random times. I want the pain to leave me alone. To never have to feel this way. To wake up with a smile and roll over to make unforced love, that's real and desired. To laugh my day away and fill up my soul.

Tears. I thought they would dry up eventually. My heart and soul well up and gush out the hurt. I try to hold it in, hold it back, it overflows and I find myself wanting to be locked away in a dark room.

Broken. Shattered and unfixable.
I've made my life this.
Copyright © Natasha Ivory Evans 2013
Nat Lipstadt Feb 2014
Please read the notes first.


Tally time, conclusion forming,
"Some day," grown nearer.
Tree's longest branch,
Coming to reach, reaching to come.
Soon to beat and plead upon
Cottage window and door.
Rooted whisperer, jealous reminder,
Revered warning, timely sounding,
Your time of *Reckless Choice
arriving

Destination's unnamed coordinates, uncoordinated,
Journey from wherefrom to wherever, unrecorded,
Observed by silenced overlording sky,
Testimony of the seeing voiceless clouds,
All nought and to no avail, destination head-shaking,
These white witnesses,
Muted, deaf, dumbfounded,
Knowing, yet  incapable of telling

State of sated steady staid,
Sundered by sharp silent sounds,
Reckless surpasses Riskless,
Life is a recitation, an enunciation

When my less to say is soon none,
My Reckless Choice, now chosen,
Unforced but enforced,
I shall be gone
The Sound of Trees
BY ROBERT FROST

I wonder about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by the day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
And fixity in our joys,
And acquire a listening air.
They are that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay.
My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
From the window or the door.
I shall set forth for somewhere,
I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone.
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2015
"I suspect that the way I feel now, at summer’s end, is about how I’ll feel at the end of my life, assuming I have time and mind enough to reflect: bewildered by how unexpectedly everything turned out, regretful about all the things I didn’t get around to, clutching the handful of friends and funny stories I’ve amassed, and wondering where it all went. And I’ll probably still be evading the same truth I’m evading now:
that the life I ended up with, much as I complain about it, was
pretty much
  the one I chose. And my dissatisfactions with it are really with my own character, with my hesitation and timidity."

