"whatnots" poems
Hey, can you do me a favor?
Let me know once it stopped, okay?
Tell me.
Tell me no matter how much it may hurt me,
tell me once you stop being in love with me.
Let me know when your heart no longer whispers my name.
Tell it to my face,
that it’s over.
I don’t want to hear it from someone else,
please at least have the guts to tell me
that you don’t love me anymore.
I know it sounds pessimistic,
but can you blame me?
We live in a very unpredictable world;
one thing can turn to another within a span of a second.
I don’t want to deal with a heartbreak because I ended up believing that love is all about hearts and flowers. And that love can withstand anything. I don’t believe in forever.
I believe in the now.
See, I can’t promise you these superficial things and vague whatnots.
I can only give you what I have now.
And I don’t expect you to promise me the stars and the moon,
no, don’t give me forever.
Don’t give me something you don’t have.
I don’t want to hope for something that may end up nothing.
Save me from the heartache of believing in love too much.
The sad thing is that we can’t even promise our tomorrow.
We don’t hold the universe in our hands,
we don’t know what will happen next,
we are no seer.
So, here I am, promising you my now
and only asking you the same.
So tell me when you don’t love me anymore.
I want to hear it from your lips with your own voice.
I want to hear the same voice that told me iloveyous,
telling me the idontloveyouanymore.
Tell me once you are slipping away,
but I won’t promise that I will not try to keep you,
because I will,
I am only a human too.
Promise me that no matter how broken I become,
you will walk away,
because you don’t love me anymore.
I don’t want you staying because of pity,
you can walk away with the memories:
I’ll keep what I need,
and you walk away with yours.
I won’t blame you, no, I really won’t.
I will cry, but all the same,
don’t comfort me.
Let me mourn the death of a love I once had.
So,
If ever this shall end…
Please tell me and have the decency to
break my heart properly.
Jan 28, 2017
Jan 28, 2017 at 8:15 AM UTC
My life is a series of "do this" and "do that",
Not actually doing what I really want to.
They say it's for me, it's for the best and whatnots,
Everything's more of what I'm expected to do.
Then came a reckless boy who called my life boring,
That was something I wasn't really expecting.
The first experience he gave me was a piercing,
He changed the way I see life, not even knowing.
04-19-17 // 12:46 PM
Apr 19, 2017
Apr 19, 2017 at 1:41 AM UTC
Happily she flounces
and bounces
on the ground in
her lemongrass-hued
dress of whatnots
Way back when
The worries of the world
Were nonexistent
She ruled the forests
The toadstool wonders
She never thinks
of sadness or misery as
she performs her silhouetted
pirouette
for the birds
And as she flies
Above the trees she thinks
to herself
It will be like this
forever
Jan 8, 2013
Jan 8, 2013 at 5:20 PM UTC
What a fix to be stuck on
A sea of remotes
Controlling their channels
(Channels really know
How to pull people in.
But not me. I just watch news.)
Piles and piles and stacks
Of remotes
Mangled up in cords
Around the main event:
The TV.
Back to that pile of remotes -
All different kinds & controls
There's a pink one
With polka dots or chicken pox
There's a swampy soggy one
A grey tomb-stony one
Etc., and whatnots
What to do with all them?
Control the tube, of course,
But they all do that
A little bit differently.
"To hell with this white noise"
I ****** up a chrome looking remote
Soapstone it wasn't
But cold cold cold still
I pressed the red button near the front
Blinked it didn't
But got stuck.
I just stared in frustration
For a long while, into that fuzzy screen.
And then
Out of the white noise
A gigantic chrome razor-hand
Came crashing through
Pulling me in.
May 27, 2012
May 27, 2012 at 4:01 PM UTC
What do you do when you're feeling so blue?
And you are under blue skies listening to the cries
Of the terns and the gulls.
The heart constantly pulls
Me to the oceans shore
Once there I'm not blue anymore.
I stand skipping the stones
Dreaming of lost sailors bones.
But it's the battles I love the most
Off the Cape of Good Hope or the Ivory Coast.
I can hear the cannons roar and see broadsides score
And I transport with delight into the thick of the fight.
I drink *** with the matelots
Take potshots at whatnots
Those enemies of the crown I say let them sink down
Into the cold arms of the deep
I will not lose any sleep.
But once more I find myself stood on the shore
And I'm soaked to the skin.
I hadn't noticed that the tide had come in.
I'm such a dreamer.
