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Jimmy King Jun 2014
If we were the kind of friends who unironically
raised our glasses in toasts,
I would give one to the generation too comforted by the ease
of a honeybee in the plaintively nonexistent mind
of a tulip

To the generation, or at least its subset
that wrongly feels representative, who stumble drunkenly
or maybe just tiredly out of tents
to **** in the view of their friends, who are still at the fire
because the tent was too cold

To those who did raise their glasses in a toast
on New Year’s Eve at what felt, with the ball drop
not screening in luddite protest, enough like midnight.
Beginning with “dear friends” and a couple laughs;
concluding with “now let’s get ****** up” and
a couple more

To those who proceeded
as directed, clinking their shot-glasses
and swigging them back. If only because
they were not tulips.
mark soltero Aug 2021
infatuated with me
you became my biggest enemy
something insincere about how you wanted me
i was there to take the edge off
coke binges at the bar every other night
and you wonder why your hairline is moving backwards
you caused my mood to lose all stability then
crying for your attention
you were starving for us to look past your lack of personality
you didn't need a reality show
you needed a reality check
at the time you were 23
way too old for me
you were grasping at straws to be pretty
we can see the crow's feet setting in and your liver failing
no amount of jogging can bring back your peak
you're the biggest cliché
you go to emo night unironically
you said you saw yourself in me
we are not the same
remember you were a prom king
Anais Vionet Jul 18
In Paris, society people unironically dress for dinner, go to cocktail parties (where the hostess has an obvious drinking problem), dine with Catholic Bishops, industrialists, politicians and occasional celebrities (usually for charity) in places dripping with atmosphere.

I met this famous actor once (July 2019, pre-covid, I was 15), at one of these summer parties in Paris. He was probably in his early forties (an impression, I didn’t look it up). Shall we wax poetic?

It was sunset - almost 10PM in Paris.
The last rose-blush of sunset was in the west.
I was leaning on the wrought iron balustrade,
of a 4th floor terrace, in the center of the city proper.

The Seine still shimmered, with diaphanous emerald flecks,
and the air was heady with the perfume of jasmine and Nuxe oil.
Behind me, beyond the French doors and filigreed silk drapes
that fluttered like angel wings, a cocktail party was happening.

I could hear the tinkling of glass, laughter and conversation.
A couple, across the way, were wrapped together as if for warmth
and they communicated in the language of lingering touch and gazes
that delved and explored. I smiled, embarrassed, and looked away.

Ok, snap out of it.

He came out on the terrace alone, as if he was looking for a breath of air and stopped at the railing about three feet away from me. After a minute, he turned, as if I’d suddenly appeared, and introduced himself.
When we shook hands, his felt like silk.

Anyway, we’d chatted for under a minute - I was jabbering about how I’d loved the Bourne movies - I was trying to sound interesting - when he leaned in and whispered, “What would you do if I kissed you right now?”

I was flabbergasted and I think I looked around to see if he was talking to me. Sometimes life offers simple choices. I grimaced, shook my head ‘no,’ and at first, I backed away, then I turned and hustled back to the party.
I think he chuckled. I saw him some time later, chatting up a model-looking woman.

I told Charles about it after the party and he said, “Huh - No kidding?” Then he shrugged and said, “Hollywood.”

This isn’t some sobbing “me too’ story. I wasn’t traumatized. It’s a tale of entitled male tomfoolery. Maybe I looked older in a certain light? A humorous ‘growing up’ story I get to share with friends - and now with all 8 of my readers.
.
.
Songs for this:
Hurricane Waters by Citizen Cope
Beautiful Trash by Lanu & Meg Washington
Quero Te a Sambar by Tape Five
BLT Merriam Webster word of the day challenge: Tomfoolery: playful or silly behavior.
Alyssa Feb 2018
I see you everyday,
I hear you everyday,
I watch you everyday,
But it will never be enough.

I am with you everyday,
I work with you everyday,
I live with you everyday,
But is still isn’t enough.

I see your eyes,
your face,
your hands,
your hair.
Your clothes,
your walk,
your skin,
I desperately want more, but it is never enough.

During the day, you are with me.
Working
At night, you are without me.
Playing.

I hate it.
I want you to myself,
yet I don’t know how.
You call me emotionless
I call you an unobservant
You call me ridiculous
I call you rude

But then you unironically said I’m brilliant.
You said I’m fantastic.
That I’m amazing.
I’m a genius.

You are the first.

You are different.

You were different from the start.
I began to see it when we met and you didn’t hate me.
You are the first.

You are different.

I wanted a friend.
I took you unwillingly on an adventure,
And you loved it.

It healed you.
I knew it would.

I was jealous.
I took you away from your ‘friends’,
and you hated it.

It helped you.
I knew it would.

I wanted help.
I took you away from your job,
And you loved it.