Tim Keider^
~~~

just an ordinary Sunday newspaper feature,
on the summer's fast approaching
summing up,
an essay,
that you read and exclaim
***,
what's that you say,
Keider,
who ya kidding?

are our brains cross-wired?
am I so prototypical
that my scheming privates are presented with
better clarity, superior style, and

and you just don't know what's worse

a) that we shared the similarity of dissatisfaction
with our lives,
that a season of unexpected leisure unexpectedly
(an unforced error, I'll call it)
opportunitized
a  soul train review that time accident-afforded and
summer sweet lushness conduced
or

b) is it that you say it so much better

only one diff kid,
entire we deux,
that makes me major league,
and you still, a sorta minor,
with a career ahead

I am at
trend end
of my life,
skiing breakneck at the steepest part of the
downward ***** of time
leading to the flatline gate
knockdown finale

but I still can't let us off the hook,
as I write this
open outcry

did life's press offer us
convergent excuses,
the connivence of convenience
that let us write our own
sad, sneering, almost denying tale
that our lives were
"pretty much"
the one chosen

will that truthfully ever going to be
a genuine smithy's mark
of
a twenty four caratexcellence of
sufficiency satisfactory?

the question cannot be begged off,
when Father Time is breathing down your neck,
accepting one's character flaws,
acknowledging, not even querying,
if I am a failed diamond,
I, the cutter,
could not shape my facets
flawless, or even well enough


point passed,
now why me worry
about hesitating,
timidity,
so no evasion,
instead ****** head-on 
invasion

the life chosen
was oft the product of
wrong fork chosen,
lazy and safe courses that
cuckolded me into a
blindsided acceptance

last verse I swear!

going outside to
come back in
pervaded

let this declining season,
be not
seen as an ending
but a fresh bloom of a flower,
an all-year-long bloom
that opens up every morning
of every day,
readying us both
for the
and to
fall,
open to  
setting the pushed, not pulled,
record straight

"good enough"
is no longer
good enough
when  answering

my life, was it any good?
was it what I desired?

when I took the wrong fork
almost every time,
though purposely chosen,
was it cowardice complete,
laziness course of least resistance?

for if that's the case,

no matter how late we linger at this bad food table,
of inactive actions,
choices taken but not accepted,
I need to change
the diet
that creates
who I am
and eat truth,
raw,
and keep it down
^ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/opinion/sunday/the-summer-that-never-was.html?mabReward=CTM

August 30 ~ 31, 2015
Falling asleep,
But needing to write,
Too much oxygen,
Or too much right,
I owe it to her, to write right meow,
Heartbeat is realizing,
They aren't coming back that night,
Like a loyal dog it begins to calm,
Until they come back,
And feel their palm,
I don't think to stand nor sleep,
Just here wherever,
Trying to remember new memories to keep,
It's awkward, but unforced,
With delirious comfortability,
But sleep eventually conquers,
And my writing loosing eligibility,
Dizzy, but the smiling won't cease,
Waking up tomorrow, or tonight.
With an awkward peace
I originally had the title as, "awkward" but let me know what you think in the comments dear reader
J C Jan 2018
I’ve been thinking
about death a lot lately—
or, that is, I think the image
my brain’s been showing me.
The vestiges of the visage
of who I used to be haunt me;
and in the crickets of my slumber,
I couldn’t help but wonder
about death a lot lately.
The quarks and the quasars I inherit
from the big bang of long ago—
elements that form Mercury—
collide back and forth, and
these are pangs that wouldn’t go,
and it has been deathly difficult
meandering out of this hole.
I’ve been lost in myself—thinking
about death lately so droll.
The synapses fire and misfire;
the subsonic trappings bellow
in the cave of my deep below.
These black-and-white films
feel rewired [rewritten annals]
of which I existed since long ago.
I resonate now an unholy see
of white-noise hellos; or:
the slow slipping of my psyche
around death a lot lately.
The string of unforced errors
does all but help me be still;
yet still the terror rises each
time I open my eyes to this
farce that I’ve been waking up to.
Since your “I don't care for you,”
I've never felt so unwanted;
as my heart opened and bruised,
my soul aches for yours dotted
along my arms so they feel whole.
I unravel when you’re in my mind;
in those twilight hours of just us,
for those unmeasured hours,
you were irretrievably mine.
And doubt may blur what we feel,
and walls may [and can] fall,
and in those moments so real—
yes, surreal—
and for those days that we were,
I haven’t thought about
death at
all.
Save yourself—no one else will.
Grez Jul 2014
Yes

   You are wonderful

            These words were for no one
                          About nobody

But take them, now they're yours.
Believe them stranger.
Wear an unforced smile, with pride.
Believe those words strangers.
If I make you smile, I guess I'm wonderful too.
Every single one of you are wonderful, for everything I've read and related to, laughed to, thought on and welled up on. You're all wonderful.
lilah raethe Dec 2012
this smile is a timid grin
a sad smile
a “don’t lose hope” smile,
the innocent raise of the child’s cheeks;
a closed mouth smile
with no teeth inside.
this smile is an excited smile
free to convey the ups of the day.
the “just turn your head a little
to the left” picture day smile;
the natural, unforced smile of
greeting an old friend like no time has passed,
the gentle smile while resting your head
on a lover’s shoulder,
with their returning smile more coveted than your own.
It's the night,
before another rotation,
things feel right,
unspoken words,
have turned into one way actions,
elusive internet *******,
replaced by the piggle wiggle's,
chainsaw snoring,
the room smells of seroquel, feet,
and the helping of hope,
sticks from a recovery melted poet,
legs of jell-o,
mood of mellow,
dancing twilight in a skyline,
of building and buses,
a year ago he was drunk,
and jail was his entitlement a week,
later,
two years and more,
have evaporated to chemicals and nights that no longer exist,