John Smallshaw 2011
Jul 19, 2011
Jul 19, 2011 at 7:27 AM UTC
we don’t need
to be fixed.
we need to be
aware. open. owning it.
embracing
our pain, our history
our patterns, our spasms.
confession:
I've been fantasizing…
that one day you'd roll up,
like Richard Pryor at the end of Moving,
sitting atop a semi-truck of your whatnots,
war paint smeared upon your dashing,
wearing a tie bandana and bullet sash,
carrying a semi-automatic weapon,
after stalking your **** cross-country,
to the front of our gutted dream house,
after this misadventure, arriving, finally,
at home imperfect, thankful just to be,
there with delirious, Cheshire cat grin,
like a lion dragging in a carcass,
bloodied, brave and proud,
eager to greet my eyes and say:
*Honey! Look what I found!
I found my ****
I brought my **** home...
This is my ****
and I would greet you,
with water-colored greys
inking down my dimpled peach,
in a black and white gingham apron,
heels, nylons and corseted vintage dress,
mirroring that ********* right back,
tray of warm hash brownies in hand,
that got nothing on my toasty sweet
lips dripping to say:
*Your **** is lovely, darling.
It'll go perfect with mine!
It's up in the attic - properly labeled,
arranged and categorized.*
and with that kind of
ownership, acceptance and bravery,
there is no way our stuff will ever be
more powerful than us, together,
merged and emerging,
by way of wings, soaring,
above our shit-spattered clouds.
Jun 26, 2017
Jun 26, 2017 at 2:07 PM UTC
I don’t see people anymore,
only shadows.
I see their past and future
trailing behind and ahead
the constant lagging and catching up of them.
I am the patch-work mish-mosh
made-up creature-being
with Past / Future / Present
silly-goose whatnots.
I am the girl you laugh with at Starbucks
because you’re too ****** bored to live for coffee.
I get it.
Let your smiling teeth do the talking.
I am the one-liner two-timing
bimbo-less wretch of a lady you call friend.
I am the cigarette loser who watches your dogs.
I will burn your children alive.
I am the tree-hugging
nonchalant ******** handing out flyers.
I will plant a seedling then rip it to shreds.
I will wear its bark for armor.
Your precious ******* oak
puts out cigarette butts now.
And from its death we grow cancer cells for fun.
Hell, we’re past time for past-times.
It’s all coffee and cigarettes now.
Coffee and cigarettes
and honking horns.
Coffee and cigarettes and honking horns
and shadows.
No more people.
Sep 17, 2014
Sep 17, 2014 at 6:47 PM UTC
I've tucked my dreams away in a time capsule. For certain, they will be better use to someone in the future. Though in all likelihood, they may never be found, for I have told no one where they have been buried and shan't offer a clue. In the capsule, far under the darkness of dirt, should one happen upon it, they will find obscure memories along with those dreams. Just tokens they are, recapturing happy times, made of clay and paint, spell ridden for a future discoverer. These knick-knacks are sure to have power, as no intention I have ever had has been greater than what was formed in those whatnots. You've seen bric-a-brac shelved, gather dust, and finally find themselves wrapped in tissue paper, inside a shoebox stowed in an attic and forgotten. Then one day they are rediscovered by another generation, who is charmed by their quaintness. They are dusted off and put on a shelf again, until sadness bearing that memory requires them to be sold at some yard sale or donated to a thrift store. I can not see this for my whatnots. To me they are too precious to leave in the hands of those close to me now. I won't have them sobbed over. That is the reason they have been buried. And should a certain someone find them in the course of time, may they only know their dreams fulfilled, by a time capsule that stewed long enough to design newer wonder of whatnot.
Jan 25, 2016
Jan 25, 2016 at 9:41 AM UTC
In the dark i saw you, bathed in yellow and blue
yellow and blue
happy, true?
i love it all, red, yellow, green, eyes, freckles, the beauty spots, silly whatnots
i love it all, the tired eyes, the voice, his voice, his touch, his sighs, his hugs, his writing, everything, his everything, and travis scott while maths
joji, jeans, games, memes, science, print, morals, snap, memories, Heart, Full, Yet, Feels, Like, Nothing
F1 generation pain
Sep 4, 2020
Sep 4, 2020 at 1:46 PM UTC
The Packrat has morphed into a hoarder
I tried to removed the monkey in a suite off his back and put it in he barrel with the rest of them even though it wasn't my business, although I was its uncle
Get in
A quaint little bungalow
Where sweltering heat is a constant
"There's coffee on the back burner, ya want some?"
