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Robin Carretti May 2018
City rush me
Pretty push
Did he see?
The wish on
*******
Sunday I thought
A rush of pluses +++
He won
Be on time if not - - -

Monday be
good to me
Rumors
Fantasy thoughts
I am
What I am
Not Popeye
Going day back
I need a third eye
I am
All free
Robin
Bird
From
everyone

Wait!!

Don't rush me
I love everyone
*

Newspaper's
Sunday
Daily
News
Poem
touchdown
My poem stood
With the others
I bowed ((Gladly))


Waking up
To a Racers- mouth
Ray
_ speed lover
No homework

All game
Sunday_

Candles burned
The House flamed

"Procrastinator"
I'll be back
"Destroyer-Terminator"
Coffee drug me percolator
He April fools her
Shopping Sunday
right up magnifying
dress

He is back
Not the future
Smart *** tricks
On the Escalator
He Jeremy irons out
her clothes
That's it!!!

Never rushed
on Sunday
To make
a mob hit

The call girls
Busy- tight pants
So Panicked Monday's
religiously
Hooked in
Scientology

So ****** in
Not to ever kiss
her on a
Sunday
He bunked into ((God))
Poem ritual bunk bed
Well NYC
Cabbie, he
will
never
take it
on Sunday

The big game
crazies
The flower
shops
of horror
Emptied
out with
Moms
Tiger
Lillies
Smelling

Mad Men hungover

Rush hour
Tv movie
Hangover
Jet game
Sprinkler
shower

Opening up
The door to his
apartment
Big Girly
hoarder mess
After a
long talk
night

Saturday Night
Brooklyn
The Disco Queen
bridge-sight
His Mom
is still oiling
His BMW Racecar
with
Hot fire Crisco
he
will never
be
rushed
out the door
His car
never
starts
Sunday
or a
Monday

Teased on
Tuesday
Wednesday
shes wild
Thursday
Ladies
drink
for free
_

She got
her husband
to buy
her cushion
cut square
On Sunday
Do it or dare
She's
hanging
low

Times Square

Girly rough
Brooklyn
tough
Channel
blush
On Sunday
he is so
wired bushed
All the day os the week and the weekend should be the most relaxing. But its all crazies and cabbies give me my Starbucks of sugar daddies
The bows glided down, and the coast
Blackened with birds took a last look
At his thrashing hair and whale-blue eye;
The trodden town rang its cobbles for luck.

Then good-bye to the fishermanned
Boat with its anchor free and fast
As a bird hooking over the sea,
High and dry by the top of the mast,

Whispered the affectionate sand
And the bulwarks of the dazzled quay.
For my sake sail, and never look back,
Said the looking land.

Sails drank the wind, and white as milk
He sped into the drinking dark;
The sun shipwrecked west on a pearl
And the moon swam out of its hulk.

Funnels and masts went by in a whirl.
Good-bye to the man on the sea-legged deck
To the gold gut that sings on his reel
To the bait that stalked out of the sack,

For we saw him throw to the swift flood
A girl alive with his hooks through her lips;
All the fishes were rayed in blood,
Said the dwindling ships.

Good-bye to chimneys and funnels,
Old wives that spin in the smoke,
He was blind to the eyes of candles
In the praying windows of waves

But heard his bait buck in the wake
And tussle in a shoal of loves.
Now cast down your rod, for the whole
Of the sea is hilly with whales,

She longs among horses and angels,
The rainbow-fish bend in her joys,
Floated the lost cathedral
Chimes of the rocked buoys.

Where the anchor rode like a gull
Miles over the moonstruck boat
A squall of birds bellowed and fell,
A cloud blew the rain from its throat;

He saw the storm smoke out to ****
With fuming bows and ram of ice,
Fire on starlight, rake Jesu's stream;
And nothing shone on the water's face

But the oil and bubble of the moon,
Plunging and piercing in his course
The lured fish under the foam
Witnessed with a kiss.