and lust,
and fair share of unalibitical rust,
the sounds and smells he's,
holding onto this year,
the only hourglass sand bits,
not fallen through, for the feels of fear,
will only disappear,
Birthdays in rehab,
birthdays ad non infinitum,
courtships of programming & meetings,
the poet,
now producing naturally foreign unforced smiles,
better get his sponsor,
to sign his slip.
I made up a word >_>
grace elle Sep 2015
I need to leave.
The dust and wild air need to enter my lungs
I need the taste of freedom to touch the tip of my tongue.
I need freedom to run his finger tips down my thighs,
kiss me over and over,
make me sigh.
I need your past to be left there and I need her ghost to stop following you everywhere, I need you to stop swallowing it up and giving me that blank stare.
The blood in my veins and the flesh covering my bones will never be the same as the last place you really called home.
I hope she finds her way back to you, I really do,
I don't want to see you suffer anymore and I don't want to go down with you too.
I know you love her more than me and I know I'm incomplete.
But believe me when I say this isn't how I will be.

I'm just some wannabe eighteen year old who's been taught a lot just by making moans,
those who taught me made me swear by a secret oath.
I lost the real me underneath a tree in the cool October air, I lost my integrity and it's probably buried in one of the graves there
I refuse to dig it back up, it was too weak to stay, I've been building a new one since that last day.

You taught me that people never really get over their first loves
maybe that's why I'm always so drunk. I used to drink coffee every hour but I traded it for a something a lot more stout, something everyone else sees me swallow and then sends their condolences and doubt.
The poison makes more sense than reality and the unforced fists,
the poison creates more forget,
and no matter what I know romance doesn't exist
.
I know I'm a *****, I never said I was kind,
to all of the people who are shocked, I don't understand why you're so blind. All I am is ink and paper,
nicotine and liquor,
a buzz mistaken for love,
a child that left everyone completely and utterly ******.

People over fantasize being next to a person in a bed at 3 a.m.
they see it as some sort of grand gesture of love,
when the reality is that during those hours you can finally feel the distance and the realization of how nobody ever truly gives a ****.
Nobody knows anyone. Ever.
Your parents, your friends, your gas station clerks, Walmart greeters, cousins, brothers and sisters.
You're just a face and that's all you'll ever be,
you're nothing more than God and nothing less than me.
It hurts to die, nobody knows what happens after that grand little exit,
but it hurts worse to live with all of these bad habits.
I don't believe everyone knows sin the way I do. So many different lips have found their way down my body after 10 o'clock at night, but the first time I felt yours on my lips, everything felt right. But I'm scared that I could be wrong, and I'm even more scared that I could be right.
The girl who spent every night with a different boy now has one that she truly wants to be with for the rest of her life.
I keep trying to run and I keep trying to hide, because it's scary to be me when the most prominent word in my vocabulary is goodbye.
Baby believe me, I love you more than any cliches about the moon and the sea, I love you more than any pill, cigarettes, or cheap whiskey. I love you with the fire in my chest and all of the holes where it makes it's ruby red nest. I know this is all so far fetched and unfair to you, but I'm still scared that I'm nothing more than a body to **** in attempt to fill in the holes within you.

I hope that your love is more than just a phrase,
I know I'm only eighteen but I feel much older than my age.
I hope your love wants to stick around until my ******* angst completely leaves, I hope it want to follow me through the years and spend the rest of its life with me.
I know I'm young and wild and also far too naive.
I know for a fact that you're so far beyond me.
I know I can sound vacant and immature.
I know I **** up and go crazy and make everything obscure.
I know I can't see clearly and more or less run from everything that's not alcohol or drugs.
Sometimes all I want is to get drunk off your love, but most of the time I'm just left with a buzz.
Your thoughts are bigger than anything anyone can comprehend, your existence is the best thing I've witnessed since time began.
Your skin against mine feels the same way the first bite Eve took out of the apple must have been so ripe and raw with taste.
I fear I'll be left out as waste.
I know your love has just as much fear as mine, and I'm sorry you have to witness my deepest sins being sung lullabies.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2017
two sudokus down, one pending, and the drinking is insatiable, peering into the stack of books, there's a copy of seven years in tibet and in start to wonder: what sort of interesting life should ever produce a book? the majority of me is asking: really? 7 years in 7 sittings of reading this?! who imagines writing a book, having "completed" an interesting life, does not imagine the majority of the readership, discarding the actual book, and being tibet bound... jealousy is such a cheap emotion, to be honest jealousy is the cheapest of all emotions, cheaper to pay a ******* for an hour's service, than take a fine girl to dinner; what, was someone expecting an "oops" with that?

i sometimes can't imagine the quality of pop,
it's not a pedantic "observation" -
it's just: well, could have done better,
but then again: you clearly couldn't have.
    i like rereading shakespeare and thinking
than minor additions would make the works
stand in greater clarification,
notably in shrapnel -
- 1st witch: why, how now, hecate?
you look angerly.
- hecate: have i not reason, beldams as you are,
saucy, and overbold? how did you dare to trade
and traffic with macbeth, in riddles,
and affairs of death,
  and i, then mistress of your charms,
   the close contriver of all harms,
  was never called to bear my part,
   or show the glory of our art?
such minor revisions, pedantic, of course...
