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Sydney Alexandra Oct 2014
Compliments are thrown around like the statement "that's so gay"

Said far to often for reasons of which know one really understands

Most are meaningless
Most mindless
Most common
Most fillers
Ex "hey, you look cute today"
"Thank you" she said with a smile

Everyone is searching for compliments
Like receiving them means something
Like receiving them makes you a greater human

Reality check compliments really mean nothing anymore

So i'm so very sorry cutie, looks like your not so cute today
Blacksilhouettes Jan 2015
"Why does he drink so much?" They asked

He answered: "To drive away the pain of uselessness. To numb the feeling my world could come crashing any minute with the next wrong decision I make"
And after that ,he drinks another one and does the exact same thing he just said he shouldn't do:make another bad decision
Donall Dempsey Sep 2021
THE USELESSNESS OF MAPS

You were always
the bit

where the map creased & tore
leaving us unsure

looking through a hole
at our own big toe.

You were always
the bit

where the map was folded in four
and had to be awkwardly unfolded

just to see
where you were.

You were always
the bit

that was just off this map

ending in mid air...

...see next map:

...the missing map!

You were always
the lost map.

You were often
the wrong map.

The map that there was...

...no map of:
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2016
perchance an epic was necessary, to consolidate the scattered thinking, and indeed, once a certain life, and was lived with a cherishing heart, the heart broke, and life turned from adventures to a more studious approach, and in here, a comfort was found, never before imagined explorations - of course sometime a tourist in the arts does come, but such tourists quickly fade, and the pursuit becomes more enshrined - to levitated towards epics is perhaps the sole reason for the cherished memory of some - and how quickly all can revolve around a searched for theme, after many incorporations were minded - as one to have travelled the Mediterranean, another to have been eaten by the great mandarin silkworm of the library of Kangxi - heading along the silk route with spices - indeed the great mandarin silkworm of the library of emperor Kangxi; as i too needed a bearing - to inspect the trickster of lore and the godly blacksmith of the north.

by instruction - an accumulation of the the zephyrs
into a vector, headed north,
toward the gluttonous murk of ice, jesting
with aches to the bulging and mesmerised crescendo
of adrift stars captured in the tilting away -
to think of an epic, to keep out-of-time of
spontaneity and thistle like swiftness in the last
days of summer, that Mercury brings the new
tides of the tetravivaldis -
   brought by the λoγος of a γoλας -
for reasons that satisfy the suntan copper of
the ***** - the λoγος of a γoλας - yet not toward
Monte Carlo or any hideout of money well invested
and greedily spent for a charm -
no, north bids me welcome from afar -
this norðri fløkja, this    ᚾᛟᚱᛞᚱᛁ       ᚠᛚᚢᚲᛃᚨ -
by my estimate, i could not take the nonsense
of numerology of a certain specialisation,
i took what was necessary, i pillaged the temple
of Solomon, perhaps that the dome of the rock
might stand - with its glistening dome and
its sapphire mosaics - i don't belong among
palm trees and date trees - hence i turned to
deciphering and subsequently encrypting -
as i have already with *ᚱᚨᛒᛖ
:
the journey of an Æsir through a birch forest
on a horse.
                    with this method in mind:
(a) ᚾᛟᚱᛞᚱᛁ       (b) ᚠᛚᚢᚲᛃᚨ:

(a)
the need to acquire possessions accumulating
into an estate, is a journey encountered
day by day, although a journey on ice

(b)
cattle only thrive near water,
auruchs did not, and hence illuminated
their way to extinction,
         by way of the Æsirs' harvest
(to eat up diversity of life, and create
a godless world of man).

my escape route came from ᚠ - mirroring שִׂ
although the former standing, the latter sitting
down, although the former fathomable
to my pleasure, the latter unfathomable
to ascribe numbers to letters for patterns -
i seek no patterns, hence my sight turned to
the northern sights, and meanings amplified.
                
the greeks were intended to explore abstracts,
having stated a triangle
they invented the ² symbol and what not,
it was because
they didn't bother extracting a phonetic unit
from something definite,
they classified such endeavours barbarian,
what reasonable greek of 13% reason and
87% reality would extract alpha from
the sound you made when
saying ansur (ᚨᚾᛋᚢᚱ) - i.e. attention -
i.e. deriving a definite sound differentiation
for alphabetical rubrics from a definite thing
(in whatever classification that might be)?
the greeks used the alphabetical rubric of
crafting a definite sound from an indefinite thing,
so they said: acronym, aardvark, assumption,
                       α                 α      α     α,
then they said α² - there are no antonyms -
but indeed there were, hence the Trojan nation
settling in the boot, that's Italy,
the Romans escalated the greek theory
beyond taking out a definite sound distinguished
from other distinguishable sounds,
abstracting what the alphabetic sound assured
a list under alpha: assumption, advantage,
acorn, etc. -
the latins were the first atomist after the greeks,
the greeks believed in atoms, but had no
microscopes to prove atoms existed,
such scientific faith found no parallel;
the latins ensured this was true,
ending with castrato sing-along -
the latins furthered abstracting sounds from
definite orientation which the greeks did
working from ice into iota,
the latins just sang i, i, i -
of course chiral behaviourism of such dissection
emerged - hatch a plan, plan a chisel -
it's very piquant i mind to let you know -
the greeks abstracted nouns in order to create
the alphabet, the barbarians still used
proper nouns to speak proper, the greeks
thus created synonyms and antonyms to add
to the spice of life - after all,
not deriving definite alphas from
cursors that acknowledged points of origins
created diacritical stressing like comma and
semis of colon and macron, not deriving them
from definite things, shunning a helpful
vocabulary bank to an unhelpful vocabulary
banked: synonyms and antonyms the Gemini's
birth of rhetoric;
but the latins were rejected with their atomic theory
of pronunciation, since they became laden
with diacritics - punctuation marks of a different sort,
you can measure a man sprint one hundred metres,
but is that also measuring a man to say
mān or män or mán? i know that the slavic ó = u
given the scalpel opening the ensō to craft a parabola -
but it's not necessarily an accent debate
but a punctuation debate... the emergence of
the diacritic symbols above the letters is due
partly to their joy of the popes listening to
castrato operas and the fact that the romans
went too far... hence the chiral nature of certain
symbols when dittoing - the barbarians used
definite things to assert definite sounds -
the greeks used indefinite things to assert definite
sounds - mind you, if the romans became too
abstract with their little units that became engraved
with punctual accenting, then the greek letters
became laden with scientific constants as necessarily
fathered, unchanging in the pursuit of Heraclitus' flux -
for example... Pythagoras and the hypotenuse:
                            σ / κ² = α² + β² -
           or?
                             c² (ć) = a² (ą) + b² / š (bubble beep
                                                           bop barman backup hop
                                                           of shackled kakah
                                                           or systematic oscillation
                                                           for bzz via burp);
πρ² is still more stable
                                 than what the latin alphabet allows -
hence why greek phonetic encoding was used in
science, and latin phonetic encoding was used in music,
can't be one or the other - added to the fact that
latin encoding had too many spare holes with
the evolution of numbers, and greek didn't have them,
hence β-reduction in lambda calculus and F-dur and A#

the one variant of the grapheme (æ) they didn't include
among expressions: graphite and grapheme
was the variant - gravitating to an entombing
of the excess aesthetic - geresh stress -
somehow the twins match-up to a single womb:
àé vs. áè: V vs. Λ - Copernicus wrote over all
of this with the flat earth uselessness
in terms of navigation - flat earth is useless...
huh? flat earth is the only system that gave
Columbus the chance to explore the new world -
no flat earth no Columbus -
that satellite named Luna was no tool
in navigating across the Atlantic - believe me
i'm sure -
                  or that grapheme (æ) varied like statistics
or like the characters in the book of genesis
that famous adam und eve (kim and kanye):
chances came, chances went:
it was still a draw on the tongue tied decipher:
àè and áé proved another notation for plurality
was necessary, not at the beginning of the word,
but after, hence the possessive article 's,
we could have parallelism, there was a crux,
how once the chiselling of letters came about,
more economic to chisel in a V than a U,
both the same, much easier though...
almost barbaric i might say...
sigma (Σ) enigma rune e (ᛖ) - this compass
is a ******* berserker, god knows if it's
mount Everest or the Bermuda Δ

but one thing is for certain, never you mind how
a language is taught unless you mind it,
not that conversational athenian is really what
i'm aiming at - but a lesson is a lesson nonetheless,
out of interest something new,
richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi,
and what preceded him, namely pan-slavism,
just when the polish-lithuanian commonwealth
did a little Judaic trick of its own,
although snorkelling in the waters of not writing
history for less a time than israel -
you can't beat ~2000 under water - although
you could if your little tribe had an einstein
among them, or proust or spinoza, then
you could effectively become a whale, popping
an individual out from the rubble to say a polite
'hello' and 'when will the dessert be served?'
but indeed, learning a language on your own,
how to learn from scratch, the greek orthography,
and why omicron and not omega,
the give-away? sigma - purely aesthetic reason,
                             νoμισματων

