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flaggwalkstheline
10-26-2008, 07:58 PM
hi ppl, im a tower junkie, the storys of SK are one the things that inspired me 2 start writing poetry though i am not so crass as to do fan-fic, I hope to get published someday, ur feedback is GREATLY appreciated, heres one of my most recent, enjoy


Dirge for birds and other things that fly


I can’t seem to find a wall big enough to bash my fat head against
And I wish I was a Picasso painting so I could blame all my deformities on my maker
The wallpaper in my head is peeling blue
I was never a heavenly body
I was never a phoenix
My feet are made of lead
(give me fire chants the meditating wannabe)
The only type of idealized self destruction I ever needed
Was to burn out like a neon raven fighter pilot roaring over the crash of sparrow engines
Never being among the clouds I never had a chance to fall
My swan dive would land in a bed of feathers when I’m expecting nails
I’ll begin to listen to the halo of flies whisper-circling my head
But before that fateful acceptance of smothering responsibility
I’m going to continue spilling wine on white carpets to give them crimson meaning
(GIVE me fire chants the meditating wannabe)
There’s cardboard death closing in on all sides and I have forgotten how to fly
If it means I don’t have to sit in a wheelchair named desire with snot running down my nose
Then by all means shove me in a nice quiet coffin
It’s not like I have anyone to talk to when I’m above-ground
And I’m sick of hearing the clinking of martini glasses under quiet well groomed conversation between liars
I have forgotten what breath on my neck while I slept felt like since I have almost forgotten how to breathe
All I hear is snorting from martyred sociopaths on a podium on the tv-altar telling me to buy their words
Well I don’t want THIS
I say THIS spreading my arms wide enough to encompass the entire barren raped valley of tumbleweeds
I toss lit cigarettes out the window of a fast car since they have nothing to burn beyond my flesh and lungs
Nothing to burn in the desert beyond your own bloated ego fat and angry
Who am I talking to again?
Oh yes its you
You and you and me and you and me and you are me and I chant it like a song for kids playing jump rope
I just need to smash in stained glass windows to steal pieces for a private rainbow that’s what I need to do
And when everything has busted the way I want it
I might find my feathers and my face in the reflection of a shard
I might remember how to fly again
In the false hope moonshine baseball bat after glow of smashed hope
(GIVE ME FIRE chants the meditating wannabe)
If it were before me on a plate killed and cooked I could not eat the fire
After all that’s we’d like to think was promised
All that’s left is the fluttering screen door and a ring shaped stain on a coffee table
Wide eyed and sick he looks up at the sky, his eyes shocked bright after being in the dark for so long
And there in the endless blue was the unreachable fire he had lusted for all through the self imposed night

This is the last song for birds who have forgotten how to fly
And I will sing until my teeth bleed and I remember

Jean
10-27-2008, 06:09 AM
if you are going to post more poems (which I hope you are http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k291/mishemplushem/Facilitation/0134-bear.gif) maybe you would like to think of another title for this thread? Think what name you would give to a collection of your poems, and tell the bear.

flaggwalkstheline
10-27-2008, 06:17 AM
oh well ok i hadnt even thought of this as a thread, mayb i will make a thread 4 my poems, i'll put one up a day in that case when i make it i guess this one could get lumped in there... ah lemme think hmm the thread on which i will post poetry is going to be called
"Poems in the key of KABLAM"
yeah thats clever
although i wasnt quite sure that we needed much moderator help 2 start a thread...

Jean
10-28-2008, 12:27 AM
No, I was talking about this thread (where we are now) becoming a thread for all your other poems. I will rename it Poems in the key of KABLAM then, shall I?

flaggwalkstheline
10-28-2008, 06:37 AM
yes please

Hannah
10-28-2008, 09:24 AM
I absolutely loved your poem. The style, the attitude, all very eyecatching.


please post some more.

flaggwalkstheline
10-28-2008, 10:19 AM
well thanku hanna, im glad u liked it, im going to try and make a habit of posting a few a week
heres another


mumbled battle-cry

This place is getting small
And I can smell impending incineration in the wind
I know where the smoke comes from
I didn’t want to be
The stranger in the doorway
Holding a flickering match between my thumb and forefinger in a pyromaniacal ok sign
I made a choice by dropping it into your open baby bird mouth
To set my world aflame
After all
Its better to be a flea crying at an open coffin than the dog being buried in the back yard

This place is getting small
Gotta start floating in another direction towards wherever the shore is
Just to prove
My blood is not mechanical
I’ve been sleeping here too long
Soon I could
Start pulling the winter over my head
A smothering blanket
Keeping me sleeping and sleeping
In beds in cars in houses sometimes with spouses but always sickeningly alone
I could become like
All the love junkies
Sweating without the needles of the opposite genders’ eyes
Funny though
They’re twitching in padded rooms without an emotion they’ve never been intoxicated by
Just told by the digital heads they should be good little hallmark addicts

I want some sort of respite from the electric bright night
But like I said
I’d rather be a parasite than have them in my blood
So its time to flee
Before I regret feeding you that fire

Here I am Here I am
Writing lyrics to songs whose singers I cant understand
Trying to explain
MY blood is not mechanical

I think I’ll wander the desert
And I’ll make sure it aint gonna be biblical

This place is getting small
So lets go
The engines are running smooth for now

flaggwalkstheline
10-30-2008, 11:46 AM
ok heres a BIG poem i wrote a while ago:shoot:




Sigh-a-night



The conflict is finished
Sad History written in books filled with dusty facts
This burnt out husk of an idea sighs one last time
And now here it is finally after much hype
Truth the deified juggernaut
Blurts out uncaring
Chewed little words scattered across the mighty ocean on one wind only
Questions wickedly murmured
Should not be heard
Especially by innocent fools
Waiting in line to throw their pieces of mind off a cliff
Broken and bloody by evening
On waves and stones of eastern bone bleached seashores
Then they pick themselves up
Dragging their metaphorical corpses home
And shatter again in the morning
Aha! There it is finally!
Half a glass of life experience
To sip slowly like bitter medicine
Or guzzle frantically like venomous nectar

Nightshade lover
Why are you a tiger?
And why am I a crippled sparrow?
Yet another argument
Rocketing towards an undeniable stoplight
Those hemlock hearts will be dust
Brown boots thump a monotonous rhythm on the floor
Thump one two thump three four
Plastic echoes in a dark hallway
I could write tonight
An endless waxing of poetic rhetoric
If I only had the time
Not much left of that concept
5 years later from 5 years ago
We were all so much younger than now
A house of cards in the wind
Our ancestors carefully crafted under the gun garden
Stumbled facedown out of the clouds
Watering the apocalypse beanstalk with blood and hope
Planting seeds in the rubble of cold war decades
The fairytale giant has many names
The god the bomb the man and the ant
Prophecy killer spewing the future dispelling the past
Rome wasn’t burned down in a day
The city choked on stagnant water
And the doctor who diagnosed the malady
Executed
Texas gulag style
In the air round the electric chair
A cigar smoke that chokes away any hope that the lights will go out
The heroes are all in exile
If they were here at all that is…

No love can be found here
Go back over the foggy highway
Go back there is no love here
A secret season of cold glances in the wasteland between secret sharers
Harsher than heat radiating from suburban isolation
I can’t feel my ego in this chill and I suspect that there is a hole where my heart used to be
Clouds of ulcerous breath billowing from under a coat
I am waiting
A ferocious wind snickers ironically
I am waiting
For the courage to look loneliness in its’ grey sky eye
Because my love is like the sun
My eyes burn shut at her beauty
My mouth closes when I try to speak
I become a ball of string
Always clawed at by the cat
The corduroy swish of my unraveling
Keeps me from reaching out out out
Still
I wait
Mixing reality and fantasy in flights of lunatic hope
Under the light of two heavens
The first heaven is black
The second heaven is a field of glaring light posts
Electric flowers humming under a desert of starshine
A noise like meditating monks waiting fro enlightenment

Go back there is only fear
Leave no trace of your muddy boots on the clean marble floor
There is no love anymore

The ancestral gardens’ rose wilts
Black and white photo daisies grown in cabinets
Children sprout from under the house
Here we are in the ruins of our fathers’ living rooms
Paved over their fathers’ cities
Built over their fathers’ fields
Plundered from their fathers castles
You and I old and frozen
All grown up up up
Not quite able to touch paradise
A child who sat in the mud of a daffodil forest
Now carefully crouches in a suit and tie
They built a city here once
Balanced on money tree branches
All those crowds of tax payers and tax evaders
Cautious not to step on a crack
Regularly reminded by mommy with her crumply back
That everything has already happened so there is nothing to worry about at all
They built the idea so tall
That it took a generation for falling cement to smash the babies on the ground floor
Remember that head cold music?
Remember how those scarlet lips would smile
On interstate 25 after another cliché overdue end of this journey
I said I would swallow every bullet
In the name of a yet unknown passion
I’ll chew all the bullets
But I won’t forget
Gaunt idealist shadow prophets skitter like tumbleweeds
One foot after another
Heavy marathons to madness in search of some mysterious redemption
They reach the noose at the end of their rainbows
Briefly gazing across shuddering rooftops
Charred mountains towering over starved crops
Clinking tombstone piano keys in an inkfog sunset
Looked over Jordan and saw the promised end
Beckoned to the sickness
By razor cold immortal instinct
No turning tragic eyes back from silver keyholes in cold rooms
Once you have a look
And see the nothing in my secret heart and hidden hands
Her warm face filled with ice and malice
Don’t leave me now
Not when the hopeful music is bleeding so loudly
Harpsichord smashed
Hourglass empty
Soda top popped
I whistle reality away in a room full of windows

The heavens are churning in my head but I still got nothin’

A wise tool knows not how he has become the gun
Unable to control the barbarian crash
When his trigger is pulled by a well manicured hand
But if a less informed individual were to lift aside the curtain
They would see an endless mirrored aisle
The flute of primitive rituals pipes from an unknown doorway
The entertainers are trapped
Not in grotesque masks
Only humanity grinning in glorious neglect
A question marked future
The wise mind repeats the mantra
I am not a clockwork monkey marching off to pray
Prey is what you are
A fiddle played by skilled hands
Prey to be hunted down by bomb happy apes
I don’t want them to know
That I know the truth
Heaven has been dead for a million millennia
Milky ghosts spat through the void
Sunlight is also a graveyard myth
Hanging meat hook like
Above a three mile island in the night
Two ships sinking in an endless sea of ripped paper
None of them will ever know it was me
I am not a clockwork monkey marching off to pray
Yet I do pray
That I myself
Will not turn out
To be lying
Belly up in the fish tank with everyone else
Silence is memory is pain is war is love is memory
Her smile was a beautiful virus
Sunlight splashes dead hot in a goodbye kiss
Starlight buried deep under gold flecked retinas
Does Anyone else remember what it is to feel?
The dishwater sadness
Crept in like lukewarm fog
Coinciding with the realization that I am not a clockwork monkey marching off to pray
Came the ragged wheezing smoker cough sense of despair
Vaguely viewed as a shadow in the rain drops
At 5 o’clock in the evening
Expectant fingers drumming on a table
Or warming briefly in an oven
After all that cold
Waiting for the go ahead to go home again home again home again home again HA
Home
Is just a place to go when all else fails
Luckily open are not open again
Predicting my failure
The kitchen is closed GET OUT stay hungry go philosophized elsewhere

The cosmos are spinning in my head
But I still got nothin’

It all went sour when the laughter stopped
Oh we had a blast before
The smartest idiots in the room me & my buddies
Feasting and drunken on giggles
It was as if a faucet turned off
And the ocean flowed normal once more
Coming down from a ha ha high
Every one followed a different realization back home
So now
(even though now is forever of course)
In the early hours when every breath is a jetfire boom
And metaphors march like mickeys’ brooms
And sleep the symphony that starts with starlight is preparing to sweep me away
Perhaps
I’ll stare a t a picture of a girl on my cell phone
Trying to will her to call me
‘cause I don’t have the courage to call her
And say
“I just wanted to hear your voice my sweet mona lisa on digital”
I can’t say that oh no
Then I might sound like a crazy person
Like the doctor in the electric chair licking an opium lolly pop said
“this self destructive behavior is self destructive”
Like the not CRAZY me said
Pop a happy pill doc they’re about to flick your switch

The universe is turning in my head but I still
Am nothing

Its’ nearly over now
The infant that failed to drown has grown old and sick
The ethereal tulip has not blossomed
Deep dusk-lit forest pines beckon the last beast in the land
Not me of course
I am too busy playing prophet
Telling you
The twilight of the new gods is at hand!
And Siegfried the farmer has known the never
His old world agent orange orchard
Once ripe with wonder
All the fruit is rotted to the center
Unable to recall the exact story of his glory
He screams through eyes glued shut
The eye is far louder than the mouth
Spinning and spitting in a fever
Sleep that won’t leave at daytime
If I had a real picture of some one near to my heart
I would turn it face down
So that alexandras’ lips kissed a nightstand
She held me in the water above the ocean orchestra
And it was blue and bright
They played jazz smooth and right though the night
And then I woke in darkness
I woke in silence
I miss the old stories
Because I remember less and less
Stop it Stop it!
I know they tore the old empire down brick by cancerous brick
I know the snow queen lies melting In the desert
A cruel sun firing her kiln
The snow queen refuses to smolder
Banished by her cruel son for her cruelty
He will become give him time and hate he will become
He has become
I’ll leave all this behind
Illuminated closer than it appears
A rear view mirror remembers the end of the book
The slamming of the tales last page
A middle finger turned behind me
Ends it a sit should end




Now at a crossroads
Two equally menacing paths
One of which needs to jumped on
Still denying the untruths truth

I chewed all the bullets
But I could not withstand the storm
So I ran
But did not forget
I chewed all the bullets
But could not stand the storm
So I ran
With feet like hammer strokes
I ran
But did not forget
A middle finger turned behind me ends it as it should end

flaggwalkstheline
11-04-2008, 09:48 AM
ok well nobodys responding but their r views on this page so im gonna post another one heres my most recent


High
High in the mountains
High above the ant farm city
High
Where air exhales inhaled dust and frost on moss bearded cliffs
There is
A white tree
In the shade of a grey walled echoing canyon
The first time I saw it from distance
I was in awe of the shining white tree
A beacon bright as a snowy mirror
An indigenous Excalibur planted straight into the naked rock
But when I completed my pilgrimage
And ran my eyes along its trunk
My hope fell like so much yarn from a spool
The White tree is dead, anemic, bloodless and skinned
Carved by passionate vultures
A hundred declarations of young affection
Most of the hands who bit things like jake love tina into the bark
Are now older and wrinkled having cast their wedding rings out with the coffee grounds years ago
Their nightmares are of the fingers they once held not the tree they recorded their youth upon
My fingers go in circles all along the places where messages were chopped and Im baffled
Im sure that if I had a name to put in a carved heart with mine
I wouldnt feel the urge to mutilate something beautiful
At least not for a while

flaggwalkstheline
11-09-2008, 08:00 AM
A love song in grey

Dear whats-her-face,
How have you been?
I’m just writing to tell you I’m about to forget
But there is still a chance
To be a voice in my head
There’s room to mumble in a dream
I can try not to forget you at first
But one day I’ll wake up with a head more empty than the previous night
I want to lie with you but not to you on a bridge of moonlight and tell you processed pesticide clichés
We could pretend that for a single blue minute we’re different from everyone else
Movers and Fakers
Shakers and heartbreakers
They drive home drunk after funerals because it seems like the best way to honor the dead

The two of us are too sad to care about anyone but ourselves
A self-enlightened idiot once told me love’s an ocean you gotta be willing to drown in
But we just sputter, dog paddle and collapse safely on the shore
I stole all my laughter from both a seashell and a machine
The softest voices I know
Come bubbling from underneath the escalators in a shopping mall
All this laughter was stolen
I stood in the middle of a crowd laughing
Laughing until tears ran down my face and I feel to the floor clutching my gut
There are people with purpose in their footsteps striding on and on
None of them stop to either see what’s so funny or why I’m lying on the floor sobbing
I knew a joke but forgot it, now there is only the need to hold onto the punch line before it’s washed away
Liquid faces swirl and turn
Professional flesh hurricanes battering on a shore where I once found a whispering shell
I haven’t been there in years but I can taste the saltwater from all my placebo tears and it tastes like the sea
Anyway, I’ve rambled enough, call me up some time when I’m asleep
Your friend,
About to forget

flaggwalkstheline
11-11-2008, 08:42 PM
Antarctica is my erotic dream

Sometimes
When I’m floating asleep
I dream about walking in a snowy place
An Antarctic-marble violin-winded breathless coldscape
I walk through it calm, nude and unashamed
Burning through the snow like a meteorite
Called onward and warmed
By the whisper and hum of your voice
Promising inaudible heat
Pushing soft steam on my neck
I trudge onward melting all I touch
Your hands brush the frost from my cheek
That’s when I usually wake feeling brittle and carved from ice
I am far more frozen
Here in my undercooked burnt on the outside
Refrigerated reality
I would gladly freeze and shatter
If it meant we were together

flaggwalkstheline
11-19-2008, 08:54 AM
Conversations with strangers


My sigh stretches long as a shadow
I an taste the meat rotting between my teeth
And my laughter is the wheezing of crows
But enough of this narcissistic analysis
Let's talk about you
Sweetheart

flaggwalkstheline
11-19-2008, 09:49 AM
The search


Marginalized
Cauterized
I am walking around with my brain cut off at the knees
You and your ancestors failed to find enlightenment
Defiled, paid for and whored out
The 20th century was one quest for it after another each ending in
genocide (whisper it like a name of god)
I can’t grow the wise beard
Not with razors or literature
Nor through the corrupt mumbles of dead geniuses
Saint paul and plato
Were plagiarist puppet masters
Their hands up the asses of their dead masters’ ideas
Being violated in turn on down through the ages
By their pupils and their pupils’ pupils
Expanding and contracting in the light of flashbulb cities
You couldn’t find it in speeches by self-made millionaire madmen standing on mountains of corpses
Which when sifted through
Offer no solution
You can’t have a golden thumb until you stop tapping it expectantly
Waiting to understand what the vulture meant
When it held a blue flower in its’ beak but did not speak initially

“I’m just greedy for knowing but at least I’m aware of it so I can’t be too gangrenous yet right?”

A bitter taste of bad brown murdered apple floods my mouth
Made worse by a hope for something sweet

The vulture counts his coins

Not found in the intravenous electric shot of liquor
Given by television, telephones and the false infinity of the internet
And its’ churches of pornographic self-help spoonfed forcefed dollar-deitys
No sweetness found in the invisible worth of coins placed in gleaming stacks
As substitute souls
The vulture told me
“All this is a struggle between two cancerous afterlives, 2 ponts of view
Walt Disney in heaven with riot police and cameras on every street corner
and Charles Bukowski soaking up Hells’ hot tub cigar in one hand, pistol in the other”.

I don’t believe a word those bastards say with their Sunday church and Friday golf games and Tuesday press conferences and November elections

The vulture counts his quarters

Not found by casting aside your rags and standing naked and defiant on the railroad tracks
Safe and sure that someone will pull you aside before
The fabled locomotive roars and charges like asn endangered species you thought you extinguished

“There’s something you should know
When we played Russian roulette and you thought “He has IT!”
I laughed since I had removed all the bullets”

No chance of being hit by the train but it still feels brave to be on the tracks

The vulture counts his coins

You won’t find any hidden wisdom scribbled on the wall of a cave
Everyone after HD Thorough doing that is just a Unabomber-esque wannabe
If you craft words that are strong, words of fire, words of Earth
The vulture will take them and wallow in their decay

I think that
As soon as you are able to give up trying to torture divinity from its’ graffiti covered shell
You may find it more easily
Until then

I’ll count my coins

flaggwalkstheline
11-20-2008, 03:08 PM
Momentary lapse of cynicism?


Girl in a white dress
Plastic bag colored
Barefoot in the dirt
Swirling before my sickly eyes
Our hands and eyes pass bye
Clouds in a dad blue sky

flaggwalkstheline
11-29-2008, 09:08 PM
Somwhere
Grey and silent as a monastery floor
A chalkmark has been scraped
Drawn into
My shape
I know this while clenching my hands in empty coat pockets
I watch headlights wink as if making a private mechanical jest in darkness
Somewhere up the road

everything I ever wanted
Flies by with blazing eyes
Heatseeking-missile kisses meant for someone else

A white outline is sketched on the sidewalk near a building
Cold Island in a colder sea
That’s me
And that’s the machine

The scraping keeps me awake

flaggwalkstheline
11-29-2008, 09:11 PM
A dream I can barely remember

I should have known right then…
Because of the way that hand held that glass
From which I drank deep
And who it was who offered it
Corrupting cancer liquid spreads
Blackening the sky like butter on bread
I should have known right then…
How all the eyes that were not there to stare
I only realized something changed
After standing with a smoking gun in one hand and a remote control that had no batteries in the other
Atop the very narrow pyramid
Dressed in the tattered clothing of an enemy
The wind pushed me off with a karmic snicker
And I saw all of them on the wider levels of the system
Wandering with full bellies through grocery store aisles lined with dumpsters filled with food they didn’t eat
And oh how I fell
Burnt tie flapping up above me in a ludicrous goodbye
To the ever widening sky
No noose to save me this time
I knew where I would land
Somewhere with a thud in the dirt
Among many telephone poles which stick like unwrapped but unused cowboy crucifixes
Stuck in the ground like the monkey king
I only realized then with a quiet scream
That the cup I drank form
Was tainted

Aaron
11-29-2008, 09:30 PM
Very stream of consciousness. It reminded me of Bret Easton Ellis. Not so much American Psycho Ellis, but kind of Rules of Attraction. The voice you use is perfect for really hard-hitting prose writing; a brand of writing I don't see enough of.

Good stuff:harrier:

flaggwalkstheline
11-30-2008, 07:53 AM
thanx I really try to hit hard
I've actually never read any of ellis, ive seen the movie of american psycho though
probably the writer I try to emulate (read sound similar to yet still be very different from) is either WS Merwyn or Kenneth Rexroth

flaggwalkstheline
12-03-2008, 01:06 PM
Another exorcism for Alexandra


I still dream of your smile
I doubt that you think of mine
It’s been such a long time since I heard you laugh or held your hand
Yet
If we were to meet on some avenue scarred with potholes like the pockmarks that used to be on my face
I would stammer and look at my shoes just like the child I was
I wish that the strange force which keeps the smell of your hair fresh in my mind
Would carry me away like the tide
To a sandy beach
Where I am free from wanting you

flaggwalkstheline
12-10-2008, 06:43 AM
I’m indoors at my pc bathing in it’s electric glow
Listening to punk rock and watching the data flow
In fact I really don’t care that its now starting to snow

‘cause a cold day lasts forever when you’re unemployed and bored
Yeah
A cold day lasts forever when your head is nothing but empty space
Yeah
A cold day lasts forever when you’ve got youth to waste

Now the snow is piling higher and the sky is really grey
And I’m still sitting here typing and downloading my mind away
I don’t have any friends but I still think that’s ok
Cause whenever I had friends they never liked me anyway


Now how long I’ve been sitting here I’m really not sure
But when I started this poem I was 16 years old
And I was forcing myself to rhyme just because it seemed so bold
But I’m fuckin’ sick of rhyming and I think

That here’s where I’m gonna stop talking about everything I like to talk about because even I stopped caring
Years ago
Cause if I’m not careful I’ll still be prostrating myself before a machine when I’m fifty
And my hair will be white just like ice
Dandruff dropping on the keyboard just like snow upon the ground of December 2008
All because I though it was okay
To wait

‘cause cold days last forever when you’ve got time to spare
Yeah
A cold day lasts forever when you’ve got no sense of time
Yeah
A cold day lasts forever when your pockets are only deep because it takes so long to find

That you’ve got no change to spare no time to throw away and too much food to eat in one sitting

Because cold days last forever when you’re unemployed and bored

flaggwalkstheline
12-14-2008, 09:37 PM
ok this poem I just wrote is comprised of 2 vertically written simple statements/ poems and 1 horizontal (IE normal) poem connecting them I'd never done this before, very exciting

The song she sang was the sweetest
Thing I have ever heard I think of it as a mournful bird
Which I realize now
Is useless, sad,
Wrong because I can never show you how sweet her singing
Is I can only scribble about it and you will think of
Me to be a coward for never learning how to keep away the silence

flaggwalkstheline
12-14-2008, 09:41 PM
hmm there were supposed to be spaces between the first word and last words of each line and the middle parts
when I cut n pasted it they were there and when I go to edit it they are there again
oh well the extra parts are still in it, just maddeningly subtle without the spaces

BROWNINGS CHILDE
12-14-2008, 10:48 PM
As to hard hitting prose, It reminds me of Dennis Leary

flaggwalkstheline
12-15-2008, 07:14 AM
dennis leary? the comdian on that tv show about firemen? I didnt know he wrote poetry...
hmmm:wtf:

Hannah
12-24-2008, 11:33 AM
ok this poem I just wrote is comprised of 2 vertically written simple statements/ poems and 1 horizontal (IE normal) poem connecting them I'd never done this before, very exciting

The song she sang was the sweetest
Thing I have ever heard I think of it as a mournful bird
Which I realize now
Is useless, sad,
Wrong because I can never show you how sweet her singing
Is I can only scribble about it and you will think of
Me to be a coward for never learning how to keep away the silence

I like this one. I like the style. It's different, interesting.

Jon
12-27-2008, 01:06 AM
hmm there were supposed to be spaces between the first word and last words of each line and the middle parts
when I cut n pasted it they were there and when I go to edit it they are there again
oh well the extra parts are still in it, just maddeningly subtle without the spaces


Teah I had fits with one of my poems.

I wanted the word "Fall" to go downward but each letter indented one more than the other...no dice!

flaggwalkstheline
12-28-2008, 07:08 AM
A sunset and a carcrash

A teardrop son drips below the hills
Exhaling rockstar purple and pharaoh gold
The brown world cools beneath my body
Glinting like a dust covered discoball
A ford mustang is crumpled against the guardrail
A child's shoe sits in the dirt unlaced
A perverted river of highway winds it's way to the sea
I lick the last drops of sweet perspiration from an empty soda bottle
And wait for the dark

flaggwalkstheline
12-28-2008, 11:11 PM
This night is filled with static

Staring at a computer screen
Pornography, nothing but noise and an imagined stench
Eyes blank and filled with static
No trace of connection
With the flesh
Except the electric kind

I listen to sad songs and wonder if they would be better if I smoked a cigarette at the same time
Synthetic, the morphine drip signal gradually gets weaker
The most lonely voices are the ones I hope to hear but fall asleep before a chance comes
Manufactured cancer pumping through my brain like air from an iron lung

In the room next door an old woman coughs and sputters in her sleep
Mumbles a subconscious prayer
Holding on, fingers dug deep into the ground
Pulled away one slowing heartbeat at a time

All the christmas trees were pulled down yesterday from all the yards in the neighborhood
They were getting old and brown and angry looking anyway
Beginning to look like scarecrows in the snow or mini-crucifixes a symbol which of course is for saved easter
The crows already left this party and I didn’t feel like following in their tiny shadows
A vicious snicker bounces on the ceiling for a second

So very clever…
I pat myself on the boney spine
So very clever, the words I try and puke up
If I told my thoughts are like a bulimics lunch
Would you be more interested?

Whatever I said that sounded so clever bubbling up from a well of insomnia
Will seem like self indulgent snickering come morning

I’m still here because I know nobody will miss me if I’m gone

So very clever…
So can any of you fading voices tell me why when I listen to my deepest murmurs there is only static?

Jon
12-29-2008, 06:26 AM
Very good. A well painted picture!

I can only hope you do not feel this way.

flaggwalkstheline
12-29-2008, 08:30 AM
uch I don't really remember writing that poem, I remember something writing something but last night I was kinda in a fugue...

flaggwalkstheline
12-29-2008, 09:13 AM
Supermarket Jazz

There is a supermarket
That I go to
Sometimes
When I'm out of meat or milk
Or vegetables in cans
And at this supermarket
Constantly floating lazily from the ceiling which has state flags hanging down from it's rafters
Is music
A sort of watered down jazz
Gentrified friendly cold swinging like a corpse with a rope around it's neck
I music could be seen there would be a sign around its neck reading
"I stopped spinning at 45 revolutions per minute 4 or 3 revolutions ago
Watered down jazz
Humming along to a tune that ought to be a funeral march
Jazz is dead jazz is dead
Who am I to lament the death of jazz?
With my falloutboy t-shirt and wannabe rock & roll bad attitude that I got out of a cereal box
Jazz is dead
And the elderly people who listened to it
Are dropping like bloated parasites off the rotten piece of fruit earth that they started the long dig down into
50 cents a pound of flesh yum yum
The supermarket with it's tabloids for sale near the register
And it's pyramid of 6-packs proudly displayed for those of us over 21 years old
If that store starts playing Smells Like Teen Spirit or My Generation
For the accountants and the houswives
the I hope I die of food poisoning from the can of pickled oysters I hold the way a mujahadeen holds a grenade
Ah the grocery store, grandest invention of modern man killing millions with cigarettes and processed food
Gun crimes don't hold a candle to this murderous complacency
Silent gathering place of this not so new world order
Swat team ordering me to put down the bad bad oysters before I do something I regret
Regret?!
You just don't want me to projectile vomit all over you Mr pOliceman
Unfortunately for you vomiting is what I do
There is a store every few miles from every house on every street
Everyone is an employee of some kind of supermarket
Feeding the economy towards it's inevitable imaginary heart attack
Well, with the amount of hyper survival provided
Some good little boys and girls might say "thank god for the supermarket!"
But I think deep down in their unhungry hearts which sit on glass shelves waiting to be snatched up
The real thought which is thought
While leafing through people magazine at the express checkout and eying the candy
Is
"Thank supermarket for god!"

flaggwalkstheline
01-03-2009, 03:08 PM
well here a corrupyted variation on "where have all the flowers gone?" by pete seeger, I have used it 2 describe my contempt with pop music


Where have all the rockstars gone?
An elegy for rock & roll
Where have all the rockstars gone, long time passing?
Where have all the rockstars gone, long time ago?
Where have all the rockstars gone?
Record Companies and overdoses picked them off one by one
Oh, when will the radio stations ever learn?
And where will the youth now turn?

