"utilitarian" poems
I argue
To harm you
The protective computer screen
Allows me to be rude or mean
Without feeling your pain
So it becomes a game
Or a simulation of fame
If I can ignore the shame
The tread is wearing off the tire
After the internet stripped
The rubber off the telephone wire
And we lost our loose grip
After being shocked
By the rest of the flock
Their existence
Shows a difference
That is hard to accept
We're not what we expect
We push the boundaries of communication
But we can't handle the technology
I feel it gives me social immunization
But I feel the darkness follow me
And swallow me
Until I'm wallowing
Yet I don't know why
I try to ignore it
Only if it gets me high
Will I be for it
This utilitarian keyboard
Should help me see more
Instead it transcribes my anger
As I turn into an electric stranger
The words on my pixelated screen
Do not reflect my childhood dreams
But the bitterness of dreams being crushed
My petulant reactions are thoughtlessly rushed
And I represent my views in a negative way
Until I'd be more useful with nothing to say
There is a need for empathy
In the electronic discourse
Right now there is only entropy
And words without remorse
Spoken from a high horse
That looks down on peasants who own it
It's also a slave but doesn't even know it
So it arrogantly trots along
Never admitting that it's wrong
Until it hears the slithering snakes rattle
Then it doesn't mind wearing a saddle
But the venom has already been injected
And its mind becomes hopelessly infected
We argue without blinking
We argue without thinking
We argue with poor logic
Our ignorance we flaunt it
Until the internet is haunted
Mar 29, 2018
Mar 29, 2018 at 4:36 AM UTC
He awoke.
His eyes opened slowly with a purposeful slowness; an action that for most people is the beginning of their life was, for him, a procrastination.
He arose.
The floor felt cold, unwelcoming as he stumbled reluctantly to the sink. The bristles rasped against his teeth, gums bleeding out of spite.
He entered.
Breakfast—a lonely egg, boring toast—entered his body; each bite was scooped with the utilitarian vigor of one who is no longer enchanted by food, yet the relationship must continue: a compulsory marriage without option for divorce. This discomfort washed down with lemon-water.
He contemplated.
Thoughts, those musings that are feared, condemned by most and yet became the greatest of comforts for him, reminded him that one day it all would end and he would be free.
He wasted.
He stretched out his hands, offering up his life force in the daily sacrifice to the eager god that, in return, lit up with the brightness of a thousand stars that blinded him from all that he wished not to see.
He showered.
Cold water ran down his soul, icing the most superficial inflammations while taunting the deepest wounds; no matter how long he remained behind the curtain, there would be no true respite.
He returned.
The blackness beckoned. He entered willingly, surrendering himself to the dark embrace of that demonic respite, his beloved above all others.
He died, once again.
Dec 28, 2018
Dec 28, 2018 at 3:28 AM UTC
I am the flightless pelican.
I’ve found myself with my mouth full,
my stomach full, and so much still on my plate.
Possessed by an inhuman hunger,
I will gorge upon pure potential.
I will yowl on and on, without sleep.
-
I have sand between my toes.
My shoes are glued to my feet.
Keep on running ‘til the calluses come.
There has to be a point where I stop to sweat,
and I’ll finally get my sigh of relief.
I have one ride left on my bus pass.
-
I have a tendency to ramble
and languish in my own stench.
People tend to forget this at first;
lured in by the false face of a genetic fluke.
They want to know the impression I left,
not the procrastinator; the cud-chewing goat.
-
I can’t sleep being held,
or if I feel someone’s breath in the still.
I start to feel the urge to burrow
into the quiet quilts; patchwork Promised Land.
I cater to the crowd that caters to themselves,
but I’m no Utilitarian. Fox and Lion.
-
I have cousins like brothers,
and I have brothers like strangers.
Stray cats with names
and a copy of The Mahabharata that I stash my money in.
I’m sitting on a sunny pier with my hook in the water;
avoiding conflict with no bait.
-
Paper cuts from the gold leaf
on the edges of hymn book pages
with burgundy leather covers.
These guilty cuts, bleeding for what seems like hours,
while we steadily forget that anyone was singing.