                             nomismaton

omicron                                                 omega

                 you write omicron at the front
                 and omega at the back
                 pivot letter? two: σ     μ &
                 νoμι-                                -ατων
                      ­                     |
                 anything here  
                 will use o            and anything
                                              here uses ω

alike to sigma:
                          χωρας (choras, i.e. country)

sigma (ς) not sigma (σ), i.e. digitalising languages
without a clear connectivity of letters,
block-a-brick-block-a-brick-digit-digit-digit
you learn that handwriting is gone,
two options, your own aesthetic reasons now,
remember, some paired for the ease of handwritten
flow - digitalised language changes the aesthetics,
you make your own rules (considering exceptions
of oh mega mega, ergo revision -

                                       χoρας,

but still the sigma rule, others esp. o mega
you stamp on them like βλαττια, i.e. cockroaches -
κατσαρίδα                 not         κατςαρίδα

all perfectly clear when you explore plato's
dialogue from the book Θηαετητυς (as you might
have noticed, the epsilon-eta project is still
in the storage room of my imagination) -
but indeed in the dialogue, between socrates
and the "hero" of the book theaetetus -
a sample, without an essay on the theory
of knowledge -
socrates: ...'tell me theaetesus, what is Σ O?'
theaetetus: yes, my reply would be that it is
                    Σ and O.
socrates: so there's your account of the syllable,
                isn't it?
theaetetus: yes.
socrates: all right, then: tell me also what your
                  account of Σ is.
                                                             ­   (etc.
or as some might say, a shrug of the shoulders,
a hmmpf huff puff of hot air, impractical interests
and concerns - well, better the impractical
problems than practical problems, less feet
shuffling and nail-biting moments with your
tail between your legs and an army of
intellectuals working out what went wrong
and how history will solve everything by
the practical problems repeating themselves) -
you know that inane reaction - others would just say
Humphrey Bogart and nonetheless get on with it.

some would claim i was begot a second time,
not in the sixth month period of the aqua-flesh,
how did i actually related to the life aquatic,
for nine months i was taught to hold my breath,
however did this happen?
a miracle of birth? ah indeed the miracle of
a crutch for a woman - spinal deformities -
9 months, sort to speak, in water or some other
fluid - merman - a beastly innovation -
next you'll be telling me beyond this life
we turn into centaurs, given the Koran's promise -
you'd need the appetite of a breeding horse
to satiate the 72 - or thereabouts - martyr or
no martyr - 72? that's pushing it -
or as they say among children - a chance playground
without swings or sandpits, but very careless
gravitational pulling toward a certain direction;
nonetheless, they might have that i did indeed
settle of a sáttmáli                  ᛋᚨᛏᛏᛗᚨᛚᛁ
                  við         ­                  Vᛁᛞ
                  tann                         ᛏᚨᚾᚾ
                  djevul                      ᛞᛃᛖVᚢᛚ -
the hands you see, fidgety -
     hond handa grammur burtur    úr   steðgur
     ᚻᛟᚾᛞ  ᚻᚨᚾᛞᚨ  ᚷᚱᚨᛗᛗᚢᚱ   ᛒᚢᚱᛏᚢᚱ  ᚢᚱ   ᛋᛏᛖᛞᚷᚢᚱ
         the hands give an ardent pursuit
                                                 away from rest -
well not that my poems will ever reach
the islands in question - and indeed an
uneducated guess propels me - what does it matter,
λαλος babbler meant anything, indeed λαλος,
language as my own, is a language that i can
understand - and should anyone omit
disparities - a welcome revision would never tease
nor burn my eyes - but the phonetic omission
peeved me off: woad in water, ventricles in a
variety of entanglements - it's just not there -
and indeed, orthographically, if there are no more
optometric involvements of omicron's twin -
then the stance is with you to use whichever pleases,
i can't tell the difference, unless i was a pedantic
student, aged 70, with a granddaughter i wanted
to be wed teasing a millimetre's worth of
phonetic differentiation between the two -
POTATO PA'H'TAYTOE TOMATO TA'H'MAYTOE -
linguistically one's american and the other
is british, which looks like greek and latin
upside-down and in a mirror: pəˈteɪtəʊ, təˈmɑːtəʊ;
or as the spaghetti gobblers would put it:
the tetragrammaton is working on their
texan drawl (dwah! ripples in china) -
or the high-society new england ******* *******
coo with a cuckoo's load of clocks -
before being sent off to england for a respectable
education, something en route Sylvia Plath -
but not to ol' wee scoot land - ah nay - well
perhaps for a year and then talk of north european
barbarism of a deep friend pizza and mars bar.

and when descartes finished with christina
queen of sweden, she became an animate portrait
of feminine attempts at philosophising,
she was basically ostracised from society,
well, not society per se, she didn't become a stray
dog, but she forgot certain functions of
the upper tier - lazily modern man decides
to hide phenomena from understanding
individual instances, with the kantian guise
of a noumenon, hence cutting his efforts short -
indeed queen christina of sweden was ostracised
by society - only after descartes finished educating her;
and indeed to most people a little bit of sloth
equates to an amputation of some sort -
yet only with the x-files' season 2 episode 2
i've learned of the effects of prolonged alcohol
"misuse", that little boxing match in my liver?
it's not a pain as such, it's actually a hardening
of soft tissue - with prolonged alcohol exposure
soft tissue organs harden, notably the liver -
and it's not a pain, it's a hardening.
but indeed queen christina of sweden was ostracised
by her tier of socialites - i'm glad diogenes
didn't get to her, but then again a bit of cloth
goes a long way this far north -
yet unlike the encounter with napoleon by hegel
diogenes' encounter with alexander lasted longer -
which tells you the old method does no service
to a little bit of material accumulation -
but perhaps the acumen was briefer when you were
ably living in a barrel - and to think, as only
that being the sole expression, not so much
a body without organs as stated in the thesis
of anti-oedipus by deleuze and guattari -
a consideration for a body without limbs - prior
to a footprint an imprint on the mind -
carelessly now, a diarrhoea of narration -
how rare to find it - perhaps this idea of epic
poetry is a default of writing per se -
with this my whatever numbered entry i seize
to find escape in it - a lack of ambition -
a loss of spontaneity that's a demanded mechanisation -
by volume, by inaneness - to reach a single
technique accumulative zenith, and then back
into the ploughing, rustic scenery and the
never-bored animals - i rather forget such escapades -
and there i was dreaming of a grand
runic exploration - some imitable game -
some scenic routes - yet again -
jack of spades Feb 2016
you know how the song goes:
a stitch away from making it
and a scar away from falling apart.
holding on gets hard when
the light at the end of the tunnel
goes dark.

my friend told me he doesn’t purposely
befriend actively suicidal people anymore.
so when a 14-year old friend
was hospitalized for an attempt,
he was shocked.
I’m not fourteen
and i don’t go to the hospital for anything,
but when i was fifteen i
asked my mom to start taking me to therapy.
she told me,
sweetie,
you can just talk to me about anything.
so i started writing poetry instead.
but poems can’t diagnose me,
poems can’t prescribe me meds to
fix the chemical catastrophe in my head
poems can’t cure me.
but neither can people.

there was a boy that i used to call sunshine,
but he told me that he would
rather be the moon.

i deleted your number from my contacts
once you stopped using mine.
you don’t keep me up at night.
i’ve stopped losing sleep over you.

i haven’t broken the habit of checking
people’s wrists when they move
because of all the girls i knew in grade school.
i have a friend with the first letter of help
permanently scarred on his stomach.
we’ve never talked about it.
i don’t know if either of us know how to,
or if either of us really want to,
or if either of us really need to.

when my brother was 18, he was convinced
that he wanted to go into psychiatry.
i think the closest we’ve ever been
was when i had a mental break over
orange juice at one thirty in the morning,
watching him play GTA on his Xbox 360.
when my brother was 17, he was convinced
that his future was in professional photography.
i’m 17 and i don’t have a ******* clue.
I’m 17 and i don’t think I’ve ever felt so much
like I’m just constantly drowning.

they say a captain goes down with his ship
and I’ve set myself up for losing all my friends.

she’s got year-round summer skin
and winter has never been my friend.

i sleep seven hours a night
and i wake up exhausted.

