all of a sudden passion suddenly

[vampiredust]

Franco's Pigeon

Franco pasted the birds
newspaper feathers on
the windows, insulating
the villa from its poetry.

He would always hear it
at sunset, when it tapped
the air with its sound of
caw-caw, caw-caw; rattling

his head as he slept. So he
caught it one day and stripped
it of its words, muting it with
his hunters knife. It flew back

inside his head and tapped harder
and harder, its beak crushing his
bone. He never got rid of that bird
and even now, he greets me with
caw-caw, caw-caw.

 

[clutching_calliope]

Tate's Slave

.....

 

[clutching_calliope]

The Adult Condition (for Tzara)

.....

 

[vampiredust]

Hastings

The lift moves up the cliff
like a bead sliding across
an abacus; the tourists
stepping on the summit,

thinking why did I do that?
as they look at the beach
with its dragged up boats
and shoals of nets. There

is not much here, they know,
twisting the fluff of their
candy floss as they walk past
former glories, feeling nothing
as the sea curses them.

 

[vampiredust]

Ramsgate

The boats in the harbour
look like toy cars still in
their packaging, packed
tightly behind the sea wall.

The sea and wind are playing
cards today. No boats will
be moving out and that's final.
Waves lash out at the breeze,

threatening to topple the barrier.
He is winning today, the fishermen
think; hearing gulls crash into his fist,
never resurfacing. He always does.

 

[Maria2394]

white noise

even my subconscious
acknowledges the need
for some other sound
than the rattles and scrapings
of it's own inner workings

the whir of hummingbird wings,
a hum from flourescent tubes
will do, a ventilatin fan, AM radio,
anonymous phone calls
with heavy breathing
would suit

 

[vampiredust]

Craters

The rain left craters
in the playing fields,
carving up the mud
into great big fractals

as we slept. It wanted
to see how we would
cope if something we
knew (but not loved)

was edited into something
else. Nobody was swallowed
up the following day. That
wasn't part of the plan.

 

[vampiredust]

Power cut

Plunged into night, we follow
the blinking moon. We are
neither men nor mice tonight
but somewhere in between,

the tails hanging from our backs
acting as our rope as we grope
places that are no longer old
but reborn in this maze of memory.

Nobody tells us when it is over. That
is not the plan. We are only left here
to rediscover those things not meant
to be forgotten.

 

[Tzara]

.....

 

[vampiredust]

Watching the redevelopment of Elephant & Castle

Disjointed typefaces hang
from rusted beams, letters
A and D pointing like compass
needles to the different parts

of the fallen cow. She was
sacred once, like the pink plastic
idol that sat in front of the lurid zoo
that was forever Elephant & Castle.

 

[tungtied2u]

Stopping suffering

People are dying day after day
night after night, in living color
on cable news, nationwide
missiles whistle, bombs burst
buildings collapse into brown burial mounds
gray dust rises as maroon stains rubble

People are suffering, around the corner
down the street,as crack dealers pimp misery
while hardworking souls huddle indoors
afraid to walk outside, raise their eyes
in fear of meeting a stray bullet
or knife weilding gangsta thug

The answer is simple
put a roof on the bustops
to inspire those waiting in the rain
on the way to their minimum wage jobs
those in power care about them

but what protects them from the tears

 

[champagne1982]

People are dying day after day
night after night, in living color
on cable news, nationwide
missiles whistle, bombs burst
buildings collapse into brown burial mounds
gray dust rises as maroon stains rubble

People are suffering, around the corner
down the street,as crack dealers pimp misery
while hardworking souls huddle indoors
afraid to walk outside, raise their eyes
in fear of meeting a stray bullet
or knife weilding gangsta thug

The answer is simple
put a roof on the bustops
to inspire those waiting in the rain
on the way to their minimum wage jobs
those in power care about them

but what protects them from the tears

The tears fall to wash the dirt off the curb before the children step over the gutter and ride that bus to another chance of escape from crack whores and pimps that pull them down closer to the concrete where so many have bled before against the cracks that break their mothers' backs and maybe even trip the old man who couldn't see it all coming for the tears falling in the rain and not kept off his hat inside the shelter.