Whales in the wake like capes and Alps
Quaked the sick sea and snouted deep,
Deep the great bushed bait with raining lips
Slipped the fins of those humpbacked tons

And fled their love in a weaving dip.
Oh, Jericho was falling in their lungs!
She nipped and dived in the nick of love,
Spun on a spout like a long-legged ball

Till every beast blared down in a swerve
Till every turtle crushed from his shell
Till every bone in the rushing grave
Rose and crowed and fell!

Good luck to the hand on the rod,
There is thunder under its thumbs;
Gold gut is a lightning thread,
His fiery reel sings off its flames,

The whirled boat in the burn of his blood
Is crying from nets to knives,
Oh the shearwater birds and their boatsized brood
Oh the bulls of Biscay and their calves

Are making under the green, laid veil
The long-legged beautiful bait their wives.
Break the black news and paint on a sail
Huge weddings in the waves,

Over the wakeward-flashing spray
Over the gardens of the floor
Clash out the mounting dolphin's day,
My mast is a bell-spire,

Strike and smoothe, for my decks are drums,
Sing through the water-spoken prow
The octopus walking into her limbs
The polar eagle with his tread of snow.

From salt-lipped beak to the kick of the stern
Sing how the seal has kissed her dead!
The long, laid minute's bride drifts on
Old in her cruel bed.

Over the graveyard in the water
Mountains and galleries beneath
Nightingale and hyena
Rejoicing for that drifting death

Sing and howl through sand and anemone
Valley and sahara in a shell,
Oh all the wanting flesh his enemy
Thrown to the sea in the shell of a girl

Is old as water and plain as an eel;
Always good-bye to the long-legged bread
Scattered in the paths of his heels
For the salty birds fluttered and fed

And the tall grains foamed in their bills;
Always good-bye to the fires of the face,
For the crab-backed dead on the sea-bed rose
And scuttled over her eyes,

The blind, clawed stare is cold as sleet.
The tempter under the eyelid
Who shows to the selves asleep
Mast-high moon-white women naked

Walking in wishes and lovely for shame
Is dumb and gone with his flame of brides.
Susannah's drowned in the bearded stream
And no-one stirs at Sheba's side

But the hungry kings of the tides;
Sin who had a woman's shape
Sleeps till Silence blows on a cloud
And all the lifted waters walk and leap.

Lucifer that bird's dropping
Out of the sides of the north
Has melted away and is lost
Is always lost in her vaulted breath,

Venus lies star-struck in her wound
And the sensual ruins make
Seasons over the liquid world,
White springs in the dark.

Always good-bye, cried the voices through the shell,
Good-bye always, for the flesh is cast
And the fisherman winds his reel
With no more desire than a ghost.

Always good luck, praised the finned in the feather
Bird after dark and the laughing fish
As the sails drank up the hail of thunder
And the long-tailed lightning lit his catch.

The boat swims into the six-year weather,
A wind throws a shadow and it freezes fast.
See what the gold gut drags from under
Mountains and galleries to the crest!

See what clings to hair and skull
As the boat skims on with drinking wings!
The statues of great rain stand still,
And the flakes fall like hills.

Sing and strike his heavy haul
Toppling up the boatside in a snow of light!
His decks are drenched with miracles.
Oh miracle of fishes! The long dead bite!

Out of the urn a size of a man
Out of the room the weight of his trouble
Out of the house that holds a town
In the continent of a fossil

One by one in dust and shawl,
Dry as echoes and insect-faced,
His fathers cling to the hand of the girl
And the dead hand leads the past,

Leads them as children and as air
On to the blindly tossing tops;
The centuries throw back their hair
And the old men sing from newborn lips:

Time is bearing another son.
**** Time! She turns in her pain!
The oak is felled in the acorn
And the hawk in the egg kills the wren.

He who blew the great fire in
And died on a hiss of flames
Or walked the earth in the evening
Counting the denials of the grains

Clings to her drifting hair, and climbs;
And he who taught their lips to sing
Weeps like the risen sun among
The liquid choirs of his tribes.

