"videotape" poems
A Secretary-Receptionist Faces the Future - “I Know Where the Door Is, You Little Police Academy Dropout.”
The name on the building changed again today
I must apply for my own job, they say
A smarmer wants more work for much less pay
It’s time to reconstruct my resume’
I once was great with videotape and film
And could type fifty-five words a minute
On an IBM Selectric; my skills are dim
The boy-boss taps on a plastic box - what’s in it?
For forty years I ruled the company’s ground floor -
Security, with a sneer, shows me the door
Apr 2, 2019
Apr 2, 2019 at 4:07 PM UTC
I want to fall in love with you today tonight and tomorrow
I want to shy away from your touch only to bring you back home with me
I want to lay down by your side late evening on the livingroom carpet
And tell you all the ways in which you are beautiful, you are beautiful, you are
I want to eat dinner with you and breakfast, too
I want to connect with your mind, your words and your skin
I want you to look at me like it's the first time
I want to love you enough without pushing you away
It seems your absence draws me nearer
I want our love to live in videotape
Our memories reeled in red, blue, green
Red, blue, green
I want to be the great strange dream
That you are much too fond of for letting go
Jun 30, 2013
Jun 30, 2013 at 8:08 PM UTC
she lives alone. from this, one can gather the things she owns. 1970s porn. she is pregnant. a week ago she went into town to pick up some new phrases. while there, she slipped into a house and beat a sleeping child. our deeds are weary not of a dog barking or of a cat hissing but of the overfed fish. my belly button is how the marksmen touch me. she thinks the child’s father followed her home. she’s about to watch the videotape.
Nov 4, 2013
Nov 4, 2013 at 10:55 AM UTC
I don’t play my mandolin everyday anymore,
let alone my guitar or tin whistles
I can’t let this die
I listened to 7 year old Japanese math rock
and want just a speck of that
An identity where I can sift right through
all this mediocre destruction all around
No one even has the gall to admit they’re killing
or the decency to even cover it up anymore
They videotape themselves dancing and
murdering kids for lebensraum
then turn around and say “no we’re not”
I’m tired of surface level house maintenance
followed by immobile phone scrolls
I’m looking for that lesson we’ll all learn
after finally going too far
I won’t play the victim or the hero no more
I did my part and now I’m too old
I need deeper art to escape samsara for good
and maybe that’s the best I can do comrades
I’m sick of details grown so scattered and thin
My whole past feels like entrails
smeared across vast deserts
There used to be rainforests here
but now it’s hard to find the pictures
Just when things almost get too competent and nice
they let decadence do its worse
out of fear that the improvements would make goods and services
too cheap not to be free
Socialism’s bad for business owners
so we lay off the workers and overcharge even more
Let the octogenarian billionaires buy up more water and air
to keep the fellas in the favelas gnashing and grim
Bunker complexes, spaceships, missiles coated in spent uranium;
these are all more important than starving children
Why do the poor keep having poor kids?
Still a conundrum
We gave them a chance to compete
some ephemeral time ago and they blew it
What can we do?
We tried to teach a man to fish…
Imagine Jesus Christ just giving folks fish and bread
for nothing in return?
Jan 26, 2024
Jan 26, 2024 at 3:27 PM UTC
Kanye West made me think polos were cool. I thought playing rap music while wearing polos would make me into a rapper. And then I turned into a tennis player. Tennis got me out of the hood. Let it be known. I could have went to court, and instead I chose the Tennis Court.
Tennis is fun. Before it was ratchet. Now it is tennis racket. Rapping was fun. Bernie Sanders liked rap. He liked Killer Mike, and he was a phenomenal rapper. Hilary listened to me. So I don’t know what that means. I should have been a rapper, but when I saw a videotape of Arthur Ashe playing tennis for Wimbledon, I felt a yearning grow inside of my gut, and it grew until I raised my hand to my mouth to smother the scream of nostalgia that I was feeling.
I wanted people to like me so I started rapping at cafeterias and bleacher stands. People drank cola and munched on popcorn as I talked about growing up in the hood of Burke. Real **** went down in the Burke. Like **** you wouldn’t believe. And that’s real.