 

[tungtied2u]

The tears fall to wash the dirt off the curb before the children step over the gutter and ride that bus to another chance of escape from crack whores and pimps that pull them down closer to the concrete where so many have bled before against the cracks that break their mothers' backs and maybe even trip the old man who couldn't see it all coming for the tears falling in the rain and not kept off his hat inside the shelter.

 

[vampiredust]

Hey mister photon catcher

scientists fish for photons
not with fishing rods like the ones
we used to have as children
all twigs and thread

but with fancy lobster traps
elaborate manifolds flexing
like muscles every time they smell
those orange mice creeping

out of the gaseous nest
there are no cats here

not as far as I can tell

 

[echoes_s]

segments

How nicely
we have rounded up society
into segments
of questions to ask
and questions to never ask.

Therefore we are to assume,
but skulls are split
and splintered for firewood,
chip by tiny chip…
another segment.

Never assume,
cliché of an ass
to anyone who
is caught in the fraction
of another simple segment.

How is anyone
supposed to really learn
if answers fragment,
glass smashing to cement,
contents spilled

Or is there an answer?

 

[vampiredust]

Time travel doesn't work

when I was a kid
they spun me round and round
hoping to put me back in my
mother's womb

they didn't understand time travel
very well

I never ended up there
just on the floor, watching
the tarmac sky spinning like stars

I thought I saw the moment of creation
but it was just the light from a puch
hell I saw that a million times

I was born with deja vu
already in my bones

nobody told them that

 

[echoes_s]

Pain always continues,
it grows, feeding carnivorous
of plight and terror,
drooling screams.

Anger consumes pain
and breathes it out
scorching fire,
flaming ashes…

choking love,
joy, sense of
being, doing
something,

choking life

 

[echoes_s]

Just as you stepped
through air
before solidity
you were here.

It rushed pass you,
the air before your ear
whirred a blurry sound
caught between a shrill
and faint murmur.

3 notes within
a millisecond,
shake of the head
and take the next step

 

[vampiredust]

Warman

Daddy loved the war

he enjoyed dropping
atomic bombs on mother's
face, exploding into bruised
mushroom clouds as they
fell

even now, she quivers
at the sound of his voice,
thinking another bomb will fall.

 

[vampiredust]

Hearing Bukowski at a poetry reading

We held a seance for you
last night, the cries of
Buk, Buk, Buk, Buk
could be heard from across
the street.

But you never listened. You
never watched us as our skin
yellowed, saturn rings dimpling
under our eyes.

I imagined you
were someplace else as our
fingertips slipped with every
recited verse.

There were no poets there, Buk -
just your reflection.

 

[champagne1982]

My heart isn't certain of its relief
at a reprieve, a reprieve!
The inevitable isn't whether to be cut
but when? I know the where and the how
I can even rationalize the why
but when remains a mystery
and I wonder if that's a better
question than any I can ask...

Why me?
Where at?
How done?

When when when? ...

Maybe this time next month I can ask "Why me?"

 

[clutching_calliope]

T'aint

.....

 

[Tzara]

.....

 

[Tzara]

My heart isn't certain of its relief. . .

 

[Tzara]

Itchy is where it starts
and itchy in the end,
both ends, bend over end.

Far as is known, no remedy
but to scratch until bloody,
rinse
and repeat.

Saturday Morning, Cartoons

Hey! Gumby! Forget
Pokey. Let me bend you,
babe. We'll do the hokey pokey
and it'll be fun,
I guarantee. May-
be kind of itchy or
scratchy, though. But
that's a different show,
so it don't matter.

Nervermind.

The end.

But, hey, on next week's show. . .



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