The rod bends low, divining land,
And through the sundered water crawls
A garden holding to her hand
With birds and animals

With men and women and waterfalls
Trees cool and dry in the whirlpool of ships
And stunned and still on the green, laid veil
Sand with legends in its ****** laps

And prophets loud on the burned dunes;
Insects and valleys hold her thighs hard,
Times and places grip her breast bone,
She is breaking with seasons and clouds;

Round her trailed wrist fresh water weaves,
with moving fish and rounded stones
Up and down the greater waves
A separate river breathes and runs;

Strike and sing his catch of fields
For the surge is sown with barley,
The cattle graze on the covered foam,
The hills have footed the waves away,

With wild sea fillies and soaking bridles
With salty colts and gales in their limbs
All the horses of his haul of miracles
Gallop through the arched, green farms,

Trot and gallop with gulls upon them
And thunderbolts in their manes.
O Rome and ***** To-morrow and London
The country tide is cobbled with towns

And steeples pierce the cloud on her shoulder
And the streets that the fisherman combed
When his long-legged flesh was a wind on fire
And his **** was a hunting flame

Coil from the thoroughfares of her hair
And terribly lead him home alive
Lead her prodigal home to his terror,
The furious ox-killing house of love.

Down, down, down, under the ground,
Under the floating villages,
Turns the moon-chained and water-wound
Metropolis of fishes,

There is nothing left of the sea but its sound,
Under the earth the loud sea walks,
In deathbeds of orchards the boat dies down
And the bait is drowned among hayricks,

Land, land, land, nothing remains
Of the pacing, famous sea but its speech,
And into its talkative seven tombs
The anchor dives through the floors of a church.

Good-bye, good luck, struck the sun and the moon,
To the fisherman lost on the land.
He stands alone in the door of his home,
With his long-legged heart in his hand.
jonchius Sep 2015
entering year 2000
rewinding vhs tape
installing napster client
anticipating victorious gore
bursting dot-com bubble
blocking tomorrow's nostalgia
commemorating festival tragedy
examining supersonic concorde
watching election coverage
recounting inconvenient truths
puzzling interface design
booing nuc-u-lar president

rising black monolith
editing non-linear encyclopedia
feeling inaugurally bushed
reliving century's dawn
unchanging state flag
processing royal massacre
escaping insane asylum
sensing impending collapse
perusing city guide
collapsing contemporary structures
initiating quixotic peacekeeping
ignoring conscription threats

entering year 2002
reporting unfortunate pearl
relaxing shotgun porch
exploding roadside bombs
addressing thousand followers
hugging financial meltdown
writing resembling skylines
shocking archipelagic bursts
processing theatrical disaster
tightening homeland security

entering year 2003
proliferating elegant telegnosis
rejecting freedom fries
blazing wartime trails
toppling dictatorial statue
unfurling "mission accomplished"
handling continental blackout
ejecting coronal masses

entering year 2004
flashing multiple sobriquets
populating dorm-roomy website
high-grossing aramaic movie
generating tunnel vision
rushing national anthem
parading goth athletes
letting games begin
accepting soviet passports
continuing obscure flumadiddle
lunar-eclipsing world series
two-terming republican regime
declining personality cult
glowing orange revolution
eroding periglacial drumlins
inundating lacustrine basins
exciting geomorphological processes
enduring tumultuous tsunami

entering year 2005
blasting "galvanize" repeatedly
unforgiving cyclonic scenario
printing controversial drawing
sketching cartoon prophet
overturning hurricane alphabet
rigging medal count
preparing new horizons
rejecting flash sites

entering year 2006
setting plutonian destination
synchronizing new horizons
sighting stellar foison
maintaining feudal system
emerging microblogging service
reading ancient tweets
rotating golden statue
mounting social debt
protesting planetary demotion
forecasting catastrophic recession
executing "innocent" dictator