I hung out on a rooftop overlooking the city drowned in sunshine that was sad as the girl who left me. Kanye West saved me from becoming a piece of **** And even if he’s an ******* now, everyone knows he was the greatest with 808’s and Heartbreak. Robocop used to play from the car speakers, as we rolled spliffs in the front seat, the wind pouring into the windows.
Jun 21, 2016
Jun 21, 2016 at 1:52 PM UTC
Accelerated trauma
Starts my videotape
I replay it ten times over
Until my body breaks
The voices in the distance
Lost by a wall of sound
Distorted scenes crush me
Falling to the ground
Screaming out in fear
A fight before my eyes
Lashing out around me
Leads to my demise
Rapid breathing dissipates
Calmness fills the air
Tears break the silence
Fills me with despair
The dark storm receding
Carnage everywhere
Scattered lives around me
Damaged beyond repair
Jun 11, 2016
Jun 11, 2016 at 10:40 AM UTC
Baby blue cushion with the fabric ties, painting rocks with orange and blue on newspaper, got a glob on the wood only rain can wash away. Clean the glass out with q-tips, squeaky clean, tap remains into ceramic bowl made in 3rd grade, medium blizzard with M&Ms; and Reece's peanut butter cups, a burger at that hotdog place featured on Martha Stewart with bacon bits, colored pencils, Barbie coloring books, Jeep keeps stalling in front of my house, don't eat my burger, Ellie and Duncan, full bag of mini peanut butter cups, South Park, Heavy Metal, The King of Limbs - eh, JWoww, Cupcake Wars, the Big Dipper, aqua colored bikini with a magazine full of pictures, videotape my monologues, short hair, sundresses, Nike shorts and tank tops. Mini with a pen in parking lot in Norwalk, feet in the pool water, ants, smelly dog, big house in New Canaan, white Audi A4, drive with the Mosley Tribes from Loehman's for $75 -- a steal, scotch tape on toenails, purple, blue, and green polished stripes, church parking lot on Duck Farm
Apr 19, 2014
Apr 19, 2014 at 4:30 PM UTC
You shouldn't steal when you can borrow
Didn't your mama teach you better?
No? Then get some therapy
No one's accountable for your needs
Not to any degree
But still you must've had a teacher
Deception's a perfected skill
But remember to taste-test that pill
After all you're the prince
Who never leaves fingerprints
In the end though
The vertical flow's
Gonna catch up to you
You can't go round & round forever
Spreading your slander tender
Still,
I just wanna see you suffer
At the hands of another
Just so the blood in your mouth becomes real
Now you're the one tacked to the wheel
Now tell me does that seem surreal?
I didn't think so
Parade around in mechanical cotton
Is that the flavor of the weak
Posing as Byron with a frankincense tree
Blood-letting to support your creed
Forgetting that the best grows naturally
The voodoo with the prodigal knife
The who's who of nautical nights
The tight ***** diabolical wife
Wounded a rabbit's tongue
Kept me from speaking up
But I dare you to take your servants
Into your sacred space of merchants
Lay your supper in the bedroom
See if they make a purchase
Or do they wanna see you suffer
At the hands of another
Just so the blood in your mouth becomes real
Now you're the one tacked to the wheel
Oh, what can be revealed
I sure hope so
So how's your precious golden cup
Is it half empty, or full with bad luck
Can you taste the iron in the stuff
Or is their protest practicing
Waiting to burn you on the last drop
Could have married a music man
An impresario with big hands
Till you showed up with plastic plans
An a conductor's wand made of tree bark
But you never had the guts to bite
See, unlike your faceless drones
I truly needed a home
I'm not the one who disowned you
I don't get off on selling soldiers
Wrapped in videotape
So why did you wait so long
To sell me out
It wasn't a hot summer
Guess your supply was in a drought
Poor, poor pitiful me
Just wanted an apology
But I guess I'll have to settle
For watching you suffer
Nov 25, 2011
Nov 25, 2011 at 8:08 PM UTC
And you hate me
And always will
I know there're laughing
But it feels more like
A thousand daggers when
You know the gist
And not the details
Whatever happened to being yourself
Or your own worst enemy
I'm sorry if I get it wrong
These eyes are no longer my own
The world is no L word anymore
It's just not big enough
By everything, unhinged-
Money and dead leaves
Spider-webs and shattered glass
Light-bulbs and nooses
Hangers and trees
Scarecrows and Jesus
Atlantis America
Animal AI
Shoelaces and hangman-
It's all I see
In a sliver of the multitudes of me
While duality's making a killing
And the devil plays with more DNA
And I wonder how long endurance
Can outlive truth
Take control
Spin me up and away
But don't spin a web
Don't play with my head
Please don't conform
With your ears and your eyes
Use a little more brain, a little more spine
Then again, all my heroes
Have gone to milk cartons
Or simply have gone away
And while I speak my mind
The hypocrites scream diatribe
But words are all I have
And I'm just a crazy pariah
So what do they care
My world is coming to an end
And I'm not supposed to tell them
What nobody knows
The tome is heavy
The message is light
But I no longer have the luxury
Of distraction
I need purging
But they just want to get clean
There's too much I can't forget
And tons more I can't remember
And the whole world seems to know the latter-
Slashed and diced
Brain on a platter
If there's really room in the end
Maybe I shouldn't worry
But is there room for truth?