It was a blessing in disguise
A bona fide slice of paradise
We read up on the complex of Oedipus Rex and the debate of moral fiber when talking about Ped Xing
We hopped on to a plane going to Pismo Beach and joined the mile high club then enjoyed clams on the half shell
We listen to a dollar fifty nickelodeon
And talked about how music is dead because everyone is just na na naing and yeah yeah yeahing their way to the top of the pop charts
Over a *** pie
I confessed my love
His rebuttal seemed abysmal to my sleeve dwelling heart
He said this was an unnatural habitat for him
And if we were to be together it would raise eyebrows
Tarnish his illustrious reputation
It was an unanswered prayer
After all the whatnots and whathaveyous
He got sick and died of AIDS about a year and a half later
He never came out
Dodged a bullet there on that one
Jun 27, 2014
Jun 27, 2014 at 12:40 PM UTC
We have been through a lot
The ups, the downs and the twist and turns and whatnots,
but I'm still a stranger in your world;
I prayed for your love, I asked to be a part of your life,
And our hearts now beat as one;
But I'm still a stranger in your world,
I know it's not your fault;
But it still hurts my wound like salt,
Sometimes I feel that I numb all these pain with alcohol
But this past indiscretion of mine is what haunting us all
Now I feel strong enough so I don't fall, and soon enough
I'll stand tall and
That's when you will make me a part of your world, once and for all
And I'll stop feeling like a stranger in your world,
Lonely and small;
Sweetheart, that day is not far away when you will proclaim me to the world as the one,
Till then I'll just hold on and fight everyday and remain strong...
Sep 12, 2022
Sep 12, 2022 at 9:04 PM UTC
the last is first behind the door of
contented pretends, and all the
whatnots in the void, all the family
photos ripped with rusty angry scissors
of betrayal and defenseless death.. no
justifications, called his son Justin Case.
Aches and backs beyond the last belief it
was ever rendered slow framerates across
the landscape, all anger and beverage
-induced slutties.. skittles in the shot
corrections, as if the world around has
a way of saying 'sorry' when the fault
lies with but a little bit of bottle body it
never intended to swallow or wallow
whilst watching a swallow swallow spit.
are you listening yet? upset? p-p-pangs
in the lunar plexus?
Aug 10, 2014
Aug 10, 2014 at 12:16 AM UTC
There’s a constant anxiety on those tables
A perilous way to deflect the world and all its problems
A kind of insidious joy in collecting
All these miniatures, minuscule and exquisitely crafted figures
Bothered by life in their stillness
Like little swans and princesses
Lingering in a silence which is sacred.
These tiny clever ones
Shuffled on slightly scratched wood,
Wear their days like a cloak of doom
And push each other
Like Londoners out of the tube.
Fearless, little monsters
Repressing their hunger,
treading over the borders of life, they enter
forests from which no escape is granted
Where awakens a desire for mutiny,
From the abnormal perfection
Smothered under ceramic faces.
A bedside table full of whatnots
Doesn’t shield you from bad dreams
The little shepherd lies smashed on the floor
And no one’s going to cry for him.
Dec 7, 2015
Dec 7, 2015 at 8:05 PM UTC
I haven't found peace
And I'm guessing I should
Like it is fundamental for my journey
Yet my journey has come to a halt
Well at least part of it
Like I'm in one car going at the speed of light
While I'm in car that has stopped moving because it broke down and a guy named Joe refuses to fix it, even though he has all the spanners and whatnots
So while one me is almost at the destination
The other me is hopelessly lost
Aug 30, 2016
Aug 30, 2016 at 5:38 PM UTC
Love me
Like you've never loved before
And like you'll never love again
Till I can't take it anymore cos I'm filled up
And until the only thing left in the plate set before me is more of it
Hold me
Like a mother holds her new born child
Looking into its eyes, fast forgetting the pain and whatnots she's been through
Till the delicate smell of your fragrance becomes my shield
And until my skin starts to melt into yours
Touch me
Till your prints are boldly engraved on me
Let your hands run wild and wide all through and true
Let it wander around my body,it's yours for the taken
Don't hold back, this is all I've ever wanted
Kiss me
Till the taste of your lips linger on even after you're done
Till I'm wasted and as drunk as a skunk
Or don't you know your mouth is an ocean of wine
I'll gladly swim in it until my strength is gone and I drown
Leave me
Only when I tell you to which I'm pretty sure is never
Never forget we're bound from now till forever
And even before the clock started to run its never ending race
Let it be the one thing you don't know how to do
Apr 14, 2020
Apr 14, 2020 at 1:57 AM UTC
A Career From Bed
It’s luxury.
To lie in bed, thinking thoughts;
Pillowed head, notepad and whatnots;
Lifting laptop at my side
(my writing bride –
or husband, as the case may be)
And write my poetry.
Uncomplicated, ‘easy peasy’
(English jargon) child’s play
To type some fragments,
Work them through,
Sending them away
To you.
In come the comments.
Not a penny changes hands.
No long-term contracts –
Only contacts,
“Like you”come-backs
Unseen as a daytime star:
With sweet, smart followers galore.
This passive bed of roses
Lap of splendor and much more…
Career from bed
Conducted solely from my head,
Solely in unsaid creation.
What in heavens could be bed-der?
(Sorry for the awful pun;
An un-withstandable temptation).
A Career From Bed 4.4.2018 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Corwin
Apr 4, 2018
Apr 4, 2018 at 7:30 AM UTC