i.e. - how did you dare to *trade and
make trivia
with macbeth -
      better still: trade & trivialise -
         and
   - in riddles, and in the affairs of death;
suppose we don't live in times
of man's "omniscience" etc.?
                but we do, and categorising ourselves
as such, we can only seem to test
knowledge via answering trivia question -
the triviality of knowledge oozes out
of game shows: where enough to be
knowledgeable is enough to known the most
encyclopedic set of facts...
    having to encompass all of man's
endeavours seems rather mundane...
             heidegger's aphorism 91 ponderings VI...
and the arrogance of writings maxims /
aphorisms...
        you read them as if they are basically true,
but then again: they're written as
propositions, rather than as presuppositions...
there's not a single word in the works
of nietzsche or la rochefoucauld
that supposes an observation to be true:
        a bit like the legal system dichotomy of
the english vs. the european courts:
  a. innocent until proven guilty, vs.
b. guilty until proven innocent...
                it's the ****** bombast of writing
maxims as propositions,
   there's no room for "error":
said content is: necessarily true,
                         but unnecessarily observed;
most of the time maxim notation is
an erosion of common sense, and subsequently
the killer proteins of alzheimer eating
away at the fatty tissue of the brain...
          mental exercise?
      who the hell wants a schwarzenegger's worth
of brain, i.e. exercise what?
           i don't like nietzsche's style precisely
because i don't like aphorisms or maxims...
          they're bombastic in assuming they're
true,
   i.e. once observed: forever replicated
to the same summa summarum...
  i think it's unsavoury to presume that one's
observations are fit for purpose of replica
observations taking hold of the reader...
if, perhaps, these aphorisms were written with
an overtone of presupposition,
             and left in the la la land of: supposing so -
they would be guarded by an element
of surprise...
                      an encroachment moment,
with an element of surprise...
         if only the loss of propositional bombast,
and the mediation of supposing-so,
   with an undertone of prepositional discretion...
stating the obvious in that stating
the obvious is stating an: unchallenged truth,
an unchallenged observation shared between
to people, well, aren't we talking about
  simply observing the perpetuated plagiarism
of what is "observed", without ever
deviating back into the "unobservable"?
       i believe that aphorisms (as a medium)
are plagued by a certainty inversion -
             sure, they're true, but they are also
true without a guarantee of replica -
                 for the most part they are placebo
ridden...
                and the only aspect of philosophy
that is unscientific...
                for the most part the style of writing
that's aphoristic is placebo,
        and not res replica...
           unless offensively forced - stereotyped.
if only the writing of an aphorism was
plagued by presupposing rather than proposing
a conclusive play on a voyeuristic act -
             the presuppositional attention to detail
would be tactful - and part of the cartesian
continuum...
             but propositional observations,
akin to making stereotypes, have no element
of founding one's thought in the cartesian dynamism
of doubt... there either is, or there isn't -
existentialism akin to the genesis in nietzsche
was born with the cartesian roller-coaster
of fusing an emotional regard for feeling,
i.e. doubt... negation being the prime ingredient
in existentialism, is oh so boring...
         ego negare, ego quasi cogito - ergo..
      i deny, i sort of think -
                                             therefore;
pretty obvious, we had to change the song -
we know so much already, in the current times,
that doubting would be pointless -
    doubting used to have a thrill of purpose
never being finalised,
   existentialism replaced doubt with denial...
so few things can be doubted,
   and when so few things can be doubted,
  we purposively lie, deny, lie, deny, to somehow
muster an origination of awe in emotive
experiences, which only bring failure -
  awe does not coexist with denial -
           you can't be in awe via purposively lying
to yourself...
  you can only seek awe by being forced
  into an emotional system of doubt...
but since existentialism eradicated doubt and replaced
it with denial...
     as already mentioned:
we deny, therefore, we sort-of think -
      we deny, therefore, we "think";
as the zeitgeist suggests - robotics, and other
forms of automation are taking over.
the argument still stands:
  if only the medium of writing aphorisms,
or succinct "truths" could be universally tested,
or at least universally observed as being true...
     if only there was a lost propositional(!) bombast
behind these pieces of writing,
or rather: a presupposition(?),
     since both approaches still converge in the realm
of supposes;
   a position is taken and one is for it -
while a supposing is given and one predates
it with a spontaneous unearthing of unnecessarily
having an opinion about it -
to presuppose is to not suppose -
since presuppositions are more archaic in always
being unforced observations,
  whereas propositions are enforced results
of having forced oneself to think: about something
with the end result of: a maxim,
or the extended maxim, i.e. an aphorism.
          - so who would actually want to make
language, and easy, and accessible, to the majority
of man?
          did not the power reside among
the priesthood who spoke latin, while the general
populace didn't?
   so why would anyone not decide upon:
speaking an english, within english,
   that the common englishman could not understand?
JMo Sep 2013
Worry for tomorrow is of no need,
He leads me into tomorrow with full truth,
Love is inside of me in which I live in His unforced rhythms of life,
We are only a little lower than God!

We are made to carry His glory,
Jesus lived on earth to lead the way,
In a perfect life lived Jesus fulfilled Gods purpose,
Lets go and seek to do the same!!!
Nat Lipstadt Jan 2016
~~~


