Tag: free verse

Beside me

ok I’m a human and you’re a human
and we’re going to take an intimate walk
through this seemingly ordinary part
of my life but if you look closely
this moment will reveal something
delightfully specific and illuminating
to what makes
me
me
and I want to share
that with you because quite frankly I just like
your company and even in the silence
(sometimes especially in the silence)
it makes me feel somewhere between warm
and content to have you here beside me

(From The Errand Friend Date)

the best night of your life

a ticket in an envelope
you’ve marked with glitter glue
putting on too much eyeshadow
you bought at the drugstore that day
wearing a skirt that’s shorter
than your school uniform
telling your mom it’s okay
and you’ll meet her right after the show
running toward the front hand
in hand with your best friend
flirting with the kid who sells you a soda
dancing experimentally looking
at the woman onstage and thinking
maybe one day you’ll be sexy and confident like her
realising that right this moment you are
matching your voice to the sound
loving the sound falling into
the sound

(A post by Ann Powers after the Manchester Arena terrorist attack)

The gray ribbon

It could be for Diabetes awareness month
maybe brain tumours.
Perhaps the wearer is supporting
increased awareness for borderline personality disorder.
But, most likely nowadays
they’re raising Zombie Awareness

(check for neck beard and/or barbed wire
wrapped baseball bat in their hand).

Confused? Let’s look at November.
Movember, right? Prostate Cancer
and Men’s Health awareness, no?
It’s also Alzheimer’s Awareness month
and No Nut November
promoting abstinence
and COPD Awareness
and National Novel Writing Month.
So plenty to do, along with early
Christmas shopping, Guy Fawkes Night
and your job and family duties.

Just make sure you don a gray ribbon
so that people know you also care
about the inevitable zombie apocalypse
even though that should be done in May.

(From Top 10 awareness campaigns that didn’t work out too well)

im giving it three

out of attempted empathy or niceness..
.. because: psuedo interlectual, tripe,
greek-mis-approproiating (indulgin
in theatre/drama/physchologism..
possibly that type of pagansim…
AKA (woody allen-esque) attempted
“oddyssaic-streamish-of-consciences blah-ism”

But i wont say “pyscho-bable” becasse IMO,
the psychologism of misery behind
the OVERT text line is actually vaild (imo)
but suspicious of pagan/ bending symobolgy?
Theres nothing new under the sun
take care anyway

(An Amazon review for Synecdoche New York)

America has fallen

There’s a burnt body in front of my office.
Then I’m playing Scrabble with friends.
There’s bomb smoke rising in front of the mall.
Then I’m at a concert. There’s a long line
for gas. Then I’m at a nightclub.

This is how it happens. Precisely
what you’re feeling now.
The numbing litany of bad news.
The ever rising outrages.
People suffering, dying,
and protesting all around you,
while you think about dinner.

I used to judge those herds of gazelle
when the lion eats one of them alive
and everyone keeps going.

I went to work, I went out, I dated.

We’d pop the trunk for a bomb check.
Turn off our lights for the air raids.
I know people who were beaten, arrested,
and went into exile. But that’s not
what my photostream looks like.

The pain doesn’t go away, it just becomes
a furniture of bones, in a thousand homes.
There’s no launch party for decay.

(From I lived through collapse. America is already there)

Horseback to Palm Canyon

Dear mother dad sweetheart gang wife
hubby girls boys old kid

How are you? I am fine 
happy lonesome sad broke flying 
high enjoying the desert

Wish I had you a letter more ambition
someone to love me more sleep

Things are wonderful lovely exciting

I have seen the mountains the desert
lots of pretty girls 
lots of handsome men 
the desert sunset desert wildflowers 
the canyons

Doing lots of sightseeing loafing
sleeping hiking sun-bathing 
swimming golfing celebrating
playing tennis bicycle riding

I rode horseback to Palm Canyon
on the Skyline trail in the moonlight
on the desert on the Araby trail
to Andreas Canyon to Seven Palms

I’m staying at the
I danced at
I dined at

Will be seeing you away a little longer
thinking of you writing you again
hitting the hay stepping out

Yours ‘till the cows come home 
with love forever sincerely

Name

(The Lazy Person’s Correspondence Card from Palm Springs)

Some women

They take off their clothes
and smear honey all over their naked body.

They roll themselves
back and forth
over wheat
on a sheet
spread on the ground.

They carefully collect all the grains sticking to their moist body
put them in a mill,
turn the mill
in the opposite direction of the sun
grind the wheat
into flour
and bake bread from it.

They serve it to their husbands to eat
who then grow weak
and die.

Do penance for forty days on bread and water.

(From The Joy of Confessing: “Women’s Vices” and Burchard’s Decretum of 1003)

Let it be known

I leave this vessel
for the lowest of the low
not only as a testament
to the act of your human transgression
but also as a tomb,
a tomb for you.

So that when you are near death
your smallness can climb in
through the hole you left
where the spout once was
and lay yourself down
in the vacuous space
and die a thieves death alone,
pitiless, without a single soul
to remember you.

You will take your last breath
void of any true feelings
of love or decency for others.

(A note on an antique in a Michigan store)