Alone with our thoughts in the crowd.
Jan 6, 2015
Jan 6, 2015 at 9:54 PM UTC
her mouth was sandpaper.
her mouth was sandpaper
and she spoke like
a smooth surface,
words scraped into fluidity
like a wooden sphere,
turned over behind teeth ‘til all friction
is lost.
she spoke like the walls of a birdhouse
in the room of a dead carpenter:
pretty unassembled things.
her mouth was sandpaper
and every kiss chafed,
rubbing raw my lips
and tongue
crafting with each touch
drawing blood like
juice from an apple,
like sap
from wood already cut from the tree.
her mouth was sandpaper
and she told me
*i bite my lips,
rip at
the inside of my mouth,
cannibalize myself cell
by cell.*
bone saws in her mouth.
the only difference between teeth of jaws
and saws
is mercy
(and she swallowed her mercy long ago).
her mouth was sandpaper
and she spoke like a carpenter’s hands:
rough palms,
tough pads,
a utilitarian artist
a crafter of dead flesh.
a mortician for dryads
and kodama.
the art and the artist
in lips
tongue
and teeth.
her mouth was sandpaper
and i brought mine to hers
again and again,
her bitten-rough lips
opening like doors to
purgatory.
less entrapment than addiction -
returning once more to nails and hammers,
hell’s blacksmiths below
heaven’s painters above.
coming back home
to the space between,
to bone saws
and a carpenter’s hands.
her mouth was sandpaper
and her voice was carpentry,
her teeth bone saws
her words
birdhouse walls.
her mouth was purgatory
but her hands
were hands.
her mouth was sandpaper.
i held her hand
and chafed my lips raw.
Mar 9, 2013
Mar 9, 2013 at 12:26 AM UTC
As the laser rays from Science City lit up the night sky in a resplendent rush of colours, I watched on, quietly , from the balcony; my mind racing back to the class 9 Basics of Economics book and to that class.
Utility. A major concept in economics.
I had understood it so well then.
I had paid full attention to the teacher when she had explained that once I had had a spoonful of Biriyani, a little bit of my hunger was satiated and I would enjoy the next spoonful a little bit less than the first.
That was how utility operated, marginal utility diminishing with every spoonful.
Today, as the rays light up the sky, I think of him, and of the principle of utility.
Does the principle apply to first love as well, as it does to the first taste of Biriyani?
As love's bittersweet concoction explodes, does it render the following loves as only marginally utilitarian then?
As the first rush, first blush fades, as love's faces change, do we begin to get satiated a little less than the first time?
And is it really because we are already a bit full, a little satiated?
Or is it because the hunger gnaws on, craving that first rush, once again?
Mar 11, 2016
Mar 11, 2016 at 10:10 PM UTC
Bright buds hang precarious on their limbs. Their hundreds of digits green and supple sway as the winds try gently at first to shake them from their perches. They snap back, their ties elastic, always bending.
The wind struck harder the third time. It caught them off guard, swinging back to face the sun. It barreled over them like a train, limbs snapped like bones under tons of industrial revolutionary steel, the cracking brings tears to the eyes of passersby.
They were so green, so verdant was their exuberant friendship, covered in rosy flesh and sturdy bark, ring after ring of tribulation and triumph, but it fractured like a wish bone. She, Persephone, prosecutor of Her, Demeter, was judge of them both, prisoner of herself.
Solitary confinement.
She tugged at her half, she needed the wish, She need for Demeter to see that She needed wishes just like the rest of us.
Demeter, jury. 12.
Her crime: attempted impartiality, balancing a utilitarian ideal that we can divide our attention based on who needs it most. She cannot be tried on account of her inability to read Braille ciphers in gestures, ****** expressions, and Tumblr posts.
Demeter tugged at her half, but only enough to show the other that she was there,
but consistently there.
It wasn’t enough.
Snap.
No marrow could be found.
Where flesh was meant to be dripped rot, an odor of resentment filled their nostrils, it choked Demeter, as Persephone had been choking for years.