my cat has all his claws
and when he crashes through my bedroom
when i’m on the brink of extinction
it leaves me haunted, hearing
breathing and footsteps that aren’t really there.
so i’ll put studs in all my jackets
and wrap myself in blankets.

i wish you were here,
i wish i was there.

the first rated R movie
that i saw when i turned 17
was that one that brought back ryan reynolds,
starring a moody teen with
the best superhero name ever,
a CGI man who acted as her mentor,
a pretty girl like a damsel in distress,
and the bad guy called himself ajax
but his real name was francis.
i cried
a lot.
i’m not sure why, really, but when the credits
started rolling and it was everything that i’d
been waiting for in a movie for the anti-hero
that I’ve been in love with since i was 13,
i sat in those velvet seats and started sobbing.

when i was six, my dad took my
9 year old brother and i
to see ‘revenge of the sith’ when it came out
in 2005.
the scene on mustafar, the volcanic planet,
the downfall of anakin skywalker
stuck with me until i was 12 and rewatched
all six of those old movies,
stuck with me until i was 16 and rewatched
all six of those old movies.
when i was a kid those scenes were scary,
now i see a mimic of Shakespearean tragedy.

i pick things apart until i know that they’ll scar,
but scars have always faded for me.
the first mark that ever lasted for
more than a month was when i
burned myself getting a cake out of the oven.
i remember my brother telling me
that he wouldn’t care about the burn
if i ******* up the cake.
we laughed about it because it was a joke.
i still think about it.

i still check to see if you
watch my Snapchat story.

i rip the hems out of all of my clothing
compulsively. I’m sorry.
i’ll pick up all the balled-up threads from
the carpet eventually.

i keep ticket stubs and scraps of notes
hazardously strewn across my bedroom,
because i’m too sentimental for my own good
but organization has never come naturally.

solar systems are borne from my fingertips.
supernovas power my lungs.
stardust glitters in my veins
(i tell myself these things in order to
keep thinking straight)

hey, look at the moon.
see how she reflects the sun for you?
it’s because she’s got nothing
of her own to give away willingly.
i gave you everything willingly
i spent too many nights
shredding notebook paper into pieces
of white birthday party confetti.

i swallowed six painkillers today.
I’m passive like aggressive,
letting my liver slip into uselessness.

it’s really hard to write poetry about bruises.
i am a constant state of decay
bleh Dec 2014
'i've only ever really read one poem. i, i have to admit.*  
You know, that, that one poem that everyone’s read, whatsit,
Howl by Ginsberg, 'best-minds-of-my-generation-destroyed-by-madness,-starving-hyste­rical-naked,' , yeah, that one;'
'It's just, I identify with it so strongly.' she says,
'That poem is soo me.'
It's funny how commentary on a generation 60 odd years ago come across as timeless insights..
how we learn that true spirit of rebellion and counterculture three generations ago,
  as it is taught to us by two generation ago countercounterculture academics.
but I guess, inevitably
                                         we
                                                  return,
  to those half drowned pontifications inevitably decried into transcendental truth by the onward spilling ratchet of cultural recognition;
  that sense of universal oneness generated by the unwashed ramblings of beat-generation hipsters dense innuendo in run on sentences running, running from their upper-lower-middle-class New York homes and their privilege of true vacant meaninglessness and despair,
   to those nervous tucked in shirted clean shaven scholars swooning over the same seme drugged, melancholic bearded men profussing the deepest of opaque truths only found up the furthest reaches of their own *****.
  As we push through to our lectures, the mosaic in motion of blazer wearing mac-users and mac-pac wearing blazers,
  As we hysterically interpret the formatting conditions for our reports, which could hang in the balance of whether the dreams we once had will ever be actualised,
  As we felt lost and found and found and lost at those park benches under the stars, where occasional strangers strolled by offering sessions and life-stories,
  As we paid exorbitantly to get out of our parents homes, and into tin-can flats with broken windows, absentee landlords and cracked paint only held together by all the moss, (the empowerment that is wage slavery,) for in our youth, poverty is not an ever-present pejorative, but the rite of passage to show that we are alive,
  As rituals of manhood are defined by two things and two things only; how much insomnia one can accumulate to meet insane and inane deadlines, and how much one can illuminate the walls in ***** from all the beers, spirits, cheap wines and questionable home-brews,
  As the government dismantles the human-rights commission, and we nervously attend the rallies initiated by the radicals, and the man on the megaphone calls on the crowd to chant and we can only mumble and laugh nervously at ourselves,
  And when the next speaker runs onto stage feeling the need to plead to this already nervous, placid mass that this is in-fact a PEACEFUL PROTEST, and that we are all true patriots and they insist everyone start singing the national anthem and we all look down and we again mumble, or pretend somehow not to hear them,
  and when, in this biggest independent rally around a unified cause our generation's ever seen, we have never felt so alone ,
  and isolated,  
                                  we
                                             remember,
                                                                    those earlier days,
  When we'd bleach our hair; we'd poison ourselves white, in the vain mystic hope that this was just the transition period to the time when we'd get true colour into our lives,
  Remember our wonder at the Eurocentric Asiatic television representations of the Abrahamic faiths, given transubstantiated holy revival by the medium of Saturday morning digital pastel pasture; when we were children staring excited and wide eyed into the Metatrons Fire of Sinai 'Random Almighty Mega Damage'; as Dante and the seraph class Tyrant-infused-Michael inevitably made battle with YHWH, -in the one True End,- as we grinded within the monolithic emerald obsidian halls, Mystical wonderment spilling forth from our reddened hollow eyes, at the beautiful unlimited expansive world contained within our console/consoling digital unit discs; conformally mapped and etched into the convex hull of our minds,
  Where we were gods, doing battle with every possible creature in morphospace, filleted into overpriced cards and cartridges, for which our strategies meant so much to us though none of us really understood the game,
  When we could quote verbatim every piece of dialogue in GTA2, and get concerned glances from our parents as we conjured veiled imagery of bukake-ladled innuendo which we didn't really understand until six or seven years later,
  When sexuality was a special secret club our elders and the kids in the years above came across so wise for being a member of, rather than an anti-turing test; a farcical ritual where everyone tries their best to imitate the hyper-reality of MTV while hiding the nervous feelings that this whole thing was really meant for someone other than us,
  When creating a whole new lexicon for our self-hood (be it artistic, ******, political or philosophical) felt like existential emancipation; a transcendental rebellion against the normalising identities and semantics of old, rather than an impenetrable circle-**** taxonomy,
  When one day we'd unveil a new term in some text, and it would completely change our outlook on every corner of our lives,
  Or, the next day, when we'd give up and just sit back on rolling banks, and look out at a veil of stars,
  Or the next day, when we'd wonder desperate and painfully, which of the last two was the real pursuit and which was wasted time? (Or was it this day, the day spent building an illusory dialectic between them?)
  Remember when we were in kindergarden, and you had to pass through the kitchen, -the adults zone,- to get to the toilet, and you'd feel both shame and wonderment listening in of the snippets of conversation muttered by these titanic figures; discussing abstruse issues from the newspaper in foreign yet noble tongues?
  Remember when we were teens, and every form-checking observation and question from these same adults was so painstakingly pedantically banal and asinine, that one could only respond with monosyllabic grunts and silent hysterics?
  And remember as 'young adults', when we'd inevitably entered this same dull Aristotelian world of forms, how we'd ask the same adults for advice on filling these paperworks, at once still asemic gibberish, and at once the fine-print that contained and predicted our lives?
  Remember when our dreams for the future were not bounded by the economy of our grade point averages and just how much debt we were willing to incur
                                …
I've seen the best minds of my generation climb into pre-packaged little boxes; and pay through the teeth for the privilege of doing so.  
  Akin to a 'Howl' they call it? Our cry for selfhood? What a scream.
It's not even a cry. Barely a whimper.
More of a zombified groan, completely aware our intrepid Journey of Self is just a pricey guided tour. (Tv Ad's static commodified existential emancipatory platitudes; 'your place in the world' / 'well it's my place and it's my time' urgh.)
And so we march asleep; all lame all blind.
  Trudging through the mind-fields; arguing, unravelling the semantic distinctions between the empty boundaries and the boundaries of emptiness.
  Transcribed down for essay deadlines,  /  assessing our lives trajectory as dead lines,
Becoming increasingly aware,
  We are not the living beings, the dasein, the Übermenschen being actualised; we are the machinery through which the institutions, the factories, the markets and education facilities actualise themselves.
  (While the only acceptable language we can breathe in opposition to these ratcheting pedagogical machines is the lexicon they provide us..
  ('oh, you hate systemic neoliberal alienation; the deestablishment of ontological anthropocentrism? Tell me more about the esoteric uselessness of academic culture.') bluh.)