entering year 2007
declining share prices
building ruby railroad
lifting presidential term-limits
perpetuating oil-rich dictatorships
falling interstate bridge
slugging giant bonds
clothing blackwater mercenaries
disappearing internet personalities
unforgiving writers strike

entering year 2008
stealing variable thunders
relaxing domain names
letting games continue
exploding sunrise propane
requesting birth certificate
electing another suit
disappointing orthodox republicans
microblogging maximal meltdown

entering year 2009
inaugurating new president
encountering bear markets
cackling risible laughter
dying pop king
deleting neolithic internet

entering year 2010
collapsing presidential palace
prospering cinematic avatar
pronouncing eyjafjallajökull effortlessly
"kettling riot police
flaming cop cruiser"
blasting text-based vuvuzelas
leaking diplomatic cables
fading pre-twitter memories
self-immolating street vendor

entering year 2011
"enervating nine-point quake
propagating harbor wave
inundating nuclear plant
irradiating unclear fates"
raging mid-eastern spring
throwing body asea
locating trojan asteroid
penetrating financial throughfare
resonating oral amplifier
blazing verdant material

entering year 2012
rising chubby dictator
gentrifying weird twitter
exploding next month
intriguing "fake" passport
proliferating single-hued avatars
surging sandy cyclone
inhabiting alternate universe
manipulating another election
rigging people's ballots
perpetuating manipulated world
fulfilling megalomaniac urges
surviving previous apocalypse
surviving another baktun

entering year 2013
descending rogue meteor
encoding festival weekend
obfuscating's very own
approving snow den
searching yaya island
soaking wet veld

entering year 2014
missing plane geometry?
annexing peninsular territory
printing powdered medication
forecasting meteoric boomtime
prevailing monochromatic identity
avoiding aviation accidents
determining auspicious date
revising deactivation plans
reliving years 2000-2014
Anais Vionet Jul 2023
Lisa and I were watching one of our favorite series last night, a Japanese manga called “The Way of the Househusband” and I could barely keep my eyes open. I went to bed at a decent hour (11:30) but when I got in bed, I couldn’t sleep, I just laid there. It was rude and caused me to oversleep.

I don’t mean to brag, but I can go from oversleeping, to bushed and showered in less than 15 minutes, I’m really a marvel of efficiency (with still wet hair), especially since we wear scrubs.
I grabbed my iPad, stuffed it in my rucksack, and hey, I was ready to go.

In the living room, it took me a moment to situate myself - it was a very noisy and disorienting environment - what with Lisa yelling at me for running late, but soon we were off.

Just a girl, her lemon ginger Kombucha, and her angry roommate, ready to face the world.

We stepped out into the morning and.. Ughh! I’d forgotten my AirPods. I double checked, not there.
Lisa gives me a threatening look. “PLEASE,” I begged, desperately, “MY AIRPODS!”
“OH, my GOD!” Lisa said, glancing, irritatedly at the Apple Watch I gave her for her birthday.

I ran up the stairs and was back in NO time, really, really ready to go.
Just a girl, her Kombucha, AirPods and angrier roommate, ready to face the world.

My sister’s apartment is about 7 walking minutes from the hospital. As we were walking, I had my AirPods in and was rolling with Kanye. I in NO way endorse his CrAzY. But If I start the day out, with “Through the Wire” and “Jesus walks,” I’m tweaked for whatever gamut Rebecca (my surgeon) has in store for me. I paused the slaps, momentarily, as we passed a herd of boys, but I was bouncing again in a blink.

Lisa and I are in the second week of our two-month, summer fellowships - shadowing surgeons (different surgeons) for “clinical experience.” The first thing I do every workday morning is bring Rebecca a large coffee (from the cafeteria). She comes in at 5:30am every morning of the week and leaves God-knows-when - certainly, well after we do at 4:30pm.

She spends the three hours before I come in, reviewing patient notes and surgical plans. I gently rapped on her open door. She doesn’t look up, but she knows it’s me.
“Good morning,” I whisper, Rebecca’s seated at her desk, working on her laptop. I set the coffee on her right side and after I remove the pre-existing empty cups, I hesitate.