This resentment, this cancer, this jealousy, it grew inside of Persephone like a tumor, days from metastasizing, the spread could have killed them.
Amputate.
You two are a tree. Bright buds dangling from every limb, they are still soft and green and supple at their ends.
You two are still growing.
Persephone will cut out this cancer, and She will heal herself, scar tissues covered by broadleafs.
You will soothe them for her. And you will see past the rosy flesh what pain it may hide.
And you two will grow. Roots firm, faces braced against the wind, and limbs always turned towards the sun.
May 3, 2013
May 3, 2013 at 5:36 PM UTC
Defying the consensus of complacency,
And the enantiomorphic political practicality,
Candidates embrace their vacillating indexicality.
Spouting thrift store self reliance sapientiality,
Telling lores of cultural compatibility.
Hope filled promises of economic suitability,
Aligned with institutional feasibility.
Packaged in over-inclusive catchall empty signifiers
Strewn across all media screens, communal utilitarian plan flyers.
Requesting no need for responsiveness,
For a vote no longer dictates precedence,
In the age of social media endemic presence relevance.
PFL
Jul 3, 2016
Jul 3, 2016 at 3:40 AM UTC
I write this from a library under the watchful gaze of Voltaire,
Having read that the future of Earth's water is being debated in Morocco.
Isn't there a Utilitarian part of us all that strives to save our home,
And rejects the notion that we must **** where we eat to make progress?
Gambling becomes dangerous when you begin to stake declining resources.
There is no turning back, and there is little optimism from Millennials who shall inherit the rotting infrastructure.
Nothing is dramatic or blown out of proportion when the President can't acknowledge that there's something seriously wrong with a giant hole in the ozone.
Herr Trump, where is the ice going?
Would you sell the penguins for profit?
Tell the Polish Brigade that legal workers will restore this country's ideal greatness.
Tell them sincerely.
Reagan spouted that it was Morning in America, and I imagine the Trumpites feel the same.
What is morning, anyway, when you can't see the sun for the smog?
Nov 10, 2016
Nov 10, 2016 at 1:49 PM UTC
I am one to have my emotions under control.
Seventeen years of maneuvering around other’s
Peculiar mood swings
Taught me how to ignore
The chaos of human sentiment.
And so my features remain stoic since.
I have learned how to channel the anxiety
Manifesting itself in a jittery leg, shortness of breath,
And a discordant mind.
It is possible– Quite easy, actually–
To translate a torrent of worry
Into potential energy.
Three years in a closet
Is time enough to collect many pretty dresses
And forget there is ugliness in the world.
As much as I preach the virtue of honesty,
Lying has become second nature,
If only to keep these shark-infested waters
Calm for one more day.
I ought to be devoid of sentiment by now,
As much of a shell as that detestable Louisa Bounderby.
However, I recently found myself mistaken;
I am not a product of Utilitarianism.
Recently, I’ve been feeling–
Oddly ill.
With a loss of appetite,
A churning stomach herbal tea cannot alleviate,
Difficulty sleeping,
And a racing heartbeat.
These symptoms are purely somatic
And therefore, quite frustrating.
I met a girl last week;
I wonder if I caught it from her.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 1:04 AM UTC
Sugar nightmares haunt children
Nancy harlequins cane them
Oh, child of mine
your life you did,
away,
sign.
Force fed familiarity with already branded emotions,
irregular realities and clouded surreal formalities,
so very many humans’ form dichotomies
out of our shared mute gray;
spinning constant self-important prose.
So very many humans share so much,
so little,
not often
doing little to soften
all of their emotional blows
trying hard to strike enigmatic pose.
Oh, child of mine
the heart of utilitarian method
has receded in incredulous fashion
followed by authoritarian apologies;
the majority is not icecream people
spreading simple good thought,
but generations fraught
with trivial conformist ideologies.
We are all hiding our seams
with creative masks
and self created tasks.
Oh, child of mine
your prescription reality is revealing itself as Atlantis,
sinking and shuddering into Quaaludes
with frightening psychotic interludes.
Emotions paint
stained lurid faces,
dancing with
ludes effecting movement,
nudes of swaying and repose.