But

       the more we follow those phantom images we built of ourselves,
the more we become aware they are but sirens; hypnotic dreamlike figures luring us to our doom,
  and as this awareness dawns; and the cognitive dissonances and schizophrenia grows,
       We


                                just try to keep calm and carry on regardless.

Can we really claim the arrogance of having a better path?
The conceit that there's a better cliff we should be guiding ourselves to to top ourselves off?
I don't know,
I reaally
really
just don't know.
..i think i started out with a theme here, but it mostly devolved into venting.
      i finished another year of university recently. i'm not really sure to what extent higher education's given me perspective on life, and what extent it's simply annihilated what little i had.
   from my experiences of student culture, i feel our generation views itself as abandoned by the world, but to good for it anyway. We aren't the bohemians or beatniks or hippies or punks; our drinking and drugging ourselves to death isn't a counter-cultural high-minded rebellion. It's more a prideful self destructive egotism, a self derisive narcissism.   or something. i dunno.
  whether it's from cowardice or a more genuine scepticism, i certainly have no idea what i am (or ought to be) doing in/with/about this world.
Tell me about the Ace of Wands!
Tell me about the Ace of Wands!

This has been poorly imagined I admit:
The sunny penthouse
Open to the breeze
which presses and sways
through the sliding glass doors

Upturned champagne bottles
set in buckets of melting ice
A crystalline view of the Pacific
Or dusky Vegas lights

Strewn silken sheets
A **** carpet you can grab on to
The myriad of variations under a rising Moon

Yet Leather and Ecstasy are no where to be seen.
And though I wasn’t thinking of Sardinia
or of the Amalfi
That is a great idea

ROMP
noun
1. a spell of rough, energetic play.
2. a farce.

Eventually
(An earth-sign cusp is slow no matter how much air)
Eventually
creeping into my mind’s eye
(Thank you Time)
was my dodging of the slow-moving bullet
Alas, the lumpy bed in Hollywood awaits
with serviceable sheets
Encased in variations on a theme of
brown everything
A soul death in faux wood paneling
Someone else’s earring on a
grubby carpet floor
that offers you
burns for your back that won’t heal so fast
if that’s what you want
There’s the opening of the door
on the purring refrigerator
to look at cold nothing
And think nothing
Cystitis is on its way
And yes,
Too much dust

Don’t get me wrong
I have no real issues with dust
I have stood
Alone in the semi darkness before
In such a living room
Staring at this luminous particulate
On album covers
and in the glare of backlit windows
Floating in a beam from
a ceramic thrift store table-lamp

I was on my way to find the bathroom
Where a pair of pink ******* lay
drying
in wait for
me

Bachelor dust
Is old
I can write my name with my finger
in that which rests
upon the turntable’s hinged cover
In case you don’t remember
What they call me

As I’ve said
I’ve got nothing against it
Ask the dust
Go ahead
Ask it
Resting quite comfortably
on the bookshelves
If there are bookshelves
As if it had
something to do.
I ask it why?

my invading molecules subdivide
and grow more comfortable

Dust?
Why do I smell the stench of
chaste virgins and ***?
The intoxicating odor of foxed letters from an epistolary exchange regarding:
One Fair Maiden and the Devilish Pursuits to  Compromise Her Virtue?
The Opinions and Observations of Fallen Fruit
Here: The woman and her only true
possession
And Here: The sticky absconder who smells of fish.
They meet.
She blinks.

The dust replies
It’s a simple plan:
The Dear Lady is to be led
Astray
by pretty words and unspoken indiscretions
her dowry in the end, useless
She’ll be banished to the counties
To be a governess
or the
Bored companion
of the only living relative who will
Admit her services
Unpaid in silver coins
He is Blind and his Cook has left
Dyspeptic
Disagreeable
Cheap
and Mean.

She is Ruined.
Perhaps she will escape
to Italy
and die
Alone
in the sunshine.

The dust tells me another story
The same century still
This time, a miscreant princeling
surrounded by Trifles
Picking up one bob and then another
Preoccupied by uselessness
Perhaps a strawberry
Perhaps more claret and his mistress’s left breast
Tonight will be the scullery maid
Who will lose more in the end
Than she could ever possibly imagine
Tossed out of the kitchens
to Providence.
God bless Her.

The dust tells me
It’s mercantile, my dear
It’s all transactional
But look at me
I’m here for a time but am easily
Agitated and
Airborne
Aeolian driven
Ever blossoming fugitive clouds of swirling devils
Interstellar Reflection Nebulae
As you can see
I’m never in one place
So I say keep it movin’.
logan misseldine Nov 2014
Even plastic collects dust
Bright fibres of pink become dull magentas
From the countless years and endless days of Still life Sharp lines and smooth contours of artistically machined plastic toys become fuzzy as hazy dust
Piles
Heaps
And overflows
From one
Single
Fact
Inactivity?
Unappreciated worth?
Discontent?
Laziness?
No
None of these
The dust collects
Piles
Heaps
Even overflows
From USELESSNESS
The things that the dust is attracted to
That the dust clings to
Are the things that in comparison to the things that are imparitive to our existance and our health
Are useless
Are plastic
Ottis Blades Jan 2014
I had a dream I smoked some ***** with a Rasta Man
while we jammed in the name of the lord to some tunes
the children of Africa roaming free like wild beast
once the cradle of civilization turned into tombs
by the ungrateful, heathen souls that ran amok
in the name of annihilation and war.

But we are fearful pious men, as we inhaled the herb
the grass is the shepherd that nourish us like Giraffes
the sky is the ceiling that we reach with our blessed hands
the rivers gives us skins like Crocs to be able to survive
harsh whether, the blood-stained desert left behind by men
witnessed by the pale eyes of the torture souls of this land.

And so we inhaled and puffed like chimneys in a North Pole night
we talked about the smiles of our seeds stretching far and wide
how beautiful is a voice when it’s brought to life by a loved one
how the scent of a pure woman can bring the dead back to life
deadlocked, we are dreadlocked like grapevines until Jah lets us
the mental slavery that keeps us chained to the ships of our ancestors.

We never once conversed about the frail indignity of the mortals
the uselessness of hate, the ways material possessions can’t help you
we reached Nirvana without taking our feet off the common ground
we shared a spirit, bonded between long hits made of peace and love
in the freedom of those free thinkers tinkering with words without rest
in the children of Jah, daydreaming at night in a warm bed made of bread.
Celine Leduc Apr 2013
Pollution of the mind is real.
Our minds are cluttered with uselessness.
Stories on the street repeated mindlessly.
Words describe men and women as animals.
We insult the person and demean the animal.
We are no longer part of nature, unnatural we are.

People are dumb as a donkey, wise as an owl.
If a woman disagrees she is a *****, fights, a cat, she is.
To be a good mother you have to be a hen.
A man is built like a horse he is part of a stable.
In times of slavery Black people were animal, soulless.
Confusion between humans and animals caused by disconnection.

Religions and Politics in ****** use rats to justify: hatred.
Jews are told they are pigs, and drink blood.
Blood and Pigs are forbidden in Judaism.
Culturally socially we repeat mindlessly: slander.
Our connection to the earth and animal is lost so is our humanity.

Pollution of the earth causes pollution of the mind.
The earth cleanses itself by fire and ice.
The mind can also:  freeze out these concepts these fallacies.
Burn the words that are defamation and abomination.
Do; yes do this to avoid the fires of hell.
Soon, hell will freeze over and become heaven.
This poem is part of a reflection on religion and heaven...  soon available in a book.
Caitlin Fox Oct 2014
Only friendship.
You made yourself clear - clear as glass - that it could never be more.
But as I too am glass, a small shard of me broke off and shattered.
And why did it ignite my spirit to be in your presence, to be enfolded in your warmth
Why, why did it set my heart aflame, burn me with such flammable, incendiary envy
To see you lust after another, to want far beyond friendship with them
Why did that melt me
I was already committed to another, no matter if it was a dry, barren whisper of once-existing love or a forest of endless rain
It was commitment
Yet in spite of this, I continued to melt
Melting, right down to my core
Where I am just sand
Vulnerable, exposed, walked-on sand that could, at any second, be picked up by the wind and taken to another pit of uncertainty
But you
You dropped the empty attempts
And you began giving me your time
You showed me the naïveté that I am, and you took my hand and led me through a dark room
It was cold, and I was afraid
And you could not tell me that "everything would be okay"
Because this was real, unfiltered life you were motioning to before me
And though it was not a fully comfortable realisation,
The cold slowly thawed, from the outsides into my core, my sand
And as I thawed, as you too made yourself more vulnerable,
I at last began to take shape
Perhaps I have a calling
Beyond this fragile shell I consistently run back to for shelter, return to when it yearns back for my unearthed body to be protected again
But I knew better,
That when you molt from your armour,
Its purpose has been used up, and it is now just an empty shell, and it is time for that shell to be discarded.
And now, in my infantile flesh,
I trust that you can be my protector until my new shell can learn to harden
I am still unsure today if it has solidified,
Because I am focused elsewhere
Focused on you
My heart's every beat feels light at the remembrance of you
My mind's every thought a whirlwind
From the dissonance of reaching for you and being tempted to go back under the comfort of my old shell, from the knowledge that these two cannot coexist
But my soul, my soul is nearing soundness at last
Because with you here, I feel that my honest identity is at last coming to life
With you here,
Your breezes blow, but I do not fear that I will be carried away
Your shore arrives, but I do not fear that I am going to wash away
Though it was you who dared grind me down to my initial state of innocent sand,
You have sculpted me, even with the uselessness that I've felt I am
Shown me my potential
And made me a flourishing seashore.
Spilling my guts while riding the bus this morning.
nivek Apr 2016
missed the boat?
treading water?
drowning?