reaching hard for words

~~~

enter tip toeing,
the loudest noises off,
save for a silent, seriously-forming smile,
re-designing your face,
while in the orbit of early morn,
mapping your return to the planetary
bed
all the while,
observing her
while closeted, comforted and cloaked,
upon their/his
landing zone bed,
honing your return re-entry voyage
home

the blonde in her traditional,
sleep arms slung in wilding, disarrayed
repose,

and
her breathing stride,
regularized and still,
yet so humanly unpredictable
wild ride

and your are surprised

by surprising yourself,
once again,
that you're in this position,
when an unforced, yet an enforceable,
warm hearted girl-glad,
chest centric?
envelops and coddles
and yet
shocking you,
that this never-expected-gift is capable of being felt

at in over up outside inside
below across beneath above and the
all encompositional prepositional,
throughout

forms of its own accord,
not asking permission,
to exist within

your body that not so long ago,
forgot where it kept
the
how-to manual

and you,
obligatory poet,
noblesse oblige,
try reaching hard for,
top shelf, newly combinated,
adjectival adverbial nouns and
verb words
to encapsulate this
shocking development

but finding none,
save for the the silent, seriously-forming smile,
busy re-designing your face,
quiet like,
it,
thunder claps slaps
in your mind

enough!

your smile is
this time

self-speaking sufficient
and
there is no need
to reach for words