You arose deeming so much rightfully yours
waltzing through seemingly already opened doors.
Holy curb their anti-Christ
Consider your aging soul
Oh, child of mine
Belief of awareness in action
understand the probability of dissatisfaction,
Stop!
treating the moment as a bleak bridge to the next inaction.
Eventually ponderous thoughts form
resembling an orrery,
an incessantly philippic story
orchestrates your oleaginous personality.
Oh, child of mine
Youth flees and your mind
takes once again to the seas,
a vexing penumbra of perception.
Bathos permeates the fathoms of an obstreperous life
and if you still care,
lament that this meaningless congeries
of moments
inspires only delusion,
no disillusionment.
Eventually a lilting threnody
leading 'tween burning pews of proposed serenity
and the following bumping callithump
will firmly stamp you into black infinity.
Oh, child of mine
You've used the switch
too much
too often
coupled with lofty scoffing
giving the innocent up as offering
to the
mechanical engine
of organic creation.
Sep 1, 2010
Sep 1, 2010 at 11:05 AM UTC
My poetry's really meant as decoration
For the days of life that we get rationed;
My lines for scrapbooks, wrapped around vases;
Words embroidered utilitarian places.
My words antimacassars for things nearby;
Some dangling sentences passing by,
Upon the latest quilt or jewelry box;
Or purse, or duffle, or coffee mug.
Please use my poems as flourishes and frills,
To substitute for things sans time to feel;
Shabby chic poetry, for every need:
Then there's always something to read.
Jul 18, 2010
Jul 18, 2010 at 3:06 PM UTC
Looking for an exit in life, perhaps other option that is rarely available. Time travel, utilitarian way to modify the past and the future.
Trapped in a matrix of flesh and bones controlled by my encephalon, it controls every part of my daily life, from breathing and blinking to helping myself memorize.
A feeling of antipathy in life that could never bring me happiness.
The inculpation for the misapprehension in my past relationship and future.
What does a man like me to do? How can one display their philia when they're not certain of that emotion?
My endurance in this life is on a perpetual edge. I perceive with attention toward happiness.
A deprivation I share with others. An absent of happiness.
A happiness of dominance; a switch that is only controlled.
Today he can be happy; switch ON. Next week he can be unhappy; switch OFF.
I walk on egg shells in this relationship and have to be careful that it won't break. I'm sad and lonely, this is what I get and deserve.
God nor I could change this, but I don't see it happening during my remaining life.
Stifles with silence deploying infantile plots. A day at a time I enunciate as my composer easily is un-maintain.
Hidden arcanum among a number of these unidentified entities lashes out at me discreetly.
Posing no threat I conceal the pass deep in the abyss in an unmarked grave sealing off the hippocampus that only the Creator can breach.
Unannounced the gravestone is turned my past is breached which I assumed that only the Beneficent can release.
Once an inhabitation, but no longer my domicile. Set aside and noted as a lost monument.
Ascendency barbarous with words of articulation fatal to ones self esteem, grossly spoken enslaved. An inclination to the predisposition of my life.
Jun 12, 2012
Jun 12, 2012 at 5:46 AM UTC
the things physical we could not live without,
the objets d'art that decorate the tapestry of
the primary bones of our existence
each of us differing,
each of us, a different list,
utilitarian is beauty,
thus our individuation
distinguishing and distinguished
a trash can,
purposed for our wastrel wastage,
and yet, beloved by waves of utilization and
discard
only after much usage, kept nearby as a token of
our appreciation, only to be dumped unceremoniously
when the
memories grow overly fulsome
Why you think I reference the common kitchen garbage?