I don't want to solve the universe
I want to solve my forgone youth
And I rather hang with the crucified and poor
They don't have time for videotape and black magic-
All that's tragic
No guilt
No innocence
Just trying to survive the next ten minutes
Pregnant mind
Keeps rewinding
Going backwards in time to the
Opposite of life
So forgive me the delve, the dare
And maybe the wrong
These questions and methods replace
Bullets I don't own
And the chamber is always full
Nov 26, 2011
Nov 26, 2011 at 12:31 AM UTC
I don't remember
The first time I felt this way
But it didn't happen all at once
It came gradually
With every song you sang
With every smile that came my way
I don't remember
But I know that it's not going away
It keeps getting worse everyday
I'm running out of words to say
You came with the summer sun
At that camp I was asked to videotape
But I didn't notice you back then
I wish it stayed that way
I wouldn't have been hurting this way
But for now I'm stuck here
Singing old love songs
Writing poetry of unrequited love
As I'm drowning in these thoughts
Of the siren who stole my heart
I don't remember
The first conversation that we had
But I do recall
I may have lied to you
When I said that I don't know how to sing
You'll Be in My Heart
And it just ***** to think
What may have been my first words were lies
Sep 16, 2012
Sep 16, 2012 at 8:41 AM UTC
You were the broken boy
The misguided little toy
No one believed that you would
No one ever thought you could
But you sure got your revenge
Drawing X's on the faces of
Little girls who said they'd never bend
And now that power's in your hands
Why would you stop at Senseless Stares,
No One Cares, and Just for Fun
Why not attack The One Who Got Away
And she came, and she stayed too long
Your mouth didn't move
It didn't have to
Cause she heard you loud and clear:
"You've done everything you should
But I've got debts to pay
And my collectors think it would
Be best to delay
This game
Just for our amusement
Just to feed your delusion
Just to add some fusion
To our boring little days"
Your sewing circle of assumption grew
An immaculate consumption of a lie
Cause we know fiction holds the truth
And now the townspeople echo laughter
Everywhere she goes
Shouting,
"Look it's a freak, let's take a peek
Look it's the freak, let's take a piece,
Or why not take it all"
You got the blessing
And you had the day-old blues
She got the curse
So you hand her the noose
With a smile
And the passing of a ruse
The last one without a chair
When the music stops
The last one holding the gourd-
Pain is always passed on
To the one not willing to
Dish it out
In accordance with the norm
Now the little horror's
Slain but standing
All for the sake of judgment,
Scarlet letters and a grudge
And your summer lovin' torture party
But she never underestimated you
She wanted to believe in you
She should've hit the floor
And it should've ended there
You should've let her hit the floor
But you had eleven more stations to score
Run away with your aching
Your little savior is now
Bashed, ripped and torn
But he has designs on you
A tune to block out all the tunes
Your little girl can't play
On her pretty, lame guitar
You and your kin
Hope you all drown in all your
Videotape
Your cosmic movie
Will have an ugly face
And when you reach the junkyard
I hope she gives you paper cuts
Mountain by Mountain
Link by Chain
Tuft by Tuft
A High Crest wave
Will wash you both away
Nov 26, 2011
Nov 26, 2011 at 1:09 AM UTC
Oh headphones...
Oh, how i need you so..
You fill my head with lyrics..
So please never let go..
Memories scatter across my brain.
When your voice speaks..