do not worry about your usefulness
you will be food for the fishes  
useful at your most uselessness
Fah Oct 2013
Where the media bows to senseless trash
the rest of us are still dropping it.

trash i mean.

stop it.

it's stupid.

Earth mama is kind, we've taken so much for granted and it's not even fair -
she did nothing but love you
and you are still dropping trash.

stop it, man!
Pick it up....
compost it , turn it into energy , do something worthwhile - at LEAST throw it in the bin!
holy smokes!

Where the media bows to trash
our brains turn to stinking piles of rotting brain flesh
and our imagination boils up in vast vats of vapid apathy
unless...
is that Marc Jacobs?

**** that.
Here's my market dress and market shoes
here is my charity shop cashmere and wool coats
here is my gifted trousers from a friend cleaning out her closet

and i still look classier than the half of you -

so please, if you could be so kind..

stop dropping trash.

The seas are full of plastic bags,
and the skies are full of the particles that used to be plastic bags,

burnt,
because it's cheaper to send the ******* some place else then learn that there is no cure

there is PREVENTION

INTERVENTION

STOP PRODUCING ******* TRASH

there we go... now no one will have to drop it.

ok?

****. Is it that hard?
-.-

is it just me who is getting kinda fed up ?
Life's a Beach Mar 2015
When I saw my bones
Protrude
From the knots of my back
Like the ridges of a dinosaur
Sapped of food, singed with
Stress
A childish distress
Fear darkness
Blankness
Terrifying emptiness
When I saw my back protrude like the
Ridges of a dinosaur
I saw my body dressed as the
Skeleton I will one day become
I saw a vessel controlling a brain
I felt like a bottle of tequila drained
Such fun until it's empty
Used to the tip of uselessness
When I saw my back protrude like dinosaur ridges, a skeleton
****
The most terrifying thing I felt when I saw my back protrude, like the dinosaurs I coveted when I was small,
The rudest thing I felt was

Satisfaction

With it all

I felt more beautiful than I ever had
Maybe
Ever will
Felt satisfied at the neatened carelessness I
Had almost used to **** myself
Satisfaction
That my body curved in
Only bones, no fat or muscle to
Hide the struts within
Revelled in the hunger in the pit of
Stomach because no one
Could control that but
Me
You can't fail at starvation

I loved it
For once I couldn't fail

When I saw my back protrude like a dinosaur
I knew I could never go there again

Because the living dead feel only
Hunger
Chest pains
And fatigue

And dinosaurs ate whenever the **** they wanted to
Dani Cunningham Jan 2012
I am the very empty shell of human ingenuity

Lost my luster and imagination

I can only put together what already exists

And call it new.

Now introducing the I-microwave

Featuring wifi

And a camera for those moments wasted

Waiting for hyper-sugared molecules to heat.

Blessed with uselessness

I bunker down in your nearest department store

And gain much needed dust.

I am zeros and ones in the system

1 kn0w N07h1n9

***** to the wall

I shrivel and die alone.



I am the ingenuity of the human shell

Lost in my own insecurities, my imagination runs wild with flaws

I can invent everything and anything

When I’m not focusing on myself.

Now introducing my spleen,

Featuring My right ventricles,

And my wiggling fugus-blackened toe nails,

All acting in accordance with my most important *****.

Blessed with uselessness

I bunker down in my loveless cubicle

And crave much needed attention.

I am nobody and everybody in the system

I know nothing

***** to the wall

I shrivel and die alone.



We are not so different you and I.

I invented you to keep me going

You depend on me to do the same.
Derek Yohn Sep 2013
i detoxed myself under this pale sun
     (you stood by and watched the
      unfolding saga all the while
      questioning the meaning of zen)

the original concept was lost
somewhere along the way
when i dropped the ball
on the forty yard line
     (can you recover your own fumbles?)

every time i stand by,
the waiting is eternal
and i become engrossed
in the uselessness of my position,
pondering
     (my love for this is a game of solitaire)

i am the ultimate in
irrational action,
a demagogue of dark
pathways and religious
zealotry, trapped beneath
glass floors watching,
trying desperately to
cannibalize my fingers.

i have smoked your toenails
and wandered away listless
at comments unbecoming
and salivated on the fires
set to displace my vessels
     (i have seen you ignoring me)

in the coming months i will
rend my eyes and pierce
my skull artificially
so you will be able
to see into my soul and
destroy me more efficiently
     (you will know me by the number of the dead)

i will search deep and
long inside this shadow's
shell, extracting this cancer
so i can cook up my
shortcomings and inject
them into a Ken doll
because then at least
i will be pretty.

i will feed my
chilled oatmeal to a
Cantonese family
that will honor me
as the ***** poo-flinger
i am for you.

i will cease to exist
on a plane with your
type, sinking lower
on scale like a rock in
the Mississippi River.

Mom, when i stop
growing up, i will
be the ****** loser
everyone always
thought i would
     (aren't you proud?)
     (isn't he cute?)

i cannot imagine
surviving your intern camp
after the tattooing of arms,
we will eat the testicles of the
fallen gods and dispense
great suffering on the weak
because of our enlightened
prospects and redemptions
     (what do you know about pain?)

i will place my severed head
in a place of prominence, likely
in your bed, right before
i cease to breathe

my eyelids weaken....
flicker, flutter....

i grow tired with the
advent of your indecision,
the totality of abandonment
the lenses fog, fade...
flicker, flutter...

i have run out of things to sacrifice
this is an amalgamation of three individual, and originally unrelated, poems
Oliver Philip Nov 2018
Are you a victim of your time , must you live
       With your mistakes, and suffer ?
Really it’s time we wake up n smell the coffee
Every problem has solution,so let’s start today

You need not to put it off or procrastinate .
Oh I know it’s easy said , so best get o’t a bed
Unless you ever wish to live with a mistake

And identify the faults, without delay.

Verify with me , in the best way to identify
In a poetic form an A to Z of your mistakes.
Can I start with A the abandonment
The abandonment of self-surrendering
I next target B for Bacchanalia nights
Melancholic days getting over a hangover

On to The Cacodemon of an evil spirit
Found in our home , a most malignant person

Yes and Depreciation of the value of our
        assets usually by the Bankers we trusted.
Oh to have the benefits of fiscal hindsight
Understanding E as extenuating circumstance
Reason then becomes the excuse for failure.

Together with F the F word so commonly used
In emphasis to any topic or discussions
Migrating to G , not mistaking God or life alone
Ethereal spirits surround us n help us choose

Methodically H the mistake that you made
Unwittingly you ignore Holy Spirit of God
Sympathetically I now carry the spirit with me
The change to my life is now monumental.