~~~


9:03am
The Sabbath
1-15-16
nyc
Ray Jun 2013
Do you remember the times spent sprawled across your bed
when we never noticed or cared when the sun had set
how you'd trace patterns into my shoulders
and I'd pretend to fall asleep;
anything to memorize how it felt between your sheets.
I miss the fire in your eyes when you craved my flesh
I miss your unforced smile, the scent of cigarette on your breath
it feels like weeks have gone by since I last felt your kiss
I guess it's the life in you, that's what I miss.
Destre' Oct 2015
unable to think
unable to focus
all to aware that you're there
unforced and undeniable
the connection between us is eleteric
or maybe its just my attraction to you that paulsing
maybe my interest,
maybe this electricity,
is one sided
making my desion to just play it cool, relax, fight it
fight the overwhelming yearn to talk to you
fight the titlewave of over exagerated feelings
every erg
every thought thats telling me to spill my guts
play it cool
i dont even really know you
but as bad as it may be,
in my head i already do
your quiet and to yourself
and i want to know if theres sombody els
that youre hidding beneith the surface
tell me
spill your guts
im not afraid
be that titlewave
let everything youve never said wash over me
and know ill still be there in the end
When the wave has cleared
And debre is scattered
I'll help you pick up the peices
jeffrey robin Mar 2013
The heart chakra
(The door!)
..
The breath
Slow and steady unforced
.
Image of a "roadWAY appear
Going both ways thru the door
--
Pilgrims and saints
Moving both ways thru
the door
///////

The light from above shines down

From below
Sounds and scent of water
--

Mothers fathers
Sisters brothers

Entwined by the mysterious power
---

Create and decay
Nurture and devour

But somehow surviving
Going somewhere
--
And lo!
You appear
.
We get on the D-train
And go down town
-

What shall we do there?
YES YES
What we shall do there
-----

Under the stars
While the Song plays
If music is love expressed, then how will my song play?
Will each phrase be smooth with content or broken by loss?
Will the notes be frantic and panicked, like my searching heart once was?
Or steady and certain, as my head is now?
Will  the hands on the keys be shaking and cold?
Or free from fear and dancing in confidence?
How many voices will join the ensemble?
And for fleeting moments or prolonged duets?
Will I keep moving forward with driving rhythms?
Or pull everything back and take a more leisurely pace?  
Maybe there will be a turning point, when dark becomes light, or when shadows grow stronger still.
Or perhaps a gentle fade, as each perfect harmony wears away at my soul.
Whether the music rises or falls does not concern me, however.
For the beauty of music is not in the highest note or the hardest bar.
It is in the reason behind every dot on the page.
And In the end there is no point in music for the sake of music, just as there is little point in love for the sake of romance.
I know there will be moments of unsure dissonance and outright clashes that were never meant to be.
But I'm hopeful, that in the same way as in music, eventually all will be resolved.
So I hope not for drama, but an unforced and natural conclusion:

**A perfect cadence.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2016
the most effective music to write to? it's not music you like, you'd be surprised what writing emerges from listening to what you'd usually discriminate against to form relationships - for me? that's pop music, mostly boy-band music: sweet lies - and trance / dance music... dance music is the quintessential dichotomy of classical music - the excess of drums - it's a contained version of the inexplicable St. Vitus' dance - it's a controlled virus, but it also works with writing: as does popped version of all the major genres - primarily because you can be offered the chance to be a backstage observer - the crowd is pleased, it's jumping up and down, and you're in the shadows ******* a poem out, for all intended purposes.

even if something profound happens to you,
you experience something inexplicable -
you have to return to the little joys of life -
that everyday people comprehend only slightly:
to be honest, the little joys of life are more profound
than hearing a burning bush talk -
the reservation is primed upon the: personal
and private - farting in a crowded train
just diminished the theory of solipsism -
after all: everyone compares their farts to
the scent of strawberry fields - evidently farting
on a crowded train destroys the theory, outright.
even if you did hear a burning bush talk
and never heard of a Brazilian wax ice rink -
you got to keep up with the basics of life,
if i was mad enough, and didn't enjoy music
as much, i'd be a raving shaman in
the Amazon rain-forest: half of proposed hyphen
compounds to attain a Germanic *bubblingblahbog