It feels like fireworks are inside me..
Ready to explode, like a rocket on its peak..
Most of the time you sit there, comforting me..
Because of the bad in my life..
That has caused a bad depression..
And a lot more strife..
An when i let others use you..
You come back to me with yellow ear wax..
So therefore, I clean you..
So i can sit down and relax..
You show me..
That there's an escape..
from hurting others and myself...
You simply sing in your videotape..
All of my worries soon disappear..
As you sing in your melodies..
You yell an scream in my ears..
Saying, "Don't worry! You're not them! No similarities!"
You! Are my friend! My admirer..
Are happiness to me..
But i must go now..
IT'S TIME FOR TEA!
xD
May 13, 2015
May 13, 2015 at 10:39 AM UTC
Soul mates
Are stolen crates of wishes
Forget love letters
Forget drug & *** woos
All we want is a friend
Funny how friend is now taboo
Pick a pocket full of daisies for no one
No one wants a pocket of something that dies
Yet we all die
We all perish
So why does it matter what we give
As long as we give freely
Instead we take cheaply lavish
And shove it in our pockets
Of bed-posts, of lamp-shades
Of never-seen river-glades
Where we bury the bodies
Of souls we never knew
Never took the time to
Never had the mind to sense
All these warning bells and chimes
Could never recompense
For time spent
For words lent
So cheaply
We've grown so cheaply
Accept a videotape
Watch the actions
Ignore the lips not moving
Watch the actions
Ignore the edits
Watch the actions
Miss the key plot
Sleep through it
Too busy dozing off
You've missed it
We could've had it all
If only we had time
But we missed it
Me one moment off
You a lifetime
Nov 26, 2011
Nov 26, 2011 at 12:59 AM UTC
I am a depressed little rain cloud
My life moves in slow motion
My dad is a bipolar manic storm
His life moves in fast forward.
How does that happen? A fast-forward man
Marries a normal woman
Gives birth to a slow motion daughter.
Eventually as life goes on and on
The normal woman starts moving slower
And slower
Until she too is going in slow motion
And sometimes, her and me,
We even live life in reverse,
Entrapped in the whirling motion of our past that
Pulls us ever backwards to live out the moving pictures
That replay in our minds way too many times.
Our life is a videotape
And if my mom and I rewind
And my dad is on fast-forward
How can we ever end up actually going anywhere?
We're one of those old videos that end up discarded
With a mile of black tape fluttering forgotten against the
Cement ground of this old, old basement called Time.
Nov 7, 2015
Nov 7, 2015 at 5:00 PM UTC
Silence is now. The sun is risen 5 hours where you are. It is the deepest twilight here, traffic lights disrupting. My window is playing a videotape of an invisible sunrise. It was directed by viking film students. They included your paintings in the credits. i hate to spoil the ending, but i leave you. The soundtrack was going to be radiohead, but Yorke’s record label yanked it. So silent film. Silent students acting like they never learn for my benefit. If it isn’t already obvious, the film is me. And you’ll never read this letter, as i’m already loading it into the movie reel and projecting it into snowy pine trees somewhere in Canada that i’ve never been.