Yes up to J for the justice that you mistake
On the times when you are it’s sad victim.
Understandably K for Karma of getting out of

Life , whatever you put in.You are punished too
In reaching L for Life. Well the mistake is plain
Virtually you spend a lifetime getting to grips
Engage with M for the mistakes you made

With each one made , don’t cry , learn from it.
In a section for N then note daily five blessings
That you have , it is a mistake not to care.
Having an Opinion is fine but it’s a big mistake

Yes to be opinionated or dogmatic with others
O is followed by P for Procrastination of time
Uselessness , putting off what’s needed today
Reaching the Q the queue that you got into

Mistakenly got into as more haste less speed
Indicative of R for recapitulation of all mistakes
Some simple and some massive and correct
To sequester an S for sententiousness
And pompous moralising must be avoided
Knowing the T of toutological mistakes
Even though it looks good in a poetry scan
So to the U. For understanding when a mistake

And a small mistake can have repercussions
Now to  Virtually every mistake has a price
Do you admit to it and face the consequences

Simplicity of the W to weather to own up
Unless you admit it and show grace n humility
Fortunately the Xanadu is not achieved now
For all the mistakes made have a huge price.
Eventually the Y n Z. Are the yardstick to
Reluctantly measure your path on to Zion.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Written by Philip.
November 28th 2018.
Are you a victim of your time, must you live with your mistakes and suffer ?
K
K.
You are my love. My sin, my soul. The only light of my life. Fire of my *****. Source of happiness, laughter, cries, tears, and oddity. You are that bad, believe me, but never better than you are now. Your name will forever be on the tip of my tongue. But sadly I could never utter it properly. Because probably I would feel shy. I would perhaps feel ashamed, if I dared to do so, or if I accidentally happened to say it out loud. I have never confessed this to anyone else. But I need you. I know it inside and out. I crave for you so much. So much indeed. And I know that deep inside, you need me too, although you are simply too proud to admit it. To you my laughter will always remain a ring of annoyance. It will never be enough. You will always long for more - from her. I will never be enough, because I will never grow up. I will never be an adult. And she is grown up. She is more of an adult than me. She is indeed an angel to your eyes. Her steadiness startles you; and delights your senses. You thoroughly enjoy it when it is so. She is but an image of perfection; her sound of laughter is of tranquility and calmness; she is indeed a pious image, a resemblance of faultlessness. Something that I could never truly achieve. Terrific but true - she is, I mean. Not I am. I will always be a kid. Sad but true. I will always be me. I will always be your outspoken, attentive young tutee to you. No more than that. I will always stay just the way I am. I will never acquire my womanhood, nor that am I inclined to, in your eyes. I will always be a girl. A student. Or whatever it is without surely any womanly attribute. I don't deserve to break my singleness. I can never cure it. To you I will always be myself; with all the misfortune and inability to be a true woman. But I understand that I will never be a woman; I don't deserve to be a woman in your heart. I will never be blessed with such courage, as I am not worthy of that. I am not allowed to enter your realm; a whole lot that is entirely different from mine. I have always been fated to be alone, and will always be left behind, even when you are ten or eleven years older than now. I will always be twenty-three. I can't age, strangely, despite my being a human. I am stagnant and odious, I am static and immovable. I am but a symbol of a fruitless tree to you; who dreams and hopes too high without having the ability to attain its true realisation. K, I am full of flaws, I smell of defects. I am adorned with fateful imperfection. And she has none of this. She is unimaginably perfect; she is all lovely and her beauty invincible. I can never be like her. Never indeed. But I am willing to change; if that is what you desire. I'll let you think that I'm obsessed with you. I will just smirk at your silliness. Over and over again. Hmm. Sounds like you've got no other option. Sounds like you are an idiot trying to comprehend my meaningless words too seriously. But I am just what I am. These are just my thoughts. Let me be obsessed with my thoughts of you. Let me make you appear in my dreams throughout the night. Day and night. All the time. Dreams that are unwanted but inevitable. As long as I breathe; as long as I could still trod the earth, let me think and dream of you that way. Stupid thoughts of obscure infatuation, I know. Guilty pleasure. The killing of my independence, my fragility, and uselessness, yet altogether the expression of my deepest feelings that I have often tried to bury in my chest, a thousand times.

Like I said, I'm willing to change; for you. If that is what you need; your utmost desire to be fulfilled. It is as simple as that; because what pleases your senses delights me, and therefore what delights me is what pleases your senses. I indulge myself only in my everyday thoughts of you, where I could jolly embrace and trace your epic proportions in my arms. I want to touch you, to cherish you fully. I want to be inside of you, just like you're already inside of me. I want to see you by my side, breathe in your air and feel your steady but unrelenting heartbeat in your *****. Your manly *****. The one I have always yearned for. I want to feel your skin against mine. I want you wholly. I want you so greedily. I want you so selfishly. I want you to be just mine. Just mine. I don't want you to fall into anyone else, because I perfectly know they are unworthy of that. Of you. One that should be my sole treasure. My precious treasure. Only mine. Because you are everything. You are the exact embodiment of who I am. You are the gold to my silver. You are the silver to my bronze. You make all of them complete; you rid them of their mutual envy. Just like you do to my soul. You repaint my soul, you release it from its gruesome weariness. You make me feel complete, unspoilt, and undivided. You make me feel as a whole. Unperturbed and unabashed by the torment of love. You purify and keep me warm and secure. You are the one I was predestined to love. The one for whom my love was created. The one I was fated to be born for. The one my very soul was meant to be with. The one that I should cling to, and should clutch tight as mine, forever.

K, you are the only love of my life. I will always want you, although this very simple need might sound absurd to you, and on its own way even seem to be impossible. You are the answer to my prayer, from up above, and since I was but a young, sinless infant in my mother's arms. In you only do I lose my presence, my heart, senses, and the whole streams of my decent consciousness. I long for you, and even in the midst of all anger, hatred, and the world's greatest disdain, I will but always long for you. I miss you, K. You are the only source of light to my heart. My darkened heart. My terrified soul. My raging despair. And unfortunately you seem to be the only one who could heal it.
I could be your lover or nimble fingered arithmetician,
serve the rice cold and the soup too hot,
make the trope I’ve made my life into a
means to ruin others.

I could be his other. All similar shouldered
as we are, pressing up against each other,
because soft bodies and soft hearts alike
call to one another.

I’m a gardener and you don’t see me
pressing my thumb to walls, convincing
ivy to climb to me over toward the other
side. I am stone and soil.

I’m smiling too much at the cashier when
she makes a joke and it never occurs to me
that my heart should be something to
apologize for.

You can’t make me, take from me,
or chip away at whatever it is
you think I am: lameness and uselessness,
inability to click back onto the track.

I could be deserted. I could be
dessert, the strays can lap up my body
and I’ll lay here where you tossed me
until I disappear.

I could have been something other
than this settlement of lies and circles,
leech demanding its nectar, mottled
voice waiting waiting waiting.

I am joy and indecipherable name,
sticky on your tongue. I’m kept.
One day you will search for me
to no avail.
Michelle E Alba Jun 2010
Head under water.
Drowning.
Screaming.
Swarming regrets.
Uselessness.

A waste of human life.
Space.
Time.
Drowning under water.

Behind closed doors
they try to break in.
No one can save her.

Clock ticks.
Times out.
Uselessness.
Under water drowning.

Angst.
Fear.
Regret-
Under water she's drowning.

Toxic being.
User, but a friend.

Water.
Drowned.

The End.
sandbar Jun 2012
How is it three years, and I still have the same dreams?
Can you explain that to me, lovely sparrow?
Clutching olive branch and yew bark
Grabbing in the dark for cold water, sweating down the glass
Bitter chlorine and calcium built up on the face
Mineral finger-paints, broken down with linseed oil and worn palms
Your eyes behind those old glasses, working clay on the wheel
Such pride in glazed pots collecting rain on the patio
Paving stones laid in sand, the last few crooked on account of the cervesa
Dry in the mouth like panting dogs, deadweight collapsed on threadbare carpet
How do we convince ourselves that it is desirable to be alone?
I hold you in my arms in a dream, whoever you are
Pulling all the strands out of a wicker basket, creating uselessness
Chattering keys on a laptop like shivering teeth
Coughing, faceless, men, the embodiment of misery in this night
The most beautiful pair of eyes I've ever seen, what other secrets lie beneath
that hijab?
Just a passing glance, most of the people we see, we will never see again
How is it some make such a profound impression with nothing more than a
smile?
Lying under the Joshua tree, surrounded by dirt roads leading nowhere in particular
Warm water mingles with the sweat on your lip
A sigh that send chills through me
The restless wind, nothing more
Timothy Brown Sep 2013
Take the strings off the viola because
That's where the music is.
Take the nails from the floor boards because
That is where the pain is.
Remove the support beams because
That is where the strength is.
The uselessness
Of these objects
Is determined
By where they are placed.
The fire.
The warmth.
The burning reflected from
Your face
Is incomparable to the destruction that has taken place.
© September 21st, 2013 by Timothy Brown. All rights reserved.
Jon Shierling Jul 2013
It caught me off guard, this sudden feeling of loss, this sense that something beautiful was gone forever. I didn't know what to do with it, this overwhelming idea that now, out of neglect or shame or starvation, a work of art had withered away into nothing.
I suppose that I'm beginning to understand that the world isn't a narrative, it's not a story by an author with a plot and a hero.
This is the essential fallacy taught to children with a streak of the hopeless romantic in them:
the desperate belief that somewhere out there is a place for people who live their lives waiting for King Arthur instead of Jesus.

