Jillian is young,
Most days she's happy,
I've never known her
To be mean and snippy.
Jillian is helpful,
Jillian is kind,
Ask her a favor and
She really won't mind.
Jillian is pretty,
Exceptionally neat,
Her only problem
Is in what she won't eat.
Yes, she'll eat most
Of what's laid on her plate,
Except when they're green,
And then she can't wait
To get up.and leave
Her lunch or her dinner
Untouched, uneaten,
But don't call her a sinner.
She just will not eat
Anything that's agrarian,
In fact, you can call her
An un-vegetarian.
Hey, 2022,
Haven't you heard?
Toy guns are offensive
Vulva is a "year-six" word
Respect authority
Appreciate diversity
Don't let your hair down
Til you're in university
Where everything becomes real
But wait, I'm not done
I cry for my daughter
I cry for my son
They teach her to fear sex
They teach him that he's a loaded gun
Are you crazy? Tyler's dead! He wasn't a man afraid to be heard, but to hear him now would be quite absurd.
It was the bones of Tyler, hanging there dead. I can tell you only what his old bones said. They said he's filled to the brim with freedom bread, and he'll never go hungry again.
I’m not a cultural anthropologist
but I came into being in the same
year as that Eisenhower slogan.
Which means I’m old but if you
want to know how old, you
will have to look it up or
“google it” as they now say.
But I digress and will now get
down to subject of this dissertation,
which is the evolution of “Like” in
popular usage through the late
twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries and how this innocuous
word usually associated with
similes or a state of attraction
just shy of love, to become
the icon of the “Internet Age.”
The word “like” is one of the
most versatile of the English
language and may serve as a
verb (transitive or intransitive),
noun, adjective, or preposition.
Like can also be used as a “filler
word,” marking a pause in speech,
a trend I first noticed in my adolescent
children, but which was really no
worse than the “you know” that
predominated in my conversations at
a similar age, although I grew out of it.
But the real transformation of like
came about with the proliferation
of social media, particularly Facebook,
Instagram, tiktok and others, where a
“Like” button was used to indicate
“friendship” and devolved into the
competitive acquisition of “Friends”
or as an indication of the popularity
of an individual post of content provider.
It has even invaded this learned forum!
Only time will tell what comes next.
been tempted
sorely for infinite days
to devour
every piece of her
the abundance of her body
filled his eyes
making his mouth water
with the taste of her lips
as they part for him
the petals of a flower
succulent and sweet
Pressing his tongue into her
to understand the texture
of her soft whimpering moans
the likes of which
were everything that sustained him
urged him onward
to feast upon her longer
Turning the pages
we found new chapters
promising untold stories
so fresh and stormy
we spent the life of a candle
lit the night of the past
clad the future in wings
of possibilities
and read on and on History, regret, reset, repeat
until the alphabet came to an end
we ran out of letters
the words lost on a last empty page
everything said
silence beneath the verso
memories
promises
sentences
fading, forgotten, dead
There will be no justice
For the mothers of Ukraine
For the orphans left without limbs
For the bystanders maimed
There may be prosecutions
There may be therapy and closure
There will be outrage
There will be exposure
But there will be no justice
It's always been the same
They tell you
There’s nothing like falling in love
Losing yourself
In someone else
Allowing another person
To carry your heart
They tell you
That nothing compares
To how wonderful
Their touch is
Ecstasy and excitement
With each new
Discovery of bodies
They tell you
About how you will want to share
Open up
In a way you’ve never known
Feeling things
Brand new
What they never tell you
Is about the inevitable pain
Because anything
That feels so good
Will always have a toll
And falling in love
Feels so fucking good
It is the most expensive
Their mission and cause was to survive
A march more akin to a dance of death
Sixty five miles, with no food or drink
The enemies' bayonets ready for those who fell.
They walked, they stumbled, they limped,
Many were carried by friends, themselves wounded and broken,
But many more were left dead on that road,
Conquerors seldom suffer guilt.
Only a handful are left still alive
Of that trek of death taken a lifetime past
Their mission and cause was to survive,
Mine is to always remember.
my fingers madly race
through the catalogue of memories
left over the days
months
years
hoping each time
to reach out
and feel you here
your hands clasp mine
our legs intertwine
this could be teenage lust
if we hadn’t left those years
far behind
hard pressed you find
the loving skim of skin
soaked in a want
only the taste of you
and your tongue’s caress
could ever create
I heard a poet say,
'Attention, please,'
who didn't liked the way
his words were quoted,
how meaning was squeezed
out of a moment noted
down on spotty paper
scribbled and crumpled
still carrying the midnight vapor
of a dying cigar killing the point
about feeling humbled
on the day he joined
a slightly deranged pack -
some would say philosophers,
others fruitcakes - of lumberjacks
who took him into the wood
showed him what nature offers
and thought it was good
as he went on, 'This tree,
not paper, I call a friend of mine
from this day on, no mo' po'try,
And like the pen he broke
we took it as a sign
to send the handles up in smoke.
Flatland far as the eye can see,
breadbasket of the world, which may
be why those Ukrainian farmers came
here to escape Russian tyranny.
It wasn’t easy but they made it
work and through their work
our prairies became the second
breadbasket of the world.
We both have brash neighbours
on our borders but theirs
come with tanks and bombs.
I'm invoking the flexible 30 in 30 clause - one of the poems I was playing with over the weekend.