"vats" poems
Sandwiched in layers of liquid crystal display,
Encased in vats of plastic,
we
Voyaging in data-spheres, plumes of digital play.
Mindless,
In the soup of silicone,
all
Myth-makers,
Pouring over electro-spawned
networks,
fall
Workers,
In the buzz of bits and bytes, of
megabytes and terabytes,
down
Everyone
Far from the wood, the brine, the
mud that caked us,
In tighter and tighter
digitised projections,
click!
‘Like me’,
‘Share me’,
‘Leave your comments.’
Messages smoothed out in polymers,
Beyond reproductions of ourselves,
enter:
Deeper, delving in the mire of dream-conscious,
Now a waking voice,
Hardened, digitised, recorded in
bubbles, in drives, in clouds:
Numb numbers of numbers numb,
mirror.
A platform slotted home:
The motherboard!
To record the echo in the hollow
of our Being.
Sep 30, 2017
Sep 30, 2017 at 10:44 AM UTC
you are tomato soup
acidic
and creamy.
your path is marked
by risen temperature in my esophagus.
your path is parallel to my spine.
and you rest in the warm vats of my stomach
but you are warmer still.
no real need for digestion.
you are but orange liquid.
but sometimes you burn
tttttttttsa on my tongue
your steam-less appearance fooled me;
there is no need for cooling
hot hot tomato soup.
Nov 5, 2012
Nov 5, 2012 at 6:25 PM UTC
*Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall
I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times."*
- Matthew the Apostle
I
Seventy-seven bottles of gin
lie in the guts of sensuous men;
seventy-seven I forgive you's dissolve
in a fanatical mind's resolve.
II
What offence occurred under Saint Constantine's priggish eye?
Was it specious as a Samian's thigh?
Or Sumerians receiving alien diplomats?
Maybe somewhere far under Moscow Putin's massing cloning vats...
III
Whatever discursive and belligerent milieu
church authority finds most tried and true
seems to be the most important decider
in the future of things like the Large Hadron Collider.
Perhaps, unfoundedly, they find it funny that Higgs
(though it seems much like calling the Liberal Party "Whigs")
is a name shared by a man and a theoretical particle
(though it be libelous in any journalist's article),
and thus label similar advancements as "blasphemous".
I guess that this is what it is: believing just because.
IV
Who can know blasphemy from piousness?
Maybe all Luther did was obfuscate a prior mess.
V
Seventy-seven palm-branch-adorned, donkey-riding kings:
an automatic-ring-making-machine beleaguering proselyte rings.
Sep 19, 2012
Sep 19, 2012 at 1:40 AM UTC
I bring ye wine from above,
From the vats of the storied sun;
For every one of yer love,
And life for every one.
Ye shall dance on hill and level;
Ye shall sing in hollow and height
In the festal mystical revel,
The rapurous Bacchanal rite!
The rocks and trees are yours,
And the waters under the hill,
By the might of that which endures,
The holy heaven of will!
I kindle a flame like a torrent
To rush from star to star;
Your hair as a comet’s horrent,
Ye shall see things as they are!
I lift the mask of matter;
I open the heart of man;
For I am of force to shatter
The cast that hideth -Pan!
Your loves shall lap up slaughter,
And dabbled with roses of blood
Each desperate darling daughter
Shall swim in the fervid flood.
I bring ye laughter and tears,
The kisses that foam and bleed,
The joys of a million years,
The flowers that bear no seed.
My life is bitter and sterile,
Its flame is a wandering star.
Ye shall pass in pleasure and peril
Across the mystic bar
That is set for wrath and weeping
Against the children of earth;
But ye in singing and sleeping
Shall pass in measure and mirth!
I lift my wand and wave you
Through hill to hill of delight :
My rosy rivers lave you
In innermost lustral light..
I lead you, lord of the maze,
In the darkness free of the sun;
In spite of the spite that is day’s
We are wed, we are wild, we are one.