Where have all the Guitars gone, long time passing?
Where have all the Guitars gone, long time ago?
Where have all the Guitars gone?
Gone for synthesizers everyone
Nobody needs any skills to hone
They just need protunes and a microphone

Where have all the groupies gone, long time passing?
Where have all the groupies gone, long time ago?
Where have all the groupies gone?
Gone for husbands then divorces, one by one
Responsibility grown with age and the threat of aids
And it makes me ever so sad

Where have all the punk rockers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the punk rockers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the punk rockers gone?
Gone for rappers, everyone.
Gone for the complacency of pop and teenyboppers
Gone for electronics, every would-be sid and nancy
Gone for gizmos slick and fancy

Where have all the records gone, long time passing?
Where have all the CDs gone, long time ago?
Where have all the albums gone?
Gone to bargain bins one by one
Gone for singles and computers, everyone.

Where have all the rockstars gone, long time passing?
Where have all the rockstars gone, long time ago?
Where have all the rockstars gone?
Gone for greatest hits compilations one by one
Record Companies and overdoses picked them off one by one
Oh, when will the radio stations ever learn?
And where will the youth now turn?

flaggwalkstheline
01-08-2009, 04:24 PM
I fear



I fear sometime
That in the years and lifetimes to come
I will forget
The feeling of dirt between my toes
The sound of wind in the tall grass
The electric clarity of new love
The taste of fresh bread
And the warmth of spring rain on my head

I fear
That my fingers will slip away from all the hands that I hold near
That I will never speak a word that matters again after I speak one that does
And that I might waste my one important word
That I will give in to the lies
(There are true american atheists, we believe in money don't we?)

I fear
That in 20 year the only thing that will matter to me is making sure I'm well prepared for that day I stop fearing

But for now
I am content
To listen to a voice in the darkness and not be afraid

flaggwalkstheline
01-28-2009, 04:19 PM
Orpheus are you still dancing?
Because if you are then you should continue dancing so you don’t see what we have become with out your music
There isn’t much left around here
The houses are all for sale
The stores closed or unwilling to hire me because they will soon be
Like the people we are so quick to call ancient heathens some of us are finally seeing how silly our rituals are
It’s closing time across the western empire
Last call for chemicals before we lock you in with nothing but yourself and your fantasies
It’s closing time across the western empire
The automobiles squeal out of the city just like chariots with burning wheels
Well I walk around all day looking for something to say
Coming up with rhymes and imagining crimes that I have yet to commit
The dust blows across my feet
Swirling dirty little galaxies
I like to pretend we’re all gods but don’t know it yet
I squeeze a piece of fruit in my left hand
Looking up at the streetlamps lightless and cowering before the sun
And I think of Orpheus that old Greek flautist
And how after he saw his love crumble
He descended back into the underworld
To play his flute and dance with the dead
Where the living could not hear

I think of Orpheus as Apollo burns overhead
I spit sweet pink pomegranate seeds into the gutter
And continue walking

flaggwalkstheline
02-11-2009, 03:34 PM
Way out past where the highway trickles off
And the under cooked raw hamburger red desert is bitter
And you can no longer hear the false breath of semi trucks because the machines have run out of breath
The real air inhales deeply rattling my teeth
Is that the sound of death I hear?
Or some inconsolable animal raging at the mean blue skies
When winter ends I worry I may have forgotten how to experience warmth
No, death is not the sound I fear
For I know that everyone turns to stone first
They will find me here among shells and petrified cacti
In a thousand years
Holding the limestone hand I cut from a one time lover’s arm in my own marble grip
By then even this place will have given up and turned into the edge of a hard beach
And I will lie in cracked chunks along the shore line
They will find me here
A failed sculpture
Reaching for the ocean I knew I would one day crumble into

Jon
02-12-2009, 10:07 PM
Way out past where the highway trickles off
And the under cooked raw hamburger red desert is bitter
And you can no longer hear the false breath of semi trucks because the machines have run out of breath
The real air inhales deeply rattling my teeth
Is that the sound of death I hear?
Or some inconsolable animal raging at the mean blue skies
When winter ends I worry I may have forgotten how to experience warmth
No, death is not the sound I fear
For I know that everyone turns to stone first
They will find me here among shells and petrified cacti
In a thousand years
Holding the limestone hand I cut from a one time lover’s arm in my own marble grip
By then even this place will have given up and turned into the edge of a hard beach
And I will lie in cracked chunks along the shore line
They will find me here
A failed sculpture
Reaching for the ocean I knew I would one day crumble into


Damn man, Damn! This rocks!

You and Fruno make me so jealous! Great talents!

flaggwalkstheline
02-16-2009, 12:27 PM
Way out past where the highway trickles off
And the under cooked raw hamburger red desert is bitter
And you can no longer hear the false breath of semi trucks because the machines have run out of breath
The real air inhales deeply rattling my teeth
Is that the sound of death I hear?
Or some inconsolable animal raging at the mean blue skies
When winter ends I worry I may have forgotten how to experience warmth
No, death is not the sound I fear
For I know that everyone turns to stone first
They will find me here among shells and petrified cacti
In a thousand years
Holding the limestone hand I cut from a one time lover’s arm in my own marble grip
By then even this place will have given up and turned into the edge of a hard beach
And I will lie in cracked chunks along the shore line
They will find me here
A failed sculpture
Reaching for the ocean I knew I would one day crumble into


Damn man, Damn! This rocks!

You and Fruno make me so jealous! Great talents!

glad u like it:P

flaggwalkstheline
03-04-2009, 06:47 PM
We built the fire at sundown from the ashes of the past and ghosts of forgotten flames
Heaping our burnt lips onto the coals without saying any silver goodbyes
The fat of our hearts and the flesh of the land
All of it: fuel
From the ashes of our futures and from the embers of a fevered tomorrow
We built the fire at sunset and we built it hot and fast
Shovel in your first kiss side by side with your last
Shovel in history and shovel in mystery
Shovel in sadness and shovel in madness
All of it: fuel
We built the fire at dusk as a beacon to signal stars
We built the fire at sunset because we hoped to return to former brightness
Then we danced, jumped, snarled and fucked our way through every last crystallized drop of heat
All of it: fuel
And when you, me and the sun finally yawn and raise golden arms over the crumpled sheets of the horizon
We will see the ashes all in a single sad heap, devoid of glory
And we will remember
At midnight we burned bright

AlishaRiley
03-04-2009, 06:54 PM
:borg:



wow.



fucking hell, you're good...

Jon
03-04-2009, 09:27 PM
"And when you, me and the sun finally yawn and raise golden arms over the crumpled sheets of the horizon"

Love this line...great ending!

flaggwalkstheline
03-05-2009, 07:49 AM
:borg:



wow.



fucking hell, you're good...


it's comments like that which my strange little writer's ego lives for:P:rock:

AlishaRiley
03-05-2009, 12:58 PM
Well, I shall be checking this thread often to have a gander at your work. It really is brilliant - so expect many more ego boosts. :D

Jon
03-12-2009, 10:40 PM
Love the new member title, my man. Member titles always interest me.

flaggwalkstheline
03-13-2009, 07:00 AM
Love the new member title, my man. Member titles always interest me.

Its a reference to Lucky Number Nine by the moldy peaches

Jon
03-13-2009, 08:44 PM
"I left my wood paneling"

Whatever will they do for a wall covering?:P

flaggwalkstheline
03-24-2009, 10:13 AM
The following…

As I wander through the woods
(deep and dark and deep and dark and deep and dark goes the primal chant that mother used to sing at bedtime)
Knuckles freezing
Fingernails about to shatter
Waiting to catch a lightning flash on my tongue like a child licking at common snowflakes which I ignore
A crow snickers at me
HA HA HA
For he knows what scheme I am truly cooking
That crow ought to be tapdancing on asphalt
He belongs to the city more than me
Neither me nor my friend the crow should be here in the forest
(deep and dark and deep and dark and deep and dark goes the primal chant that mother used to sing at bedtime)
They are only so far ahead of me now
Figures in black suits carrying my empty coffin above their heads
I see them
Branches scraping at my oak lid
I want to catch up with them
And tell them to hold on just a minute while I climb in for my long expected rest
My friend the crow will sit on the lid before the earth is shoveled on it
Frozen earth wrestled from the mountain
And relocated to cover up the truth
(deep and dark and deep and dark and deep and dark goes the primal chant that mother used to sing at bedtime)

AlishaRiley
03-24-2009, 11:57 AM
oh, that's wonderful. :wub:
To begin with, it vaguely reminds me of robert frost - stopping by woods on a snowy evening, but, of course...it's completely different. It just made me think of it, and that's one of my all time favourite poems. :wub:

flaggwalkstheline
03-24-2009, 12:42 PM
Glad you like it, I wrote it a long time ago and I think the vibe I was trying (n I think succeeded with) was like early 20th century imagist verse gone gothic

I'm actually going through some of my older writing today so I'll probably post some more pretty soon

flaggwalkstheline
03-24-2009, 01:16 PM
and heres one now


Cannibalized poem # 5

All my songs are plagiarized
From men who sing about dead skies and golden thighs

Kurt Colbain said “throw me In the fire and I won’t throw a fit”
And the real tragedy is that nobody would do it for him

I have never loved non-machines
All my wet dreams are pixilated empty screens
I share no body heat
With people who succeed in setting themselves on fire daily
I don’t even have the nerve
To slit my own brain

If you shout one too many times
Until your voice is ember and ash
Even that will seem mundane

All my flowers are dead
And the aphids are in mourning

Everything important has been said and not by me

I ate a rose
Wanting to force my throat to spew something worthwhile
But all I got
Was a Freudian nightmare prophecy last night
In it: a pink fetus, blob of flesh
Was passed around in a circle by heavy breathing septuagenarians
Buzzards caressing it in the worst way
The old killers put it back in the sleeping young mother to be
The damage done early
They chuckled

That’s enough to get me blacklisted by mothers everywhere

Every generation of kids
Wants to outdo their parents
And give up destroying themselves earlier
After a valiant attempt at oblivion and the creation of a few wild eyed martyrs


The rose I tried to swallow had it’s thorns removed by someone whoe cares

Those kids, before they start
Denying they’ll give up
But well before the ruinous seeds are planted
Are told how big and cruel the world is

But actually childhood is much more blatantly nasty
Mountainous walls of unattainable candy
You get beaten up for lunch money and you NEED those grades
Remind me why again?
Because for me
Now that I’m over the cavity mountains
All I see is flatland
And
Circling
Buzzards

And that last doozy of a drop
Into the gulf

A bubble existence filled with reflections
I’m not strong enough to smash the glass

I lust for disease
Contaminate me please
Kick my teeth in for a forced clown smile

I can’t BE
Not in my grandfathers’ suit and tie eventually die, teach your children well, real men don’t cry world

So I’m begging you to rape my heart even though it might freeze off you tits
‘cause I’m afraid I’ll survive another one of these fits

All I want is for someone to look at
Without feeling
That I’m on the wrong side of a moat at the zoo
And that I’m scribbling on the wall of a cave

Jon
03-25-2009, 08:49 PM
That last one is friggin' brilliant!!!


I love this line from the previous poem; "Knuckles freezing
Fingernails about to shatter"

flaggwalkstheline
03-27-2009, 12:44 PM
The magnolia sinister

Sometime I think the city is an afterlife
Gas station temples for carbon gods
The prophet wrapped in styrafoam
Sees the degeneration and mastication of the masses
Chewed by expensive teeth
And does nothing
Godliness gets in the way
I could do something but don’t
Mortality gets in the way

Flowing through the streets like salmon with wallets
Filling the void with things

I met a girl who smelled of smoke
Yet never burned, only smoldered
She writes her own name over and over again so she won’t forget it

I climbed the highest hill hoping to tip the scales
To bellow the question the valley below
WHO HAVE WE BECOME?
Words remain unheard and insubstantial yet bright as fire
A liar can only deny for so long
And continue to say the bomb is holy
While the magnolia is sinister
I’m done lying to the mirror
Sitting up at dawn listening to the radio
The same song sung in repetition
Slowly murdering myself with self pity
Hypnosis and narcosis for breakfast
The heat is gone
I stomped the all permeating sigh
I burst through the door yelling gotcha gotcha gotcha
Slow to realize and sad to admit
Everyone but me
Already knew the secret before
I was waiting on the stairs outside the door
This whole time
Unknowing
You and I were floating in an afterlife
This whole time

Jon
03-27-2009, 08:58 PM
You never fail to impress me FWTL! Just when I think you have done your best...you best it!

Great work. It pulls the reader in slowly. Soon said reader is in the world you have subtly created. Angst that doesn't take over but is a monster to be defeated. Angst that insists on being defeated!

flaggwalkstheline
03-28-2009, 07:17 AM
You never fail to impress me FWTL! Just when I think you have done your best...you best it!

Great work. It pulls the reader in slowly. Soon said reader is in the world you have subtly created. Angst that doesn't take over but is a monster to be defeated. Angst that insists on being defeated!

wow
glad u like it
I wrote that like 2 years ago, Ive just been copying some of my older stuff down so I can have it on my hard drive and putting some of it here 2

I dont know if thats my best though...
I think so far my best is my dirge for birds poem which is the first thing I posted on this thread...

AlishaRiley
03-28-2009, 08:52 AM
Flagg, your last two poems are completely amazing, man.

Cannibalized poem # 5 - this really hit me. It's awesome - truly awesome. Well done, squire, you're pretty much a poeical genius. ;)
I've really enjoyed reading your work. :couple:

flaggwalkstheline
03-28-2009, 09:06 AM
Flagg, your last two poems are completely amazing, man.

Cannibalized poem # 5 - this really hit me. It's awesome - truly awesome. Well done, squire, you're pretty much a poetical genius. ;)
I've really enjoyed reading your work. :couple:

I've been telling people about how much of a genius I am for years now!:dance:

The cannibalized poems are called that cause they're the poems I wasnt satisfied with n decided to mix with other unfinished stuff thus: cannibalized

Jon
03-30-2009, 10:11 AM
You never fail to impress me FWTL! Just when I think you have done your best...you best it!

Great work. It pulls the reader in slowly. Soon said reader is in the world you have subtly created. Angst that doesn't take over but is a monster to be defeated. Angst that insists on being defeated!

wow
glad u like it
I wrote that like 2 years ago, Ive just been copying some of my older stuff down so I can have it on my hard drive and putting some of it here 2

I dont know if thats my best though...
I think so far my best is my dirge for birds poem which is the first thing I posted on this thread...


Yeah...after one shows true skill, "the best" is subjective.

flaggwalkstheline
03-30-2009, 11:24 AM
You never fail to impress me FWTL! Just when I think you have done your best...you best it!

Great work. It pulls the reader in slowly. Soon said reader is in the world you have subtly created. Angst that doesn't take over but is a monster to be defeated. Angst that insists on being defeated!

wow
glad u like it
I wrote that like 2 years ago, Ive just been copying some of my older stuff down so I can have it on my hard drive and putting some of it here 2

I dont know if thats my best though...
I think so far my best is my dirge for birds poem which is the first thing I posted on this thread...


Yeah...after one shows true skill, "the best" is subjective.

I try not to think that anything I've done is THE BEST, best so far, but I like to think of a poem like that as just raising the bar for future writing

heres another older one


Denial?

I would do anything
To have an ear to whisper my secrets into
But
I just keep moving forward quietly so as not to wake the sleeping

Ignoring the solemn kaboom of human racecars
Burnt out on the highways of the human heart
I deny that I want to close my eyes and not see silence
If I had someone to hold through the jetfire cold nights
Then the invisible machines could grind to a stop and I wouldn’t care
that’s what I wanted after wasn’t it?
Complete and utter destruction of all that I deny and has denied me

Every good story should end with a man preparing to jump
But again
I deny the primitive impulses and tiptoe down the hallway
Quiet quiet
Do you want to have a breakthrough?
“I am the whipping boy co corporate america”
Unspoken for
Speak for me
I dare you to I’ve got enough to say for a lifetime

I have been to the sea of dreams when it was not my time

“This must be the cancer talking, ignore him dear.”

Flesh swimming in the eyeball blue sky ocean

I have been to the sea of dreams when it was not my turn and I will not get to swim again
I spend every night trying to remember what the water and skin felt like

Felt like?
Feels like I just slipped and fell after I decided not to leap
Feels like I took a stab at happiness
And left it bleeding on the kitchen floor

soylentjillian
03-30-2009, 01:23 PM
Flagg, I love your poems, they remind me slightly of T.S. Eliot, who I love (the older stuff, not the four quartets era). You know, like the Wastelands and Prufrock.

in the rooms the women come and go talking of michelangelo

if any of you enjoy pot, try reading Eliot (especially the wastelands) after :cool:.

flaggwalkstheline
03-30-2009, 02:17 PM
Flagg, I love your poems, they remind me slightly of T.S. Eliot, who I love (the older stuff, not the four quartets era). You know, like the Wastelands and Prufrock.

in the rooms the women come and go talking of michelangelo

if any of you enjoy pot, try reading Eliot (especially the wastelands) after :cool:.



I am planning on getting a tattoo which says "I should have been a pair of ragged claws / scuttling across the floors of silent seas":P


Seriously, I am

soylentjillian
03-30-2009, 11:09 PM
Flagg, I love your poems, they remind me slightly of T.S. Eliot, who I love (the older stuff, not the four quartets era). You know, like the Wastelands and Prufrock.

in the rooms the women come and go talking of michelangelo

if any of you enjoy pot, try reading Eliot (especially the wastelands) after :cool:.



I am planning on getting a tattoo which says "I should have been a pair of ragged claws / scuttling across the floors of silent seas":P


Seriously, I am

That would be so cool. I love The Wastelands. Pictures if you do it!

flaggwalkstheline
04-10-2009, 02:15 PM
The pristine white eggshell I live in
Is a man-made
Straight to video city of the old stones
Giddyup Hi Ho I’ve got nowhere to go
I’m in the kitchen spilling milk and you’re in the bathroom shitting silk
Nothing but a useless butterfly
A pretty thing that just flutters by
Remade for machines
Made in china iron maiden
Volcano sacrifice on ice
Public mating slowly fading
Over laden buckling table
Sweet as maple
Mentally unstable escaped horses gulp down green fattened golf courses
One digestion cycle complete
I wanted to draw blood but lacked the paper or red ink
A hungry sky-blue bulldozer drinks down the hills after taking diet pills
Rusted hands of the butcher rip into a lackluster blockbuster which lacerates a stop sign
The bombs are all within my mind
I would have painted you into the new neon mona lisa
And then crucified you in the bathroom of an art museum
If I’m to have one then give me a brightly colored inquisition
Loving you was once my mission
But now I know that the that broken hearts can heal and mend even if we don’t want to
And stolen thoughts are the easiest to bend
I would never counterfeit the wasted bloody gift I gave you
Even as the buildings fall
And I realize me eyes are mechanical after all
Projecting lies upon the wall
Even then I remain just a boy
A grub in a metal ant hill without any guts to spill
So please just let me drown
A frowning bitter clown who once slept on a bed of down
Let me snorkel in my own cancerous tea kettle
While you stand there up to your ankles in sand
Hopefully not too sad
That you didn’t take my hand

Jon
04-14-2009, 07:31 PM
"And stolen thoughts are the easiest to bend"

I rather like this line!

flaggwalkstheline
04-14-2009, 07:34 PM
That poems a bit different for me cause I normally dont rhyme especially in such excess

Jon, Dude, that is a badass signature
That is such a badass signature
That I may just copy it from u and use it on another site:pirate::rock:

Jon
04-15-2009, 08:04 PM
Aye!
Make it so!

AlishaRiley
04-16-2009, 04:12 AM
Flagg - you're too fucking good, man.
I could sit and read your poetry all day, every day.
True talent right there - keep 'em coming, I beg you!
:huglove: so damn good.

flaggwalkstheline
04-22-2009, 01:29 PM
Lion about this


A humiliated lion roars on a rock stage at the zoo
He roars as the small children not ten feet away yell back
Their bored parents standing close by protecting them from other people but not the lion
They’ve seen this act before and they know he’s nothing but a friendly hairy whore
I want him to leap out and tear their shrieking heads off
Go ahead and bathe in the blood of your tormentors but only if you can muster the will to leap
The lion missed his chance
We have got more in common than most suit wearing bible swearing apes care to think about
I’m looking for a job to put me in a backroom and wash uneaten meals from plastic plates
I haven’t yet proved myself worthy of the honor of serving anyone anything
If he had only run a little faster
Fought a little harder
Roared a little louder
They wouldn’t have caught him and put him in an box surrounded by other fattened prisoners
It feels so good
To laugh at what we used to so easily fear
Once we’ve castrated and lobotomized it
Made sure it’s safe for those screaming kids who will never learn to feed themselves
Look how strong we are
Pacing back and forth in the cage for hours on end
Look how smart we are
Unable to undo a simple lock
Look how clever we are
With our microwave safe toys and empty beds
He can’t get out no matter how much he wants too
Once you’re in, you never escape the zoo
I took the bus down into the city to get there
Looking out the window at the cars and the shops and the bars and the cops
And the lion at the zoo, safe and tame, beastly yet lame
We watch him from behind a fence and a moat
Licking icecream cones and drinking pepsi
Occasionally tossing trash in at the king of the jungle
Ironically it’s a man who picks up our waste
A human maid cleaning up styrofoam cups thrown by humans at their chained animal entertainment
“I’d rather go hungry than live in a box even if it was big enough that I didn’t know I was in it.”
That’s what I think
Before paying my last dollar to climb back into the bus and sitting my pale never hungry body down
The lion gets all he needs to eat
All the meat he can consume
As long as he doesn’t leave the safety of his fake jungle
He will remain king

Jon
04-22-2009, 07:59 PM
"The lion gets all he needs to eat
All the meat he can consume
As long as he doesn’t leave the safety of his fake jungle
He will remain king"


Brilliant parallel

flaggwalkstheline
04-30-2009, 10:44 AM
as with all my cannibalized poems, this one consists of other poems I wasnt satisfied with combined with new materiel

Cannibalized poem #7

Disappointed after all
Tired of morbid giggles and guffaws
Disappointed in electric wonders
Disappointed
In my inability to make anyone smile
Disappointed
That I’ll never walk a final mile
Disappointed
At what’s behind curtain number 3
The first kid to disbelieve in the tooth fairy
That’s me
Disappointed
In the ho hum way soil was shoveled onto you head
That’s you
Choking on a mouthful of wormy dirt
“Where is my sky?
I want the sky
I want to warn the sky
I want to wash the sky
With turpentine
I want the sky
To belong to me and me alone”
That’s certainly a drastic spastic solution
Disappointed
That we will never be
Movers or fakers
Shakers or heartbreakers
Driving home drunk and fast after funerals because it seems like the best way to honor the dead
The lit fields glowed heavenly heavy on the way there
No one will see fit to even make a eulogy for our youths, let alone carve it in fire

At midday these streets were filled with footsteps
But as the sol wheezes into a blue sleep
Only my deafened shadow dreams
Silent and half nude
Stumbling in smoggy streets wearing unwashed sheets past dumpsters filled with food
Blind and satisfied
The two of us are too sad to care about anyone but ourselves
A self-enlightened idiot once told me that love is an ocean you have to willingly drown in
But we just sputter, dog paddle and collapse safely on the shore

I’ll tell you all the processed pesticide clichés you want to hear

The hurricane of thy breath upon my neck
Reminds me of a shore where I once found
A whispering shell
Years since then have passed like ripples on the water
But I can taste the saltwater from my placebo tears and it tastes like the sea

Disappointed in my automatic melodramatics?

I planted poppies in the piano

Fields of them glowed morphine orange on the car ride to the funeral

If I cannot fashion a wreath from your smile
Then
I will
Make it my mission of gemini mayhem
To kiss the corduroy stupidity from the lips of a thousand brainwashed brides
Wake them up from their sparkling clean comas
30 years ahead of schedule
No more grand coronations at the country club
While the piano player sleeps
We will descend on the ring of plastic trees
Spouting midnight static
We will dynamite you discos
And make you sing without machinery

Some mornings I sit up
Half convinced that the police sirens outside my window are really airraid sirens
Disappointed
I haven’t sleepwalked my way to immortality
Yet

Jon
04-30-2009, 10:24 PM
"To kiss the corduroy stupidity from the lips of a thousand brainwashed brides
Wake them up from their sparkling clean comas
30 years ahead of schedule "


:thumbsup:

flaggwalkstheline
05-20-2009, 12:18 PM
Drop

A raindrop fell on my wrist today
One clear ink blot on a blue vein
Giving me hope of a storm
I wanted to walk home drowned
And wake up on a plank in the ocean over what used to be a world I wanted to own
But no
No, a thousand echo voiced Charlton Heston god in a megaphone “thou shalt nots”
I will write my commandments in the snow in yellow
I just look at my shoes and mumble an apology to the faded plastic
A sprite can rattles here and there in a clouded gutter on a quiet afternoon
Poor little piece of trash all drank up and smashed
The sun is a shaded lamp
Amp my blood and give me a hug you amphetamine crazed lightning bug
Stamp out the ashes from your sputtering kaboom
It grows and grows, planted firmly
A tumor made of a smile I forgot
Shoot me out of a cannon into a pool of sharks to celebrate my acme alma mater
No sharks
No Cannons
No oceans
Not even a puddle with black algae floating in it to drink from in clownish desperation
I’ll never be Wile E Coyote no matter how hungry I get, I just won’t have it in me
Feed me to the tumbleweeds and semi trucks
Feed me
Your crimson smile

Jon
05-23-2009, 03:43 PM
"A tumor made of a smile I forgot"

:clap::thumbsup:

flaggwalkstheline
06-03-2009, 11:12 AM
Bicycle

Sweltering
Gaze of midday fire
Illuminates the chrome beneath my body
I breathe wind and the shadow of clouds
Burn past house, curbs and stop signs
All mine
This tree heavy with ripened fruit
Devoured under the hunger of my wheels
Grateful for such grace and speed
I feel the pulse of summer
Can your car do this?

Jon
06-05-2009, 04:22 PM
poignant!

flaggwalkstheline
06-05-2009, 04:40 PM
I am distinctly against the use of cars
this puts at odds with nearly the entire population but I dont care:P automobiles suck

flaggwalkstheline
06-20-2009, 02:02 PM
For Sophia

A hand was on my shoulder
Along with a wide toothy grin
It rested there
For too long to have just been a friendly pat on the back
A warmth spread from your fingertips up my neck
And down my arm
I smiled back
Reflected manically in your goggling green eyes
Some new exciting feeling began to spin faster on it’s axis
I didn’t want your hand to move away

Seymour_Glass
06-22-2009, 08:38 AM
I was gonna quote and comment on just one, but they're all so good that that would be a disservice to the rest. Excellent work.

flaggwalkstheline
06-22-2009, 11:38 AM
glad u like em

now I want u to do something
tilt ur head toward whatever direction new mexico is from u and listen really carefully
BOOOM!!!
That is the sound of my ego finally making my head explode

Jon
06-28-2009, 02:06 AM
FWtL...I am just hooked on your work, man!

flaggwalkstheline
06-29-2009, 06:44 AM
I've got something massive that I'll post in the next day or so
I wrote it at a coffee shop where I do open mike readings after I found out about michael jackson's untimely death
its quite foul
I think I've finally mixed modernism and punk rock into a nasty mess

Jon
07-01-2009, 04:15 AM
I'll be waiting.

flaggwalkstheline
07-01-2009, 12:38 PM
here it is
I've been thinking of trying to get a webcam so I can post some live readings cause most of this stuff, especially this one, has full impact when read out loud and very loudly...


Manifesto of a childish anarchist


I’m rather weary
Of chasing epiphanies as if they were butterflies
Running aimlessly down a white walled maze in search of cheese
I refuse to believe I’m a diseased rodent
I refuse to click my heels and believe
I refuse to wiggle my nose and take in the stench of your clean lies
I refuse to give you the sweet molasses of my plague
I refuse the dry-cleaned lint of the modern world
The modern world will burn in it’s own tragic propane bong accident
But I won’t be the one to light the fuse to a supposedly retired cannon
I refuse to grow soft and doughy on a couch or in a chair
I refuse to be another skeleton voyeur
Wasted away to saliva and bones just looking for digital eden and my lost shaker of salt
Salt the earth where a garden once grew see if I care
I’m busy behind locked doors
Fucking myself in front of a screen with robot whores until I come dust
No shame for anything but the lack of real nail in the forehead love and the lack of shame

From dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return

I refuse to dream in Technicolor sunsets
Seeing things in black and white always suited me better anyway

I refuse to not read the books which in the end actually are vile

Wallowing in the filth of cosmic abandonment
Eventually we will all be buried on Mars
With our wallets and shopping carts half buried in red sand
I refuse the safety of a brightly lit supermarket aisle
Riding the squeaky wheeled shopping carts straight down to prepackaged hell

I refuse to not have a story to tell
I refuse to gasp at the shadow of a hooded saint martyring himself in front of a camera

I refuse to sputter out in a blaze of beerbelly glory
Like so many fools gold bling encrusted american dreams
Elvis on the toilet
Sad, alone and constipated
White jumpsuit stained with mashed banana and peanut butter

I refuse the electric humbugs spewing at a cardboard audience

“Cue the canned laughter!
Strike up the band!
More money more parades more plastic
Pay no attention to the politician behind the curtain
Applaud applaud you morons!
I know you cant read but you know what neon means!”