“What’s up,” she says, leaning into her screen to check something as she keys to enlarge it.
“I have a small question,” I say, “Are we supposed to be filling out timecards?” She doesn’t say anything, continuing to examine the - whatever. After a few seconds, I added:
“Quinn said we have to fill out timecards.”

“Did he?” Rebacca asked, rhetorically, after a bit. She’d stopped studying the screen and gotten a faraway look. Then, after another moment, she said, “Well, bless his heart,” which made me chuckle, because we’re both southern girls and that’s shorthand for “f**k him.”

“Thank you.” she says (for the coffee). I’d been dismissed.
We have rounds in twenty minutes.
BLT Marriam Webster word of the day challenge: Gamut: “a series of related things.”
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2013
Dog Tired, Bone Tired, Dead Tired.

all in, beat, bored, burned out,
bushed, done in, drained, drooping,
exhausted, ******, fatigued, fed up, flagging,
just about had it, indifferent, knocked out,
out of gas, pooped, punchy,
ready to drop, spent, taxed,
wearied, wearing, wiped out, worn out
plain old zonked.

there are only two words, for which there are no precise, exact, synonyms.  

To mind, they flash instantly,
For they are the constants in the equation of life.

Love

Responsibility


Man, can they make you tired!

But they are constants, so we accept and pray for ourselves
To accept them both with

Equanimity.

5:45am
August 24th 2013
equanimity
— noun

mental or emotional stability or composure, especially under tension or strain; calmness; equilibrium.

This poem should get the honorific of First Poem of the Day,
But as a constant, it cannot be defined by a unit of time
What is an American?

Is it decided by the timber of our voice,
the strength in our limbs,
the blood in our veins,
or the color of our skin?

Tell me,
for I do not understand,
unfold your thesis,
inundate my mind with statistics,
be it quantum blood measures,
origin or sociological constructs of the creature in question.

Tell me,
what it is to be an American?
This umbrella term,
I just do not understand,
is it to be a thief?
A country founded on stolen land,
and stolen labor,
sage bushed bills,
backed by gilded structures and systems of debate and seizure,
is being an American drowning in leisure?

What does this term mean?
I find myself confused,
it is difficult to quantify the qualitative,
and breath life into lifeless chiseled forms,
found in squares and plazas throughout,
a country split by hard wired ferocity,
quicksand laden dividing lines,
the vocal deciding what it is to be,
and what it isn't.

Careful lad,
there is such a thing as too much,
too much individuality,
so put up your hair,
put away the paint,
put away that sign,
sheath your weapon,
old boy,
this isn't your fight,
and besides,
what can you do with a toy?


I don't know what America is,
land of the free,
where is that?
I see only industry,
a dying morality,
drowned in ethics,
a protestant-core built on overt inequality.

What does it mean to be an American?
I can't tell you what it means to you,
only what it means to me,
and so I say dust off the document upon which this term was built,
and realize that the past is not what you should use,
just as anything else of import,
use judgement,
agency,
the ability to choose,
uphold the  freedom that suffocates in the back of your mind,
to the flame inside your chest,
to the weakness in your legs,
down against the sole of your shoes.

America is a country founded on rebellion,
a little man,
underdog all grown up,
and now he's the one throwing punches,
a story paralleled by Davidic tales,
and though he may not be perfect,
and is often reviled,
I love him still,
his rough edges,
for we are still part of the experiment,
ongoing,
the American dream.

Though the gates may be weighed down,
the hinges rusted,
a country of sojourners,
soon a country of minorities,
cultural pluralism,
though flawed,
I like it better this way,
a techni-colored mirage of what once was,
and if we must meet our end,
so be it,
guide me home,
for is it not true that all roads eventually wind home?
A.P. Beckstead (2014)
ethyreal  Jul 2013
Loremaster
ethyreal Jul 2013
The seeker looks.
The seeker does not listen.
The seeker knows the voices in his head tell lies.