And even now, with every word comes the terrifying truth that my babbling is going to change absolutely nothing, not a single atom is going to **** an electron on the completion.
I won't feel better, the situation won't change, you the reader aren't going to say EUREKA!!!! at the end of it, so what's the point?

Expression, that is the point of it, and to be be completely blunt about it all, I hope some one I love and admire will read this and say the typical things that are said when people are honest on public forums. Do I have a point? No, not really.
So what do I do with this loss, this empty fireplace in my soul?

I drink and smoke and **** it away, stay so busy that I don't have time to consider it, this knowledge that the fire has gone out. How typical of me, how unoriginal and bourgeoise to write another ode to the trials of the individual.
Who am I to feel loss and pain when my stomach is full and my needs are met?
Aren't I another servant of economic output?
Should I not donate time and money to a cause more worthy of respect than a withering example of excessive individualism such as myself?

No, and what's more, ******* society, ******* for taking away the only haven I ever had: my head. ******* for marketing my imagination,
for inventing a bunch of ******* about responsibility for the greater good,
for poisoning the little freedom I do have with feelings of uselessness.

And most especially ******* for your greatest crime of all;
implanting this feeling of guilt whenever I do anything with my own well-being in mind.
You have created a system that perpetuates itself on shame and output,
you have killed the desire to create for it's own sake.

*******, and I'm going to unplug from you if it's the last ****** thing I ever do.
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2015
it's a paradox of yevgeny zamyatin, that the true rebellion is caused by a stress of the necessity of dreaming... talk to any schizoid individual and you find they're the dream manufacturers... dreams happen in the safe environment of the laboratory of the unconscious... they're the socially acceptable hallucinations... it's even socially acceptable to interpret them... which i find very odd... why should unconscious hallucinations be socially acceptable and profitable and career crafting and conscious hallucinations be socially stigmatised? ah the safety, the environment of the freduain interpretation of dreams: well... he's ******* asleep, isn't he?! ******.

after my usual walks drinking, i tend to enter the
realm of heat and christmas tree
a little bit too brooding,
i just painted a picasso or a kandinsky,
burnt it, and then am told to "plagiarise" it...
i don't like the approach nietczsche had
taking a notebook with him
and writing his thoughts written,
i like the way my faculty memory
eats the immediacy of thinking
as counter to the translation of descartes'
theory equating existence with thought
as if thought could prove i exist
thus uncoupling it from the original:
thought and doubt.
memory is central by comparison,
i have the revision from the miscarriage of descartes'
aim: memini ergo cogito.
it makes sense, given i started the night off
buying three san miguel bottles at tesco,
buying five beers at the turk,
spotting russell the schizoid-affective man
huntched in a corner...
told him five minutes max...
started talking with him
about the ol' sailor's narrative... turbulent noons
and midnights with a bottle of jack...
wide eyed russell every time i speak to him
reflected...
i remember drinking my first coffee aged 7...
i was born with a heart condition...
i shouldn't have... live dangerously though...
drank it... magic!
i remember the taste even now.
the cognitive me is not the existential me...
odd, isn't it?
i should have kept the original kandinsky,
but i burnt it and kept the plagiarism...
why is it that the function of memory
is paramount to mental health?
this prof. of psychology itemised this girl
who's north mania south an airplane descending
from the height vector with the ears popping...
why is it that i can remember me aged 7
and most people got cheated into total engagement
in life in the orientation of satisfied or dis-satisfied
expression of puberty?
if the faculty of memory is not defended
then diseases enter...
not one of the diseased is like an original adam,
like translation of original adam, i.e. mozart beethoven
einstein...
good enough to be without plain jane as narrator
and puppeteer...
let the strings do the talking, please!
i'm in love with ****-****** literature...
take that **** of yours, that suitcase
of ***** stockings to your mother to give it a eco-friendly
spin of the washing-machine...
**** that crap should that crap enter my heart...
you heard of ****** latin? i think you have,
it's not church slavonic, it's rude latin...
the type of thing that adds oil on the cogs
and makes you adherent to the philosophy:
pause for thought or pause for fake vocabulary?
i sweat with oaths to add fluid...
if you're offended by **** and not f
ck you
must be really appreciative of pronography...
so they said: we must rid the word of a vowel
and expose the people with **** corn bits between the teeth!
well... it worked...
i didn't tell you remember the pythagorean theory
you were taught aged 12... i told you
to remember you aged 12... like i remember nathanel
with his briefcase in year 8 in math class...
like i remember this english teacher's legs
when i dropped the pen to loon inside the stash-load
of pooddles and *****...
like i remember racing a guy from bałtów
to ostrowiec and winning: he on a tour de france bike
with anorexic model tires and
my on mountain bike fatties...
i told you memory is crucial... given our thought explored
inanimate things as the perfection of our knowledge,
given our thought explored animate things
as perfectly categorising man and animal alike
thus mis-interpretating ourselves, oh the sacrifice of
the perfectly catalogised atom among the toothbrushes...
a convo of assortments...
it's perfect knowledge in relation to inanimate things...
the sort of thing which is question:
but atoms are animate things... calling them inanimate
just because they're invisible doesn't give you a
right to driftwood clung to in robinson cruseo's shakespearean friday.
hence the passing inspiration... so dull now
that i only feel inspired to pour myself another whiskey
and justify the meaning of relaxed.
associate yourself with the world,
hardly many of us will end of with the genius score of don juan,
we're in an environment of strict biology,
we're told that memory governs our world
with the world being on the quest to repeat...
and it does repeat... sounding the encore of biting frost,
sounding the encore of delighted shadows of summer
having postponed snipers to shoot them dead with night...
the world that inquires per se via repeat
only divinites man's faculty that's memory,
and quickly attacks it in revenge by dementia...
imagination is left to the murderers' who fancy
all the hues of red on the face....
this world is not pleasant to those who think,
to those who couple thought with imagination,
and to those who couple thought with memory...
alas... such few increments are left to re-discover
after being taught the uselessness of centimetre
when no centimetre knowledge is used in their
mechanisation of a profession.
that bit monkey less than man already happened
contradictory in theoretical terms
given the diversity whereby man's diversity
per se cannot explain the diversity of each thing
using evolutionary relativism, niche by-product concerns...
penguins will always make it to antarctica...
no banker or plumber on antarctica... just
scientists who started the whole expedition as
worth anything by counting penguin eggs...
indeed... ah this is going nowhere...
i don't believe in evolutionary relatvism
like socrates didn't believe in moral relativism
theft is punishable with the cutting of the hand
that stole... ****** is punishable with the cutting
of the head - it's all really related)...
and the aesthetic relativism is as true as: beauty
is in the eye of the beholder -
to that girl in the night near the church
walking with a concerned friend
concerned by her attractive panda-eyed mascara expression.
most of the time i find the inherent vice of jungian
interpretation of poets
to be a case of narration: poets don't write enough
to be valued! i respect fictional occupants of the
equivalent hammer of a labourer writing long paragraphs!
well, true enough... any idiot would suddenly exclaim
a symptom as: i differentiate that i'm a constant inspiration
for a non-existent narrator, and the symptom i differentiate
from true to fake by the fact it hinders my faculty to think...
pronoun shrapnel i call it... auxillary pronouns
that benefit me to expand my thought on a levelling
that did not want to see in monochromatic divergence
of continued with linear-ism akin to horse blinders
that only exposed a corridor where a valley could have stood
for the eyes to be inspired by.
Courtney Apr 2014
day,
sun warms my body
laughter fills my mouth
to paint the picture of
happiness

night,
shadows creep closer
music fills my ears
i try to drown my thoughts of
uselessness

which me is alive?
Mystery Girl Aug 2016
Bottle after bottle
Pulling me in
I'm drowning in the buzz
My life jacket in this misery
The only thing keeping me afloat
Under the crushing weight
Of my uselessness
Donall Dempsey Mar 2015
You were always
the bit

where the map creased & tore
leaving us unsure

looking through a hole
at our own big toe.

You were always
the bit

where the map was folded in four
and had to be awkwardly unfolded

just to see
where you were.

You were always
the bit

that was just off this map

ending in mid air...

...see next map:

...the missing map!

You were always
the lost map.

You were often
the wrong map.

The map that there was...

. . .no map of!
Joe Bradley Jan 2017
The moon dangled hard through the city
and the moth-lamps hummed discord with the wetness.
The dripping stars like accidents in spilt milk,
waited for a mop.

Walking home I hallucinated men
coiled up with the smoke-stacks.
They pressed through the brickwork and
as shadows flickered in the street-light.