Eventually uncle sam will fall off his stripper pole and lose his hat
And all the overall wearing phd bearing howler monkeys will cheer

I refuse the need for an omnipotent incompetent benevolent uncle joe
To tuck you in at night under glossy tabloid sheets
I refuse the need for papers to prove my humanity
And a rainbow of pills to hold onto arbitrary sanity
I refuse the need for a nationwide cell I don’t know I’m in till I look out and see the bars
I refuse the poisoned newspapers they pass through my iron lung door
I wipe my ass with the stories of yesterday!

This is probably confusing of course…

“A horse! A horse!”
Shouts the heckler of the opera at the back of the powerpoint meeting hammering on his organ
I never learned to play piano only how to drop them cartoon like on anything good

The hecklers always go home to revenue supported catacombs

I refuse to dig my grave fro 50 hours a week
Just to keep renting the shovel
I will steal the rusted shovel and plant trees in the highway and highways in the sky
I refuse to sit by and watch the apple orchards I never walked in as a kid get torn down
I meant to eat everything eventually
I would have consumed it all myself
But preparing what I would consume next got in the way of the simple pleasure of
Gorging myself
I refuse always want more
More toys!
More furniture!
More food!
Shovel your fine cheeses and wine alongside a thousand value menu hamburgers down
My endless throat
I consume and speak of doom through a full mouth to try and fill the void in my head
I run the shopping cart down the aisles crashing into chemicals keeping the alive dead
I refuse to gladly trade heart disease tomorrow for a cheeseburger today

I refuse to believe in no nature but human nature
Crawling out of my hole in November like every other glue sniffing knight with no dragon
To slay
Slay me with laughter see if I eve smile, I’m busy sharpening my teeth on your sister

I refuse the divinity of holy grails full of holes which hold no water
No water but the spit of jig dancing snake oil selling creature featuring preachers
Masks sick with sweat and hunger

I refuse to have any nostalgia for the 20th century
Cruelest of all ages
It’s filth soils a million pages
A hundred years holding the burning sword
I will bury the 20th century and its two world wars
On the piss soaked headstone I’ll carve
“It’s history!”
And then smash the statues with my orange hammer
Idols of gandi, nixon, clinton, the beatles, duke ellington, nancy kerrigan and mau
Mau can kiss my red ass
No future no future no future no future
I keep mumbling the sex pistols quote as I thro dirt over my shoulder
No future of mine strong enough to avoid my unnecessary revolution
No city no man no woman
Strong enough
Never strong enough to do the bench press you think is expected of you

I will burn the tower until only the garden is left
Because I refuse the shadow chasing me
I refuse to fear what the television tells me to
I refuse to fear that north korea or north carolina will wipe me boogerlike from the map
I refuse to fear the day the gasoline painkiller IV drip finally stops dripping
Our engine black opium is dinosaur shit anyway
I refuse the liars
The criers
The buyers telling what to buy and where to buy it
I refuse the expected sadness when they tell me
The king of pop died today
Alone and friendless
Now in the endless
Sleeping with angels now
Is how the cliché goes round the mulberry bush
All it would take is a push…

I refuse the seductive sadness which runs its tongue up my spine
And whispers the day in day out modus operandi
Never loved never loved never loved never loved
I haven’t thrown myself out into the cold yet because I have no key for the door to get back in
I refuse to let go of my drooling hope
When all it would take is admitting I have not hand to hold
No time to waste
No sweetness to taste
No broken mirror to face
I refuse the temptation of the cold
I refuse to believe I’m actually not so bold

“To carthage then I come burning burning burning”

I steal my words from the preserved tongues of fellow thieves
Stolen from other thieves in turn
Once it comes down to the real thickness of creative sickness
All of us are big eye robber flies buzzing around what we think is beautiful

I refuse the doubt that I don’t have the fortitude to be your antichrist

I’ll hold onto the names of those I’ve lost in the maze
Clutching the rubble of their memories like a mourner shredding missing child fliers at the funeral

And many years from now someone cancerously familiar will look back and not laugh
Someone with my face will run his thin fingers along a brick wall where I once spray painted
“Death Too!”
Like it was a crumbling lover’s spine
Wanting to chant nursery rhymes and cannibal mantras from on high once more

Whether you wanted me to do it or not is irrelevant
Because
I refuse to play Prometheus
I refuse to provide john brown’s mystic fire
For you have already lit your own fuses

Jon
07-06-2009, 08:06 AM
I'll get to this soon. Some medical issues have my attention right now.

flaggwalkstheline
07-22-2009, 10:58 AM
The dandelion roars brightly
A golden maned challenge to the authority of roses
The arbitrary tyranny of beauty slurps down the water, blocks out the light
And is the first to be eaten by birds

An unknowable gloved hand throws it into the burning pile
The old dandelions shake what's left of their grey hairs knowingly

flaggwalkstheline
07-27-2009, 08:33 PM
Murky clouds congregate and grow

Pondscum on the roof of my eyesocket’s blue

Robed monks circle the bed where we lie

Moaning into the water through broken teeth

Resting on the shores of your watery pulse

flaggwalkstheline
07-27-2009, 08:34 PM
I was thinkin about the fall of rome the other day
The emptied coliseum
Cages unlocked
Slave-fattened lions hunted
Owned the blood and gold
In the year of 63 only 40 years before Alaric’s sword swallowed their sky and cut through the tombs of pagan kings
The emperor Julian rode into Persia in a black chariot
Or was it Dallas?
I forget…
Either way he rode into Persia like a gunfighter at high noon and went out like a roman candle
I was thinkin about the fall of rome the other day
While watching flag draped caskets goosestep their way across a television screen

flaggwalkstheline
07-30-2009, 07:16 AM
Ok so tonight I'm going to my weekly open mike performance and I'm going to do something completely different from my normal poetry readings, I would like anyone who stumbles onto my thread to be honest with me about this, I'm going to try my hand at stand up comedy:scared: Here is an excerpt from my act, keep in mind it works better verbally but I gotta know, is this funny?


I’m really inept when it comes to planning anything. The last time I went to my therapist I made the most embarrassing mistake, I accidently scheduled it at the same time as a I had planned to meet up with a prostitute. So yeah that was awkward. Needless to say that’s the last time I went to a joint counseling session with my girlfriend. I tried to tell her, doctor ross says we should be a team and if you should either offer to join in some of my activities or be ok with them. Alright that’s a lie. I don’t have a girlfriend. I like hookers better. That’s a lie too.
See I’m a chronic liar, I lie about really petty stuff. And you know what: its not always a bad thing. I really like messing with wrong number callers. The other day I got a phone call from this woman who asked if I was Michael so I said yeah I’m Michael and this woman on the other line tells me that apparently my aids test came back positive. I know what your thinking, “they have a test for aids?” I know Apparently you have to pass a test to be hired as someones aid! So I told this woman that I’d really like it if she could send them to my address” n she’s like “ok” So Michael if your listening: I got your aids! They’ll be doing my laundry and dishes and paperwork and you’ll be paying the bill, sucker. Most people are gonna wish they had aids as good and helpful as mine. So all because of a wrong number I’ve lucked into somebody else’s aids! You gotta think on your toes to really make the best of a situation as simple as a wrong number. They haven’t show up yet but I’m waiting. I’ll have the best aids in town.
Like I said I don’t have a girlfriend, I messed up my last relationship pretty badly and the worst part is I’m not even sure how, one minute your fine and the next… its over. I was waiting at her apartment cause I wanted to surprise her after she got home from her job so I was in her bedroom, I had lit scented candles, had some marvin gaye (her favorite) playing on the stereo, the lights dimmed, she sat down on the bed and I started giving her a backrub and I said “How was your day babe?” and all the ungrateful bitch can do is scream “Who are you and how did you get into my apartment!! I’m calling the cops!” So she threw me out without even letting me get my clothes, I was wearing my best negligee to surprise her!
I spent all that money on sexy lacy underwear and all I got was disappointment. Sometimes I have good ideas though, like I have a problem with movie theaters, the bathrooms aren’t close enough to the seats and I always miss part of the movie. Cause if you’re like me, after the giant popcorn and the giant coke (plus the 5th of scotch you smuggle up your ass prison style to get in the movie theater) you really have to go to the restroom. I mean REALLY have to go, like kidney damage omigod I’m gonna blow out an eyeball here. I think a person should be able to go right there while watching the movie. My first idea was to have urinals on the backs of the seats but that would exclude the ladies from using them and if you thought that guy kicking your seat was bad, then clearly you’ve never been peed on. So that idea would work, but what if every seat was actually a cover over a toilet, that would be luxury. Of course there would need to be rules, like you can only poop during a loud scene, no pooping during quiet introspective scenes. When Jennifer aniston and Mathew mconahay finally realize how much they love eachother and he shows up at her door with flowers you do NOT wanna be the guy grunting and squatting while other movie goers yell“DOWN IN FRONT QUIT SHITTING!” (high pitched) “Oh Mathew Of course I still love you” some rude bastard is straining on the can (constipation noises) My toilet theaters would give new meaning to the phrase that movie stank, or that new transformers movie was a shitfest!
I think it’s a good Idea but then I’m gullible, I’ll buy anything. I buy stuff off of the Tv infomercials and one time I was really embarrassed, I bought what I thought was an eggbeater but when I got it in the mail six to eight weeks later I was shocked at what I got. I know a vibrator when I seen one! It was covered in thick plastic and plugged it in and the plastic didn’t come off! And honestly what woman needs two at the same damn time!! That’s just selfish.
Speaking of ah smut I bought my first porno movie two days ago and one day ago I bought my second! I went into the big porn super center, the walmart of porno. It was kindof a scary place, I expected spectacle, I expected like a TnA circus going on in there people with tubas and trombones playing souse marches but no. It was quiet almost church like and the employees were so kind and non intrusive. They were like priests! “welcome to a house of porn my son, may I direct you to a sale on horny housewives” I’m like um ok and he’s like “very good, piece of ass be with you (cross self)” Polite monk like porn store employees are better than really rude ones I don’t want to meet that guy whose like “Buying pornography huh?!” uh yeah that’s why im in a porn store just sell me the damn movie dad! My dads not a porn store employee, lying again. Some guys get into porn like wine tasters, (snootily) “the 99 backdoor whore rides again has a rich vanilla texture to it but the 07 triple dildo gang bang has this delightful fruity undercurrent wouldn’t you agree?”
My dads not one of those guys either, I’m living with him and his girlfriend and I think its about time I had “The Talk” with him, I walked in on them necking on the couch the other day and I realized it was time to tell him how his body is going through changes and its time he knew that now that he’s older I never want to see anything like that again EVER. There’s nothing funny about old people’s sex lives. Except that they exist.
My parents are divorced. I never wanna get married. Married people look so miserable and the only people more miserable than them are divorced people. The vows people take should be changed to something like “do you debby promise to nag, harangue and generally make steves life a living hell either into an early grave or until divorce do you part?” (very high pitched) “Oh well I certainly DO!”
Guys are bad too. We think about sex way too much like I was saying I like messing with wrong numbers and the other day I got a call from this really sexy sounding woman who was like “Hey jim, its me, last night was really fun, we should get together again tonight” Now my immediate idea was to say “Ok, yeah this is jim, in the flesh the one and only, the real jim you were drunk last night and might not remember what I look like but I promise its me, where do you wanna do it again?!” I didn’t go through with it, I hung up, I would never be able to pull that off especially cause my aids havent arrived yet and I know aids would make that so much easier.
Women are in denial (high pitched) “oh he loves me” ladies I’m gonna give you a crash course in guy speak when he asks you out “hey wanna hang out or grab a cup of coffee or something” that means either I thought about you when I masturbated last and would like to have sex with you or Im going to think about you while I masturbate and still hope to have sex with you” when I guy says “I had a really great time tonight” it means “have sex with me now but if you don’t im gonna go home and masturbate” when a guy says “I love you” it means “thank you so much for having sex with me” when A guy breaks up with you and says your relationship isn’t working but hed like to still be friends it means a few things it means He is tired of having sex with you and would like to pursue other women but possibly hook up with you again in the near future without it being called a relationship.
I think my time is just about up, but if any of you ladies would like to grab a cup of coffee or something or you know hang out you know that’d be cool. Bye now.

Jon
08-01-2009, 02:25 PM
I love the flow here it IS funny and with the aids thread running through...that was brilliant but my favorite is in the pornosupermart " “very good, piece of ass be with you (cross self)” That will be really good visually as will the theater...brilliant as well.


BUT



"Like I said I don’t have a girlfriend, I messed up my last relationship pretty badly and the worst part is I’m not even sure how, one minute your fine and the next… its over. I was waiting at her apartment cause I wanted to surprise her after she got home from her job so I was in her bedroom, I had lit scented candles, had some marvin gaye (her favorite) playing on the stereo, the lights dimmed, she sat down on the bed and I started giving her a backrub and I said “How was your day babe?” and all the ungrateful bitch can do is scream “Who are you and how did you get into my apartment!! I’m calling the cops!” So she threw me out without even letting me get my clothes, I was wearing my best negligee to surprise her!
I spent all that money on sexy lacy underwear and all I got was disappointment."


This IS funny but has been done too many times. IMHO.



AND

"I think it’s a good Idea but then I’m gullible, I’ll buy anything. I buy stuff off of the Tv infomercials and one time I was really embarrassed, I bought what I thought was an eggbeater but when I got it in the mail six to eight weeks later I was shocked at what I got. I know a vibrator when I seen one! It was covered in thick plastic and plugged it in and the plastic didn’t come off!"


The truth is...I flat out didn't get it.




Good stuff. I want to see the video if possible. The delivery will increase the humor exponentially.

flaggwalkstheline
08-01-2009, 03:09 PM
yeah I got a fair amount of laughter for a first time out, i was so damn nervous I was shaking lol

Jon
08-01-2009, 04:08 PM
No video???


PM me with an explanation of that joke please.

flaggwalkstheline
08-01-2009, 06:49 PM
unfortuanatly no video
However I should soon have a video up of a poetry reading I did in school, it was trippy watching myself lol, I'll hopefully be able to post a link soon
oh and the joke you didnt get was my attempt to compare eggbeaters with vibrators
needless to say
it bombed because its not funny

Jon
08-02-2009, 11:45 AM
It was lost on me...then...to me an eggbeater is a whisk.

http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff79/walterodim_photos/wisk2.jpg

Jean
08-02-2009, 11:57 AM
flagg, will you keep that piece here? the title of this thread goes, "poems..." I need to know in order to update the Index

flaggwalkstheline
08-02-2009, 02:13 PM
flagg, will you keep that piece here? the title of this thread goes, "poems..." I need to know in order to update the Index

ah what piece are you referring 2?
not sure what ur talking about... though when I find out i'll be glad to help...

wait u mean my comedy bit not being poetry...

should I delete it?

Jean
08-02-2009, 10:24 PM
Delete?! God forbid, don't, it good! I thought maybe you could start another thread in Turtleback Lane, for your prose? Or if you want to have everything in one thread, we could move the present thread to Turtleback Lane and rename it; but I think the first option is better.

flaggwalkstheline
08-03-2009, 06:07 AM
I'm probably not going to be putting much prose or comedy up here except very occasionally so I'd go with the second option, no need to make a whole new thread for something I'm going to be posting, um maybe the thread could just have parentheses added to the end saying something like (and other stuff by nate) or something
?:thumbsup:

flaggwalkstheline
08-03-2009, 02:23 PM
another new poem


The blue eyed schemer
Bit the ear of the green eyed dreamer
You and I
Though we walk smugly under burnt umbrellas
Will never hold out the flood
And its time spanning tidal burp
So rather than watch the water grow into the clouds
We should turn our backs on the typhoon
The inevitable is as boring as a blank morning paper
We should climb into the mountain's dulled teeth
Fling our metal trophies and withered wreaths
Down just to hear the sudden sullen clank
Turn your back on the avalanche
And climb with me
Climb like spiders in love
You and I whose feet have never felt
The pure ancient rocks beneath the labyrinth
Have heard the bull stomping stomping
Climb and we will never be inevitable
Pick plums until out lips are purple
Chew them to the very core
The center of amnesiac sweetness
Sunlight tempts eyelids to open and become brief sunflowers
Sticky hands fused together with sap from a dying tree
You and me
Should dream like reptiles on cold stone
Shedding yesterday's skin

Jean
08-05-2009, 01:26 AM
I'm probably not going to be putting much prose or comedy up here except very occasionally so I'd go with the second option, no need to make a whole new thread for something I'm going to be posting, um maybe the thread could just have parentheses added to the end saying something like (and other stuff by nate) or something
?:thumbsup:
I think we'll leave it as it is now, and look into this again should you happen something else in prose. Bears wouldn't like to touch this title, they love it. http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k291/mishemplushem/Facilitation/0134-bear.gif

Jon
08-06-2009, 03:26 PM
"Into the dulled teeth of the mountains"

Like a photograph!

flaggwalkstheline
08-07-2009, 08:04 AM
ok so that poem that I just posted I have now reworked twice and version 3.0 (the best one is now up)
I normally only post the final draft, dont know why i changed it up for this one...

Jean
08-07-2009, 08:18 AM
it looks like you altered the first line, too? do you remember what it previously was, I need to change it in the Index

flaggwalkstheline
08-07-2009, 11:26 AM
it looks like you altered the first line, too? do you remember what it previously was, I need to change it in the Index

ah I think it was "the blue eyed schemer whispered to the green eyed dreamer"

Jon
08-07-2009, 01:36 PM
And I suspect that "Mountains" was meant to be possessive.

flaggwalkstheline
08-07-2009, 01:40 PM
And I suspect that "Mountains" was meant to be possessive.

u oughtta be an editor lol
fixed it, thats a frequent typo I make

Jon
08-07-2009, 01:47 PM
That's ok.

Yesterday at work, on the company website for all to see, I typed "Has anyone checked ***'s pill count?"

But I left the "O" out of "count."

flaggwalkstheline
08-07-2009, 01:54 PM
wow thats awkwardly awesome

Jon
08-09-2009, 02:33 PM
Yeah...it was THE boss that discovered it.!!:onfire:

flaggwalkstheline
08-17-2009, 08:23 PM
just about squeezed the last drop outta a theme I've been on for a few poems lol


A butterfly floated from an insectile cloud taller than the mountain
A nectar drinking yellow leaf touched your hair and dissappeared downward
I wanted right then to give you a wind touched kiss
We sat on a rock and watched the six legged sunset

That night I dreamed all my teeth fell out of their sockets and were planted in the soil
Roots detached from their desolate pink homeland
Great trees grew from them and carressed the sky
And from the branches flew a butterfly

Jon
08-18-2009, 06:13 PM
Keep squeezin' man!

flaggwalkstheline
08-18-2009, 06:50 PM
what I mean is I usually have a theme or a metaphor that I work with for 3 or 4 poems before I move on to a new one

flaggwalkstheline
08-24-2009, 01:22 PM
I had a drawer at the bottom of my dresser
Where I kept trinkets and
Important things
Old keys to doors of places torn down decades ago
Made of brass and iron but feeling in my hand like old bones
Two broken wristwatches
Given to me on two separate occasions
A page sized picture of Alexandra
Grinning her fuck-your-house and burn-down-your body smirk
A ticket stub from a Bob Dylan concert
Touching it I can almost hear the blues
A love letter from Megan written after she moved
Somehow it still smells like the perfume she sprayed on it
And a stack of old unfinished poems and short stories
Crude and coffee stained like maps in movies used by pirates
I took all of these relics
And tossed them in a dumpster
Like virgins into a volcano
I sacrifice my past to feed my hungry future
To sew a wound in need of a suture
Into the dumpster
Except of course
The Dylan ticket

flaggwalkstheline
08-24-2009, 01:24 PM
Small green leaves shake nervously
Shuddering against white rock
Knowing the cold will claim
Their coin shaped bodies
Two brave hummingbirds divebomb the invading force
I duck my head

flaggwalkstheline
08-24-2009, 01:26 PM
To the rocks which we dig our fingers into
We are no different from the ants crawling
Or eternal dust in a sunbeam which might make me sneeze

Seymour_Glass
08-31-2009, 01:39 PM
I had a drawer at the bottom of my dresser
Where I kept trinkets and
Important things
Old keys to doors of places torn down decades ago
Made of brass and iron but feeling in my hand like old bones
Two broken wristwatches
Given to me on two separate occasions
A page sized picture of Alexandra
Grinning her fuck-your-house and burn-down-your body smirk
A ticket stub from a Bob Dylan concert
Touching it I can almost hear the blues
A love letter from Megan written after she moved
Somehow it still smells like the perfume she sprayed on it
And a stack of old unfinished poems and short stories
Crude and coffee stained like maps in movies used by pirates
I took all of these relics
And tossed them in a dumpster
Like virgins into a volcano
I sacrifice my past to feed my hungry future
To sew a wound in need of a suture
Into the dumpster
Except of course
The Dylan ticket

Okay, I love this so much. So much.So much.

flaggwalkstheline
08-31-2009, 02:03 PM
I had a drawer at the bottom of my dresser
Where I kept trinkets and
Important things
Old keys to doors of places torn down decades ago
Made of brass and iron but feeling in my hand like old bones
Two broken wristwatches
Given to me on two separate occasions
A page sized picture of Alexandra
Grinning her fuck-your-house and burn-down-your body smirk
A ticket stub from a Bob Dylan concert
Touching it I can almost hear the blues
A love letter from Megan written after she moved
Somehow it still smells like the perfume she sprayed on it
And a stack of old unfinished poems and short stories
Crude and coffee stained like maps in movies used by pirates
I took all of these relics
And tossed them in a dumpster
Like virgins into a volcano
I sacrifice my past to feed my hungry future
To sew a wound in need of a suture
Into the dumpster
Except of course
The Dylan ticket

Okay, I love this so much. So much.So much.


:D

I have recently come upon the opportunity to get a book published:drool:!
Gotta tell everyone I know/ talk 2!


another narrarative poem

Well it happened

While surfing youtube
I found a comment in the comments section while watching a beavis and butthead video
Saying “It is so funny that beavis and butthead go to highland highschool in Albuquerque
Cause that’s like down the street from me lol!”
I responded “That’s so funny I’ve thought the same thing cause that’s where I live too!”
Then I realized
The first comment
Was me 3 months ago

Seymour_Glass
08-31-2009, 06:48 PM
:excited::excited::excited::excited::excited:

flaggwalkstheline
08-31-2009, 06:54 PM
I am so on FIRE:rock: today, I've hammered out like 10 new poems!




The rat grinned a blue grin
A leaf hisses across dirty feet
His ribs feel very thin
Water drips in a weak flow
And the garbage pile is running low
Don’t mistake it for a crimson snicker
The candle hasn’t yet started to flicker

As blue as his eyes
The rat grinned a blue grin

And buried his head in fame

Seymour_Glass
08-31-2009, 06:59 PM
:thumbsup:

flaggwalkstheline
08-31-2009, 07:32 PM
A telescope is gazing up at a million suns blinking in the year long blackness
A telescope was built in Antarctica
And it has the front row seats to heaven
No one can go there and look through it because of the cold
Because of the cold
A telescope stares up from earth as empty as blank paper and is alone

flaggwalkstheline
09-03-2009, 09:10 PM
very revised variation on one of the above poems




The rat grinned

Blue
In like a hurricane
Red
The barrel of a firearm
The small print of the contract
Signing away
Years I could have spent moping
Don’t drop the cannonball
In a vulturous swoop
The deal goes like this
We get the future
Once crumb of tomorrow at a time
Dropped onto a cracked plate
The garbage pile is running low
And when I kneel to drink it
The river ceases to flow
The rat grinned
Green
How his teeth gleamed mean
And wrapped a hairless appendage
Over a gearshift
Accelerating into yesterday’s cinderblock breakfast
Sometimes I do try
Sometimes
I give a draconian shove
And fall over choking on exhaustion
I rode my silver bicycle fast
Past a dull cheap 2 story motel
I saw an old man sitting on a bed through an open door
Eyes like sinking battleships
Gone in a desolate blur
More crumbs in the mud
The rat grinned
Hands
Me, a hammer and nails
Daring me to make him a martyr
None of us have been to the future
At least not all at once
We painted yesterday
Until it shined retro-blank
Lies that looked like pearls
Wait!
There used to be
Jovial robber baron nephilim
Twirling shoe polish mustaches
But they pawed their way into the soil
Long before the deal went down the drain
Out of the sky
No more blue to drink
The rat grinned
Popped open the tab on his beercan
Not such a plague-ventriloquist
Once you get to know him
Show him if you care
When he speaks
Press your ear to the linoleum
And tell me if you hear a heartbeat

Jon
09-04-2009, 06:16 AM
Interesting subject matter.

I love the line

"We painted yesterday
Until it shined retro-blank"


Good stuff man.

flaggwalkstheline
09-08-2009, 08:03 AM
Bent spoon induced auditory hallucination

The saddest image I can conjure up
Is a bent spoon
When I was a child
Brimming with wonder
I found a bent spoon
Underneath the sofa
The crooked faux-silver
Acted like a satellite
Bouncing the noises of my future
Off of my developing psyche

Bent spoon
You are the symbol
Of civilization committing suicide
Blowing it’s brains out after failing to scoop out icecream from the carton

Bent spoon
The creaking of your metal
Is

The sound of wind on dead grass
The rumbling of trucks in the hours before dawn
Ah and the long silent inhale just before the planes hit the towers
That was there
The lipsmacking end of 12 years where the biggest fear was of the president’s libido

My only response was to weep
Because I was so small
Because I felt like I had just heard the angels high-fiving and scorning us once and for all

And there was also
The chainsaw noise of my own laughter
That was what cut the most
Because that’s what I would do now

If the utensil gods decided to bless me
With a terrifying auditory vision
From a bent spoon

I would only laugh

flaggwalkstheline
09-08-2009, 05:16 PM
The corpses of used up cigarettes and cicadas
Line the sidewalk under corporate bushes
A blind man taps his way
Across the crosswalk
In front of waiting, snuffling cars
They all hold their breath
And wonder
“Who’s it gonna be?”

Jon
09-13-2009, 08:37 AM
intrigue

smcicr
09-14-2009, 11:35 AM
Firstly congrats on the book! :rock:

Secondly - just wanted to say that I'm really enjoying these - they have a Ginsberg feel to them in places and I love the descriptions:


Grinning her fuck-your-house and burn-down-your body smirk

and


The chainsaw noise of my own laughter

To name but two.

Keep 'em coming.

flaggwalkstheline
09-14-2009, 12:29 PM
Firstly congrats on the book! :rock:

Secondly - just wanted to say that I'm really enjoying these - they have a Ginsberg feel to them in places and I love the descriptions:


Grinning her fuck-your-house and burn-down-your body smirk

and


The chainsaw noise of my own laughter

To name but two.

Keep 'em coming.

Oh I will, I'm glad u like them
I've been checking my email obsesively since I sent the manuscript in 2 days ago
Ginsberg is (obviously) a very big influence on me lol

flaggwalkstheline
09-14-2009, 01:34 PM
Almost too prudish to post the following poem, which is why I have to



I
Went to bed with a smoldering headache
And had a vivid sexual encounter in another life
I was lying with a pale skinned woman on a bed in a dark room
A rainstorm tapped on the window like wet fingers
Her legs smelled of cinnamon twisting around me
She pulled my head close by the hair to her mouth and whispered
“Which one of us is dreaming?”
A lightning bolt passed between us
Arching her back and gasping she mumbled, “Don’t go to sleep again, don’t leave me”
I woke back in my own bed, sheets twisted in every direction
Looking for the jagged crack in this reality that I slipped back through

flaggwalkstheline
09-16-2009, 07:01 PM
I returned to the city of the gods
I returned riding a red wind, dead tide, tossed aside
And found it quietly, blissfully
Choking on it’s titanium spittle
Abandoned in it’s overgrown cradle by it’s former glory
Weeds grew fingerlike from between the cobblestones
Ashtrays spilled on shining marble courtyards
Burned out, earned out
Spurned like undesired ambrosia
I was stoned, red eyed
Left barefoot in darkness with no music to guide me
To feel my way along the outer walls
Listening for the raven’s calls
Cast snake eyes into the desert
But the desert spoke to me with it’s pointed tongue
The desert rattled at me in the language of laughing sand
Gave me sunlight to drink and desolation to bathe in
Fire to spit even as I was licked by cacti
The hairs on my arms rose like sunflowers
I returned to the city of the gods
A dog slid across the sidewalk
Fear on my heels hands like electric eels
Rats in the clouds weaving funeral shrouds
I remember once we were still convinced who we were
Building temples in which to pretend the bitter fruits of our labor were sweet
We walked past sundials and turnstiles
Sure of our ability to toss lightning bolts
Heads or tails?
Spinning the trigger repeatedly and walking away
The quantum bullet misses every shot
Spinning in the barrel
All the apples ravaged
The crayons melted and savaged
Ah city
I have smellled what your embryonic perfume hides
And your hyde is as soft as mine underneath all that grime
The machine’s convictions are weak but currently confident
Sure of what we are not
Wearing the big people’s ivory suits
Which we made ourselves out of rubble and bones with hypodermic knitting needles
For gigantic shoulders we had never seen
A voice from the clouds said “Do you want fries with that?”
I returned to the city of the gods
My burnt feet striking cement like matches
I returned to the city of the gods
And watched the people scurry like moths afraid of their own light
The last time I was here I forgot the name
I returned like a hurricane birdsong on repeat
Only this time
I heeded the desert’s words



Massively updated

flaggwalkstheline
09-17-2009, 06:54 AM
well it's official, my first book is going to be published by december!
:drool::rock::panic::pirate:

Jon
09-17-2009, 03:36 PM
Cool fucking beans!