*No, no! why it is our brain,
that be cleansed nightly,
leaving only the wisps of life aprior,
that reruns in wisps, only sometimes,
for better or for worse*,
recycle-able
Feb 22, 2025
Feb 22, 2025 at 10:00 AM UTC
I wish the words
Of romance I'd speak
Flowed in Mediterranean Greek
Or Spanish dreams
Italian poems
The thoughts would fly
The feelings roam
I could kiss your face
With subtle French
With rhythm, flow
With sheer grace drench
Instead it's English
That is the tool
To express what's inside
To play the fool
And so I tell you
You're one in a million
In words that are so
Utilitarian
Feb 14, 2010
Feb 14, 2010 at 10:43 AM UTC
aloof alphas attack!
banal betas boom, before backing
cautiously, creeping
down, defensible dark
estuaries, estranged escapes
from fierce fiery-eyed
giant gators gathered,
hard hearted hedged
in impossible illumination, irate
jowly jeering jaded jackals
**** **** **** …
let loose low laughs
making much mirth mercilessly
now none need nourishment
oblivious obvious, overt
a putrescent phalanx,
quite quintessential a querulous quorum
a quatre
raucous resounding raptorials retreated
subsequently seizing sizeable sarcoid
sections in scissor strokes
total tormentors, that time twists the
ugly utilitarian
veracious victory
works the wild
yearning as
zealots
Apr 10, 2015
Apr 10, 2015 at 9:30 PM UTC
To be abnormal in a normal world, is that so uncool? How about to be unjust in an unjust world? Surely then yes, for I am a fool. Not a fool so cruel, but a fool too cool to abide by societies rules. You see, it is the nature of man to be just as unjust as the unjust world, just as must as it is to be a fool, but not a foolish fool. Now you, you are a tool, for living the just life in an unjust world. You are the tool and I am the Utilitarian, and will use you to my advantage and private interests. That’s just how things go here in this structured place, meant to deface and interface yourself. Desensitize you to yourself; reduce yourself to a cheap exploitative commodity; a means for my planned robbery laid near a veneer of parliament armory. Society rules by the Golden Rule, and that is: Those with the gold are those who rule! Now who is the fool you tool?!
Nov 27, 2010
Nov 27, 2010 at 6:06 PM UTC
I long for cobbled stone roads
Dim lit stone stairs climbing with ivy
Up buildings built by Romans
adorned with flowers and intricacies
Details honed by Craftsman
Delicately drafting
the landscapes we live in
Unlike the concrete utilitarian steel and glass pillars and highways
Their plight on our journeys in life
To benefit the productivity
but detriment the soul
To capitalize no matter what the cost
Leaving me longing to nap
in a park with Parisians
For fresh baked baguettes on a bench with a bottle of burgundy
For mosaics made of glass in cathedrals built centuries ago
Over billboards and neon lights,
the flashing and screaming
products for purchase
Let me get my dinner after the people have had their naps.
Let it be an occasion
not a necessity to get by
Let's walk the city after 10
while the sky is still bright
Waiting for the dim street lights
to light our way back
To another day of walking
cobble-stoned streets
Jun 21, 2024
Jun 21, 2024 at 1:04 PM UTC
Hi Matt,
After further consideration, unfortunately, at this time, we are unable to pay you a meager wage to place food on a tray and carry it. I would like to placate the fear dominating your psyche that you are considered worthless by our utilitarian capitalist society with hollow thanks. I will keep your application on file for the next three months or whatever and in the rare event that our needs change, we will contact you to see if you haven't killed yourself yet.
Sincerely,
Potential Employer #283
Apr 22, 2014
Apr 22, 2014 at 7:56 PM UTC
They flurry fashion clad around him,
Bashed and bumped he is upon his knees,
Nought but an obstacle to their purpose,
Just mechanised utilitarian’s ****** into abstraction.
The mishap stagger jounces loose a depth,
A profundity in a shallow weakened him,
His hollow cavern caves into consciousness,
To behold thumping polychrome dances of light.
The wash of sludge slinks down his hands,
In the puddle on the mid of his legs he gapes,
It is a fall of falls to end his deaden tumble,
As he stands he knows not what next to do.
He had death marched his life to a timber box,
Crafted career, projected home for expected wife and child,
He weighs an unlike life of who knows what,
Just not this one where he supposed he was alive.
Wind begs for his tie and so he lets it free,
Looks to the looming tower block prison,
Through the militia of totalitarian drones,
He runs and he runs and he runs.