7.1k
(1)
The day she visited the dissecting room
They had four men laid out, black as burnt turkey,
Already half unstrung. A vinegary fume
Of the death vats clung to them;
The white-smocked boys started working.
The head of his cadaver had caved in,
And she could scarcely make out anything
In that rubble of skull plates and old leather.
A sallow piece of string held it together.
In their jars the snail-nosed babies moon and glow.
He hands her the cut-out heart like a cracked heirloom.
(2)
In Brueghel's panorama of smoke and slaughter
Two people only are blind to the carrion army:
He, afloat in the sea of her blue satin
Skirts, sings in the direction
Of her bare shoulder, while she bends,
Finger a leaflet of music, over him,
Both of them deaf to the fiddle in the hands
Of the death's-head shadowing their song.
These Flemish lovers flourish;not for long.
Yet desolation, stalled in paint, spares the little country
Foolish, delicate, in the lower right hand corner.
6.7k
The blood vats
Stirring clotting goo
A tepid sticky stew
Crimson mess
Spilt on the floor
The hungry goblins
Gulping the pulpy gore
Plasma swimming
In spider web veins
The dripping fluid
Sticking to you
Soaking through
The stained washcloth
Swirling in the warm bath
Cloudy dispersion
Smoky mass
Dark diluting
And disappearing
Through time
And loss
So here we are
Generations of
Vampire blood
Leaching the life force
Spreading the plague
And bleeding
Life from one generation
To the next
May 30, 2015
May 30, 2015 at 8:55 PM UTC
Chicken and beef
More beef
More Chicken
Potatoes fried in vats of fat, A cow's
heart in a wine reduction;
Bacon strips,
bacon strips,
bacon strips,
bacon strips.
"Ulcer in the pit...
...never neglect to salt"
It hurts again.
—Doesn't it always?
Jack and Advil,
A half-hearted suggestion.
"You don't really know unless you try?":
Burn a hole, Bleed it out
Pain is water-soluble, right?
I tried it once. I've told that story
Brought down in one day by two pots of chili
9.26.11
D.B. Guy
Nov 3, 2012
Nov 3, 2012 at 2:52 AM UTC
No one saw it coming,
that warm September day-
Not the workers at the pudding shack
Who mixed sweet treats for pay.
Not the Rookie at the pressure valves
Not the people in the town
It was the Rookies’ rank incompetence
That set in motion what went down.
Nine vats of Snack Time pudding
Exploded with a roar
Nine hundred thousand gallons
Went oozing out the door
The workers never had a chance
On this, their final day
Ending up like Easter bunnies
For a giant’s holiday
That mighty wave of chocolate.
Like a Tsunami hit the town.
Sweet creamy death swept over them
Deliciously, they drowned.
Others turned and tried to flee.
They ran for all their worth.
The swift were lucky to escape
This scrumptious hell on earth
The survivors of the snack slide
Lost all they owned in town
It was a diabetics’ wet dream
Everything was chocolate brown.
It was the worst snacktastrophe
Our land had ever seen.
Obama sent marines with spoons
The air force dropped whipped cream
Nov 26, 2011
Nov 26, 2011 at 10:50 PM UTC
214
I taste a liquor never brewed—
From Tankards scooped in Pearl—
Not all the Vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an Alcohol!
Inebriate of Air—am I—
And Debauchee of Dew—
Reeling—thro endless summer days—
From inns of Molten Blue—
When “Landlords” turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove’s door—
When Butterflies—renounce their “drams”—
I shall but drink the more!
Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats—
And Saints—to windows run—
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the—Sun—
2.8k
She sets down
her very large glass of Malbec
sighs and lights
a poorly rolled
tampon-like cigarette
the look on her face
bothers me deeply
I open my mouth
with good intentions
and probably should have
said something like
"Are you ok?"
but what came out
went something like
You are nothing to me
just an **** potato
there's almost nothing
that you could provoke
within anyone
except for the cats
Yeah,
I'd bet you could start
the feline revolution
with your poisoned toenails
and mashed carrots
not even seventeen vats of ****
could make you more slippery
No,
I don't want your wet cake
just bees,
endless mayonnaise
and cherry flavoured toxic yoghurt
Jan 26, 2021
Jan 26, 2021 at 11:41 AM UTC
Summer has bloomed.