Perhaps a signed copy if I purchase an unsigned copy??????

flaggwalkstheline
09-17-2009, 08:48 PM
Cool fucking beans!

Perhaps a signed copy if I purchase an unsigned copy??????

I don't know how I would sign a copy for you, though if you can figure that one out I'd be happy to do so:idea:

it was really funny, so I went to wendys today and oredered one of the GIANT hamburgers and nearly puked it up, I didnt though, i fought off the nausia and wrote a really funny poem about it (which I'll post tommorow) I performed said poem at the open mike I was at but during the second poem the hamburger tried to come back! I was this close to upchucking everywhere in the middle of my performance!

Jean
09-17-2009, 10:52 PM
http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k291/mishemplushem/Messages/congratulation03.jpg

flaggwalkstheline
09-18-2009, 06:25 AM
http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k291/mishemplushem/Messages/congratulation03.jpg

thanku:P

Now heres a very sexual poem about hamburgers and puking




Ode to a cheeseburger I nearly puked up

O! glorious doble-cheeseburger
I almost lost you forever on the carpet
Seven dollars for your flesh
They called you the Baconator
And you nearly annihilated me
Seven out of my last ten in the bank
For your false advertised all beef slabs
Lettuce, tomato and shiny bacon that tasted like evil love
When I saw you there on a picture in the window
I wanted you
I wanted to possess you
Consume you
You were the kind of hamburger a guy could talk to like a whore
I want you to squeak for me
Fuck me you slimy cow!
Fries coke
Mmm right there
I climbed a mountain of salt
Licking my lips I lifted the engorged bulk to my mouth
Swallowed it one steamy chunk at a time
And then the gag reflex
Three gleaming bites to go
A slave in the belly of a burning Viking ship
Keeps rowing out of habit
Beating his drum
The fat man in my head hollers
“You wuss! You pussy! DO IT!”
The wendys dining room spins like a discoball
Show that half pounder who’s boss
Be a man!
Slay the greasy dragon
I felt like rocky at the end of the movie
My whole body destroyed
Ya gotta put me back in! ya gotta!
O! Hamburger
I held you down and finished you
What kindof American would I be if I couldn’t eat the whole thing?

smcicr
09-21-2009, 05:51 AM
I saw the title and went 'really?' :wtf:

yup :D


"shiny bacon that tasted like evil love"

and


"A slave in the belly of a burning Viking ship
Keeps rowing out of habit
Beating his drum"

It's just great stuff ;D

flaggwalkstheline
09-21-2009, 09:13 PM
Reconsideration

It came to me in a burst of blue and white light
This reconsideration of genetic instinct
I know I have distant relatives who fled nazi germany or pogroms
And envisioning streets gleaming in gold
Came here on smog belching boats clutching only their old testaments written in yiddish
And I have heard from my own mother, who grew up in the holy land
Of how the arabs want to drive us into the sea and teach their children hatred of us
And maybe they do…
My mother certainly believes so
I have not forgotten jerusalem and the promises made to and for it
Yet
Watching on cnn as fat women in burkas wail at american news cameras over the rubble of their huts
Or seeing the “chosen people’s” tanks ride into gaza to punish the wicked with western fire
I can see the choking strings pulled tightly
The harp sings a bitter biting song by the waters of babylon
Twisting nooselike from puppet to puppet
No real puppet master calls the shots or jerks his fingers
Only tangled wooden children
Only the herking jumping dance to the point of ventriloquistic collapse
They pull and pull their hair to the snapping point
And all of us march closer towards the ocean in chains
It came to me in a burst of blue and white light

Jon
09-24-2009, 02:04 PM
I saw the title and went 'really?' :wtf:

yup :D


"shiny bacon that tasted like evil love"and


"A slave in the belly of a burning Viking ship
Keeps rowing out of habit
Beating his drum"It's just great stuff ;D



I'm tellin' ya' The man ROCKS!

flaggwalkstheline
09-24-2009, 09:11 PM
I saw the title and went 'really?' :wtf:

yup :D


"shiny bacon that tasted like evil love"and


"A slave in the belly of a burning Viking ship
Keeps rowing out of habit
Beating his drum"It's just great stuff ;D



I'm tellin' ya' The man ROCKS!

:Pthanku
yarg
I NEED to get ahold of a digital video camera so I can record some of my performances and share em here!the open mike reading was sooo INTENSE I felt like I was speaking in tongues or something,
I'll post the poem I read tommorow morning but it's just not the same :orely:

flaggwalkstheline
09-25-2009, 08:34 AM
Poets walk these friendly streets
Ignoring eachother and looking for isolation to escape from
Crawl outta the bushes with a handful of daisies
The lilacs no longer bloomed at the same time this year
I wish every day could be the day just before Halloween
Before the disappointment of stale sweets and razor-apples

I whine my self important questions out
Dine my presumptions into complacency
They fly from my sugarcoated lips
Like bratty airraid sirens
Luring answers to death on the rocks

The boat sailed across the melodramatic oceans with no incident, captains log day 5

If I said I loved you
Would you take off that ski-mask?
Maybe smile malignantly across the barbed wire
Or would it be obvious I’m a pity soaked liar?

If I told you I love you
Would I become brighter?
More
Than a grain of dirt on the soul of your boot?

Can I have a biscuit
The kid whimpered over his revolvers
To eat out of a mud puddle?
I pick at my acne sores when I’m nervous
And when I’m nervous I think of how many sores I have
The more nervous I get the more my stiff hair falls out
The more I suck my thumb
Close my crumpled eyes
In a corner under a sink and a dripping spout

If I said I love you
Blinking profusely
Would you stomp in my pond water face?
To see if it improves my buggy smile
I have never felt
Even the teensiest bit of stirring
In my lukewarm bathtub heart
I hate the fucking word heart
I despise every adjective used to describe love
All the words associated with it

Attraction !!!
!!! Infliction
Kiss !!!
!!! Crash
I said it, now smash !!!
Romance I burn thee
I detonate them for a spiked punchline
With cartoon dynamite
I free myself of all but
Red red can can dancing rage
A bouquet of a dozen rages
Zen monk with a chainsaw
Cackling the way I do when I wake my self up
With wonderful jests forgotten in seconds
I dreamed last night
The poet gurgled through a mouthful of broken glass
That someone beautiful beat me to death with a tennis racket
That was what made her beautiful
I detonate my dreams
Gleefully stomp
Mushroom cloud the whole swamp
Gleefully I want to goosestep across your burial mound
Pushing down on the plunger watching through sand scratched goggles
Doodles in notebooks, dripping popsong body fluid and long walks through the slaughterhouse
Screaming orgasmically into the zeusless sky
Like severed limb fireworks
I tear the barcode on my soul to shreds
And burn it the way people used to with draft notices
I have nothing concrete to rebel against
My bruiseless head spins planetlike in a starry void

The very word soul is a much a lie as money or fame
Or anything meant to mold shame
Meant to keep a person cleaning bedpans or serving burgers
Right up until that third strike, you’re out
Bring in the bearded new boys
And fire up the crystal balls, they need polishing
If I said I love you
You’d probably plaster fliers all over town saying what a small-dicked ignorant shit I am
No one needs to know that unless I said I love them
We ought to describe where that emotion is generated as being in yer pants
I dig my chewed down nails into the sidewalk
Neck snapping chokehold on reality

The women I jump through hoops and juggle for
Are artistic, intelligent
Looking for a gorilla to brutalize them
Give me thirty years and five thousand beers and we’ll talk, sweetheart

I have never felt even the slightest bit
Of legendary un-reality
But then
Neither have any of you
Not in the dampest holes of your heads
People think they should feel
Something
Like children convincing themselves repeatedly that there IS a santa claus
Or the very pious feeling god’s hand and not the priest’s

I haven’t found anyone to lie to me mutually
Someone to spit or bleed lead tainted candy lies into my gaping babybird mouth
Shove me outta the leafless tree
To break my unused wings on the cold truth
Break my cheap whore metaphors
Bash their widdle lips in
!!!!
I have never
FELT
And
My only wet dreams are of me jerking off
Which is funny because I’m the least attractive person I can think of
How’s THAT for grand comedy
Cmon and laugh you crap flinging dirge singing monkeys
Clap your hands and say
How embarrassing

So bring the boots, the booze, the tennis rackets, the hatchet and the TNT
Consider this an invitation to a mutual crucifixion
We’ll have a tuberculosis blast
Revving chainsaws and coughing
And playing tag like coffin-caffeine fueled kids
I’m
Fucking
It

smcicr
09-29-2009, 06:52 AM
Ok, so bear with me for a moment...(this isn't meant as a criticism)

Perhaps it's because this is one of the longest poems of yours, thus allowing me to fully experience the sensation, but it struck me that on occasion i feel like i'm trying to understand (connect/get it/click?) through binoculars - the see-saw back and forth of the focus wheel, did i just...? was that...? as things blur in and out of focus.

As above, this is not a criticism - I don't believe it is the job of the writer to lay everything out for the reader, I think it's more rewarding when you've involved yourself in something by having to think about it. I guess author's are a bit like the people that set crossword puzzles (wait for it) if you do the same puzzle, put together by the same person for a period of time then you start to get into their head and be able to read the clues that much easier. Even at this point I am pretty much guaranteed at least one moment of complete synchronicity reading your work (that also often ties in with everything after it hitting sharp focus), this time it was:


The women I jump through hoops and juggle for
Are artistic, intelligent
Looking for a gorilla to brutalize them
Give me thirty years and five thousand beers and we’ll talk, sweetheart

which is just smack me in the face brilliant (it's impact actually accentuated by the fact that what preceeded it was eluding me ;)) and from there on it seemed to shuffle itself into order and run like dominoes. :D

I also think your point about the live performance aspect is particularly apt here - I can very easily see these taking on a whole new life in that arena.

Looking forward to the next one.

flaggwalkstheline
09-29-2009, 07:07 AM
Ok, so bear with me for a moment...(this isn't meant as a criticism)

Perhaps it's because this is one of the longest poems of yours, thus allowing me to fully experience the sensation, but it struck me that on occasion i feel like i'm trying to understand (connect/get it/click?) through binoculars - the see-saw back and forth of the focus wheel, did i just...? was that...? as things blur in and out of focus.

As above, this is not a criticism - I don't believe it is the job of the writer to lay everything out for the reader, I think it's more rewarding when you've involved yourself in something by having to think about it. I guess author's are a bit like the people that set crossword puzzles (wait for it) if you do the same puzzle, put together by the same person for a period of time then you start to get into their head and be able to read the clues that much easier. Even at this point I am pretty much guaranteed at least one moment of complete synchronicity reading your work (that also often ties in with everything after it hitting sharp focus), this time it was:


The women I jump through hoops and juggle for
Are artistic, intelligent
Looking for a gorilla to brutalize them
Give me thirty years and five thousand beers and we’ll talk, sweetheart

which is just smack me in the face brilliant (it's impact actually accentuated by the fact that what preceeded it was eluding me ;)) and from there on it seemed to shuffle itself into order and run like dominoes. :D

I also think your point about the live performance aspect is particularly apt here - I can very easily see these taking on a whole new life in that arena.

Looking forward to the next one.

glad it made you think, I like doing that to people heh I know what you mean about that set of lines bringing it into a sharper focus, I felt like the ones before it were almost becoming too abstract. They work but any more of them at that point would throw off the whole thing so the line about "neck snapping chokehold on reality" and the following ones are meant to kinda ground the thought process and pull the poem back from becoming too metaphorical, that poem almost sorta doubles back on itself with the "cheap whore metaphors" thing
huh I usually dont analyze my own writing quite like that:orely: but your response prompted me 2 do so :idea:

flaggwalkstheline
10-02-2009, 11:41 AM
The finklestein shit kid rides again version 1.0

Robert Mitchum raises his tattooed hands
and tells the congregation of werewolves and bureaucrats
to simmer down and let their copper cauldron bitchin christian witches jew brew cook more slowly
In the beginning of the 20th century when the atmosphere was new
When the trains were snoring smoothly and cocaine was in the sodapop and the oil flowed like it would never stop
The 19 century was hidden away in a locked closet
In our youths our hearts were filled with fire but the fire grew higher so we leapt into the sea
Touched by an ocean we forget all trace of yesterday’s book burning head turning churning
All of it forgotten
The whipcrack brick-a-brack sad-sack sound of muskets on smogless mornings
The burning of sails in oceans where the fish never laughed except at the sun
Which sank into a black sea for all empires the umpire declared it OUT!
English, Russian, German, Soviet, Spanish
Their glorious statues of conquerors on donkeys tarnished and cracked
Stand lonely saluting suicidal leaders who built them in their image
Sentries in empty courtyards keeping watch for the day the tall ships return from over the water
But the tall ships will never return because they never left they were torched in the harbor
Forgotten
History repeats it’s own jests over and over until somebody doesn’t laugh
Rust to rust
Boom and bust
Doom and trust

Ten years into the age of aquarius now and where is my radioactive paradise?
The steel umbilical cord from one war to it’s bronze fisted mother
Is pretended to be disconnected, severed or contained in lead
The gun sits on the wall, forgotten but unrusted tapping it’s yellow and black foot
Waiting to be noticed and used
Fired finally after 100 years of waiting for release
When it happens
Some of us will laugh because it was sure to happen so why not just get it over with
Get it over with, the flashbang release of starpowered tension
All of you have forgotten
You accountants with all your numbers
Have forgotten the 19th and are now forgetting the 20th
The smell of gunpowder in the trenches or the soot of violated rice paddies
The age of numbers grows fantastically and the implodes in a shower of uselessness
You lawyers, you bakers, you butchers, you users, you pushers
Yes, you with all your knowledge still look to the same psychopaths for salvation as you always have
You have forgotten
The primal whistle of arrows through the green
The dread sound of beating drums
Behind a wall of screen broadcasting atrocities from every corner of the world
You have forgotten the feel of dirt between your fingers
And will only remember when the soil swallows you up
The walls of the garden are soundproofed and you can’t see the stains on the other side of the mattresses
You scientists and makers of fire and lightning
You spit metal and dream-stuff into the sky with only the purpose of knowing
Yet
With all your time spanning brain scanning magic tragic planning
You have forgotten as thoroughly as a dog forgets not to jump on it’s master
Your shiva-esque grandfathers reforged and unbottled zeus’s thunderbolts
But you have forgotten what happened to the old gods
Forgotten, their fiery arms wait on the wall patiently while oppenheimer laughs in his grave prematurely
Ah but there are men out there in the small and mean world with minds that span time
Waiting in the last deserts, the last mountains, the last mines, the last undiscovered hells
They ring the bells and poison wells
They bring the fire with them like bearded crack head prometheuses
There are men who desire to wear the wolf skin of fenrir and stomp around in the ashes of valhalla
They have long memories
Though their lives have short fuses and they go off like firecrackers in the hands of children
They stretch on and on like vapor trails clinging to the naïve native sky

A wasp circles a dumpster
Ignoring nearby flowers
The leftovers of a big picnic, she devours












The finklestein shit kid rides again version 2.0

Robert Mitchum raises his tattooed hands to the roof
And tells the congregation of werewolves and bureaucrats
To simmer down and let their copper cauldron bitchin christian witches jew brew cook more slowly
I hold the remote in my hands and think of turning the lights out

In the beginning of the 20th century when the atmosphere was new and didn’t smoke a pack a day
When we knew how to build steel and iron with our bare claws
When the trains were snoring smoothly and cocaine was in the sodapop and the oil flowed like it would never stop
The 19 century was hidden away in a locked closet with fine dressed skeletons and told to stay

“So tell me young jester”
She speaks syrupy through shining teeth grinding armadillo eyeballs on the clean bathroom stalls
“Are you my fuel, my mule?”
An airplane flies by outside the plateglass window as he adjusts his tie roaring like a fly 5 floors up
“Or my mirror?”
Shards of broken fairy tale embedded in my retinas
So as the snow queen sucked faster I pushed the shards in deeper and snickered so wisely, so surprisingly
“I want some more”

In our youths our hearts were filled with fire but the fire grew higher so we leapt into the sea
Touched by an ocean we forgot all trace of yesterday’s book burning head turning churning
All of it as forgotten as gum on the underside of the table
The whipcrack brick-a-brack sad-sack sound of muskets on smogless mornings
The burning of sails in oceans where the fish never laughed except at the sun
Which sank into a black flooded outfield for all empires the umpire declared OUT!
English, Russian, German, Soviet, Spanish
Napoleon never accounted for what would happen when winter finally landed
Did the land and the flowers weep when their gardners stomped trampling them?
Their glorious statues of conquerors on donkeys tarnished and cracked
Stand lonely saluting suicidal leaders who built them in their image
Sentries in empty courtyards keeping watch for the day the tall ships return from over the water
But the tall ships will never return because they never left they were torched in the harbor
Forgotten
History repeats it’s own jests over and over until somebody doesn’t laugh
Rust to rust
Boom and bust
Doom and trust
I rode a white horse with a gasoline mane to the farthest shore of this desert
The snow princess spreads her legs and all the little birdys on powerlines shiver
All I can gasp with a shrug and a quiver is I want more

Ten years into the age of aquarius now and where is my radioactive paradise?
The steel umbilical cord from one war to it’s bronze fisted mother
Is pretended to be disconnected, severed or contained in lead
The gun sits on the wall, forgotten but unrusted tapping it’s yellow and black foot
Waiting to be noticed and used
Fired finally after 100 years of waiting for release
When it happens
Some of us will laugh because it was sure to happen so why not just get it over with
Get it over with, the flashbang release of starpowered tension
All of you have forgotten
You accountants with all your numbers
Have forgotten the 19th and are now forgetting the 20th
The smell of gunpowder in the trenches or the soot of violated rice paddies
The age of numbers grows fantastically and the implodes in a shower of uselessness
You lawyers, you bakers, you butchers, you users, you pushers
Yes, you with all your knowledge still look to the same psychopaths for salvation as you always have
You have forgotten
The primal whistle of arrows through the green
The dread sound of beating drums
Behind a wall of screen broadcasting atrocities from every corner of the world
You have forgotten the feel of dirt between your fingers
And will only remember when the soil swallows you up
The walls of the garden are soundproofed and you can’t see the stains on the other side of the mattresses
You scientists and makers of fire and lightning and all things gorgeous and frightning
You spit metal and dream-stuff into the sky with only the purpose of knowing
Yet
With all your time spanning brain scanning magic tragic planning
You have forgotten as thoroughly as a dog forgets not to jump on it’s master
Your shiva-esque grandfathers reforged and unbottled zeus’s thunderbolts
But you have forgotten what happened to the old gods
Forgotten, their fiery arms wait on the wall patiently while oppenheimer laughs in his grave prematurely
You good kings who only want to set forth and pillage thy neighbor
You have forgotten the dirty fingernails which place cardboard crowns on bald heads
Ah but there are men out there in the small and mean world with minds that span time
Waiting in the last sands, the last mountains, the last mines, the last un-re-discovered secret places
Fields where the grass has never been scythed
They ring the bells and poison wells and have not forgotten
They bring the fire with them like bearded crack head prometheuses
There are men who desire to wear the wolf skin of fenrir and stomp around giddily in the ashes of valhalla
They have long memories
Though their lives have short fuses and they go off like firecrackers in the hands of children
They stretch on and on like vapor trails clinging to the naïve native sky
I take a deep frosty breath and remove pale hands from my shoulders

A wasp circles a dumpster
Ignoring nearby flowers
The leftovers of a big picnic, she devours

Jon
10-02-2009, 11:05 PM
I'm seeing a change in your work sir.

flaggwalkstheline
10-03-2009, 07:27 AM
really?
how so?
I'm curious how others percieve shifts within my writing style

Jon
10-04-2009, 01:43 AM
It seems more involved now.

flaggwalkstheline
10-04-2009, 06:09 AM
oh ok:nana:

smcicr
10-04-2009, 06:35 AM
The finklestein shit kid rides again - it desperately spits it's bleakly resigned anger and says (to me), it's going to get f*cked up and you probably can't change it so treat it like a backdrop and be incendiary in front of it. More good stuff.

Really like the imagery, especially in the first part. Also, I think it's partly me and partly because it suits this piece but I like the fact that at times it feels like it's almost going to come apart. It's a fast ride. Thanks for posting.

flaggwalkstheline
10-04-2009, 08:44 AM
I got the title for that poem from cheech & Chong:rock:
YouTube - Cheech & Chong Up In Smoke 1978

and the updated version of that poem is now posted under draft 1

flaggwalkstheline
10-05-2009, 07:43 PM
Bullfighters don't cry

The matador waits regally in the arena
His shined boots planted holy in the dust
Clothed in gleaming cosmic red and purple cloth
To the children watching he looks like he could bring silver fire down on anything
Lion, bear, train, highway, ocean
The bullfighter puts a mask on and stands in clouds of golden hard dirt
Conquers his deified enemy, denies muscled fear
He does it every time and he makes the task look sublime
Matadors don’t cry
There’s no doubt that he won’t fail to dominate
His hero sword glows like a vengeful star
The monster was tenderized before it comes out bleeding
Yelling that the game is rigged nobody listens the silence of death makes it impossible to hear
Anything but the rustle of the red cloth and the bull stomping on the ground for a gunfighters death
And the steel element of goodness tears into ferdinand
Some of the people in the bleachers cheer and stomp and shriek at the death of the beast
Others just jam more popcorn or icecream into their mouths
Waiting for the red flag that will signal them being herded into the arena

flaggwalkstheline
10-20-2009, 04:18 PM
I’m not afraid of drowning anymore
I’m not afraid of rising up to spit in the face of stars
I will drink from the river’s secret name until my lungs are sore
I looked up into the cumulous eye and realized
If I’m to become as one with the tide
Then let it sweep me away with a grey hand
Let me wash up coughing with joy on a gleaming foreign shore

Jon
10-21-2009, 08:29 PM
Very nice Flagg.

It's fun to watch you evolve.

flaggwalkstheline
10-21-2009, 08:57 PM
thanku jon, u and others who read this thread have a birdseye view of that evolution

Jon
10-21-2009, 09:03 PM
I meant literally. Why I remember back when you grew those two thumbs!:P

flaggwalkstheline
10-21-2009, 09:10 PM
It's true
I was a creation of doctor moreau
I used to be a kangaroo

Jon
10-21-2009, 09:24 PM
I trust you got the smell of the primordial ooze out?

flaggwalkstheline
10-21-2009, 09:38 PM
yep yep
who knew baking soda and fizzy water would remove the smell of primordial ooze!
of course I only found this out AFTER I bought the oozyclean off of a billy mays infomercial, stupid thing convinced me with testimonies from the ninja turtles, buncha media whoring reptiles

Jon
10-22-2009, 10:14 AM
Pffft...reptiles.

They think they are sooo smart because they don't have to maintain a core body temperature.

flaggwalkstheline
10-24-2009, 09:01 AM
alright
I recorded the entire show I did with some friends of mine last night
Here are my performances
The last part of my performance wouldnt upload because it was too long and the video quality is poor because it was dark but the audio is good

YouTube - Show at southwest giftbasket Nate part 1


YouTube - Show at southwest giftbasket Nate part 2


YouTube - Show at southwest giftbasket Nate part 3


YouTube - Show at southwest giftbasket Nate part 4

Jon
10-25-2009, 09:22 PM
Very cool!

I envy you having such a place to exercise your works!

Seymour_Glass
10-26-2009, 07:13 PM
God, that's cool.

flaggwalkstheline
10-26-2009, 09:32 PM
heres a narrarative poem that is 100% nonfiction



The last time I had a job
Was in late fall of 2008
I spent about 2 months washing dishes
At a dennys near a shopping district
From ten at night until six in the morning
I sprayed dishes
On my first all-nighter
I was shown
How to wash the dishes with the highpowered nozzle
By an old man who had worked there for years
And when the boss; a black man named Jim who had a hairlip
Left me and the old guy alone
The old guy said to me, “That nigger owns me haw haw haw I loves me some irony!”
The hours oozed by like melting tar or menthol cigarette smoke
As I went back and forth from the kitchen to the counters
Collecting bins full of half full coke glasses and pie crusts on plastic plates which looked like glass and took dropping to find out they weren’t
Spraying the remains of three AM eggs and sausages down the drain
My feet got light and I felt like I was floating on linoleum
I began to think that the whole world outside the restaurant had been
Swallowed by some terrible beast that smelled like fake maple syrup
And I was on the only fluorescent island left in the whole sea of submerged streetlights
Alone with a fourty something year old waitress who kept “accidentally” walking into me
And winking or licking her chapstick smeared lips as she apologized for knocking the dishes outta my hands
And wiped the spaghetti sauce from my slick black apron with a rag
I think her eventual goal was to get me into the air conditioned bathroom and have her way with me
Some people lose all their inhibitions as the night grows on them
For the record I never pursued her
The idea of kneeling between her celluloid riddled thighs in a locked stall with for-a-good-time phone number graffiti looking on approvingly made me want to puke
A homeless guy slept in the corner booth sometimes murmuring his November visions in clouds of bearded mouthwash
After mopping the floors with one of those universal yellow buckets
I walked home that first time deprived of sleep
Home at six in the morning
Still dark
Where my father and his girlfriend and her mother all were still sleeping
The asphalt felt like it was bending underneath my rubber souled shoes
The sky closer than it ever had been
The trees on the suburban lawns gleaming deep green
Going past the darkened home improvement store I heard yelling and a gunshot from some far off street
A few cars with their electric eyes leering hissed past me like metal snakes
That first night
The sleep deprivation felt so beautiful
Afterwards it killed my insides the way I’ve heard radiation can
One night
The kitchen was fumigated to remove grease from the stove
Guys dressed in rubber boots came in with hoses attached to a truck
And sprayed harsh smelling foam for three hours
So I sat outside
With the chainsmoking cook and the flirtatious waitress who wore a torn pink snow jacket
The other dishwasher
A recovering meth addict
Told me how when he was 15 he went to jail for stealing a fireengine and driving it all the way to Texas
I was impressed said so
I listened to bright eyes and portishead and michael jackson on my headphones and watched the moon
Glad I was being paid for doing nothing, that was a good evening
I continued working there
Hauling bins of dishes
For about a month and a half
The recovering meth addict kept asking to take my shifts and after a while
I didn’t mind at all
I began to dread the long walk or bicycle ride from the house to the parking lot
I thought of Orpheus going into the underworld
Only I had no Persephone to lust after
Only a twice monthly paycheck
And the feeling of my brain growing a soft mold
I couldn’t sleep during the day so every day became a series of failed naps
So by nine thirty when I was getting ready
Putting on my socks and black slacks
I was already exhausted, emptied and tired of living all my days with a total awareness of all those hours
We take the ability to skip them for granted
And I felt afraid
Of the whole night preparing to snatch me up like a grey clawed food services creature from the minimum wage lagoon
Scared like a child under the covers with a flashlight
And the boss kept scheduling me when I had school and had already told him I couldn’t work
He didn’t care but when I told him of the problem he would pretend to care and fix the problem
I quit a few days after Obama was elected president
The assistant manager
A hard faced woman the same age as me with a penchant for finding things not clean enough
Asked me if I even wanted to work there at all since I kept giving away my shifts
Like it was a privilege to scrape the stains of egg yolks down the sink with my fingernails
I told her that I didn’t much feel like working there anymore anyway and took off my apron
So I walked home to a good nights sleep feeling satisfied
When I got home the television was on
I found out that was the very night the economy went down the crapper
I have been unemployed for a year or more by the time you read this or hear this
I guess in a way
I’m kindof a trendsetter

Jon
10-27-2009, 09:21 AM
I like this, poetic trend setter!

"The hours oozed by like melting tar or menthol cigarette smoke"

and

"A homeless guy slept in the corner booth sometimes murmuring his November visions in clouds of bearded mouthwash"

Great image.

I like you description of what such a shift does to a person.

"I couldn’t sleep during the day so every day became a series of failed naps"

"We take the ability to skip them for granted."

flaggwalkstheline
10-28-2009, 08:59 PM
ok
since I'm not going to have a video camera tommorow
I'm going to post the lyrics to my lovecraft based rap song which I'm gonna snarl out tommorow night at my regular open mic
as performed under my rapper name which is also my temporary halloween username
the background music I'm gonna use is a very loud section of stravinskys Firebird ballet

ahem



I’m MC unspeakable
My words are shriekable
My bones are creekable
I like fightin and bitin and cyclopian lightnin
Got a magic stone I found in a church that takes over my mind n takes me back in time
Sacrificing cats in ancient Egypt or watching that iceberg sink the titanic
Nothing funnier than morons in a panic gimme some popcorn lets decapitate dicaprio
On Halloween I might just go into a red foaming frenzy
Massacre an acre of teenyboppers dressed like Edward Cullen
Those kids wouldn’t know a real villain till he bites out their necks
What’do you expect?
The hunger inside me is a tide of fire electric wire demon for hire
I’ll fly outta the spire n sacrifice u to cthlulu in rlya
I’m from innsmouth come down to my home town n I’ll drag you into the lake yeah I got breath like a snake
Don’t struggle dagon the fish god just wants to cuddle
That crucifix won’t protect you from the horrors I’m gonna unleash into ur subconscious
That which is dead may eternal lie though through strange eons even death may die
So get ready to cry say goodbye
Got a pair of fangs I’m gonna sink into your veins
As soon you go to sleep I’m gonna rise from the deep n creep into ur bedroom with a mouthful of doom
Howard knew what I’m talking about and nobody listened to that priss
Wonder what he’d think of this shit



(chorus)
Yeah I got the sickness
Sing it with me
I got the sickness
Got the evil eye
I got the sickness
Get ready to die you better run cause here I come
I got the sickness
My lips are turnin blue comin after you
With my webbed fingers and a smell that lingers
I got the sickness
And soon you will too HA!