It was your favorite time of the day.
I didn’t know that.

You wrote about us,
I wrote about ash.
You wrote about our work,
I wrote about perfume.

I told you what you wrote was silly.
I loved your writing.
I loved our flat.
I loved our job.

Now it has changed.

Now,
I
Love
You
Jeremy Betts Sep 2022
We have more in common than you might think, from way back when, we've all been a slave to the system
This isn't some All Life's Matter nonsense to gum up progress, it's just an explanation of the MO of our nation
It went from skin to the dollar amount you bring in, it's my history too, no appropriation
How is it that I don't fit in being that I'm part Native American, must be the other part of me that's an Irish man

They stole you then stoud you and demand you comply to tilling stolen soil using the same regurgitated lie
You were forced to work, we were forced to die, you deserve reperations but unironically so do I
You look at me and just see another white guy, I'm a perfect example that history can't always be seen by the naked eye
Never forget the why, we're being forced to hide the cry as they rush to rewrite themselves as the good guy

Sectioned off ghetto and reservations put in place for the preservation of the notion only the white survive and thrive
Every second of our life the truths been uncovered and streamed live, no need for a deep dive
But they still claim to be blind to the red stained streets from this perverse and nonconsentual mass blood drive
Their stories never jive but the hive mentality rules, allowing bigotry and hate to always revive

I want to Hulk out, often feel I'm about too, but what's that gonna do, it'll only prove we're as savage as they say
They are waiting for the avalanche to fall any day so they can justify putting us away, barking at us to just sit and stay
Is there another way, how can we drag this from out the shadows and into the light when there's only perpetual grey
Allowin' us to say what we gotta say hoping then we'll go away, how many marters will it take before we're no longer prey?

Question charitable blankets, pass on the boat ride, how we suppose to trust when every handshake is a lie certified
A bona-fied villain willin' and able, fully capable of genuine genocide screaming gods on their side
If there is a god and he does come back he better watch his back or run and hide
They lack morals of any kind, replaced with blind pride, he'd undoubtedly be crucified in a fashion not only justified but glorified

I know you can't fight hate with hate, that'll only perpetrate this disastrous fate
But all we hear is wait, the time is never right but always near and once it's here they'll be glad to open the gate
But if we keep rattling the cage they'll have to keep pushing back the date, so we wait
But how much do they think we can actually take? Maybe they're just waiting for us to finally break

©2022
Tate Dec 2017
There is a difference between holding your breath
And not breathing at all
One takes a lot more effort
One is the product of carrying too much
The other of carrying nothing at all

When I walk into a crowded room
I will hold my breath until my lungs find a reason to relax
My face will flush and I will eye the exits
And I will imagine any possible scenario that would allow me to leave
Which is to say,
I’d rather be in danger than be here

I’d rather be in a secluded single bed hospital room
Than brushing shoulders with conversations that don’t concern me
Smiling uncomfortably to an offensive joke because
You don’t know me enough to know the fire in my bones
That I could ignite and burn you to the ground.

You also don’t know how I wish I could extinguish that
How I burn down everything I touch
How I wish my embers would die down
Lacking oxygen might not be the worst thing

No, being alone in a crowded room wouldn’t either
Saying unironically that I stand alone in a crowded room
As if it has never been said before- might just be
Or maybe my sparks are burning this poem up too
Ruining its changes

You gotta understand,
The thing about fire is
It is a beautiful beast
A chaotic dancer who knows both sides of
Everything beautiful and everything not


In my eyes fire eats its beauty
It eats the life from inside out as it spits remnants of relics
Too tough to melt
So when we are in the flames
Like our salem sisters we think
How can something
so grand
So intriguing
So important
Be burnt down by a people so ignorant
Only to reveal what is truly important
How could you not see that as a compliment

How can you not see that we are all the flames
And that we are all also being eaten by them
As we consume everything around us in turn
And that maybe we just need to catch our breath.
Blue Flask Mar 2017
pop a hip and dance
As the path is layed for you
Feel the dark irony swirl
And spill your coveted secrets
In vague half-meanings
Talk about the unironic pills
And the unironic problems
And smoke your unironic drugs
And drink your unironic liquor
Watch the unironic ironic movies
And talk about it afterwards
I'm your unironic little circles
And smile
unironically
That you were nothing but original
a mcvicar Mar 2018
Hubris (from ancient Greek ὕβρις) describes a personality quality of extreme or foolish pride or dangerous overconfidence, often in combination with arrogance.