Though my torch cut them down like saplings
and the moon ripped off their heads like scarecrows,
each man was a sermon,
a vastness straining the borders of sight.

A tailored uselessness hung there arms,
waspish currents tore from their mouths.
Starlings turned on their cross-wind,
as messengers of some sleeveless silence.

The moonlight fell on them like whorls,
like hurricane petals, hostile
were the shopsigns, they moved backhandedly.
The gulls raged. The crows filled silence they left.

The shadows all danced to the back of my head.
And when I turned they were gone.
I'm plucking for life and a body.
That shrinks the world to their size.
Enigmuse Nov 2014
My friends all think I'm crazy because I stand in the middle of the street and talk to a God that doesn't exist while high-fiving the windshields of passing school buses. I stopped taking my medication again because guilt taste a lot better than artificial happiness, and I stopped wearing that cross you bought me for my eight birthday because it contradicted the sense of uselessness I received for my twelfth. Life seems a lot less precious when you're talking to your parents in the TV room of a psychiatric unit and look them in the eyes while they tell me not to cry and say that 'pain is only temporary'. All I do is write letters to a man on the moon about the time I realized how hard and easy it is to die. Send me to therapy and make me take pills. I'll smile, but I'll always remember how to tie a noose
Tom McCubbin Sep 2015
All day I do nothing.
My waving arms and pulsing brain
keep me empty.
What uselessness, me.

Before dark, when cool air rushes
from the bay, I water my garden.

Monday I covered chard seeds
in a dark prayer blanket.
What can tiny stone-like
objects do in the sea
of black fertility, but hide
cold, invalid, and scornful.
Maybe they can dream and
forget this earthly destiny.

All night I toss covers,
as if African hills have twisted
and lifted the
valleys between them.
Is anything worth my awakening?

At dawn I see marvelous unfurlings
conquered darkness
while I slept!
This poem is about sleep and awakening to new creations. The reference to "Africa", for example, signifies where a new man awoke long ago from out of the wrinkles of the old. What we sleep on grows within us in the darkness, much like seeds planted and covered in prayer.
Donall Dempsey Sep 2022
THE USELESSNESS OF MAPS

You were always
the bit

where the map creased & tore
leaving us unsure

looking through a hole
at our own big toe.

You were always
the bit

where the map was folded in four
and had to be awkwardly unfolded

just to see
where you were.

You were always
the bit

that was just off this map

ending in mid air...

...see next map:

...the missing map!

You were always
the lost map.

You were often
the wrong map.

The map that there was...

...no map of:
Blind Aesthetic Apr 2015
If I drew myself
If I drew a self-portrait
I’d use watercolor pencils
They’re easier to work with
And it’s just as easy to blend
They give more defined lines
A great choice I would think
I’d begin with an outline
Drawn in a mistaken
Grey or oops blue
Working my way bottom to
Top and right to left to maximize the unwanted
Smudges that will later become the mistakes which weren’t my own
I would move onto my face.  Switching to a false green color to start on
My eyes. Coloring the right iris, heavy handed the tip breaks. I sharpen it
Color in more as it goes from fake green to saddened black I stab through
The canvas bringing in some light from behind. Moving onto the left now
I go from green to useless brown. I’d dip the tip in water and just let the
Pencil sit, stuck to the canvas the color drips down the cheek pooling at
The jawline before stopping as if not wanting to let go. Snap goes the lead
Throwing away the pencil so it doesn’t bleed onto the other colors I move
Onto the lips this time. I’d go with pale promise to compliment the right eye
I would add hints of passive anger red and narcissism orange as highlights
For the skin I’d color it in disappointment, several shades, to show definition
I would then take a brush and dip it in water. I’d blend all the colors so it looks
Natural. Blending disappointment with anger, narcissism with uselessness
Fake with disappointment and the mistakes with everything that they touch
Once the painting dries I’d look onto the creation with the same look that a
Famous painter would give their child when they're told their painting *****
I would reluctantly sign my name, take a step back, and crumble the painting
Into a ball and throw it away saying to myself “I know you can do better”
Alexander  K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya; aopicho@yahoo.com)
So keen and careful on
An impending superlativity
Very willing and ready to counter it
In the mighty of their lonely evil machinations
African relatives as black in the hearty as they do in the skin
Fangled to matchless stature in their scramble for ignobling Africa
Refusing to listen to reason of voice by echoing uselessness in their sentimentality
From the past historicity so redolent in the glory of peasantry a sit of nugatory bigotry
Relatives, kindly is implore you to your accurate antonym, it is imperative
When are you bound to set free Africa from the curse of inheritance?
Give Africa a leeway for freedom of thought, investment
Entrepreneurship and corporate glory, pliz
By easily novating yourselves
Relatives with true
Customers
And fellow
Professionals
Africa.
XXVI

The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly

by a spirit of uselessness
which delights them—

all the exciting detail
of the chase

and the escape, the error
the flash of genius—

all to no end save beauty
the eternal—

So in detail they, the crowd,
are beautiful

for this
to be warned against

saluted and defied—
It is alive, venomous

it smiles grimly
its words cut—

The flashy female with her
mother, gets it—

The Jew gets it straight—it
is deadly, terrifying—

It is the Inquisition, the
Revolution

It is beauty itself
that lives

day by day in them
idly—

This is
the power of their faces

It is summer, it is the solstice
the crowd is

cheering, the crowd is laughing
in detail

permanently, seriously
without thought
Pax Jun 2019
its the night when your
life becomes sleepless

your day might be reckless
doing things after things
of uselessness

i am tired,
no, i don't need sleep
no, i don't need rest
i just want that feeling
i could hold and hug
to where i kiss and wish
be loved for me to love back

i sigh waiting for a sign
that i am still alive
after all.
I feel so dead, feels so cold for so long..
Happy B-Day to me.
Sydney Jun 2014
I want you to listen to my signs
My complaining about my uselessness
Tell me I'm worth a ****
Take my arms and scratch me
Up
And
Down
Give me feeling again
Give me anything you can
Buy me a wristwatch
Tell me I have some time
You need me to stick around
Cut my hair
Tell me to grow it out
mark john junor May 2013
filled with shades of yesterday
the river road's thick air labors
in my chest
as the intangable wall of
blind rage
strikes again and again in thoughts
too powerful for wishfull thinking to deny

fists clenched slamming down
on the ungiving pavement gives only
voice to the uselessness of this rage
it has neither reason or goal
it simplly bleeds thru awake mind
it simply breeds like a disease
an infection of the moral soul
with shades of rationalizations

they printed a book
and built a church to their
god of lies
and the misguided truths others hold as
a path of reason

scape goat to their inadequacy
lambs to the slaughter the fresh recruits
stare in wide eyed wonder at the drawn blades
dont it look like nirvana when what your leaving behind
didnt wear such a sweet smile
some things will never change
they learned that in the great war
they learned that in the feilds of cambodia
the monsters feed and their
lips red with blood
...smile...
death is never frightened
its allways has a smile


the river road far behind
but its taint lingers
as all evil men will
long after their due date
rotting in plain sight
but nobody can afford to strike the tent
and bury the corpse
after all he was a celebrated smile
he was a devil to dish the news
and loved to lend a helping hand
but only if that hand held a blade

if i had only closed my eyes
if i had only turned my back
i would not be here today
wither that be a good thing or nay
waits in the wings


get me out of here
it is the memory of...not a current reality that i wake with, and memories like evil men and women
must be excised and buried...i dont want your rotting existance to linger past your due date
edit:
We grow in a ragged garden
whose caretaker no longer cares
for himself except to prune back
only the most strangling branches
of his mind's miseries.
Effectively, we are left to
our own wild ways.

In all directions,
time's vine sprawls unnoticeably
slow in its natural haste
to overtake every creature.

We are the berries
strewn along this vine.
Our thin skins stretched and aching
around poisonous pools of bitter juices,
desperate for a touch,
a cause to burst,
a moment in which our existence is fulfilled.

To die in defense of the vine
is why we are here.

Most of us will never do but rot;
stuck to a stem that roots us in
idle uselessness.
It is my brightest & deepest, berry blue hope
not to rot here with the lot of you.

So, with great want I watch the passing birds
fly in the sky and seethe in need for the
little hoppers who come so near
just to tilt their tiny heads
and maddeningly flutter off.

There must be one who makes the mistake
of choosing me.
One who plucks me right off with its beak
and bolts to dine in some high, safe place.

It will die for its hunger,
and so too will I for satisfying it.
But, for a moment between boredom's end
and attaining purpose,
I'll see the garden from a different view;
a bird's eye.
I'll see the entire vine for what it is,
and hopefully; finally, know why
it's worth protecting at all.
*BURST

— The End —