When I was a kid they put in me the insanitarium
Ironically like a fish in the aquarium cause I scared em
That was before I grew gills they pumped me fulla pills
They said I should be ashamed for what I did said I was sick n I said no shit
First thing I did when I busted out was impale that doctor on a tentacle and say that’s for cutting off my testicles!
So now I’m a full on demon speaking crossroad seeking evil squeaking hellion
In a few nights it’s Halloween the time of year when I get mean
So when the stars align n I’m feeling fine
I’m gonna drink your blood like salty wine and leave you lyin in the mud
Gotta taste for human flesh flash fried by monster eyes
This aint the fuckin monster mash so get that kiddy stuff outta your head
I like to bite n I like to smash your skull in with necronomicon incantations
And when your dead my homey Herbert west gonna reanimate your corpse for immoral purposes
Reanimator masturbator human hater blood skater gonna take over the earth like we did before
Sprung from the mouth of shub Nijurath the demon whore

(chorus)
Yeah I got the sickness
Sing it with me
Whose got the sickness
I got the sickness
Got the evil eye shining blue diamond
Get ready to die you better run cause here I come
I got the sickness
My lips are turnin blue, comin after you
With my webbed fingers and a smell that lingers
I got the sickness
And soon you will too HA!

I’m gonna live forever if that gives you a shiver just wait till I swallow your liver I always deliver I live in a river
When I get old I’ll just swap bodies with some young hottie
Leave them decrepit and looking like a toad
The alhazrad solution to never getting old never feeling cold
this souls been bought and sold so many times I gotta box fulla human skin written receipts saying how many
One look in my eye and you’ll be hypnotized when I say I want your body I don’t mean whats between your thighs
I’m a body snatcher human catcher itch scratcher
Traveling the nine spheres looking for new fears
I’ll drink down your tears and come back for more get ready to hit the floor
On Halloween night I’m gonna score
Bore a hole in your skull with my teeth suck out whats underneath your brain
That’s right your brain which after I drink still wont be half as insane as mine even if I make a smoothie outta your spine
My name is MC Unspeakable and I got poor people skills but that don’t matter I get a kick outta seeing people splatter in the gutter I eat em with butter close the shutters



(chorus)
Yeah I got the sickness
Sing it with me while ya bleed out feed out get yer need out the blood spits like a spout
I got the sickness
Got the evil eye
I got the sickness
Get ready to die you better run cause here I come
I got the sickness
My lips are turnin blue, when I’m comin after you I got nothing else
With my webbed fingers and a smell that lingers
I got the sickness
And soon you will too HA!

Jean
10-29-2009, 02:03 AM
Will you give it a title?

flaggwalkstheline
10-29-2009, 06:44 AM
i dunno
i guess the title would be: I got the sickness:cool:

smcicr
11-01-2009, 03:01 PM
Hi, I'll get to the lovecraft rap tomorrow hopefully, it's way too late for me now.

Just wanted to say I really liked the Denny's poem. Conjures some vivid images, I was just wondering if the floors in those places were the same the world over having done my own tour in one this side of the pond.

About an hour into the shift the heat from the dishwasher seems to perform some sort of science experiment with the grease and the sweat and the bitterness and all of a sudden it's like an ice rink instead of a floor?

flaggwalkstheline
11-01-2009, 08:55 PM
Hi, I'll get to the lovecraft rap tomorrow hopefully, it's way too late for me now.

Just wanted to say I really liked the Denny's poem. Conjures some vivid images, I was just wondering if the floors in those places were the same the world over having done my own tour in one this side of the pond.

About an hour into the shift the heat from the dishwasher seems to perform some sort of science experiment with the grease and the sweat and the bitterness and all of a sudden it's like an ice rink instead of a floor?

yep yep it did that

Jon
11-02-2009, 12:51 PM
I rather liked his description of the lives of folks working that graveyard shift.

flaggwalkstheline
11-07-2009, 10:38 AM
Spiraling arm of a motorcycle myth

Achilles takes off his motorcycle helmet
And moonwalks his way through the nightly garden of a ghost town
Climbing the skyscraping beanstalk with a needle and thread in his sugarworm teeth
He goes to the giant’s grave just to lay a wreath
Gritting his fingers on the wall he states to Alice whose holding the shovel
“I like you and you like me, so let’s start working on a travesty, a tragedy
Give me your frostbitten glove, give me a gunshot signaled headstart, give me your copperwire head
and I’ll lick the stamp on your lavalamp heart ”
One of his crocodile headlights winks slyly
It’s easy to submerge your intentions in gasoline tears
The out of tune saxophone player trying to learn guitar since he pawned his lungs
Wanting you to put money in a velvet tophat
He knows
And Helen with her fragile collection of music boxes that all play tinny star spangled banners
She may be tossing them off the golden gate bridge to see if they sing when they smack the pacific
Balancing way up there in a night gown fluttering in the summerending jet-noise breeze
Spotlights flash like king size disco balls and all the crows and cows on conveyer belts yell not to jump
She knows
You have to stick a knife into the ketchup bottle to make it talk red
She knows
We recreate history in a spiral tapestry
Legends wind us
Truths find us
Lies bind us
With all the honesty of a blind painter plagiarizing the mona lisa
And without forethought for what’s in the gold hinged box he just bought
Humpty Dumpty’s stolen pickup truck skids into the guardrail, exhausted
Finally out of 40 proof 14 carrot fuel for the modern entrepreneur
He knows
Most of us turning the wheels underground in the song-mine
Don’t know anything except to come running when it’s feeding time
We have a suspicion spelled out in the tapping of our spoons
That this may be punishment for doubting that California is the new holy land
But if you listen closely past the gossiping of satellites
Within the horrified laughter of yesterday’s favorite martyr is a low dirge from a sallow whale
And a boat with peeling paint and no captain is preparing to sail

Jon
11-09-2009, 06:17 PM
"She knows
You have to stick a knife into the ketchup bottle to make it talk red"


What a great image. It can mean so many things. Each reader makes her own interpretation; thus the poem becomes the reader's own. A gift from FWtL.

flaggwalkstheline
11-09-2009, 07:37 PM
ah if u liked that, then the updated version (much more cohesive) will blow your mind!:shoot:

Spiraling arm of a motorcycle myth version 2.0

Achilles takes off his motorcycle helmet and his blonde hair spills out like unwatered grass
He pats the prairie dust from his leather jacket
And moonwalks his way across the nightly garden of a ghost town
Climbing the skyscraping beanstalk with a needle and thread in his sugarworm teeth
He kneels in a clover patch near the giant’s grave just to lay a wreath
Gritting his fingers on the wall he smirks to Alice who’s holding the shovel,
“I like you and you like me, so let’s start working on a travesty, a tragedy
Give me your frostbitten glove, give me a gunshot signaled headstart, give me your copperwire head
and I’ll lick the stamp on your lavalamp heart ”
It’s easy to submerge your intentions in gasoline tears
And Alice with her fragile collection of music boxes that all play tinny star spangled banners
She tossed them off the golden gate bridge to see if they sang when they smacked the pacific
Balancing way up there in a night gown fluttering in the summerending jet-noise breeze
Spotlights flashed like king size disco balls and all the crows and pigs on conveyer belts yelled not to leap
She snarls back now in a voice like silkworms
“You gave me a wound that would not heal, a sickness that time could not steal
But just take this blackened hot butterknife off my wrist and I’ll write my lesson in lesions on a pale chalkboard”
But she knows
You have to stick a knife into the ketchup bottle to make it talk red
She knows
We recreate history in a spiral tapestry
Legends wind us
Truths find us
Lies bind us
With all the honesty of a blind painter plagiarizing the mona lisa
And without forethought for what’s in the cold jar he just bought
The magic child known for pulling his golden spork from the highest mountains icy eye
Dies
A stolen pickup truck skids into the guardrail, exhausted
Rolls six times
Finally out of 40 proof 14 carrot fuel for the modern entrepreneur
He knows
Most of us turning the wheels underground in the song-mine
Don’t know anything except to come running when it’s feeding time
We have a meager suspicion spelled out in the tapping of spoons
That this may be punishment for doubting California’s status as the new holy land
But it’s blissful to ignore the reincarnated understanding in the calf’s brown eyes as we carve it into veal
The small cow even in the very moment of butchery
Has known more peace in the fields than you or I will ever find with our spears and shields
But if you listen closely past the gossiping of satellites
Deep within the blustering laughter of yesterday’s favorite martyr
Is a low dirge from a sallow whale
And a boat with peeling paint and no captain is preparing to sail

Jon
11-10-2009, 04:51 PM
That blind painter is going to have legal troubles.

flaggwalkstheline
11-20-2009, 12:02 PM
From the ashes of my hemorrhaging desire
I will build a light house funeral pyre
From the bone in my sand blasted hands
I will build a lighthouse at the desert’s edge
From the steam engine on my lips
I spit forth a searchlight
And wait
For the tide to turn and spite the land
This has been a long and forgetful drought
I have sustained the promise of starlight
Feeding it one gunfighter brick at a time
And for each shoeshined promise there is a barefoot crime
Watching a fluorescent eye highlight them shadowy among the beached shotgun seashells and dry throated sailors
Then turn its alternating current judgment to last weeks freezedried tragedy
A receding meal of rabbit stew in a tarnished pot with floating chunks of fat like polar icecaps
The shorelines going bald and I trace the starting moment with my gloved hand
From the shaking of my rosehips
I will dream a lighthouse in the sand
Bereft of the fire of a hand heavy with want
My Neptune orbit spinning and my keys jangling like rattlesnake boot spurs
I wait out the slow crashing or marble spires
And far off in the pure blue garden
The dolphins laugh and enjoy the ride
Returning slowly while I try to build a lighthouse from my dried out tears
Salty brick by salty brick, each one collapsing into a pile of ash
Making a mound for my chimney skeleton mausoleum
The dolphins laugh

Jon
11-20-2009, 04:33 PM
This is why I keep reading your shit, man.


"My Neptune orbit spinning and my keys jangling like rattlesnake boot spurs."

flaggwalkstheline
11-20-2009, 06:53 PM
This is why I keep reading your shit, man.


"My Neptune orbit spinning and my keys jangling like rattlesnake boot spurs."

oddly enough that was one of the few lines I wasnt 100% percent sure worked :thumbsup:

Jon
11-21-2009, 08:26 AM
This is why I keep reading your shit, man.


"My Neptune orbit spinning and my keys jangling like rattlesnake boot spurs."

oddly enough that was one of the few lines I wasnt 100% percent sure worked :thumbsup:

Well, it painted a clear image in MY mind.

flaggwalkstheline
11-21-2009, 10:17 AM
This is why I keep reading your shit, man.


"My Neptune orbit spinning and my keys jangling like rattlesnake boot spurs."

oddly enough that was one of the few lines I wasnt 100% percent sure worked :thumbsup:

Well, it painted a clear image in MY mind.

good to know, now I won't change it since i know it did something

flaggwalkstheline
11-22-2009, 09:17 PM
Disemboweled in the shopping mall

All of almost spilled out today
After I handed my inked up job application paper
Filled with references and former employers names and proof of my citizenship
To the girl behind the starbucks counter
And she said through a mouthful of braces
“We’re not hiring right now but I’ll give this to the manager”
Everything nearly spilled out
All the rage which has built up inside me like plaque on unbrushed teeth
I imagined
(And I could see it too, like a drive in theater just above my nose)
Leaning my head over the tile counter
As if to give her a kiss
And biting her head off in one scissor motion chomp
And saying to one of her shocked coworkers as her spurting headless corpse collapsed on the cash register
“Now I KNOW there’s a job opening
Who else do I have to kiss to get it?”
Instead of even saying something witty or mean
I shoved it back down
Like a disemboweled person pushing their intestines back in
To buy more time
All my experience with violence comes from Hollywood
Tom Hanks firing at that german tank with a handgun at the end of saving private ryan
Even in fiction everybody wants to buy more time
And even though my eyesight occasionally tints red
I’ve never even been in a fight and know no pain beyond my own melodramatics
No pain no gain or maybe just no gain and plenty of pain
Clichés expand popcornish in my lard-streaked imagination
The coffee junkies behind me tapped their feet and scratched their arms waiting for me to move out of the way
I meekly said, “Thank you”
The espresso machine gurgled like a laugh track on an unfunny sitcom
I walked out into the rest of the 2 story shopping mall
Where a poster of a woman in a bra stared at me like a 30 foot tall big brother from a wall
Had the words
HELLO BOMBSHELL
Emblazoned across her chest in red letters
I hear them in head real sexy over the sound of crashing planes
HELLO BOMBSHELL
And from inside fudruckers I could hear a shamanistic chant proclaiming the bird is the word
A bald man dragged two shrieking mucous leaking children inside with him
One on each hand
And the mothers in public, they pull their children close to them if I walk within ten feet
Like I’m an unmuzzled dog without a metal leash around my finger
A fairy tale monster under the bed only around as reason to keep the kids in school
Is that all I’m good for now?
At the foodcourt the workers pop out like invisible robots to sweep away the trash
And then go back backstage or somewhere where nobody can see them
The hooks in deep kid either be gutted or go to sleep
And you aren’t gonna be able to push it out by eating potato chips and playing xbox
When I turned 13 years old
My mother sat me down and told me that now that I was a teenager
I was on my way to becoming a sex crazed immoral monster and how much of a shame it was that I wasn’t a girl
And now at the ripe old useless age of 20
I can’t look anyone in the eye and I step aside on the sidewalk to let anyone coming walk by
So yeah I’M the monster alright!
I wonder as I watch the plastic Christmas trees twinkle like fishhooks
If I’m alone in this
Or if everyone walks around pretending they aren’t disemboweled?
The postal service is letting kids send letters to santa claus in the north pole this year again
And the president is gonna give more money to the banks
So who’s propagating a bigger lie?
I hope I am
Alone in my loneliness because it’s nice to have at least one original idea going for you
The strapless plastic watch in my pocket reminds me that I have nowhere I need to go
Without me the wheels will continue to turn but while I’m here there isn’t anything left to burn
And while today feels thin and malnourished and the future remains incomprehensible
The past just keeps chewing and slobbering and getting fatter
I sometimes worry that eventually it will catch me in it’s flytrap teeth and every day will be yesterday
I hum a warped snatch of a beatles tune and look at chocolate truffles behind glass display cases longingly
“yesterday all my trouble seemed so far away, now I need to get some decongestant nasal spray”
And yesterday a homeless old person and I crossed the street at the same time
In between the painted white lines that say where it’s ok to walk but only when the white flashing sign says when
I couldn’t tell what gender he or she was
He or she wore a tattered muddy tarp for a coat and had dull tarnished eyes like beaten silver
And the edge of the tarp-cape flapped in the dioxide breeze and touched me briefly on the knee
Giving me a gypsy curse for sure
I could see myself mutating into a hag creature leering from the dumpsters
HELLO BOMBSHELL
But for now I’m young and broke my wallet has consumption
And the shopping mall’s display windows are tugging at it’s lungs
I’m young and useless except as a bedtime story so none of the children grow up to be me
Let me remind you that the bird IS the word but I’m not a bird just sickly and absurd
And I spent six out of my last 20 dollars on cheap hamburgers and fries
I sucked down their grease and realized I’ll never be close to the best
HELLO BOMBSHELL
All of it nearly spilled out today
But I shoved it back down the way a lazy person like myself will do with a small trashcan full of candy wrappers
HELLOBOMBSHELL
Airplanes are leaving streaks in the sky over the cities like skidmarks on grey underwear
On tables all over the civilized world
The cigarette butts sit cold and lonely in ashtrays until a genderless bony hand picks one up for a feeble fireless drag
And I can hear the sound of chewing
HELLO BOMBSHELL

Jon
11-23-2009, 07:06 AM
*** Saving Private Ryan spoiler above.***

flaggwalkstheline
12-04-2009, 09:31 AM
Here is a poem that I co-wrote last night with my friend Sophia
:nana:




Once upon a minefield



Once upon a minefield
On a crayon siphoned interstate junction
There was a man whose mind was made of grated cheese
And this cheese was made from the milk of the mighty lactose cow
Which actually turned out to be
The sun
The sun is as lactose intolerant as most people on earth
We are all made of stars and scar-tissue then
Except for the leathery windex huffing cows
Just as windex cleans windows so too does a gel pen made from the snot of oysters
Clean the heavenly hooves
No ordinary oyster though
This oyster encompassed ravenous glue snorting sinews
Sinews that pumped the blood of processed fish
“No no no!
Mr. Flounder, there is too much combat on isle five
I think I’ll eat some strange pie now”
So the schizophrenic hydroponic dancing begins

And the stars went out as the grocery clerk chewed them down one by one
Starting at their lightswitch roots
And the man with the cheesed out brain
Crawled through the cowpies on kneepads into the whipcream dipped desert
And he placed all his malodorous revelations about him
In a circle like toy soldiers on green stands
So while the grocery clerk chomped and snarled down the heavens in a tornado of black hole cows
Whose neon signs pulsed like seismic cosmic nightclubs with no customers
The last child of cheese lay on a bed of scorpions among stops signs and machines which had broken down complaining of indigestion
Stomachs upset by commercial jingles
Nuclear radios still singing
And
Keeping the would be drivers fast asleep to dream of the creation myth of money
They missed the chance to make a wish at the shiny mess the oyster and grocery clerk puked back up
The form of heavy eyelid currency was so thick that it developed it’s own consumerist thought process
He watched the wrinkled old hermaphrodites paint their faces in feces on green paper
The copper mouths opened and said
“Hey buddy got a light? I wanna smoke my watch
Oh and What time is it?”
A stretchy rubber ducky smile
“Time enough for all of us to catch fire and then heal our burns
And miss burning
Miss burning was the name of a reluctant prostitute messianic figure skater
What a figure…”
This he remarked while thinking of where to graffiti a permanent marker fresco next
”I’m not afraid of the god-raisins, let them wet themselves back into grapes for all I care”
Here’s what the good book that you can only buy at the gas station has to say about it
So they spit forth a pillow plow made of planks and banks and mustard tanks which gave many stanks
And YES they changed it into wine and moonshine for the kiddies
That sent forward into backwards
And just yesterday it seemed like it was still headed by flaming cheeseballs
Pointing a mozzarella lightning finger over the hill at the coming metal elephant earthquake
A stretched accusatory pinky finger says in a voice like floral print sofas
“For want of a peanut, a forest was murdered
Here they come round the burning mulberry bush
Ghastly ghosties and little roasties!
My Christmas thoughts were ruined by the rolling of the cheese wheel sounding off
Triumphant over the find of lost hard candies under the couch”
And he grabbed a catapult and placed on it
Sliced and diced wedding rice balls that would ascend
Just to fall on the wall of the bellowing gelatinous foxes in man suits driving Lamborghini canons
Honking his nose and spewing a green gunpowder psychosis mucosa
It zips into the clouds fast enough to bend back in time
For the oyster to eat I whole
And the grocery clerk to eat the oyster
And all the while no one noticed that it was not THEIR future being eaten
But rather a different future
One with dust and gamma irradiated perfume
Where all the heros live in sandwiches being eaten by canaries in foalmines
Who upon seeing the teeth of each devourer might quiver and say
“I tawt I taw an apocawyptic puddy tat” before keeling over in a drug overdosed pile
Of feathers and carbon monoxide soda pop
And there was little to be said but this could be included as it is a side note that the future is only made
Of the skins of dead animals that testicle donating PETA members and gun toting monkey hunting nuns
Use to cover up their syringes of animal fat and sugar made of dead things rolling around and squirming
Like a tentacle of syphilis on an unmade bed
The automatic and uncharacteristically withdrawn monstrosity sent forth by conspiracy builders
Came not too long after the fatass prince of nostalgia bathed himself in secret diaper fantasies
Cheesebrain tells the baby dollar while cities stretch metal muscles to the faking point
“Here’s how it went down
I dialed 911 and the giggler on the other end of the line said
For Suicide assistance please press 1, for help disposing of bodies please press 2
If you are in need of drugs please press three
If you’re another jackass writer dialing 911 for shits and giggles we advise you to press 1 but what ever you do, don’t press 4”
Naturally I pressed 4 instantly and heard the shriek of cats fighting on the other line
I looked up and the planes were crashing because their canine pilots were bleeding out the ears
From the seductive dog whistle set off by my pushing in the bluebeard code
So I went back to the phone dialed 911 and pressed 1 with my tongue
Pressing the magic number activates
The gun
The gun is the silencer and the silencer is the disconnected operator scrambling for a scalpel”
*BEEEPP BEEP BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEE*
It’s like she died from eating healthy oatmeal!
Good world what is this god coming to!?
Send forward some tomato paste and bathe that phone in the purifying sugars of brownness
As the brownness comes from the same sugarcane the priests like to use for administering beatings
The pope’s hat pumps fake feathers and fur coats!
Where is the hamster of the toilet clan!?
Where the hell are you? We need yesterday’s special tomorrow and you failed like a whale with the clap
I ding the order bell in the 666 diner and realize everything was already an overcooked on the outside
Pink clod cold in the middle afterlife and the chain chain chain of dead housewives
And newly sober tuba players will be waiting for me after every insubordination subliminal transformation
With meat cleavers and rabid pet beavers saying with morbid admiration
“Teach us to die again the way you did when we were young and willing to lie to the doctors
Just to get anti depressants that we flushed down the toilet
To keep them from polluting the minds of those who had caught the pure sadness
In flypaper butterfly nets, oh teach us, teach us!”
Then then would hand me the meatcleavers even though we all know
If there are no endings to anything then what’s the point in going forward?
No matter how many monkey wrench park bench typos you loving throw in like easter egg hand grenades
Ah look over yonder el Niño
Here come the nail filing defilers pulling file cabinets full of dental records in little red wagons
Cancan dancing in military formation
In a cloud of pixie dust and oysters and cowpies and handcrafted faberge ovaries
With turquoise curlers in their pubic hair and their bald heads gleaming like imposter moons
Here they come
Best take up a spoon
And start digging

Jon
12-07-2009, 01:51 PM
”I’m not afraid of the god-raisins, let them wet themselves back into grapes for all I care”


I love how you take me to another world...my world as I see fit.

flaggwalkstheline
12-12-2009, 08:09 AM
You...

I was standing there in the cold

On the sidewalk

The air was mean enough to make my left eye drip and then freeze the tear to my cheek

Me and three other guys were waiting to get on the bus whenever it decided to show up

We all kept walking back and forth from the signpost to the bench

Occasionally craning our necks to see if it was coming

And then I noticed that all the cars had turned their lights on

And were rushing past our chunk of concrete iceberg like sparkeyed sharks way out in the deep

And isn’t it odd that I think of the cars as turning themselves on?

The human element finally removed

People need machines to turn them on but the machines can get off just fine without flesh

A cancer cowering under the precise shining scalpel

I know exactly when it was exorcised for me

It was you

No not you

You

But if you want

You can pretend I mean you

Are you ready?

I would take a deep breath but I’m afraid it would ice over my lungs

What I can’t tell you

Is

I knew exactly well what would happen

I knew I didn’t have a chance at that point

Not then

We stood outside the café on the dull red cobblestone in our winter coats

At the very start of winter

But it seems like many seasons ago

You were about to walk away and I asked if you could just wait a moment

Then I stammered out words that felt sweet and sticky in my throat like honey on a spoon over a teacup

“I really like you”

And you smiled uncomfortably and said nothing

So I asked if it would be ok if I kissed you goodbye

And you shook your head and said,

“No I have a boyfriend, we’re friends”

I remember you had food stuck in your teeth, something brown on the front ones

I stared down at my boots

“Oh”
It wasn’t quite cold enough for me to see my breath on that day

“So, I won’t ever bother you about anything like this again”

And that should have been it

That should have been

The last words spoken on the subject

But I can’t seem to fit your eviction into my schedule

So months later

I stood in the cold waiting for the bus at 6 in the evening

Wrapped up in gloves and a scarf and walking back and forth to try and keep warm

And when it’s coldest that I remember you the most

And think of things to say to win your idealized affection

I want to give you a nickname that only I can call you

But I knew I didn’t have

A chance

And I think about how at some point I may have had a chance

And blown it

(4 times through the mirror now, are you still following?)

When we stood under an umbrella in the spring

And I felt that I ought to pull you close

It was the way you looked at me, I’d never been looked at like that before

But for some reason I didn’t

Go for it

I butchered my only chance

And the other girls I meet up with at school or talk to on the internet

They don’t give me that sense

Of ludicrous hopefulness

That I had when I was with you for a brief amount of time

I tried in my own feeble way

And now whenever I talk to you

Your words whistle through my chest cavity like wind through gapped teeth

So I stood with three other people out in the cold all of us no doubt

Alone

Waiting for that big turquoise bus to take us all home

A guy with a cane hobbled up and looked behind him and saw it looming behind him

“Hot damn!” he said, “I never had timing good like this before.”

And what I’m shocked at is that he said

Hot Damn

I never heard someone actually say that before

Out side of old books

And the sad part is

Within year or so

I’ll find somebody new

To mope about while I ride the bus

And I’ll think to myself

“Hot damn, nobody’s ever written a poem quite like this one before!”

So yeah

You too will be forgotten

Just as I am forgotten

And then this will be written

For another you

Jon
12-13-2009, 11:22 PM
First. I consider it an honor that an accomplished writer would allow me to read his work free of charge.

As to this poem; I LOVE " But I can’t seem to fit your eviction into my schedule"


One possible flaw:

" People need machines to turn them on but the machines can get off just find without flesh"

I suspect you meant "fine" rather than "find."

flaggwalkstheline
12-14-2009, 07:14 AM
yep fixed the typo
thanx
hey I'm glad 2 share my poetry w/ anybody who's willing to listen, poetry and listening are both nearly lost arts:couple:

flaggwalkstheline
12-16-2009, 09:35 PM
My intelligence is leaking out like my brain was incontinent with swiss cheese revelations

Shit man…
So there I was the biggest scorpion in the shark pit

The flashlight in my hand running out of lightbulb juice

Everybody in the whole town was watching with those little opera binoculars from their front porches by this time

I didn’t mind though, felt as natural as a bear eating a Pomeranian

Aunty-disaster she put on her freudian nightgown and ran out into the cigar smoke sunshine
Chasing that cheating mule of hers barefoot in the hardpan holding a frying pan

You shoulda seen it!

A tumbleweed tried to grab her ass so she dropped ashes from her roach clip on it and it skittered away

When you get far enough out in the wasted places

But not all the way to the next truncated reststop

It’s like whoever holds the crayon decided to just stop coloring the fields and skies

A psoriasis afflicted old billboard reads

“settin em up and knockin em down: A time honored American tradition since 1863, try it out: gun store at the next exit”

Aint that just the funniest gag ever?

Like one of them newspaper panels with marmaduke humping dagwood

Aw man I’d trade everything but my ego if I could just leave a mile wide trail of destruction through the hundred acre woods

All the stuffing’s gone outta my childhood friends and it’s stuck on the branches and on my hands

My hands, my hands
They don’t turn pages the way they used to but they still remember how to hold spoons

The storybooks I read when I was a kid all ended up on the burning pile eventually

The burning pile- the burning hemorrhoid

My ultimate procrastinated destination

Way out to the east of California those barbarians still put smiley faces and gold star stickers on their mother’s coffins

Can you believe that claudius?

I tell ya, kids today have no respect for honest butchery!

I’m shaking in my spurs at the thought of inheriting my old grandpa’s world

The old lawnmower showed me just where to push to make the dirt fly everywhere

Gimme another shot and I’ll tell you all about how I burned down a movie theater playing twilight

With the kids still inside of course, no half assed heroics for me no sir!

Ah, here comes the cavalry in assless chaps and sparkling cowboy hats best tip em well or they’ll never leave

Suddenly I smell perfume and I don’t know to whom It belongs to…

But it has an electric déjà vu to it

Just like when I bit my lip and spat it into the toilet

Floating there like a crimson jellyfish

I knew my mouth had bled here before

I’m finally burying my type-writer and licking my hatchet lips at the thought of blistering outta this femoral town next summer

The eastern edge of the Arizona desert has rocks that look like citric tombstones

I wonder what mummified martyrs are sleeping under them?

And for that matter WHO theyre sleeping with?!

Abe Lincoln has a milk mustache and is using the hole in his head as reverb for his banjo

Robert Oppenheimer shoulda been a folk singer

And don’t ya know Richard Nixon was a punk rocker?