will not pass the Oxford censor - the optics
are already too much scattered in English from
original Saxon - thus comes the certainty of
yesterday's night: shaving.
i've been growing this mogwai for some time
(also a scottish indie band) -
                 but yesterday i decided to shave -
a month if not two or three passed -
i just missed the feel of razor-metal against the skin -
first the scissors, to cut most of it off...
then the foam applied to the stubble -
then the razor... ooh... ooh... most ****** hair
hits full crop yield in your late twenties -
          beside the fact... i can't tell you the experience...
after a while the mogwai just gets pulled a lot,
twisted and curled by the fingers,
a bit like passing time smoking cigarettes -
you fingers need to do something -
          but the feel of the razor metal against the skin,
the sound of unforced itching when the sliding
scoop travels against the skin -
                          without comparison -
it just feel right... obviously the goat had to remain
to hide the double-chin - all the perks of having
a diet primarily fuelled by a suggestion:
and what if there was no water on this planet,
what if this planet had lakes, fresh water sources,
but instead of salty seas, we had alcoholic seas?
well: first of all we wouldn't get the point
of how Na-H2O defies gravity, travels up into
the fluffy kidneys (clouds) and falls back to earth
pure - i'm suggesting something akin to:
   clouds and salt - the prime component of clouds
has to be salt, based on a simple suggestion of
magnetism - i mean, the seas aren't boiling,
there's no volcano kettle making sea water into
sea steam - i'd love to nibble at a clouds and say:
stash that into a bag of chips with some vinegar.
still: the pleasure of shaving... and drunk...
not a bad job... a goat did emerge last night.
morning glory Jul 2017
Wakes me up; strengthens my bones
This early morning sky almost makes summer feel like winter once again.
Unforced smiles; finally, some fresh air to breathe all on my own, in such a rare and quiet solitude.
maybe i'm in love with the sky
Jackie Nunez Oct 2015
The memories hurt,
The memories will never fade,
They stick to my head like bubblegum,
They creep in my loneliest moments and torture my soul.

I hate you for doing this to me.
Why did you make me love you so deep?
Why did you show me you cared?
You shouldn't have spent 3 A.M summer nights talking to me,
Maybe then you wouldn't have known my real self,
you wouldn't have been able to reveal my weakness.

Unforced happiness,
The connection between us,
The grip of your hand when i was unsure,
The look of admiration in your eyes when i stared at you,
I saw my reflection behind those hazel eyes,
I saw the way you saw me,
My fingers tangled up into yours perfectly;
It was like it was meant to be.

You left me empty handed, unsure of who i was anymore,
My favorite summer memory,
My favorite Hello,
You made me feel whole;
yet so empty.
You were the best, and worst thing that has ever happened to me.
You were meant to be only a memory
Buven ThePoet Jan 2020
We just met
But I already feel what I should
have felt a long time ago..
The World needs to know not
As long as I am happy.
I am more committed to grooming
what I have just received..
Unforced love!
If there's something to tell
The smoke will choke everyone
I would rather fly and land wherever
the wind would take me
Than to sit down and listen to
'Everything will be alright'
That has grown grey hair..
What's the use of dying in misery
whereas the World has a lot of options?
I only pay attention to good news..
Stephan May 2016
-
**Sinking slow the mire
Of touted soldier’s stare
Blindfolded, seeing inside
Stood straight of knotted shame
Condors perched waiting
My last cigarette damp
Lips nicotine cracked
Useless circumstances cry
Unforced tears fall
Guns raised and aimed
Bayonets point a finger
Discharged of itchy indexes

Ripping antique flesh
Puncturing vital statistics
Sorrow in tattooed blood stains
My dense skull explodes
Shards of bone fly
Dotting soiled landscape
In a mosaic of lost dreams
Shattered with one foul mouth
Loose like the cannons
Flanking the homeland
As I consume the sludge
Of final foolishness
Mitch P Jun 2015
I remember love
and it's steep cavernous walls
the gripping elation
And unforced smiles.

Comfort falls in the crook
of my arm and my lungs
And steals away my fear.
Her breath tickles my shoulder,
she twitches in her sleep
And smiles like the crack of dawn.

Where love would wear away
now it wears on me,
weighs on my security;
a secret I won't believe.

I climbed with grit and grin
against gravity.
Where I used to fear the climb
now I fear the fall.
Miguel Diaz May 2016
What is the air breathed in by the millionaire?
The same as inhaled by the slum-dweller?
The monopoly on air is great!
Or imagined?