Carried on the horse of a Viking god.
Drying fields, food for cattle,
and men. Working feverishly
to bring the harvest in. All now is
golden as the Summer Sun runs
valiant across the skies. The barley
corn will fill the whiskey vats full.
Full for the drinking the long dark winter
through the black of days and black of nights
in the feasting halls of men and gods the golden Sun will stay.
Aug 20, 2015
Aug 20, 2015 at 12:16 PM UTC
WHERE dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen chetries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With afacry, hand in hand,
For the world's morefull of weeping than you
can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's morefully of weeping than you
can understand.}
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To to waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For to world's morefully of weeping than you
can understand.
Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For be comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
from a world more full of weeping than you
can understand.
2.2k
drowned the Earth suddenly.
underneath honest light,
all
submerged. this cataract of feeling —
waters pursue beginnings. cradling them
to unknown ends, washed by the shore.
gluttonously the night swallowed
all — parliament of birds warble no longer.
midnight, the Moon
claws the supple skin of organized stone
displaced
where all the edges bloom
forth torrid froth of dappled light which kills no less than a brief life of matchflame. tenuous spar of wind on
the unserious twilight; bulge of death
in the stream — a body haul, rafting
in compost; stench of all topple like
resins held loose in vats. rat **** becomes
as inviting as moulding bread;
tantric music for no instrument, hoarse
cries unbeheld —
until the flesh no longer flounders
pressed against sleep-shaped youngness
hewn lissome in the hours of no succor,
modeling silence in the thrill of
this enthusiastic space,
hands scouring muddied
obscure, atremble,
shadowless hours fill stomachs with
the plump word of rescue yet none
of these fingers unwished the
ingenuity of dull gods — this twilight
nor twinight could ever grive
in forethought, striking bells to signal birds
to arrive again so we could feast
in silver fish, with bare hands scaled to callouses,
looking at it twice-over, this battered yolk
of whiteness, with deeds of the viridian
now atrill in new fragile woodworks
lurching and
ameliorating as we all
stutter and sing
haunts dabbing open
lips of small wounds that
wish to shut quietly, almost
every threat of gray or pummel of
wind startles the flyblown ornate,
hurrying us back to cornerless homes
where all photographs washed away,
very few hang
swayed by verdure
of the gradual throne of sea
curving perpetually the several stars
we have ignored for a while,
where everything quite begins
again to enthrall with a melodic
leitmotif of the most tender of
instances loose
in mouths
and in endless recall
breathless—
Nov 8, 2015
Nov 8, 2015 at 7:55 AM UTC
Consumed by mutation our species struggles
Dying out from exaggerated consumerism
(soft drums) When will we learn
Monsantoland economics adopted
Three headed grasshopper
A malformed genetic **** you
Other intelligence, for we are known, must be confused
Amused
At our inherent stupidity
It cannot be called ignorance, see through lies
Great hulking vats of toxic slushy
Pouring into our very veins
Pollute the pipes, it all goes to hell
Handbaskets filled with frankenfruit
Our deformed future draws quickly near
I know where my tomato's been
Do you?
Mar 1, 2012
Mar 1, 2012 at 1:50 PM UTC
2038--neurolotto
You SEE
sometime
in years yet seen
science
will make
our bodies last longer
a decade or more
but questionable advances
will allow
our BRAINS to live
for…millennia
or longer
submerged in
a neuro-friendly elixir
connected to
electric eyes and ears
freed from
frothing fears
about our body’s
dutiful decay
BUT even with infinite leaps
in scientific skill
and our relentless will
(to be around for eternity)
only a few will have the means ($$$$$)
for such magic cyber machines
and joyful juices
to keep them THINKing
10,000 years or more!