I come from Alabama with a revolver on my knee

Cmon in the bottled water’s fine

So long as you can handle your sulfuric acid and the way you drink it shouldn’t be a problem

I shouldn’t say anything like that to your face, I’m sorry

Be a pal and turn around so I can say it behind your back

Everything gets pissed out sooner or later so sit down and drink up

I heard the kinda razor lollypop filth he said and to tell the truth I kinda liked it

Give me your tired huddled masses on a bed of flapjacks and bacon

I am one HUNGRY primate

Climate change is jingling in my sweaty pocket

And the hogs of war are howling for steak at the strip club

If I were an astronaut I’d take a permanent marker to the moon and write “for a good time call me at 1913-666”

Aw those aren’t the real numbers anyhow

What you thought I was gonna give you my home phone number huh?

I cant take any calls I’m too busy dialing strangers and breathing heavily into the phone

Pornography doesn’t do it for me anymore

(He says with tears of honest nostalgia in his bruised mango eyes)

Nope I get off on the guilt of knowing I bought pornography ha ha ha ha ha

As soon as the laughter stops

That’s when it starts to kick my ass and I just can’t handle the noise anymore

It’s the guilt

THE GUILT, Gilbert

It is chewing me apart like piranhas on the hunt for peanut butter and jellyfish sandwiches

And I don’t even remember what it is that I did to deserve feeling like this

I like it so much but I feel bad ‘cause I think I don’t even deserve my own self proclaimed martyrdom

And it aint just me all the dignity has spilled outta our tiny world like ink from a broken pen

26 kidneys just went on the black market

You can see em standing on the corner of Washington street and central avenue

Smeared with lipstick wearing garter belts around their interlobar renal arteries

Disgusting!

I never felt so sick in my life as when I saw all those cancer patients getting on top o’ that poor old woman

I used to play the saxophone when I was a boy but I melted it down for chrome noisy liquid

My dreams are shit and spitshined with cheap wine no matter how brightly I paint them

And not the kinda shit you can leave on someone’s doorstep

For um-


Shits and giggles

Fits and squiggles

Cmon you bastard of a swamp monster engine

Turn your slummy cranium west and start coughing for me

The words fail to come no matter how much I try to stimulate them

I’m changing the subject so my implied stupidity doesn’t get called in for interrogation

Hey did ya see the tits on that chicken, mm hmm makes me wanna just chop em off and make nuggets

Have you bought all you’re Christmas presents yet?

I know it’s July but hey it’s always good to get a leg up on the competition

Better yet
Amputate the morons before they can sharpen their righteous high noon saws first

Oh boy the new thing is to hang tiny fetuses from your tree howbout that?

What’ll they think of next?!

I think it’s only a matter of time before the carolers take come all ye faithful as a cue to have a big candycane orgy

Gimme another napalm facepalm martini and I’ll tell ya all about it

Jon
12-18-2009, 06:41 AM
" A psoriasis afflicted old billboard..."


Man, I just love your style!

no half assed heroics for you, no sir!

flaggwalkstheline
12-18-2009, 07:17 AM
mwa ha ha ha
I gave the most psychotic performance of that last night
yarg i wish i had video taped it:wtf::nana:

Jon
12-18-2009, 07:43 AM
I do too!


I'll bet it was scary and funny.



Locke (my son) really enjoyed the movie theater line!

flaggwalkstheline
12-27-2009, 09:20 PM
Fear
Once every generation

That’s what the old one’s who still remember speak of while looking upwards

Once every generation…
My bodhi tree withers without water and my legs are cramping something awful

I don’t think I have enough fear inside me to ever spoonfeed anyone a radioactive sermon
on the mount
It blooms within me, a vein blue flower

Like the white light circle on an old television turning off and closing in on itself

A dawn

Of thin, nourishing FEAR

Dripping from a spoon

Spit it all out

A handful of dust

Perhaps?

A vein-blue flower

Perhaps

There is a reptile in my head with one claw on the thermometer

Turning, turning

The other unwashed hand on the radio

A hundred familiar choruses all singing back and forth

Two eyes search two eyes search two eyes

I’ve heard this story before and so have you

It’s there inside you sunning on a rock

So have you and you and you

Your spots give you away and the other hunters know you are not of their brood

Turning

Have I started forgetting to count the days and ways?

Or the hours?

Or the tragedies?

The people and their dictionaries and censuses?

Or is it possible

They have forgotten to count me?

I watch them prance, skip, run

And eventually

Settle down triumphantly silenced at last

In cars, in bunkers, in stupors

Or on benches

Waiting for metal saviors after having forgotten how to use their legs

Two eyes search two eyes

Search

In this space of concrete and clouds

They compete to be the greyest and the coldest

Never quite the boldest

I stretch out catlike and suck my displaced lungs

Back inside

Waiting outside the door staring intently as the wood and metal

Bend to the shape of the crosslegged thinker

A voice outside says, “I believe in wars of resistance.”

Two eyes two eyes
Peripheral paradigm shift of nightlight consciousness

A fever, afraid

The true broken jaguar which needs no hollow words to describe it

Is only visible in a reflection of a reflection of a reflection of an echo

Two eyes search two eyes search two eyes

And find only the jutting hard edges of things arrogant and buried

You can meditate all night but you’ll never get it

Without my help you are rushing down a one way street with no destination and a failing machine

An empty potato chip bag on one of my feet is kicked off and just lies there

Emptied and salted

A fever

Afraid

These hills are losing their rolling awareness of who is lying on them pulsing with lowtide mumbles

For a tinfoil AHA! moment

You floated towards me in the arterial deep

A fever, afraid

All gleaming titan-orbit eyes and coral reef hair

I could not hear any sighs of relief or release from my drowned ears

But I could smell the saltwater crocodile tears on your breath

Frozen on my shoulder

Two eyes search two eyes search two eyes

The tunnels are not collapsing but we stomp claustrophobically through them as if they were

Falling ethereal pieces of tetanus treasure

The body to the soil

The tapestry to strings

A fever

An eye

Afraid

The earth and moon and dream

Into a scream

A Jaguar

The puzzle

To the wind

We are but birds on a temporary updraft over a toothless mineshaft

Cages waiting somewhere down below with discarded placebo gasmasks

The sacrifice will go as planned and the trumpets will weep

In nickel-plated terror

Someone is coming, I can hear his iron footsteps

An iceberg snapped like a brittle
thighbone off from somewhere far south

And it is traveling north churning the swimming pool like butter

With a marrowstrength promise to infect the warm places

The mosquitoes flee in bloodsucking panic

Potato chips crackle under my malaria teeth

A fever, afraid

A fever a fever afraid

There is a man on his way to see us and he’s not the one any of you expect

Two eyes search two eyes search two eyes

Spin three times and say your words of power in front of the mirror

When you stand on the edge

Your cities wheezing themselves apart

Cortez is coming from across the gulf

And his armor shines brighter than any of our sungods

Is anyone watching?

Or am I just greedily turning in abstract darkness while the clichés feed

Upon my flesh

Upon my flesh

A fever

The emperor takes off his clothes and realizes they make him what he is

Afraid

To the fever is fed the vision and to the vision is fed the body

Small fish

A fever

Big teeth

Afraid

Big fish

Swims through eyesockets

Small teeth

A reflection, an echo

Jaguar, jaguar what happened to your claws?

Blunted into well manicured baubles, they built great things once

Spit it all out

You still have your teeth and your now un-climbable pyramids

A fever

Cortez comes across the ocean once every generation

Afraid

They all climb under the blankets with me and take notes on my breathing and my drooling

Spit it all out

A sweaty raindrop shakes it’s liquid hips landing kerspam on a mardi-gras parade

The wall of ice looms and weaves it’s white carpet while I lick an icecream cone happily under an industrial shadow

Slowly and methodically packing away his clothes and a good shined pair of barely worn black shoes in an old suitcase

For the last time

A dam full of cracks and covered in spraypainted apocrypha prepares once more

To let go

flaggwalkstheline
02-07-2010, 11:11 AM
I think this is gonna be

One of those days

One of these days

Have you ever had one?

Mornings where you lie under cold blankets counting nosebleeds

And the amount of times the ceiling fan spins

Cosmic spiderwebs refuse to get off the merry-go-round

Moments where electricity arcs through the bodies of silenced children and they don’t even know it

Unlike us

Grown and unwounded

Bound with electrical tape on the highest hills

Hiss the whitest pills

Trim your possum fur coat frills

Moments where you pretend to relive your first love, sloppy and quick in the backseat

Fresh meat

You don’t remember

You wish you had that ember

Noons with no purpose but to stare at red sunlight

Glinting off of empty wineglasses on tables where no one is eating

Relish the untainted hotdog for it is your last

Eating the days

Where chimney smoke glurps from empty houses with the ashes of burned lovers

Hours when you had

The nubile voice of anubis

The flesh of the virus

Medium rare in a stove

Butcher it’s glass vials (seven, there are seven)

Divide it among the hungry

Feed the bearded doomsayers licorice

Feed me candy in the shining motel lobby

These are days

Where waking feels like sleeping

Dreams creeping across the sand

A dead cowboy holds a lantern and points the way

Every night the folksingers pray for new catastrophe to bump and grind their minds against

The red guitar coughs in my music-less arms

Nights when floating lighthouses crash blind into sand vacuumed shores

And engines dock in a void

Days of fire and grapes and orange soda soliloquies

Red buddah, dead bubba show me a new path

Stomping through old trees with as many rings as Jupiter

Hours of cloud socket realizations

You have polluted the waters of my all-soul

And I have done the same to you

We have only this one day

One day forever

To remember

flaggwalkstheline
02-07-2010, 11:13 AM
Because we are real
When I squeeze your hand in mine

And you squeeze back wordlessly

It’s like an affirmation

Of every everything pure, primal and good

Your touch is that of burning green afternoons spent lying on shady stones

And the taste of small and imperfect yet perfectly real apples

Plucked wormless from a bent tree in a gold field off the side of the interstate

So let the dreamless say what they will as they struggle to stay afloat in an ocean they deny

At the very least

We are real

So let us weave our fingers into a tapestry

While other people pave over their flowerbeds

Choking on the promise of endless sleep

At the very least

We are awakened

The liquids of our opened eyes flow in a river of brown and blue

And at night when sirens and jet engines rise like heatwaves off of former forests

And middleclass dogs pace freshly trimmed backyards howling for meat

I hold your memory like a supernova close to my breast

We kissed three times in the back seat

With each one a live wire frazzed on our lips

So let the machinery of heartbreak and the cities of faked want cough blood and soot toward their unreachable heavens

Our love is a geranium sprouting from junkyard dust

flaggwalkstheline
02-07-2010, 11:16 AM
Holden Caulfield is dead/ The last moments of my youth/ 1/28/10
Holden Caulfied’s alter ego died today

Ninety one years old

Eaten alive by unending teenage rebellion

When I left highschool

It felt oddly similar to the way Holden did it

I’d failed junior year twice

Wouldn’t do it anymore

Couldn’t

So the last day of school

Which, as usual, was a big party

Felt like a garish funeral to me

I would have lit out much earlier

Except for Sara

She was the first person I ever really loved

She was slightly younger than me

16 to my 17

Black hair, brown eyes, 5 feet tall

We spent a lot of lunchtimes

In eachother’s arms behind the dumpsters

Listening to punk rock on an old cassette player

Writing on eachother’s arms with bic pens

Occasionally swapping brief electric kisses

So

I stayed an extra 8 months

And on the last day

We sat on a bench saying nothing under a big oak tree

While other students and teachers lined up for burgers from a grill

We both knew

I was preparing to sever the gangrenous umbilical cord connecting me to childhood

And she still had a bit more to go

I asked her if she would stay happy, stay lovely

The bell rang and all the kids flew away on skateboards like birds heading south

I kissed her mouth one last time and walked off into the sunshine

Thinking of Holden hollering “So long assholes!” at his sleeping prep school

Alright

Not all of that is true

We weren’t in love

I mean

I was

She wasn’t

I never kissed her

Not once

We embraced a few times

But like Chekov’s soldier

I’m a crumby liar

A phony

I wanted to kiss her on that last day

But something kept me from doing so

I took the bus back to my mother’s house

And sobbed like the faker I am

That other way I told it is just the way I wish everything would have happened

My tragedies do not shine

They merely thud

And spill salt on lumpy white scars

And now Holden is dead

He would have understood

Why I keep writing about the ocean even though I’ve never seen it

So here I am

Hopefully you think of me

The next time

You stick your fist out the sunroof of the car your parents bought you and yell “Teenage wasteland forever!”

Rotchyer teeth out Amadeus!

I’m an unemployed community college student who fancies himself a poet

Holden in his straightjacket

Would have called me a faker

For going off into the big world like all the other cowards in love

And I have tried to make the leap tried with all my feeble powers of persuasion

I have only dropped and had enough time to hold up a sign like wiley coyote that says

Oh No!

Oh no indeed

I suppose I’ll grow out of these juvenile melodramatics someday

But in the meantime I’ll just shake my fist and swear at the successful and the sleeping

Jon
02-10-2010, 11:10 PM
"Why I keep writing about the ocean even though I’ve never seen it"


Good line.

I wish to declare this the best of your work that I have read. I red VERY few poems once. I have read a handful of poems more than 5 times. This work falls into that handful.

Thank you!

flaggwalkstheline
02-11-2010, 09:47 AM
heh nonfiction poems always pack a little extra wallop don't they?

Jon
02-14-2010, 08:59 PM
Aye, they do!

flaggwalkstheline
02-18-2010, 01:42 PM
Cannibalized Poem #15

The thirsty sea captain of whirligig beatles whips his knightly motherboard into a nein legged frenzy

Stencil a picture of a green eyed ape over the declarations underneath a sooty pidgeon-shit bridge

Fermented stigmata armada on the march

Or was it in june?

The time gets away from daydreaming fictitious lusts at nine in the morning gets boring

Either way

Their footsteps shake my eyebrows and rotted fruit thumps from bone fingered trees

Was it you Jennifer Of Arc?

Grinding thighbones together in search of a spark

Believe when I say I’m no lieutenant, no nomad, no whore, no hound dog

If I ever crash it will be silent and undramatic

No discovery of fire to be made by THIS neanderthal

My ship is sinking before I even push it out into the bay so don’t tell me we’re all sailors eventually

The taxidermied sharks swim about me spreading sleep and gum disease

Full on lightning bolt taste of battery acid lipstick in my mouth

A wave-goodbye crashing session illuminated by a stradivarius bonfire

The random violins yowl and throw themselves into a pile

My lesson I’m pressing like olive oil

On a chalkboard with a rusty sword

A tin can being kicked down the sidewalk

Because I can’t find a rock big enough to brain this thing with

Tell the band to hit it and tell the boys back home I still remember their games and their veins

I don’t blame them for the mess in my stygian bedroom

No rivers run eternally

Out of breath on the outskirts of a woozy metropolis

Climb the panty-strewn burial mound, milkshake in hand and try to dig an apology from the crabgrass

I don’t blame you for the fall of Rome even if you blame me for dragging down Babylon by the bootstraps

It’s all carbonated history now

Murky water swishing like mouthwash under a bridge

So why don’t you fill a suitcase with fool’s gold and come on home?

Ten thousand volts and 50 CC’s but not a bit more brainpower beyond what you got from a magazine in a doctors office

I know what this sickness is; it dribbles from my faceholes nonstop

The opera singers don’t like my baritone heckling

“Such a fickle child” she shakes her head sadly and tsks

In a few pine-scented hours when the sun is rising over the newly polished guillotines

They’ll lock him up for enjoying the communion amphetamine a bit too much

That 2nd place golden boy’s blood greases the police car’s motors

“Alright machine gun Hubert, we got you surrounded, you cmon out now

We’ll make a martyr outta you yet!”

The promise of chocolate calls out a slobbering horde of banktellers

Who have never left home but have walls covered in maps fingerprinted brown

No one wanted to hide under the stairs with me and now they’re all sick with reality

“Shhh stay quiet or they’ll hear us

Pull up the covers and lock the door

We’ll drain the fluid from the evening’s wounds”

It used to be easy to disappear in a puff of nicotine

Zip bam kadabra I was gone but not so much anymore

The words that used to be magick are mediocre catchphrases at best

Now I take a step and hit the floor without being ready at all

Where’s my horned viking virgin dunce cap?

I’m going off into the ice and it would be nice to keep my face on fire

My decapitated valentine slides her head on my shoulder and says “te amo”

I’m having an optical coptic migraine

Pass the champagne, charlemagne

This is the last time

(Shout it like it chokes you)

THE LAST TIME

I let you try and burn me at the stake

Turn me over I’m cooked on this side

Your sulfur solution halitosis is getting strong

I’m not strong enough to lift the boot off my polished back

Like a boulder in the way of a golf course

I just sit here with a hoarse throat scheming my way into obscurity

Take my purity; go on, it’s not doing me any good

Bury it deep

See if it grows into dogwood

The last time I chipped my teeth on a stone

Carved the message on my bones

I set off into the muddy hills with burned lungs and a knapsack full of clove cigarettes

Guilty pleasures manacled to my beer-battered kneecaps

Pulling like overeager dogs on leashes

Towards the greenest hills and greatest hits my blinded sockets have neither seen nor heard

Jon
02-19-2010, 08:34 AM
"I don’t blame them for the mess in my Stygian bedroom"




May I suggest you use a different interior decorator next time. One sans " Hell" or "Styx" in the name.






"Pass the champagne, charlemagne"


Perhaps you want a cap "c" on that name.


"My decapitated valentine slides her head on my shoulder and says “te amo”




YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Love it!

flaggwalkstheline
02-28-2010, 09:42 AM
Vamanos

A gun fires into the air at the starting line

But nobody moves an inch

The horses, the jockeys, the junkeys, the trenchcoat wearing icecream dealers, the scorched pianos

The squealers and the healers look on in sarcastic admiration

They hear the boom but they look at the empty stands and realize that only one gladiator gets to leave

But if the emperor’s thumbs get cut off who wins then?

Who wins when everybody wants to be hungry tommorow?

Alli es no mañana para los ganadors

The winners

They go, they move, they yarl down the tunnels because they know there is no tomorrow

Their assistants wait for the signal and start scribbling furiously

Los rios corre loco cerca aqui

Padre-time’s malodorous legendary engine revs up

The rivers run crazy around here

Is someone out there? I hear movement in the dream

A glass shoelace chainsaw howling invisible

Hasta los arboles de combatir son asustado

I can’t hear anything but tapdancing now that I’ve inhaled too much self-help immolation

Even the trees of war are afraid now

Spinning saliva bounces from an old man’s rainjacket

Mythological fact twisting my arm burning the farm

Looming over the electric shadow of a broken down hearse on some imaginary interstate

It’s my head that gets in the way of seeing infinity

Through these two mirrors I meant no harm

Step out the front door late enough and you’ll see there’s always a red light in the east

Entre los dos reflejars, yo previsto no daño

A gaudy carnival that the stomping fluorescent elephant wants to get off

Last time you were here among the petroleum sparrows

You held your sweetheart’s pillowy hand at the top of the ferris wheel

And felt their vertigo heartbeat that said

This is it, the highpoint, it’s all crashing from here on out kiddo

If that wave of seizure inducing trueness

Were to bring us darkly to our skinned knees again

The mechanic’s clownly laughter might thump to a sludgy crawl

But there is a towering glowering flowering bonfire

Between us now

The high horses huff the smoke of carriages, corsets and caskets

Heaped dull orange a mile tall

The wall sprouts from a seed of panic

Past where the groves taper off into swampland

Tittering flute players hop on broken toenails and warm their elbows

There is a solution outside of the book

Outside of the choice between the green and the concrete

Be a locomotive like me after all

Crash me off the iron centipede tracks with a shout that tastes like grapes

Your voice steams like february daylight

Bienvenido al mundo tan gigantesco y feo

Blooming across the cardboard desert, primitive and mean

Welcome to the big and ugly world

Cockroaches come out in the rainy season to fill their bongs and lungs

Moving across the sand and prosthetic legs, abandoned

They know what to do when you spill saltwater on them

And the old fellow sleeps easy and grunts careful not to roll over on his bedsores

Bearded and drooly, forgetful clouds

The opposite of our scrubbed-nerveless faces

We’ll sneak past his brobdingnagian hightops

With a plan to hammerbomb his bedroom’s-worth of grandfather clocks

Feeling blind for a door in a crippled kitchen

I run my glimmering hand along the bottom of the barrel and feel the splintery sweetness of old popsicle sticks

It’s a nation of inertia and insomnia so movement even inside a shriek is wanted

Something moves in the murk and we honestly don’t see it, don’t feel it, don’t smell it, till we are it

We used to be honest and we used to be true

With hands more real than soil holding illuminati-free pitchforks

But the edges we pitched our tents on moved away
And pitched us onto flatland rather than over them into the pit we were flirting with

Flatland with nothing but wind and cigarettes to chase after under the arms of windmills and watches

Ticking and ready to blow this whole place is gonna go, push a wooden carousel to the atmosphere

There’s a red light in the east and the referee waves his prison flag and yells go go go

Go, the tattooed hands on my sweatless back coax

Go, the disembodied genitals bubbling beneath the suburbs urge

A fine set of two letters carved out of pure desire, these are our gifts to you

Go, the Stonehenge rocketship builders adam bomb ghost grins

And as I look down into the trees and see where the sunshine stops

I just want some form of movement even if it’s only the type that happens without a seatbelt

When you return home more redfaced than when you left, what then?

you imitation leather Nazarene

What then? Once the power none of us question goes out and you’re left with matches?

If something moves and it’s not quite clear what, I might hesitate briefly

But like a sheep in a blender, I’ll reach for it

I’ll reach for it like a doughnut-baited beartrap

I’ll hold up a bandaged stump and lick the sugar of my in-shock lips

And if anyone asks I’ll say through a mouth full of sweet

I regret nothing except that I regret nothing

A person eating a doughnut never regrets

Jon
03-01-2010, 07:15 PM
I am honored time and again to read your works.

"I run my glimmering hand along the bottom of the barrel and feel the splintery sweetness of old popsicle sticks"


I thought such phrases existed only in my head. uttered from self, to self in a moment of solitude. It's like I am there!

flaggwalkstheline
03-08-2010, 11:34 AM
What I have

I have a thunderstorm whose batteries just gave their last buzz
And I have a pair of navy-blue underwear with a hole on in the front
Like so many other magicks gathering dust on a shelf
They have stopped doing their menial tasks but I hold onto them
Anyway
The keepsakes pile up under my bed and eventually evict the boogeymen
I have the shame over a thousand dreadful deeds I haven’t committed yet
I have a pornographic film projecting in my head nonstop like a sweaty carnival
I have cardboard pieces to a puzzle I’ll never put together

So tell me
Is it time to throw the whole invasive operation away?
The metal arms on this clock have almost stopped clicking
I have a pocket full of earthquakes dropping off into places as foreign as atlantis or shangri-la

I have a shriek that hasn’t started yet
But when it does
Like an unfueled steam engine fable unfolded
It will smash the wallpaper with nonexistent fists and knock paper airplanes out of the sky

I have a field watered green by a thousand years of nonstop genocide
I have a plant whose petals I unfolded to find nothing special inside
Nothing special
These words echo off the walls of my movie theater like thrice lobotomized symphonies

I’ve got a deep breath that I have put off taking until I see ripened banana blotches in my vision


I've got a shiny new heartbreak that can go from 666 to zero in 10 seconds flattened
And I'll parade around grinning psychopathic and toughguyish
Like a child with two black eyes stomping through the rusty playground
Other unblemished worshippers of the true gash
Ooo and aw from their muddy hovels
And imagine throwing their bulky flesh
Like tinfoil candy wrappers into the dumpster with wasps and flies and drippy milk cartons
And you and me and me and you will go hand in hand on the scenic route
We will go
Leaping red hot medium-rare and furious
Into the volcano of my hollowed out melodramatic sickness

flaggwalkstheline
03-08-2010, 11:38 AM
So I think I’ve finally gone and done it now

I watched from the curb bouncing a baseball in my left hand

As the big men with their mermaid tattoos pack up all the uneaten birthday cakes in black trashbags

And take them away where no one could eat them

I wonder if there’s a tropical island somewhere being ruined because all the uneaten birthday cakes

With their melted wax and smudged happys are dumped unceremoniously SPLATT from planes into palm trees


The Jumper cables clank to the ground

“I’ve finally done it now!”

He says smiling and putting down the red paintbrush while the monster struggles on a reflective table vainly


This is the last moment where I can just sit here helplessly crosslegged

Meditation in search of some hidden cosmic vibration

While the paperwork for my bent smiles’ parking permit is filled out by someone else

Even rolling around in my own filth has lost it’s taboo luster by now

The ink stains all the hands but my own cleaned fingers

My lack of experiential filth and my lack of real meat reality to chew on

I scratch them onto wooden tables at bars where people full of true destruction try to drown

Afraid that anyone of them my single me out for lacking the real fury



At night I hear the humpback whales blowing their ram horns

But I wake up in the dirt still sleeping in a pile with the coyotes

These things are what I talk about manically nonstop shackled to my gnawed funnybone

The words sprout from my mouth like weeds in the cracks on a green stone tennis court

The questions jut out of my arms like cactus spine syringes

With only half of the sharp thing visible it’s just a quest


“Question:

If money and sex are the powers keeping most men strong

Then why do I feel like I could chop down a mountain with my words alone

when I have had so little of either lately?

Answer:

Because those are the big drugs

The granddaddy opiates

And if one has not opened the door for them more than a little crack then

They could not possibly be rampaging in the bloodstream now could they?”

He adjust his bowtie and sits back down behind his briefcase

“No further questions your honor, the suspect clearly has delusions of mediocrity”


So in my ignorance of all important truths I am of an iron mind

Steel apologizing for no reason to the chicken neck being lopped off

I’m sorry if my tetanus bootspurs ever cut you

I never wanted anyone to bleed their secrets onto my tastebuds

I hold onto this masochistic eucharistic sadness

If only to keep the awful silence out of my eyelashes

Off of my drugless but somehow junkielike hollow chest

I tap graffiti strewn bathroom stall walls with my chewed to the cuticle fingertips

Listening to the pages in a book flipping like doves wings but making no cooing noises


“I always felt sorry for the pigeons when I gave them bread

And they didn’t even know the difference between wonderbread and good jewish rye

But I gotta keep the moments from the inbetween from getting to me like fresh squeezed antifreeze”

He closes his trenchcoat and strides off taking big busy steps leaving shitty bootmarks on the jury’s faces


I could have gone for it today, you know

I saw the headlights and the fog, the light in the refrigerator

I saw a fire extinguisher in a locked cabinet

Saw the way the sidewalk curved away off into some fake oblivion

Saw the way the nettles try to creep up between the slabs

I could have done it today

I could have gone for it

When I met that street performer with the guitar

And sang with him in front of a condemned deli

About hollis brown who lived on the outskirts of town

While he (aaron his name was aaron) played 2 haunted chords over and over on the strings

I could have followed that path until it went off into the sand

And slept on the rocks and the cacti

Lived momentarily in the wind like a dried leaf skittering insectile dysfunction


“Infected the whole time”, the morticians speak softly and hold their black derby hats to their shaved chests


Solemnly I swear I didn’t build the atomic typewriter

It just landed groaning and hot on my front lawn one day and I didn’t even listen to it when it told me to touch it

I didn’t listen even when the doctors plotted against me outside the door while my mother nodded in approval

I didn’t listen when they screamed STOP like it was a cork to be thrown down my gullet

And all the ketchup bottles were shattered on the bathroom floor

I could have gone for it, you know

I could have gotten moving today

Packed up my can openers and letter openers and bottle openers and left the refrigerator lonley

I could have sped off into the dusk as if it was waiting for me

Died in the silence and woken up somewhere noisier than here

But no

The tourists fuck eachother sensible on beds of nails and the shreds of the last groups who were here last night

Changed by maids nightly used to lowering themselves on winches and wenches over the shark tank


“The clouds are quiet today, I wish you would say something

Have you noticed the way the clouds don’t worry about touching each other?

When I float off I want to stay floating and never rain back down on my old parade”


He says, she says in a ping pong game between paraplegics in glued to the floor wheelchairs

“Not today, not tonight, not ever Copernicus, I’m tired and have a headache so go discover the heavens yourself”

She rolls over and goes to sleep and the dog creeps up to her very late

And staringly he imagines eating her face instead of being a good boy

Not tonight not tonight not tonight the record skips waiting for bobby jean to surrender

Tonight the paper or plastic monster stays asleep is still chained to his addictions

Tonight is for eating rotten apples and wiping the sweat from my piggy forehead like condensation on a beer glass

But when summer comes

(Take a deep breath and try to feel the first sparks of spring on your cheeks)

I’ll follow that path into wordlessness and a green lie

When summer finally comes

Jon
03-09-2010, 10:16 AM
“No further questions your honor, the suspect clearly has delusions of mediocrity”


Love it!

flaggwalkstheline
03-19-2010, 06:17 PM
What happened to Wednesday

cowritten with and dedicated to Sophia


Whatever happened to Wednesday?

Tuesday came and went and came again

While I sat in the social services office wanting foodstamps to boil to a fine soufflé

And when I came out of the bureaucracies’ gaping heated orifice

Thursday had its gloved hands around my tubular neck

Somehow Wednesday got left biblically behind

The things I did flash by in a blur of vaseline and yellow rubber raincoats

Left behind like the lingering taste of lemon rinds

I darned my socks and dammed the river; damn the luck the fence needs mending

What did we do on a Wednesday afternoon?