Through the bustling paves he is a sketched dash,
It is the most paramount of hurries he’d ever began,
His heart flourished as he saw not where he was going,
Knowing only that he would not ever reoccur.
Sep 15, 2013
Sep 15, 2013 at 10:01 PM UTC
Once I noticed a great writer, and he had no comments.
To remedy this occluded justice,
I left a colorful comment upon one of his best.
Immediately a scathing message appeared from him,
Though he had never messaged me before;
I had an instant moment of understanding
Of why he had no comments; it was just too obvious
For my childlike mind to have avoided the trap.
A few more condescending messages,
And I deleted the comment; nothing more needed saying.
I had trespassed on hallowed ground,
I had merely to retrace my steps
And all should be forgiven.
I intruded upon your life, which I could never really see,
Through a series of locks and channels
It remained invisible to me.
And again I invaded privacy, caused consternation.
Compliant, I withdrew all my excursions to your door
And with an effort, I mitigated any unhappy
Emotions remaining there.
I do this to spare everyone more pain.
But it comes at a price.
Did you ever wonder how all the people
Who go to the grocery store on Sunday mornings
Could have such well-defined niche lives?
They think they are defined by what they do,
By a synthetic order that's tacked over the hours of freedom.
There is an affliction, in which every single hour
Must be made to account for itself.
But what if they woke up some day
Before the grocery shopping was done,
Would they feel they had missed out on something
Inestimable and uncommon; worth sleeping in for-
And replaced it merely with something
Utilitarian and predictable?
Be careful what you trade your Sunday mornings for.
Jul 25, 2010
Jul 25, 2010 at 6:20 AM UTC
Glassy eyed and
Lost in utilitarian cities
With a low-yielding love
And a useless imagination
With the bad art
And the public transport seat pattern blues
Jan 29, 2016
Jan 29, 2016 at 7:34 PM UTC
The poetry
It has spilled
Like the blood of a great massacre
And it has diluted
To a near transparent film
Over the 21st century
Over Miley Cyrus' ***
Over grotesquely distorted salaries
It lingers in the grey concrete behemoths of utilitarian cities
It's on your cat
It's in your parents hair
It's in Angela Merkells teeth
And this omnipresent film
That only few can see
Is evaporating into a backdrop incandescent beauty
It's vaporising into an intoxicating nectar
It's what slavery was to the blues
Or the reconstructions of war to bauhaus
Or what the crusades were to the renaissance
So twerk on Miley
Your artlessness
Makes art stronger by the day
Mar 6, 2014
Mar 6, 2014 at 5:24 PM UTC
Amphorae, beautifully crafted,
Delicate, exquisite, fire-glazed,
Heated in jumbo kilns,
Lovely molded necks,
Opaque pigments,
Quartzite residue-
Symbolic, timeless, utilitarian
Valued- with xanthic yellow zirconium
Oct 23, 2019
Oct 23, 2019 at 7:26 PM UTC
I would start with your hands.
Mine would dance with yours;
our fingers waltzing together.
Then they would become curious,
I know so.
My hands would glide up your arm
leaving a trail of goose bumps behind.
I don't know where your hands have gone,
but mine have reached the top of your shoulder.
My fingers can't resist
tracing your collar bone.
Your hands find mine.
I think they got lost
in the escalation of my own.
But they're together now.
Taking a hint from yours,
my hands reach to your chin --
only breaking contact
for a second.
My fingers have tilted your chin,
so our eyes can do a similar dance
to the one our hands have completed.
Hands are the utilitarian laborers
of the body,
but eyes guard the gates
to the soul.
My eyes search your own.
They are hesitant, but
my hands are always reliable.
They pull you into me
and at the last second
before our eyes close,
and our lips meet,
my eyes find what they knew was there.
Jul 11, 2014
Jul 11, 2014 at 8:40 PM UTC
Utilitarian Love Poem
You are aesthetically pleasing,
the reason for which I first noticed in you.
And later I found your personality equally pleasing.
I also noted your chest to waist ratio is suitable for birthing.
Therefore, I think you should live in my house.
Apr 23, 2015
Apr 23, 2015 at 7:01 PM UTC