So, the powers that be
will have a grand lottery
though millions will apply
(while 10 billion others know their own brains will die)
only a few thousand will have the privilege
of having their few pounds of cranial fat
placed in a perpetually guarded vat
for helpless these brains would be (!)
if they were left at the mercy
of those who could not pay
to extend their time to play
on this rolling rock
What things they will get to see
floating in the magic juice (!!)
But…walks in the park
will be only a waking dream,
thinking about cheeseburgers
will be calorie free,
for the sense of smell and taste
will, of course, be history
music will sound a bit…strange
for the best implants
won’t replace the old ear
a passionate kiss
and the a n t i c i p a t e d bliss
of more
will be a sweet (??) memory
a “sweet” memory…?
Or just a memory
for when freed of the flesh
can sense and soul still mesh?
Can THINKing
we are FEELing
suffice?
and will we really
savor the cyber sight
or cringe in FRIGHT
of round spaghetti *****
floating in other preciously guarded vats
that we KNOW
are our only bodiless friends?
Aug 14, 2012
Aug 14, 2012 at 10:54 PM UTC
India women dip white
linen cloths into vats of
the most beautiful colors,
Yogis meditate.
Dodoitsu 7,7,7,5 Japanese style of poetry. Circa 1600s. Often concerning love or work, and usually comical. In my case I was trying to show an analogy between dipping into meditation and the dipping of cloth in a vat of dye. But I also found it humorous that the men meditated, while the women worked.
Mar 9, 2013
Mar 9, 2013 at 11:58 PM UTC
Ole Hunchback
Got a right Royal burial;
That smiling villain's bones
Bleached black-blonde
In underground parking.
Exhumed and parlayed
For over two years;
Confirmed to be he
Who caused a Queen
To cry vats of tears
For the Tower boys.
Poor Anne dropped her hankie.
His horse-drawn caisson
Is a subterfuge,
A distraction to veil
Civil dissatisfaction.
He finally got his horse,
And we get the droppings.
And I see Cromwell
Standing beside Churhill
And Charles ouside
Westminster.
Perhaps Manson
Will be busted
In Poet's Corner.
Mar 31, 2015
Mar 31, 2015 at 9:22 AM UTC
Shhhhh - Titanic was Sunk by a Bilderberg
Albino rabbis, the Illuminati,
Protocols of the Elders of Zion -
The evidence seemed a little spotty
‘Til a radio guy had us wonderin’ and sighin’
Fluoridation by the New World Order
Backed by the Trilateral Commission
A scheme to open our southern border
To crop circles – that’s his suspicion
Area 51, the Templar Knights
FEMA lurking in the Bohemian Grove
Perfidious Rothschilds through menace and fright
Guarding a Jewish-Viking treasure trove
Poor Newfoundland is Occupied by ****** rats
Who scheme in secret tunnels beneath St. John’s
Brewing magic potions in Macbethian vats
In Rodentian rituals from the Age of Bronze
The Priory of Sion, runes, swastikas, the Vril
Roswell and the Thule Society
No wonder the air is darkly chill:
We all live in a conspiracy!
Jan 15, 2017
Jan 15, 2017 at 3:54 PM UTC
I love her.
With every inch of me, since day one.
When her hair is messy.
Uncombed and curly,
Pulled back into a sloppy ponytail
That falls so chaotically across her shoulders.
With several strands pulled out, framing her face.
A cigarette delicately tucked, safely behind her ear.
I love her.
After she wakes up.
Eyes blackened from her obsessive and excessive use of makeup.
With awful breath and resting ***** face,
She is Beautiful.
I love her.
When we stand outside.
And rays of sunshine illuminate her brown eyes,
Turning them into endless vats of amber,
Untouched by man.
Glistening until the end of time.
I love her.
When she is curled into me.
Sleeping deeply and soundly,
Snoring louder than my thoughts,
Shaking and Twitching from whatever goes on in her beautiful subconscious.