Besides apparently mow down a platoon of wallet wielding platypuses with my psychedelic socket wrench

And hurl licorice lust-balls at the anti-abortion grannies wearing squealing kid-skin boots

I locked Wednesday afternoon up in a pit in the basement

Planted the germ under the skin but didn’t eat the bubonic fruit

Tectonic electronic monophonic platonic eyeliner airliner

I built a monument to a sneeze but knocked it over in a yawning rage

The seizure was not fortuitous the way you predicted it would be

These are the blueprints to the Wednesday’s destruction and an icecream man’s abduction before he tinkled outta fudge junction

I tried to write THE SPARK IS NOT WITHIN ME on my chickenthin arm in red ink

But the pen ran dry so not it says THE SPARK IS NOT

The spark is not here

Search under the beds I know they have it

One of has it and the other will stomp and strangle to get it

Cassiopeia thou art a rake and a snowblower but you wont turn on for the likes of me

Turn on the TV quick!

I think they’re preparing to raid the beekeepers, this war on bugs has gone too far

Better flush the wasps

Cupcake-Sam waffles between cyanide truffles and a muffled fluorescent milkshake

Shake shake your crystal ass crack and build a monument to it in the drainpipes

Suck the colonoscopic gunpowder through a bendy straw

Arsenic is a rich man’s beverage

We gotta get outta this place

Our cave doesn’t even have cable since I jammed the wire in my fingernails

Gotta get out from the middle of the caramel intersection where the former abortion doctors now perform backalley circumcisions

Wait for me when the stop signs stop braining your resurrected cranium

Wait for the stool sample pigeon cruise ship to annihilate the ashtray factory

Spewing cleanly microwaved sea monkey splooge into Mr M.R. Scrooges wide open receiver feathers

Nuke the leftovers in the trashcan anyway

They’ll be munched by the butcher’s cold fingered starved slaughter daughter

She yodels metallic catcall meatball sandwich requests over the orchestra’s stradivarian guillotines

Give that wench a yank and bring mine saxophone there is a battle to be won

The ceiling fan improved improvised decapitation and the scarf never left his neck

The song still on his onion piano weasel basted teething rattle

Wasted the zeusian meth on carnivorously unworthy swarthy alarmclock tobacco chewers

Wednesday afterhours up and spouted a mouthful of dental guitar picks

Growling torturous nursery rime dictionary inflammation as the flamingo pinkos march fro equal shrimp

Cocktail sauce was crossed off the menu at the restauraunt for being a dirty word

My bones may be noisy by no choice of mine but I bet the gambler’s decency association will lynch my fingerlicking toes for that one too

Pass the tire snake my square machine lungs have gone flat

Either that or pass the sewage flask I can’t breath under this snow owl ski mask

Cupcake wont stop his waffling

And I can’t even add the hypodermicly thetical numbers together anymore

Mathematic automatic uzi fluzi with just a hint of truth

Hide the silver-werewolves there are skinner on the loose

I snored and snorted through the grand opera where the Vikings chant in orange life vests
Tvinkle tvinkle leetle shtarr

Maaan the poop-deck, the wizard’s wounds ooze okra

The neighborhood watch is all wound but they forgot to throw daylight savings time into the blender

So 24 siddown you laughtrack commy years later a Wednesday’s face appears on the full lard milk carton

Staring pugsley full on in the face like his first filthy magazine

And uncle #2 (the one named infestation) drops his roach spray in horror between the floorboards

And all the civilized vermin at their breakfast tables die like dinosaurs zonked out on smut and grass

Passing out on the waffle iron gets one the most interesting tan you really should try it

Sinews burst from their ballet dancer buttocks in the turnip pasture

I’ll sit here in the social services office drinking heated milk silkworm tequila mesh panty firehose from a juiced boxer’s scabs

Flexing overpressured anachronistic submarine triceps

At least when I went into the valley of scowling teddybears I wore my bonespur bicycle helmet

This mindgame is extinct from it’s own leatherblood donations to the boiled horse railway stations

Reanimating zombie raggedy ann dolls for the lightbulb swallowing rigid worshippers preparing a toystore orgie

Wild wildebeatniks wipe their dentures on my handcuffed shirtlinks and decline hotdog teaparty invitations

Caressing carebear infested landmines clandestine in plots of redvine handholding

With intentions to distribute snuff-films and wookie yaoie to the old folks home

I’ll flex my favorite finger at em for stripping the atom bomb of it’s ferocious integrity

The space age came and went and came again and I missed it every time but at least I had fun here on earth

Here on earth, me and my muse

And you my reluctant muse

The spark may not be within my plagiaristic silverfilled little chest cavities

But the spark is yours thru and thorough it crackles behind your sunglasses

I promise

The next Wednesday I’m with you

I won’t be a coward

I’ll hold your hand and giggle without fear of abominable repercussions

I promise

Jon
03-19-2010, 09:57 PM
"Passing out on the waffle iron gets one the most interesting tan you really should try it"

:clap::rofl::lol:

flaggwalkstheline
03-22-2010, 09:13 PM
Orpheus looks west (fragment of a larger narrative)
Following a white bird which moves lightning-thrush through the dried out bushes
He can hear the water gurgling through deep green trees
He contemplates that if there is a stream here, and if it is clean
Then perhaps he can wash the ashes from his hands at last
Illuminated by a campfire orange early evening
They come earlier and earlier around this time
Half of a marble-head statue poking out of the mud stares back at him pupil-less and accusatory
The splinters rattle in the garbage bag he hoists over his shoulder
Crickets rub their legs together to scratch out a simple tune
And he remembers the music which drew out the tears of tyrants and eager youth equally
He’s been here before, hours away from the descent

And off sightless in the east hungry motors are whirling hound-doggish and loud
Orpheus turns his fightless eyes
To the oxidized treasures of the west this time

Jon
03-28-2010, 12:10 AM
This one is crying out for prose.

flaggwalkstheline
03-28-2010, 02:44 PM
hmmm:idea::orely:

Jon
03-28-2010, 07:10 PM
Just a suggestion. I write little prose but it usually starts out a poem.

flaggwalkstheline
03-28-2010, 07:14 PM
yeah
I'll consider that suggestion most intently:thumbsup:

I find that I can do a semi narrative within a poem but whenever I try to start something in prose form it ends up turning into poetry, I have a stack of unfinished short stories that all mutated into fine poems:cyclops:

Jon
03-28-2010, 07:54 PM
It has happened to me on a few occasions.

http://allpoetry.com/story/269968

flaggwalkstheline
04-06-2010, 04:37 AM
Willing to wait

I don’t remember
Promising that I’d wait here forever
But here I’ve been
I know that the grass was more vibrant before
But look over there!
That stump with the scorch marks used to be the tree
That we reclined beneath
With curious hands yet untainted we explored eachothers’ crimson sunburns
Softly, I have waited so long
The grass under where I lay turned yellow
I sat cross-legged in the middle with my eyes closed
While cities rose and dropped in concrete sunsets
And now the wild reclaims the civilized
For a while I waited
Wanting to set out on those adventures that we promised we’d have
But I didn’t promise that I would wait forever
I think it’s time I tiptoed out through the field of other patient dreamers
I won’t look for you sitting blissfully among them
There was always too much fire in your fingertips
So I’ll leave this note under a split cinderblock
On the off chance you want to fulfill your end of our sleepy bargain
In case you come striding over the burial mounds to find me
I’ll be somewhere where my eyes stay open all night and day
Restless and trying to keep moving before the scent of poppies overtakes me
But still waiting

flaggwalkstheline
04-06-2010, 11:11 AM
I have just finished creating the biggest, baddest poem that I have ever written, it is a monster that grew to 11 pages and I had to stop myself from feeding it more because poems have a habit of growing exponentially:scared::evil:


Guzzling ghostly lust with the three little pigs on a DNA spiral staircase

Part 1
Murmurar

I wouldn’t trust THAT GUY

Oh no not him

His eyes are faded and blue as worn comfortable jeans

He probably bought them preworn from old navy


Ragged word balloons above a cartoon character’s head

Blue shroud birthday coffin, don’t speak it’s name out loud

My fingers hurt but I shove onward

Forth flashed the perverted proverbial raincoat of Robert E Lee

Alright soldier, I want you to push it till it squeals and see if it feels the strained gears chainsmoking

Drop the barrel of sui-psyche-inedible monkey fun bombardiers

Into the angelic algae fishtank panzer

Swallow for the camera fishy, your paycheck’s coming


Something stinks about the whole situation and I’m gonna get to the bottom of it

Bring me my shovel squire, there is a gravedigger’s duel to be fought


What IS that tantalizing odor?

That’s just my gangrene, purely aesthetic I assure you

My cologne is made from the finest rattlesnake groin

Impressed? I would be too ha ha

Give me a pat on the head to speed me on the way to chthonic metropolises


Those tall buildings just INVITE leapers

Lepers looking to escape the electric cities’ raised eyebrows

Oops there goes my leg, get me a needle and thread wouldya?


Tee hee my c-cup amadeus ex machina

Thou art lovelier than the HURKS spouted from repeated toe stubbing

On the tower

Glowering at thin ankled reptilian windowcleaners

Walkways paved in the blood of slutty roses posing wrinkly and thorned


My glass eye fell out and was scooped up by a band of popsicle bees

Bumblebee mumbleflea strangle me with licorice

(Dear diary: April 20th, hungrier than normal hmmm)

My gadfly garden of delights is ripe with unbathed distraction

There’s no nutrition but nibble on a green chunk to maybe grow big and strong and mean

I hope it will grow into a tree inside my cannibal salted wound cat-gut

So eat me drink me spit me shit me OUT

Hunting the rhinovirus dilated iris takes a tiny shotgun

Pirated tricycles are spinning on the sidewalk


Thrice I rapped on the door with my tin gauntlet greased

But nobody opened up

Emotionally or otherwise

The HIlarious detachment remains


Again, I found your armor clogging the bathtub

Now some people argue

In between sips from big foamy milkshakes big frozen silver cups

That rust equals sexiness, and I partly agree

Though I get more of a plutonium hard-on from the joy of burning

It was a pleasure to burn

Ray Bradbury said that right?

I haaaate looking like a fool in front of the chiumps

Bad enough they beat me at clue

But their victory dance consists of candlesticks and sodo-

Oh my, Ha ha guys


Chiump: any of a species of blue eyed primates who can’t type

I wear the pin of low society

Metal through skin and bone

The waiter opens his wounds nightly and says

Very gooood sir


I taught you well my rotund nemesis

How to play chicken with a boeing jet

Boooooring

Ahem


NEWSFLASH

En mi cabeza azul

Lorca es el christo verdad

And I try to picture lush andalucian forests as separate from his words

But they stick together

With every AY! I recall his retroactive martyrdom

His death

We poets

We like death

It’s inevitable and vague enough to describe anything

Death and love and time

Tiempo, muerte, amor

They are to me

Interchangeable

Yet sometime I am sure they are all lies

Perhaps somewhere

Poets and tyrants walk hand in hand (not mano a mano) through trashless forests laughing

Knowing as they drink nectar and rain

That above and below them
The pens of bureaucrats and wordsmiths still snake and clank like notched swords

Para mi, Lorca es el Christo Verdad

NOW BACK TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING



Part 2
Tiempo


Will that be choking or non choking?

Wrap your butterfly arms around me and find out

Find out and see

The not yet knighted killer of the one armed abortionist

Is getting life in prison and a lifetime movie made about his tribulations


And the houndfaced lady in my community college writing course

Explains why she supports abstinence only sex education

It’s because of her son she says

It’s every mother’s dream for her son to remain abstinent she says

She then adds

He’s 24 years old

But I digress, digest, infest


Time to get down to business

No more clowning

This is the last moment before the clowns crawl back into the cotton candy sewers

And the final clock’s pacemaker

Frowning felix on the kitchen wall

Odd Vibes emanate tonight from every reflective surface

April fools day is almost here

Quince minutos hasta impacto


If I convince myself that SOMEONE is standing in the doorway

Will that SOMEONE be there again?

I am

Saran wrapped in ethereal contraband diction

High and coughing eagle pieces in the aerie

Scabby chuckles peel watery from my bucktoothed mugshot

Hold on a second

I just saw LA RATA looking at me serenely as if he expected dinner

Ungrateful pigtail, after all the predators I’ve whacked off for him


The farmer and his son stand on the edge of a crater where their house used to be

The crops aint comin in good this year pa

Whatchya reckon we do?


Weeeeell I think it would be prudent to stomp spit sputter and curse

To show those radish roots who the boss is



Lick the salt from your earth’s wounds and see if it sobs graciously in loserdom

Every year I tell myself that I’ll grow better, taller and more true this time

But I don’t

I just get a bit more melodramatic

Keep that civilized world away from me

It’s croaking by the bucketful

Melo doctor asthmatix mechanicleavage claims vengeance


Part 3
Amor


If we were both robots

We would be free to love like humans

And ironically might not want to anymore

I am willing to wait with the patience of a zen android under the bed for as long it takes

For you to change your mind

Wait and see

Be a robot with me

The thing is, I expect nothing

So everything is a surprise

I told you I’d sell a kidney if it meant I had a chance to so much as kiss you venus-crocodile manikin of my saltwater fantasy island sweepstakes

You and me are so sad together with our foreign scales gleaming in denial

But it’s a little better than before in that place where the water ran wild


Uh oh I think my Agamemnon-mask fell off

There appears to be wind on my pockmarks


The question remains like the last good tooth in swampy gums

Can I lift this sexy swift sword in time?

Or will I be crushed by the weight of our congruent hysterias?

I won’t sign the paperwork or come out of the cave even though the war’s over

I know the whole glory and honor façade ended ages ago but the only white flag I have is my underwear

And I’m just too modest to surrender

Somewhere they go together to shores unknown

Pero, en mi cabeza

It is still us and them

Me and you, through and through

I’ll wait here on the traintracks to be run down

Even though the jack of clubs up my sleeve is that the trains don’t run on time or ever anymore

I still don’t trust anyone with a smiley faced tie and a willingness to cooperate

All the good dog-fearing symbols have been stolen by the feline conspiracy

Choice evaporated

Scotty gave me twenty dollars for a poem and now I feel like a whore

Five minutes to april fools day

I realized the exhibitionist once and future porn stars

Are the same

Square jawed boys

And hinge jawed girls

Who took glee in stealing my captain planet lunch box

Way back in the backslapping hours of dawning comprehension

PLEASE REMAIN CALM AND GET IN THE LIFEBOATS IN AN ORDERLY FASHION


Part 4
Muerto


Jet fuel barbeque gives me rockety indigestion

But there’s always somebody wanting to wage war

If not on people then it’ll be on whales or “killer” bees

I’ll wager ten cans of decade old beans

On the machine winning by a total knockout

And that perhaps you weren’t always such a dorsal fin bobby pin dug in so deeply


I tried to tell the old man

That his green gods don’t exist

But the chiump just yanked a 20 from his wallet

And hopped around with all the conviction of an evangelical sasquatch

I don’t want to slash and burn the sunflowers

Even if they might be THE ENEMY

I am almost

Castrati Casablanca

The illuminated cynic electrocuted silly

The yes men swan dive from windows over the loss of imaginary numbers

So I gather the courage in dust particles, one piece at a time

Just to ask a question

Would you tie an ink ribbon in your gingivitis hair?

I need to remember where to find you

Among the shiny new ruins just baked yesterday

I’m hauling the metal corpse of a typewriter everywhere I go

With the intent of leaving it like an abandoned baby on your doorstep in a basket of boiled eggs


2 minutes to april fools day

I bet they don’t say

To next year in Israel

In Israel

Dammit my mask fell off

Nobody bat an eyelash

I’m almost real without it


Para mi, Lorca es el Christo verdad


We each get one spindly gleaming salivated moment

It will be waiting on top of a mountain of parking tickets and empty beercans

We have a choice to either bottle it or eat it now

I watched yesterday change it’s clothes and become

The fleeing stream dwindling to a puddle far below the initial whoosh

Now

Oh judges of the eternal nyuck nyuck

Santa Claus, Superman and Oppenheimer

Knock knock

Whose there?

April fools motherfucker

I’m the flower of Kali with a multiarmed bone friendship bracelet made JUST FOR YOU

Wear my sigil as a symbol of unraveling

In the later stages of her oracular degeneration

Cassandra spat marshmallow breakfast cereal

Instead of those old black magic harlotry charlatan tea leaves

I come to burn your house down with electric ineptitude


Ok stop right there it’s obvious you have no idea what your doing

It was interesting while it lasted but at some point

The middle-aged corazon de la ciudad

Grew and grew (my, how big you’ve gotten) rotten and only kept beating it’s snaredrum as a survival instinct

All in all padawan

I’d give it a 7.5

See, I wrote in marker on this whiteboard so that means it matters

Kiddo, your performance lacked any REAL creativity

So listen to this Beyonce CD nonstop for three weeks and come back when you’ve learned something

In fact this whole audition has been one giant circle jerk and I’m not having it anymore

(Mostly because I’m spent but there’s no need to state the obvious)

Go panhandle in the parking lot ya bum or I’ll thump ya good


THUMP the surfboard buckles

THUMP go the gambler’s knuckles

THUMP the clockwork heartbeat fresh meat for the itchy social workers

THUMP the trickster’s scheme jettisons party-hat expectations

And a thudless sky fell in on me like it was carved of iridescent music

And I opened my mouth baby birdish and drank deeply

Deep as the low angry yawn of rivers dammed

Trying to wake up from muddy comas

And flop murkily towards the nearest trainwreck competition

THUMP THUMP THUMP

Yo comero las fruitas de los sueños pero tengo hambre para más

Jon
04-09-2010, 10:10 PM
I'll have a look when I am better in a couple of days.

Jon
04-10-2010, 11:53 PM
"Again, I found your armor clogging the bathtub"


You re an image monster, my friend!

flaggwalkstheline
04-22-2010, 09:03 AM
4 clanks (an origami poem)

1
You have such a citric chuckle
Smoke fingers twirl
Machinery of sky
Intimidates silver and exquisite doubt
Clank! Clouds blank memory spark
Wheels turn glass eyelashes
Tear pages from a gilded book
2
Smoke machinery intimidates clank! Wheels
Fingers of silver clouds turn
You twirl sky and blank glass
Have exquisite doubt, memory-spark eyelashes tear
Such a citric chuckle, pages from a gilded book
3
Smoke fingers, you have such
Machinery of twirl, exquisite citric
Intimidates silver sky, doubt chuckle
Wheels turn blank clank! spark
Glass eyelashes tear from a gilded book
4
Clank! Smoke machinery intimidates glass wheels
Fingers of silver clouds turn eyelashes
You twirl skies and pages
Doubting the spark of gilded memory
Tear an exquisite chuckle from a blank book

flaggwalkstheline
05-04-2010, 02:28 PM
Quickly now
I am caught quick now, as if a speck of dust riding unsure on a rubberband midsnap
Were to stop itself and wonder why prior to being overtaken by the eek
In the eyeballed force of momentum, there is an inertia of suspicion?
I’ve been following following following my own magnifying glass anthill inferno footsteps
The first bite into a ripened mango is deeper and brighter than the next
Stop and feel the spin, oblivious beneath your hand
Hopping full throttle click through pure neon waterbottle forests
Over felled logs and cairns built to try and please jealous dope-peddling gods
Yours may be vengeful but mine is green and cares not for railroad spikes
The old fury bearded oaks form archways into chlorophyllic realms of nectar
Still I burn giddy and those behind me bellow and those ahead of me laugh crash
Drifting tangle through the screamless clouding smokestack ocean amplification of space
We should become as one jetfire apparatus gleaming with the sound of unplucked thighs and harps
Threading vomitorious chunks of nebulae through hypodermic spools
But your roaring hands, they were here with me through most of these floods working the loom
Floating impossible twitch the generator smells of ozone and carbohydrates
Suddenly they all AHAAA! into one another
This one is red and mean and this one’s lip quivers with soured kindness
In this one I dive with patient seaturtles down among the choir
It tingles in the back of my evolved spinal organum
Drink me like eager wine when the clock turns three
When we were smiling reptiles, we remembered and decided to forget
And now want the popped bubble back shining translucent lucid
I turn mad and piggy on the pollinated wheels of my own sneezed desire
Possibly holy crack of the baseball-bat echoes down a windowless hallway
And a dandelion glows growing starry between my crunchy lightning fingers

flaggwalkstheline
05-29-2010, 12:00 PM
High noon in the temple of the dog

The cave dwellers in my skull

Are crayoning the walls, flags at half mast

And are stagnant, following the speedlimit

Staying in the lines

A dumpster with a dead dog’s head

Hanging a german shepherd tongue over the side

Among the teacups, ashtrays and stale muffins

A wet kiss among the marigolds and chewed chicken bones

Diving into a green swimming pool behind an abandoned home

Rain gutter groaning gushy

Paint chip steel rooster turning

Climbing out in filthy blue jeans

A narcoleptic tattletale with open palms water stain

One of his eyes was so much bluer than the other

So much so much all the zap had gone out

As if it had stolen its partner’s light

Hidden it deep below cracks in the rainless road

The sleeping sickness transmitted by dust devils forbidden

Vision incision stitch, we all forget eventually

Flames on the riverside rivers on the fireside extinguish surgery

Hieroglyph ember of remembrance

Or some semblance of citric bite

Squeeze peach juice, don’t

Exhaust sticky sigh, forget

Metal chevy rusting in a pit, my friend

There are deserts beyond this one

Where I can grit my crooked teeth

Desiring to be lost mystical in the sand

Stagnant, amphibious and ambidextrous

Hexed, undersexed, deloused, overfed

Hyper-want incinerate confidence

Poking ribbon rib bones barbecue

Silver tongue lash fluorescent odor

Lush of sap popping broken tree limb

Thank the elegant snarl

For a broken bird’s nest

Eggy crest of a wave

Outfoxed airplane swollen vertigo

Go north into the ice go north permafrost axehandle

Overcomplicated snowshoe mechanism

Movie theater seat fishing, where is it?

Projecting shame tooth twist tie knot

No footprints scribble concrete smoky trashcan

YEEHAW! Dance circular around the lunatic boombox

In the skins of your predators

The flayed carpet of featherless curiosity

Water fountain dry mouth trickster swallow

Not theoretical anymore

You all went cowardly through the gleam

Beaten by Orion’s belt I waited outside the temple of the dog

Occasionally lifting my leg on the saintly marble

We have been here before, paperweights for picnic blankets

Drooling into a wishless fountain of coins

Antarctic diplomas rendered useless

I spit cavities, fillings and stalagmites at you who went through the painted door

I stayed, bathed in a corduroy swish

Threw my top-hat onto the dewy grass

Smoked out of salad bowls

We dressed in papercuts, carbon

Shredded documents gleefully heated

These things I piled into rubble lungs

And baked into a pie

Blackbird and ground beef zero

Circular, his beergut spills on the table

Planetlike and sebaceous

The accountant’s sofas are stuffed with the fur of taxidermized scientists

Galileo blinded by the big picture

Telescopes fear no paradise

Pointing up even as their makers clutch their eyes whimpering

Time evolves depending on velocity simmering on an electric stove

Einstein prove right by a fat man’s indigestion

The planet spins vomit vomit vomit

Desires sin as defined by its own judgment

Deep algae bubbles

Holding my nose and hoping

Calculate reason calculate a sickness calculate a cure a trap and a lure

If I only had the hands for it

(Remember want does not beget form)

I would construct for you

Such a machine dream of the frozen yogurt dictator

Towering and gorgeous flicker

A shadow spilling across

Where rocks used to make it were yanked from take wallpaper whipcrack flight

Out here in the junkyard with the stonehenged refrigerators

There are no true vegetarians

I am no hunter because the hunter cannot

Put his arrows down on the river-bank safety deposit box

And say no more, speak no symbol crash

Ever polluted, he would starve

Bump no shoulders, crack no boulders

Fry no omelet, he dares not

Rusting in a cornfield

I only have one good dare left in my shirt pocker

Tumbleweed sleep-sickness snowflake exhale

On these walls reptilian snap signal current

I scritch a future with no walls, no hours and no owls

But sneak in around the back and astrally catch myself laying the mortar

Satellite grinding the paste circular

Picking up the morning paper from the stoop bent by the weight of a full gut

Ritual ridiculous

I never want to lose the hunger

So I prepare a gold tipped shovel

You can see the egotistical twinkle from space

But good luck building the necessary kaboom to get there

I stole all that from the necessary pockets

Circular

Ye blackbirds cackle opening a fresh box of breakfast cereal

I am no hunter because my arrows are tipped with marshmallows

flaggwalkstheline
05-29-2010, 12:02 PM
A recipe for cooking the ecstasy of reptiles

Raspberry dribble the liquid of my name from your tongue

I want it to stick out like the magnificent chunks of what five minutes ago was a smooth snowglobe

Nectar five hundred yard dash venom

Split lightbulb shines temporarily

Coil inside hissing singing meat-hook

My savage inability to comprehend

Is neither noble nor ghastly

I wear a crown of nettles to remind me

Of the omnipresent choice

Between the primal thump and the electric hum

First there was sound

Flip the switch off

And there is THAT MOMENT struggling

Trapped insectile zapping a projectile idea: I was made of fireflies then

Gift-wrapped in extension cords

Recklessness only gets us to the wall earlier, then what?

The canaries wear gas masks round here

Digging for birdseed synonymous with ascension

But if I could unplug my body odor

I would I would
Take a dull ax and split the Hiroshima willow

Fill a notebook with shards

I can read to you a bedtime story

Goodnight moon, goodnight sky, goodnight flies

Goodnight all you lonely astronauts

You sweaty illuminations are spit-shined

I cannot say what needs to be said when all is said and done

I spout a gold plate collector’s edition cliché

And give you the gentlest boot I have to kick with

So with the oven preheated and hungry

I bake something sweet, perhaps a big cake

Make sure you put the stripper in AFTER you’ve cooked it

First: carve a perfect angel from fossils

Then jackhammer it back to particles

And loudly vacuum the dust with your juiciest machine

Pour out the teargas-canisterish bag

And stomp until your toes are ashy

Lie down and make a crematorium snow-angel

FINALLY snort that until your nose bleeds

Ignore the shaky hand gripping your touristic sensibilities

We can show them, show them all

How to stitch puncture wounds with scotch tape

Turn to page seven for metric conversions and baptisms

Measure the rope juuuuuust right

Pick a flea from your arm hair

See it leaping blue between the prong and the wall

I would give them all my pollen

Give them, give thee

Give freely

The iron stutter stumbles

A wonder! That’s it!

Give me migraine thunderous applause

Give me a new name

One that tastes like a champion’s last touchdown

Read that name to me swiftly

But leave few teeth intact please

Deep yawn here comes the boot

You are to me

As strong as the dedicatory moment after a sunset

When I can see the whole sky sunless indigo and unruined by fear of blinding

Briefly it’s all mine

It’s mine before we speak our sculpted goodbyes

(All this and more can be yours if you call the number at the bottom of your screen in the next
Ten minutes for just seven ninety nine, that’s right seven ninety nine but hurry supplies are limited!)

Then

Nothing

Except the scraping of blankfaced statues

Sucked or shoved down open manholes

Yellow caution tape be damned

The holes in the whole façade

Punch satellite pinholes through canvas

I had the entire quartz cloud in my arms

Water those bleary eyes and perhaps a tree will sprout ripping them open

Are they my eyes or yours?

Regardless of eventual answers

We will never drift leafy onto fields of nostalgia

To lie there waving and sneezing

That door remains closed to me now

I can only kneel on this clean carpet

Peeking through the keyhole

And a shaded vexing oasis

Mumble my farewells and send them out like desert island bottle messages

Goodnight all you lonely astronauts

All you wounded cowboys

All you sober writers and melted firefighters

Goodbye all you quick witted hypnotists

Goodnight all you boys we wanted to become

A cowardly vein shivers in my temple

The lightbulbs don’t dare shine here

Even though I claim

To see the difference

Between knowing and seeing

Between seeing and feeling

Between feeling and knowing

First there was sound

Light the candelabra with strike-anywhere matches

And toss their smoking bones to the marble floor

Jon
05-30-2010, 08:14 PM
"I bake something sweet, perhaps a big cake

Make sure you put the stripper in AFTER you’ve cooked it"


Great line!

Jean
06-07-2010, 04:26 AM
yes, it reminds of that moment in Addams Family

flaggwalkstheline
06-07-2010, 05:19 AM
heh
i love the adams family
uncle fester is one of my role models:nana:

Jon
06-07-2010, 11:08 AM
Damn it Flagg! I saw a new post in this thread and rushed over expecting new works....:excited:

flaggwalkstheline
06-07-2010, 05:58 PM
I may have something rather soon, im in cleveland visiting some family so my writing time this week is a bit cut short but i do have about two poems currently cooking:cowboy:

flaggwalkstheline
06-10-2010, 06:21 PM
The carcass of declaration (conceived upon seeing Charles Meynier’s “Muse of history” painting at the Cleveland art museum, if you must know)

Apparently

The virus flew gloom overhead, green


Photograph paper lighting flight

Clutch it carefully treading down the stairs to see who’s banging on the door

Bird impossible moonrise engine

It was in the way the water fled, rippling fearful from your legs

Repeat blight repeat ego wash rinse, delete

It was in the dirt dreaming pure beneath your fingernails

Gulp mosquitos and their eggs stagnant from a plastic cup

It was in the yellow cloth on your shoulders, leaves clinging to polished marble

Downed wire shot snake hissing

Turn the silence of industrial emerald eyes to quiet the noise in my wasp-hive mind

Rusted grass spurs wheels to shine

We could always wander ugly, past steam powered pilgrims chugging through the soil of minotaur gardens

Believes bleed unflower vein yearn

The chisel in a painted hand considering carving an innocent tablet

Candle implied snuff kilometer, tundra will be here soon

Staring vicious calm from the well arranged floral ruins

Tracking stone shoeprints, wilted cockroach

One blue-jean afternoon, the locomotives will return hauling beds loaded with fool’s-gold

Push the 3rd vertigo railing, drop blink trickle

Between the relaying of iron messages, there is a leaking seashell battery

Desired then not so, racing replacement mask-makers

There were seven of them, and to each grin I applied a fresh fox coat of whitewash

Mattress slashed bounce painkiller violin puppydog crush Pompeii

Each elephantine face erased to tumbleweed, except for yours

Blue wing landing coo in the secret burial ground of vestal jumbo-jets

With a justified glove, touch the hammer-beef imagined junkyard of my face so that I might recall a maker’s brush

A wanter’s touch, the shovel’s dewy scrape, or a bowl of oatmeal’s steaming mush

The sound made as the paper-maché walls gave way to a possible machete


Apparently they were in the way

Waiting for dead horses

The weight of the virus blew overhead

While the grandest cowards we could ever hope to be

Clacked healthy teeth safely in their dry throated February holes

flaggwalkstheline
06-16-2010, 10:49 AM
Daydreaming during an astronomy lecture
Aether, irradiated ozone absolute zero
Oh! I’m awake now
The fisherman’s line kerplunked onto the surface of a calm brown lake
He’s watchful for crocodiles
Somebody must be willing to bite
Beyond the faux pristine
Paint and poison lawns of suburbia
And the sterile fluorescent hum of academia
There is a yawning desert
Sand frozen in waves of brown and white
Petrified shells from its former life as a sea
Buried not too deep
I wonder if one can still hear the ocean in them?
And if so, is it the old dead Mesozoic one?