A false dichotomy, a false pretense,
a logical fallacy, a paradox and contradiction. Linguistic sounds murmured and mumbled by orators and curators.

The breath of life is the worlds most beautiful gift, but also a mundane commodity,
It is in a perpetual state of being unwrapped and re-wrapped,
Transported by logisticians,
Prepared by makers,
Packaged by designers,
Consumed by the user,
Expelled by the waster,
Salvaged by the recycler,
Reminder of our life,
Reminding us of our mortality
Which we so frequently forget.

Breath is without choice,
We are unforced,
We flow the atoms inside us
Which our lungs are built to contain,
But particles need to be expelled.
As all good things must come to an end,
So must the ego we wish to contain.

Nature's masculinity is all too powerful, dominating the global hemisphere. His spheres of influence are enermous and his allies volatile.
Fire, metal, lightning, magma, stone, thunder.

An awesome feat,
We have learnt to harness electricity,
The ecstatic delight,
The shock of wonder,
We are galvanised into apathy,
Wired on our technology,
Device on finger,
We have yet to integrate the complex organic with the intricate artifical.

The technology of air is a great invention, invented by an invisible nothingness, an empty void of silence, a chasm of infitissimal unmeasurableness.
We have yet to harness this ancient element.

As we race about and fulfill our desires,
Humans, thought to be different,
No, we are a microcosm of repetition, a chain reaction, a catalyst of a parralel universe.

We have created our own branch of nature,
We are a branch hanging off the trunk
Our own pecking order,
We are not elemental isolates from the land which we once grew on.
Diamonds are made from carbon.
Flesh from cell.
Cell from atom.
Interconnected, neural and galactic.
The microscopic projections playing through our planetary minds:
Sharp as the claws of beasts.

The tiger rattles its chains,
Exuding its own glory,
Its notoriety known amongst
The lesser kingdom dwellers.
Is it moral to cease the latters' lives early on, severed by the hand of sentient and intelligent conciousness?

The grand old question proposed by philosophers.
To **** or to be killed?
To live or to die.
War or peace?
Answers and binaries, we rush in attempt to answer both,
The sedate and the anxious professors will philosophise,
Knowledge will reach the masses,
Ignorance remains.

Time will pass and death will come to all of us,
Mortality an unstoppable force,
an unstoppable ticking,
A machine in the clockwork of nature,
A cog that has been inhabited by life,
An abstraction colonised by thinkers and doers,
All on the same trajectory of the unknown.
Powerless and hopeless civillians, grasping and clinging desperately on an immense rocketship,
Fighting for survival.
Are we preparing for a greater good or a we headed into the dark oblivion?

The corporations too - perceived as more powerful -
Know they have land and
Ownership of property,
Exerting their will
In an extravagant and
Flamboyant fashion.
A luxurious and pompous display,
A model for citizens to admire

Sooner than we know,
The invisible does become visible,
The curtains are opened.
Even denyers become believers.
The windows of facades,
To be scratched. Will be clawed.

We lament and count our losses,
But the trees remain grounded,
Roots are always shifted,
Loggers cut down beasts of beauty,
All too common, there are all too many treefellings.
Her presence is sparse and dense.

We raise, we grow and then we prepare and consume.

Is it so strange we do this to eachother when we do this to nature?

In a internation that worships success and scolds failure, how can the failure be allowed to live?
He is at the mercy of the lucky,
he is at mercy to dissaproval,
he is at mercy to mockery.

The air she does not distinguish between worthy and unworthy, she gives lovingly to children of the earth.
Is it not time love ourselves to love eachother and love her back?

Is it much more powerful to imagine utopia than to disdain dystopia?
We are a dusty age that Mother blows away with her strength of love.

We forget her might,
Her fury, her will.
She: more powerful than all of us.
The earth can crack,
The skies will burn,
The seas will flood.

Our might is remembered by historians,
Our strength is revealed through leaders,
Our vulnerability is exposed.
Our secrets are brought to light.

We are as evil the land.
Life lived in the grey.

— The End —