Previous Lover and Grateful Friend,
Jul 17, 2020
Jul 17, 2020 at 2:33 PM UTC
These strange fellows
Still record on videotape
Abroad an outdated
Insufficient spacecraft
The shape of
An interstellar bowling alley
By night they hunt for
New age wine
Radio waves
And a slew of hitchhikers
Some they greet
Some they cheat
Some they mistreat
Some they eat
Convenient store gangbusters
Crop circling has seen its better day
Soundtrack enthusiasts
They've a score to settle
With John Williams
They came from a fruitless world
In search of pomegranate skies
And the Big Apple
Even from the far flung
Reaches of space
Everyone's an actor
Some they unseat
Some they beat
Some they reheat
Some they eat
We're odd to them
Because they're gods to us
In a technologically challenged
Unidentified flying object
It's not war they want
Nor invasion
Just dinner theatre
And a reliable map
Mar 26, 2020
Mar 26, 2020 at 1:27 PM UTC
A brave little man with a shopping bag
Defiantly stood before an army tank
A foul machine designed to grind free men
Into ****** scraps to be hosed away
Two unknown men - it was not the tank that stopped
It was the tank commander who stopped the tank
All that is left is old videotape:
Two bullets made all problems disappear
A brave little man with a shopping bag
Another brave man with a battle tank:
They stopped -
And, yes, someday China will be free
Jun 4, 2019
Jun 4, 2019 at 2:25 PM UTC
This back and forth,
The static on the screen
‘In rainbows’ on repeat,
Hoping this videotape,
Will roll the credits,
Waiting to hear the words
The hero never spoke
Sep 14, 2015
Sep 14, 2015 at 12:10 AM UTC
You’re suffering is what I thirst
I hope disease reaches you until you’re lungs burst
I want to experiment on your child
make you lose you’re laughter for a longwhile
I wish to pour acid on you’re face
so you can feel your heart stopping at its pace
I want to bury you alive
you’re failures is what I strive
hang you upside down while you bleed
videotape you as I hear your pleads
strangle you in your sleep
give you an excruciating death for your nasty greed
you’re downfall would be so delicious
I’ve lost sense of forgiveness
Dec 5, 2019
Dec 5, 2019 at 5:47 PM UTC
to heal is to rage
to heal is to be confused
to heal is to feel the wrath of sorrow and how it can turn a smile sour for seemingly ever.
it will be ages before you go gently into that good night
spending dusk to dawn wondering
wondering why and wondering how
how you let something so precious break between your fingers that were holding it so soft, so dear
a broken videotape in your mind replaying replaying replaying every time you could have done something, said something different but didn't.
healing is cruel, tearing every fibre out with no mercy - you are unlearning
unlearning and relearning over and over again
and surely enough, you're back on your feet, feeling ready to take the world on one more time.
but somewhere you start to stack bricks around your heart hoping it will hurt less the next time around (secretly hoping there won't be a next time around)
and maybe it'll work, maybe it won't
but every time something slips through your hands, the panic while it hits the ground and breaks into a thousand pieces remains,
no matter how gentle you are or how much you care.
Mar 31, 2020
Mar 31, 2020 at 11:02 PM UTC
June 9th-10th, 2020
In the House on Woodland Road – Love Weaved in Many Molds
It Came when Two Little Girls heard a Woman’s Voice Announce, “I Have a Surprise for You,”
And Sitting on the Fireplace – there was a Videotape, and it Showed Tigger’s Smiling Face
The Tigger Movie had Just Arrived, much to the parents’ surprise
It Came Again when the Girls Looked in the Cookie Jar, the one Topped with the Smiling Cartoon-Cookie Man
Inside was a Tower of Oreos, Waiting for the Girls to Pull Apart and Lick
Love was there by the TV-set – Shown with a Stack of Madeline Tapes
Love was even by the Bookcase – with a Bing to the Brim of Hardbacks Neither Child could Understand
Seated on a Shelf’s Corner, there rested a Crayola Box – Filled with Crayons to the Tin’s Tip-Top
Love was in the Bedroom, with Crayola Crayons Stockpiled – and Sitting on the Closet’s Ledge
Love was on the Rounded-Rug Below, as the Child Played out a Tick-Timing Clock while Laying on their Back
Love was by the Twin Seat Cushions, as the Girls Bounced from One to Another – and Played Leap Frog Between Each Other
Love was in the Garden’s Grass – seen when one of the Children Pulled Apart Presumed Pickles from the Tree, and Sprinkled them all over her
Love was by the Cats’ Food Bowl, Awaiting a Stray to Walk in and Take a Bite
Love was when the Child walked into the Family Room, and took out the Classic Game Candyland
She Played with her New Puppy till he Crossed the Finish Line, and Declared him Champion
Love was there as the Children went for a Walk in the Backyard, and Saw all the Birds and Conifers
The Birdfeeder Hung, and the Bathwater Rippled, – and they awaited its famished and filthy Aves
Love was there for many years, long before the Children Appeared
And then One Day, the Children came, but all the Love had Died
They Noticed the Dust, and the Cobwebs, and the Chill Attached to the House
They Noticed the Trees Chopped Down, and their Smiles were Lost
They Noticed the Change, and it Made them Very Sad
The House had Lost its old Charm, the Children Fell into Monotony
and the Gems that Once Gave the House its Glow – Would Never Again Come out and Show
Oct 1, 2020
Oct 1, 2020 at 6:18 PM UTC