Not yet, not yet

The girl sitting in the desk ahead of me
Has such gorgeous creamy tan divine Michelangelo-sculped angelic legs
Stretched across the empty chair near her
Obliviously
She is the main reason I’m still awake
As the professor drones in harmony with the air conditioner
About atoms expelling electrons
I am grateful to the stars
For giving such gifts of cosmic youth

AlishaRiley
06-16-2010, 07:17 PM
every time i have a sneaky peek at this thread I get beautifully lost.
there's something very special about everything you write, flagg - your imagery is just mind-blowing. you must have a beautiful soul for such perfect pictures to come tumbling out of it.
Blown. Away. Again. :clap:

flaggwalkstheline
06-16-2010, 08:03 PM
every time i have a sneaky peek at this thread I get beautifully lost.
there's something very special about everything you write, flagg - your imagery is just mind-blowing. you must have a beautiful soul for such perfect pictures to come tumbling out of it.
Blown. Away. Again. :clap:

thank you alisha, it means alot to me to know that other's are affected by my work:huglove:

Jon
06-18-2010, 06:57 PM
"It was in the dirt dreaming pure beneath your fingernails"




WOW!


No disrespect to Jean, but I must call you "sir" now.

flaggwalkstheline
06-20-2010, 02:53 PM
heh
i'm not sure i comprehend but thanx:thumbsup::dance:

Jon
06-21-2010, 06:57 AM
I mean...there really is only one person I call "sir" on this site and that is Jean. Now I must include you.

flaggwalkstheline
06-21-2010, 09:02 AM
oh
ok
:nana:
thanks

flaggwalkstheline
06-22-2010, 05:57 AM
A lie
In a garden
Just before dawn
I sit crosslegged
Today is gonna be hot
It’s the summer solstice
A plastic hose is nursing the plants
And fruitflies are drifting tiny through their 24 hour lifespans


When I awoke
The power-outaged red lines of a clock were flashing 12:00 over and over
And the curtains were flapping in a dull warm breeze
I could feel
The unnamably green bloodspark
Pushing electric from your chest against mine
I almost expected
To see a glimmer of dewdrops on the curve of your eyelashes
I pushed your hand from my thigh
And wondered if it was possible
For fruitflies to comprehend their own smallness


Empires of nerves and bones and suns and lungs
Rise and fall, rise and fall


Too early for breakfast or showering
A hummingbird flits to a poppy
Looking for opiate nectar
It hasn’t bloomed yet
So the hummingbird moves on
After circling it at a speed of 500 heartbeats per minute


When you wake
I’ll offer you
A peach
Knowing under the fuzz of my breath
That in some cold garage
Bulldozers also turn hungry in their slumber

flaggwalkstheline
06-25-2010, 10:53 AM
Existentially bipolar white male seeks a Nancy to his Syd: a personal ad
In a short bus crossing the street
I saw

A lone retard in the morning light

Illuminated angelic in a wheelchair

Drooly, for a second he had the heat that I lack

Flopping fishy in a near strait-jacket

My heart will give out

A free balloon to its hundredth customer

It swells as I observe a muslim girl in a hijab

Carrying a 32 ounce plastic cover full of doctor pepper

Cynical Sagittarius rarely realize

Handguns crow with cocks come morning

And when (not if)

You lose the barefoot snoreless aerosol shazam

The head won’t float singing down the river

Despite silence two microscopes can stare at eachother all day

And never discern which one is upside-down

The clowns might wave their wands

But it won’t move my rowboat from where it’s mired in the mud

The only way to do that

Is to lie back under the haw of gulls

And wait for the tide to let me sleep in a new place

Unaware of the miney-meany western loon feather

I can’t betray the freckle constellation

Cram the gold moment past your lips (or was it hips?)

Salivate later, there are looms of destruction to sew with

Spiral stink of soured milk

Slaughter the sows to finish teaching them a lesson

I can only hope it’s my ego on the fork’s end

Though it won’t dissuade me from my lobotomous duties

Just watch me LA LA LA LAAA OPEN WIDE

Sea turtles have the manners to brush their teeth

Before going to the net swish three points

Incriminate the echo of failure

The limits of lab-rats bratty weaving

Spacemen don’t need to jump

Pivot the mustache of a used car salesman

Twirling his hands he says “I’m sorry but I can’t sell you a 99 kryptonite dicksucker for less than 5 goats

I’ve got dark masters to please!”

“I suppose I can just run the housewife manifesto into the dirt but I’ll pout while I do it”

The census worker’s cyborg face lights up elitist backing out the door

“Get back on that couch! I’m not finished psychoanalyzing you yet!”

This can be either a heatstroke or an enlightenment

Crank my gargle to the Parthenon

Giggling at sneakers hanging from powerlines, pouring water on my smoking hand

Eavesdropper you can guess which one I’ll claim it is

(You can guess can’t you?)

Doctor doctor gimme the news

I gotta bad case of sniffin glue

My radio wishes it were a television and my television failed out of hypnotist school

George Washington had no halo despite what sycophants sputter

Hurricane season this year is gonna be a whopper with cheese

The hole in the ocean won’t quit sobbing

And all the antidepressants on earth won’t stop it from spitting all our precious fuel back at us

Come to think of it

That might make me feel better

Last time I reached for moonlight

An eleven thirty pm phone call

May have saved me as much as it nearly ended me

I was this close

To saying in that highpitched voice “I love you” (cue the laughtrack and applause signs)

But I could only muster deeply “I miss you” (cue ethnic kiss oooooo sound)

And I comprehend (but cannot mend)

DNA is not love

Excalibur is the loneliest gun in the west

If you haven’t dreamed oblivion

Then you have no way of sniffing out its odor

“Just fill out the paperwork and get out of my office please”

Sex: nonthreatening and invisible

Race: last place and panting

Address: your closet

Occupation: ogler

I don’t want to die by car accident and bowel movement

If I had and choice, and I think I do

I’d tell all the monks without organ grinders

About the health risks associated with vows of silent celibacy

Before they explode, ignite evil gleefully

Take a bottle of pills and if you can still call me in the morning take another

I swear I saw a smiling face

In a hamburger at a fast food joint

And everyone else in the air conditioned trough

Probably had similar sinister steaming revelations

My hand wrapped in ice, liquid all over the cement

I chowed down hoping to stop

The knucklepain

And in that second

All the groomed heads heard a manikin manatee Ed-McMahonesque voice intone

“Gentlemen start your blenders!”

But it was less interesting

Than the numb meat in their hands

Chewing to the tendon

Was the only way to slow the dull ashy windy ache of missed opportunities

Jon
06-25-2010, 08:57 PM
"Empires of nerves and bones and suns and lungs
Rise and fall, rise and fall"


VERY poignant!






"Despite silence two microscopes can stare at each other all day

And never discern which one is upside-down"


Brilliant and thought provoking!








"Doctor doctor gimme the news

I gotta bad case of sniffin glue"


Now I'll never get that damned song out of my head!!

Jean
06-27-2010, 11:02 AM
I mean...there really is only one person I call "sir" on this site and that is Jean. Now I must include you.
Jon, you're the only person in the world to call a bear "sir"!

http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k291/mishemplushem/Facilitation/bear4bis.gif

flaggwalkstheline
07-02-2010, 07:24 AM
A definition
Once more I wake to the sound of ringing bells

A shining slick ice-cream traffic cone impossibility

3 faces in the morning, dressed for a funeral

Starlight gives no myth for free

Paris gives the shellacked apple to not-so-green Venus

And within a week planes painted with swastikas
Were dropping crates full of booby-trapped telescopes

Over Babylon’s department stores

Crowded with know-it-all astrophysicists

Space needle hypodermic head rushes

Trampled on the banks of an investment polluted river

A cloud, out loud, a shroud, underground

Put my wish between your birthday candles

In your lungs and on your field of alpha-wave negative vegetables

Water them with knee-scrape bandaids

I see it, hanging from a thorny branch

Napalm lip gloss fruit of my refused labor

I can never push far enough, you know that

Circling satellite around a blue mother

Back to the moon, permanently ethereal

Oxidized gambler bets there’s nothing funny

About rolling blackout aphrodisiac amok swamp slurpers

When the whizz kid pisses out his special grimace

Nobody expects us to sniff the concrete

Wanting to be pirates yo ho ho

No more crossed wires in my tin whistle coffin kindling

What I’m TRYING to say

Through all this jazzacular migration

Is that I was asked to define love

By an existentially challenged English major

In denial of their words’ heat

So I’ll say this through a huff of second hand chimney smoke

I’ve only experience something close

A few scrawny times

Each of them sad and dripping gorgeous

Like vines and roses covering a rusted guillotine

I’ll never be some alpha male gamma hulk

Arrow in the heel conquering hero demanding a heil

Nor do I want to be

Some spark tongued moron with an authentic demonic swagger

Pull the belt tight around your waist

Perhaps try to reconstitute

A snowflake of memory, ever so repetitive

The scent of a passing garbage truck

The scrape of a foot on the sidewalk

Broken glass attempting aurora borealis

The plastic bag half in the sand

Half flapping in a sterile breeze

I traveled all this way, over all those fences

Wanting to give you back your forgotten boots

I was content in her hands, perhaps cowardly

We coagulated temporary sunshine

I come close sometimes

But when I put my effervescent eye to the telescope

I get an old fashioned voodoo Neptune Pleistocene blinding

And every dawn

Someone I never see

Climbs a long stairway to the top of a bell tower

Yanks the rope to draw out the noise

And the dogs howl along

Calling the insomniac faithful

Closer and closer

Jon
07-06-2010, 12:34 AM
I mean...there really is only one person I call "sir" on this site and that is Jean. Now I must include you.
Jon, you're the only person in the world to call a bear "sir"!

http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k291/mishemplushem/Facilitation/bear4bis.gif



I ONLY HOPE YOU UNDERSTAND WHY I PLACE THIS LABEL ON THIS ARTIST.

flaggwalkstheline
07-06-2010, 07:24 PM
Possibilities of a carnation

I have waited patiently for the dumbbell girth

Of a shamanistic tornado to orbit back around

In the background, a moot figure pressure point

Spin crackle the popcorn permanent grave marker

Turn once ghost and gaze on a freeze dried wedding cake future cornhusk

A sunburn on my neck pulses with a red herring yearning inhalation all its own

Canyon moan of the moonshut window

Electric catcher’s mitt lightweight hum tomorrow

Bird thunk into the glass melodramatic dive

Dizzy in the realized heat wave goodbye

Swaying in the field of fresh wheat pews

I would rather sit with you in the nightgrass

Let the wizard’s intonations wash us

Than silhouette into the longtoothed forest

Behind invisibly barbwire fencing maneuvers

I’ll be there eventually all inflated with new air

Bungee cave-painting blood jump

Clock gears lose relative relevance quietly

Forgetting marauding hordes of secondhand hours

Talk to engines as they rust cough

Railroad, railroad, where have you sickdog crawled to?

Where do your whistling stolen footprints trail off?

The end of sentences split neomythic industrial prison lips

I won’t ever be sure where the salt lick shores lay down beastly

Salivatory elevated dust blink growl

The day I expect to plant a flag tree on any foreign dust-bowl

A perfect game is a paradoxical whisper

Though there will no doubt be debriefed slivers of red balloon pop party time is such sweet sorrow

There’s no opthamologistics plumber professor

Riding to plug the starry pinholes in my fighting-hand retina

The only real tragedy is the separation of sensation from emotion

Sneaking banshee upon me slowly

Not yet circuit face touch ready

I can push a lie hot fist and make a pondwater ripple

Bend my radar head towards some shape flexing algae dot

But we have all lost our coffinous boxes full of ticket stubs and bottle caps and chained giggles


I like the sound of empty plastic cups rattling on cracked pavement

Drops of sticky brown soda clinging to impersonal white insides

The smallness of even the most coddle solar system of polluted intuition

Coming to terms of surrender at last with my own

Impossibility


And with yours

Jon
07-08-2010, 09:29 PM
"Clock gears lose relative relevance quietly

Forgetting marauding hordes of secondhand hours"


There is ALWAYS a phrase in your works that tumbles through my head for days. I never add the fabric softener or clean the lint screen.



GREAT ending BTW.

flaggwalkstheline
07-13-2010, 08:17 PM
As simple as I am possible

Dreaming liquid beneath a headache

The two of us ride bicycles laughing

And skidding down the polished hallways of my old elementary school

I want it to be this way

To actually encounter sleek movement as it happens

The capacity for hunger is one of the only guarantees

Even when there’s nothing left from a TV-dinner feast

Except for sweat stained butter knives

Cadillac of the bloated flirt

Licked clean tinfoil satellite

Stalled out huge and chrome

The packrat weight of a substitute for flesh

Fleas scrape their lips on sacrificial cardboard

I bear witness and show my mirror-thin cracked teeth

Yet nobody bites back

Not one flash of fire unswallowed

The torch past its prime objective

Viewing the shifted focal point of petty burning

Odd and blinding to look away now

After staring for such a glowing two season teapot eon

To find a stone, diamond shaped massive

Crashed high in the mountain

Surrounded by piles of lumber

Immovable defiant boulder unclimbable

To stand on top of it would be to stand on the last frozen gasp of a great wave

Broken apart with migraine precision instruments of mass distraction

The pointing of sugar stained fingers

Only encouraged nosebleeds by the bucketful

The acquisition of moldy ideas became more important than the initial mission

Like the oblivious lumberjack and his appetites

I never leaned back in the sawdust

And contemplated the implications

Of my felling the old green wild ways

Not the old ways immortalized in black and white film

I mean before that, when insects traversed possible sands one grain at a time

Dionysus is dead so let us swill grain alcohol in his honor

There will always be a splinter of hunger buried deep

Coughing up the waking realization doesn’t hurt as much as your martyrs say it should

But it itches, just below the calm surface of grey and blue

I can barely hear the sound of air-conditioned wind rushing past your simple machine

Over the faithful growl of chainsaws

flaggwalkstheline
07-16-2010, 10:05 PM
Exhalation
Springtime arrow, quiver of clarinet caterpillar sky-lust

Splinter, wounded queen of shivers exhale storm

I said I would wait and wait forever for the damned carpenters to make something fun out of dead trees

Sinking rubber feeling ducky titanic regret

We never respected distance

A riot of blueberries and bald eagle toupees

Coin the term backflip frost drill bit cash register

Rigged to blow away the waxing moon birthday candles

Serotonin tanning bed shot stretch of ghost town memory

Tumble weed hairbrush trying to piece together for the 3rd time

A wineglass wise man kiss ass tongue busted

Fate is not a kidnapped light circle and I am no turning point of contention

Thrown out protesting by bankers with bootspurs

Fifteen minutes of arbitrary sound brought 30 minutes of contentment

Bitter theft leg scratching command post modify

Near death work experience head on the wall origami folder

Astrological chalk marks on the sidewalk all wave north

Egg filter jellyfish jetstream film trailer park

Ready to drizzle parachute pants my intensity

Speak exquisite into the electric armchair

It will take a special spatula to pry me off

The carbon-dating game bowtie twirl

Just be clear what where you want to shove justified distraction

When pointing the rainstick at a miraculous lizard sunburn

Pour spackle whitewash over the desert

Banana peel clunker slip crank, sailor I am not

The oceans of your youth are sickly ragdoll puddle

Everything circling a drain I know I won’t gurgle

Ever be a champion hog-skinner

You can’t justify the melting of saxophones for horseshoes nor the butchering of horses to harvest heat

Tornado fat ten by ten cell, ha ha crow cigar sweatshop pun manufacturer

Forehead jubilant slap raw mosquito of the drenched slum

I can’t read your kool-aid tattoos, foreign forever no matter where

Substitute my sarcasm for a mystic hamburger

Polluting the goddess’ fourth eye tied to the railroad tracks with used chewing gum

Milky marble ionic newspaper column

Mice in a castle of rats slurping the dry mouthed good stuff tried to say help

Running out of hundred degree particles from concentrate down the concrete

Down deep breath brat-syrupy dream-fluid stolen from rotten eggs who peaked early


A blue fingernail took all afternoon to rocket lift off once from the breadcrumb table

Jon
07-18-2010, 12:03 AM
"Near death work experience head on the wall origami folder"

flaggwalkstheline
08-02-2010, 08:07 PM
Now the companion piece


Inhalation
Unsure, perhaps even hesitant to step forward into an obvious sinkhole

Tiptoe thickboot, don’t wake the napping jackals

Entombed in that softsighted electric forest

Trying to constitute blank-face empty reason circle

Confirm a fuzzed out remembrance blast of static

Strange blinking appliance light of civilized plastic rabbit feet

We buried the elephant deep with shovels made from his bones

Wanting to stop the huffing of earthquake dust

These hills should shake their vesuvial hips for no choice but ours, right?

A stew of attempts stirred rotten but oh so ozone tasty

Pruning the tree of warm meat curiosity

Borderland between rain of night squeezed oranges

Wet and reluctant on heavy branches

A drop of nectar holds sweet breathlessness immaculate and jumps

Lamppost put out whooshed cyclops

Metallic reach Neptune-blue marble analysis

Crouched with tulips twisted saccharine

Desiring quick to catch that sad thunder voice before blindness

Meteor teeth xylophone, you cannot own the sound

Butterfly net my body made of mirror shards, wind skin mesmerize

Stomp a barefoot tangle naked in the drumheart stormtap

Pulled by the grassy hair towards central water burial silence

I stand fullbellied in this cookiecrumb bedroom doorway dripping the loss of my voice

It remains either unclear or unspoken, which one of our muddy shores sighs more impossibility

flaggwalkstheline
08-13-2010, 05:26 AM
Future movement

I believe the immense migraine beauty of an iron plated sadness

It’s some scattered papercut intensity, some cirrus gesture that I can’t quite capture

Recognition of a face dozing sudden on my shoulder

Muse of my drooped eyelid flower

I wake folded in sound and mutter that I have the crash

The one troglodyte unrepentant in his cave in soliloquy

Sunflower rattle clutched in my gearshifter hand, oh but I don’t have the reach

When it happens I’ll send a paper airplane postcard

Tiretracks left out along a squealing asphalt two color kaleidoscope highway

Carbon relic of an age, a moment, a look, a reach

I will squeeze every drop from this ephermal youth

Twisting nails from rotten front porch planks

This is a place built bloodsoaked with a hope of flight

We smelled smoke and decided to consult the bite dried oracle

Locomotives with no passengers but bouncing beds of scrap metal

Whistle greasy lone machine across the planes of a mythic Kansas

Remember the flap of your feet across the suburban almost tombs

The enamel on your teeth was so shiny back then

At the very least we tried to reach for the source of this liquid déjà vu recognition

Tried to push unsuccessfully to convince ourselves of a way to jump the tracks

Only moths understand the ringing of duskpainted clocks

But not us, we have armhairs cold with airconditioning

As you lick that cherry popsicle and some of it runs down the stick onto your sweetened hand

Your hand, my hand, the ambulance crooning

You hand, my hand somnambulism swooning vultures

Stop to consider as you lift newspaper wings towards flashlight sterilization

Thin like the ribs of anorexic aphrodites splayed formaldehyde in magazine pages

The future, with all its smokestack supermarkets and spires of bacon and gold

All those ed wood film bandit bilingual promises

Already happened

It crashed gasping upon us

A great bleak wave of oil, biscuits, violins and associate degrees

Arthritic heave of an arctic muscle for a chalkmarked finishline

I would race until my lungs crisped but my legs would give out hours before that happened

An eventual skidmark ghost town walk of fame winked star with my name on it

We are the century of the bruise’s biggest lie

The plate was licked clean

Flopping cerulean in the mud when it recedes back into stagnation

Not the shade of willow blue I wanted to become

I lit incense and tried to conjure the gentle heat of butterflies

Someone told me there really is a path of smoke

But like I said to the ceiling, only moths understand

So look backwards slick with paranoid bliss

What comes next, like my grin, lacks the jellybean spark

Because what comes next is polished jade blindness, an escalation of protoplasm bureaucracy

All engines are moving west now

Cough up the price of a switchblade and have a seat

We only stop to fill up on fluidic melody

All engines point spinning compass panic to the west

flaggwalkstheline
08-17-2010, 10:24 AM
Hidden sounds
There are sentences and articulations on the very edge of breath

Hydraulic calculatory umbilical sensations

Stutterings that remain unspoken, pressed tightly into an iceberg clump of noise


Sometimes when I haven’t said anything in hours I worry that in silence I have forgotten how to speak


Dark grass against a blank tangled pink of summer sky

Sagebrush air minueting on your hardened eyelash

I climbed a grey mountain that grew more massive with every footstep

And drank the unmelted snow that waits clean under the cool of graffiti red stones

Though I grasp to the branches for your song, you are not my nightingale

The choice of where to jump is scalpel-strung between rivers

Gushing unshaped southward, the gust of primitive rests cold upon my lips

Jon
08-20-2010, 10:11 AM
There is a personal element in this poem I'd rather not get into; but thank you for the reminder, Flagg.

flaggwalkstheline
08-29-2010, 09:51 AM
There is a personal element in this poem I'd rather not get into; but thank you for the reminder, Flagg.

always interesting when I accidentally target someone elses personal issues with a poem vaguely about my own:unsure:

flaggwalkstheline
08-31-2010, 06:55 PM
Summer underneath

I sense a lemon scented finishing sliding into place


A kind sameness to conversations, dizzy with repetition

Puzzle piece of a sore throat, fit and healthy

Each tainted horse seems to go faster into the meatgrinder, jolly unspooled brain cloud mechanism

Speedometer nerves into the crimson, turn an ethereal key

Unmown grasses brush against my cleaned feet, teach paper to pretend

Sugarbomb, hemorrhaging youth leaves torn upon the exhausted breeze

Sped up headache moment of fire moving away, magnifying glass

Eventually just a single pinhole of light winking in the ink distance, hello is anyone there?

July was always dreamed but at least first it was a long lasting heat, kids jumped under busted hydrants

Click the button, I still have the fear but it’s dull now and always arrives on time for work

Don’t wake them, tiptoeing barefoot through this tunnel for what felt like murky lifetimes

Curiously afraid to sniff a coal silent crocus, you lack the pollen sneeze

No guiding Amadeus prankster, I might have heard the passing of a forgotten technological ghost-howl

Clever, spraypaint the words, “god hates humans” onto a dirty undershirt

The 18 wheelers left ages ago but they left behind patches of melanoma, beanstalk this situation

All up and down this spinal event horizon, road of swampvision

A pomegranate obscenity whisper of images, lying on a bed of crushed bedbug dust

Stand with me and we’ll wait for the hawks, irony lives in the west

Crunch, an icecream truck jangle temptation

Fatchanced, one woman applies makeup to another in a room with the shades drawn

The midday rays poke feebly through plastic slats, imitation furnace lines

She sits still, eyeline going dark

Still, pizza boxes on the floor but no flies this high up

Next room over, scoot over you’re hogging the casket

Flatline neon koolaid mustache, paper clips bent in a nervous habit

Mourners send text messages from behind bleak veils, sitting on trashcans

The kindling thin corpse of an old veteran lies under a starched sheet, scratch

Airconditioning buzzing the white cloth flaps slightly, the mystic has no fumes

On the clothes line storm, the necessity of illusion

Crane your neck up past the stoic chimneys as far as possible, lift a stretched thin frown

Ripened oxygen bubble, the branch bends

Chapped lips scrapheaped for ideas, the hummingbird splash I was promised by a digital oracle will wait

When we come back here on the next go-around, step right up only a nickel to burn

I’ll make the weakened muscle pilgrimage to a dead tree, oh but you were bright bright once

Frozen brittle calf refrigerated in its prime, cut out shape of an orchestral barbecue


The sweetness of an American summer is sand in my unfinished statement

Jon
09-04-2010, 08:27 PM
I enjoy your work immensely. A few moments when I can light up a smoke and let my imagination go where you take me. My imagination almost always breaks the leash and runs off into it's own world. And that is one of the things I think poetry is about.
But the skill to hog tie a reader's imagination, then set it loose on it's own wild adventure, is a rare skill indeed.


"Flatline neon koolaid mustache"

flaggwalkstheline
09-05-2010, 03:24 PM
the skill to hog tie a reader's imagination, then set it loose on it's own wild adventure, is a rare skill indeed.




Glad you think I can do that, I try my best:pirate:

flaggwalkstheline
09-15-2010, 07:53 PM
The salesman laid down his card and said, “Hit me”
Really there’s only gonna be one moment

Butchered into sensible molecules

Somebody sat down and decided all these rules needed enforcing

And enforcing them means people are needed to break them

Unfolded, you would realize how silly you look with that thornless rose in your teeth

Throw me a floatation device this hypnotic osmosis is seeping through

No such thing as a real unfolding though

Not in this hour of horseflies and chewed cuticles

When we’ve been unraveled here on the floor for the past week

Unable to appreciate the simplicity of that first silver twist

An actual straw bogeyman to torch would be a feast

Dripping from a fluoridated maw

Bureaucracy can only crush me if I believe in its weight

No doubt there are labrat strewn cubicles hard at work on just that

I have no great and sudden theft to brag of

Only true beauty in the moment before complacent decay

Slow clack-clack of shingles falling from unrepaired roofs

While I am yet young I will continue to stoke my rage, rub my hands together over a burning trashcan

Heap in the furniture and useless polystyrene swim shorts

Clean bedsheets always kicked off in swarmy fits

Flower-tooth wounds all healed up now

No more scars for you, now it’s all model trains and box wine

Doze stretching across the stormed grass

No divinity in pain, competition among vultures is probably a sham

White lines have appeared on seashells far from home

The warning sign says not to take the elevator in case of fire take the stairs

But what if the stairs catch fire?

I won’t be able to get out of buying a flame retardant coffin

I tire of trying to shout down the sunrise

One dream, that’s all you get

Against which others are silhouetted

Circles of yellow scrub

I want golf course perfection to break its thumbs off in car-doors

I wanted the long horizon, expansive and mythical

I know there aint no fairy tale but leave the closet door open

There are too many eyes around here

Ring of clover blackened by my wish

Monolithic gurgle as the last bathwater hisses down a shiny drain

I reach across a pit of grins but move too coldly

Flawless logic of unfinished gossip

Endangered species of traveling salesmen, hunting obsolescence while pushing ziggurats

Suck on a painkiller lollypop mothflap hungers for mutually assured blindness

Spat upon image of nursery rhyme tenderized meat

For want of a discoball a can of beans was emptied

And they probably thought anybody ringing the doorbell had to be a robber

There are easier things for self-righteous vegetarians to gnash at than that

Yeah I laughed when they told me the news, what else could I do?

That had to be at least two or three beached lifeboats ago

Swearing straightjacket fealty to itchwigged judges of insomnia

Slow tick of suburban minefields growing fat

One dream, slaughtered and turned over investigatory

Neighbors’ floodlight shatters through my divided night sigh window

Trapped between ambrosian memory slips

And the sharp taste of icewater

The polar bear habitat seemed abandoned so we climbed in

Called off the plan to drift beercanny with the tide on my one chance to really swallow

They said this pill would be bitter but here I am

Ground down to nothing but sneer

A short tight follicle of stopwatch reminding

What if the stars are lying?

Growing landfills by the loud mouthful

Ripple of a green yawn

Equilibrium haunts methodic running leaps

Quiet, the ants crawl across my spoon

I must be the first person in fifty years to ride this worn elevator

But everyone who pushes the numberless button probably thinks that their virus is unique

Mosaical vertigo patterns repeat

Letters in the mail all full of shambolic trickery

Trying so hard to feel like sorcerers with milk mustache intentions

We’re heading down to the basement to investigate furnace twitches, you should come too

Snap the strings and their noise hangs airy for just a brief tangle

Someone’s knocking at the door and when they come in I’ll give em my wifflebat casserole surprise

It’s possible to laugh jetstreaming tears right until when you finally turn the handle

And when I eventually opened my eyes, even the popped balloons were in black and white

Jon
09-15-2010, 08:21 PM
"Only true beauty in the moment before complacent decay"

So philosophic!!!!




WE HAVE A NEW VERB!!!!


"beercanny"