I love her.
With no expectations of reciprocation.
I understand I do not fit the criteria due to inevitable reasons.
One day I will, and it will be beautiful.
I love her.
And because of that I will change.
I will become what she needs because if I have her my body does not matter.
She is the one of my dreams.
The one I think about at midday and midnight.
The one my most lovely of poems are of.
The one I have only truly loved.
She does not find me attractive in the way I do her.
But that is okay.
Because I love her.
And one day,
She Will Love Me
Oct 13, 2016
Oct 13, 2016 at 11:10 PM UTC
Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang)
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou down
And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,
Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk
With Death and Morning on the silver horns,
Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice,
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors:
But follow; let the torrent dance thee down
To find him in the valley; let the wild
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,
That like a broken purpose waste in air:
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth
Arise to thee; the children call, and I
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
1.4k
The thousand dreams and burns and hopes and scars
That crimson phantoms, deep within the skin
Graze and raze with, betrayed by eyes like stars,
Shift and ache. Too long I looked within
For on this present dark’ning deathless day
The thousand hearts of man so pierced my soul;
I saw them all. Wild, frazzled from the fray,
Dragging, too weighed by life’s relentless toll.
Sweet sonder, teach me by the sky-wide sun
The thousand lives that glow with redd’ning force,
That burst like vineyard vats with seams undone,
That reel like sea-lost ships that miss their course.
But then that chilling truth in my mind fell:
If I can read their hearts, they read mine as well.
Sep 20, 2018
Sep 20, 2018 at 2:16 PM UTC
Excerpts from the Journal of Dorian Gray
by Michael R. Burch
It was not so much dream, as error;
I lay and felt the creeping terror
of what I had become take hold . . .
The moon watched, silent, palest gold;
the picture by the mantle watched;
the clock upon the mantle talked,
in halting voice, of minute things . . .
Twelve strokes like lashes and their stings
scored anthems to my loneliness,
but I have dreamed of what is best,
and I have promised to be good . . .
Dismembered limbs in vats of wood,
foul acids, and a strangled cry!
I did not care, I watched him die . . .
Each lovely rose has thorns we miss;
they ***** our lips, should we once kiss
their mangled limbs, or think to clasp
their violent beauty. Dream, aghast,
the flower of my loveliness,
this ageless face (for who could guess?),
and I will kiss you when I rise . . .
The patterns of our lives comprise
strange portraits. Mine, I fear,
proved dear indeed . . . Adieu!
The knife’s for you.
Keywords/Tags: Oscar Wilde, portrait, Dorian Gay, journal, ageless, face, youthful, unchanging, rose, thorns, ***** vat, acid, acids, dismembered limbs, violent beauty, knife
Apr 3, 2020
Apr 3, 2020 at 3:55 AM UTC
Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang),
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou down
And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,
Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk
With Death and Morning on the silver horns,
Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice,
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors:
But follow; let the torrent dance thee down
To find him in the valley; let the wild
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,
That like a broken purpose waste in air:
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth
Arise to thee; the children call, and I
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
1.4k
See simmering vats
of shoulders, elbows and knees,
A banner reads:
"Welcome to the joint stock company!"
A mule may melt your heart,
but the cartel will dissolve your family.
Sep 29, 2020
Sep 29, 2020 at 6:29 PM UTC
I'd like to think
That the stars from above guided me to you
A sailor lost in a stormy sea
Into a sanctuary where a maiden lives
Reigniting a dead fire that
turned a heart made of stone
Into vats of molten rock.
And whenever I rest my gaze
Upon those mysterious eyes
A pang of pain strikes my chest
As if the universe is reminding me
That you're a lover I have long lost
In another life, another realm, another world
But the currents of life held us in liaison
And we swim in this vast sea
Knowing that one day
The currents will wash us away
On the same shore where it all began
Apr 17, 2015
Apr 17, 2015 at 12:08 AM UTC