                           ~~~

on the subject of paper thin strings
i'm tied, we're tied, you're tired
of being ******* to posts made out of stainless, painless steel.
ironically trying to sing your problems to the ashtray,
unironically trying to run, run, run away...
this post weighs me down
spins me around a thousand million times
until we forget that we've been dancing by ourselves for quite a while,
because there's never been another princess like me
except she wears the same crown every other princess does,
and she still sits at the bottom of the stairs and cries every night;
no white unicorn, no black dove.
but to all the princesses that wear top hats or silken kitten ears
you too are paper thin and water thick.
our strings are all the same:
Zeus himself saw to them being made of underfed dreams,
un-photosynthetic flowers that grew out of expectations in some genie's head.
so, where's your conclusion?
we all suffer from hubris.
we all survived the tsunami just to die in the ship wreckage
and suffocate in the debris.
we're all weak, and meekly making our ways along
              these stupid paper thin strings
attached to a post made out of
              stainless, painless steel
4.3.18
Tark Wain Jun 2016
Hmm
All of my let's just be friends
are friends I don't have anymore
my mind races
as I search for reasons why
I'm unironically looking
to Drake for inspiration
Phoenix-Rising Apr 2020
Him
I dated a boy this year who was more difficult to understand than any girl I’ve ever dated. He always wanted to be with me, which isn’t a bad thing, I guess, unless you’re in school, and you’re trying to focus, and he’s starting to become controlling and clingy.
It started slow, with hugs every time I would walk to my other classes, and that was sweet. Then it grew to ten hugs in half an hour of seeing each other. And maybe it’s because I’m gay and didn’t realize it yet but he just got on my nerves all of the time.
When we had only been dating for a few weeks, he said
“I love you”
And I told him I didn’t love him back. I said it was too early and we were young and I was still figuring things out. He said
“I guess I’ll just have to keep saying it until you get used to it and say it back”
I couldn’t seem to explain to him how angry that sentence made me, or how toxic it sounded, and he continued to tell me, at least five times a day
“I love you”
I had not told my first girlfriend that I loved her, ever. I hadn’t told my second girlfriend until we’d been together for three months. I guess I should have told him then that we had to break up, that it wasn’t working. Instead, I gave in, I said
“I love you”
back to him. And that made him happy, but it made my insides coil every time I thought about him. Still, I did not break up with him. I thought I needed him for some reason. Because as much as I hated it, he did tell me he loved me, and I hadn’t heard that in a long time.
So when he began to say things like
“My girl”
Or
“She’s mine”
Or calling me
“Babe” unironically,
I let it go. I thought it’s just a show of love. When I did tell him not to call me babe, he called me that the next day. He never seemed to remember when I told him things like that.
But he did tell me he loved me, however cheap those words were. I didn’t think about the fact he’d probably said that to his other eight girlfriends before me too.
The day I broke up with him, I told him I was still trying to figure out my sexuality. He replied,
“Fine, it’s not that big of a change anyway, from pan to gay, we'll just rewrite that in the books”
And that was when I knew that I was doing a good thing in breaking up with him. Because that relationship was not healthy, and I wasn’t happy.
He and I are still friends I guess, but not really. We don’t talk anymore, and I think that was always a problem we’d had.
Elizz Jul 2018
I'm a sucker for brown eyes
But then again I always just loved
The thought of waking up to look into grave dirt
And not be buried securely under it for once
I'm also a sucker for blue eyes
Because I'll never be able to drown in them
Like I've just ever so slightly drowned in the sea
I mean it was just a little bit
Part of me thought it would be fun
I like Canada dry
So much so that I think
It may have actually taken over my body
Absorbed all of my blood
And now my heart
Which has unironically and uncoincidentally
Turned into a perfectly undented Canada dry can
My smile will blind you
Whenever I choose to do so
When a guy tells me I should smile more
I honestly only smile because
When his eyes fall upon it
They will shriek
Sprout arms
And shut his eyelids
But little did they know that it would be too late
Because they've already shriveled up
Turning to a fine layer of dust inside of their respected sockets
So yes I'll smile for you
I'm a siren walking
Who also just happens to be an opera singer
Just so I can replace the glasses that I shatter with your ear drums
I'm a lovely rose in the garden
The better replacement
Of snow whites poisoned apple
Admire my glimmering
Harmless beautiful petals
You don't notice that you're getting light headed
But that's alright
Because I get your last breath
That belongs to me as you inhale
My sickly sweet fumes
Heavier than the humidity in the air
As I sit
Sipping my peppermint tea
Reading your life
Like I read the pages of my book
Because I'm all about blue seas
And brown rays of sunshine
And did I mention?
I'm a sucker for a smug smile
Alicia May 2019
I love train stations.
Unironically, I hasten to add.
I get excited when I get to explore
A new one, even though I have a
Habit of getting lost easily and
Ending up on the wrong platform.
I’ve never missed my train though,
To everyone’s surprise.
Getting lost in the easiest of places
Is my speciality, but the usual anxiety
Doesn’t course through my body
In stations, the liminality is
Almost comforting. It’s an in between platform,
Not the start and not the end, always
Somewhere else to go afterwards.
I like that.

— The End —