The seeker hides.
The seeker's bones become shadow.
The seeker knows not to let his muscles creak.

The seeker feels
Inside his pockets
Where he found Knowledge-Gnomes and carving tools.

The seeker sees
Through brass, rose-tinted goggles
And bushed eyebrows and bags that sank into his cheeks.

The seeker reads.
The seeker's hands touch parchment,
The seeker's hands feel ink, like a kings would gold.

The seeker knows all, yet nothing.
The seeker speaks all, yet nothing.
The seeker's wisdom, enchanted into every grain of sand,
And yet enchanted, still, into none at all.
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2014
Dog Tired, Bone Tired, Dead Tired.

all in, beat, bored, burned out,
bushed, done in, drained, drooping,
exhausted, ******, fatigued, fed up, flagging,
just about had it, indifferent, knocked out,
out of gas, pooped, punchy,
ready to drop, spent, taxed,
wearied, wearing, wiped out, worn out
plain old zonked.

there are only two words, for which there are no precise, exact, synonyms.  

To mind, they flash instantly,
For they are the constants in the equation of life.

Love

Responsibility

Man, can they make you tired!

But they are constants, so we accept and pray for ourselves
To accept them both with

Equanimity.

5:45am
August 24th 2013
Completely struggling to write, so reposting this on it's first anniversary.
At a stirring in the orchard, she sharply turns.
monument-still she watches, lopes on.
Her mottled grey more coyote-like than *****,
The fiery orange long gone from her wasted frame,
Her once-bushed tail, now hairless, drooping.

An aged ***** in her last winter, moved to stalk
in daylight, up the orchard to the treeline,
Once the hill's best hunter; each year her kits
ferocious players near the now dry brook,
Does she dream, I wonder, of those springs?

Leave her now to time, deep-denned,
where the last sleep's call ends hunger,
hid from the season's creeping chill.
Better there to finish than a trapper's snare,
Better this quiet ending in the *****'s lair.
Kabelo Maverick  Oct 2014
Cache
Kabelo Maverick Oct 2014
Swallowing pride is less change on the price then the focus blinks the golf post. Sweet Love undone, shame, it’s no hole in one when folks impose on soft ghosts. As Man rest below, it’s like we misunderstand more and so the next fellow will follow. Old stories weren’t so cold, once upon a time family and friends wouldn’t trade you for gold. But don’t be caught out worn out; coming to terms with new germs makes the heart want to turn back to the cool perms. So afraid of Love that breeds us, worse, we can’t punch Aids without a glove on; Jesus… plus nowadays it even busts one in handcuffs, believe this. But who am I to judge the weathers, besides, my friend thinks I’m soft like white pampers. Just days ago, my eyes were pepper sprayed by white crackers, pick sides, and my colleague couldn’t pay his dues, all he did was explain tired matters, in all this I just decided to grow white feathers and God forbid, I cursed their wild manners. Silence still spoils the years, no doubt, I learned in this lair, how loud you roar the strength of Bears, that’s what it’s about. I can’t wait till my mother reads this... why I had to walk out of my Uncle Steve’s burial ******?
I thought I was missed, in minutes I saw her with this deep look in her eyes, fixed, then it turns out my in-law thinks my boys and I looked like gangsters in the midst, I felt my heart twist…almost threw a fist to expand what his mind missed, but ****, no kith and kin greetings and kisses… I had to take leave; my family is now Mr and Mrs. From now on end, they’ll see me with a fresh eye, this is how I’m meant, forever until the flesh dies. I guess best times are with strangers, in a rendezvous called Timbuktu I met these boys and not famous, we crushed a lot but touched the dot, the heart of failures. The *****, trees, good food clouds greed, you could snooze or leave, I swear the mood won’t bleed. Best you crown them abundant like a peace antique, that’s Mr Brown and London, my good friends indeed. It’s a Mystery what life can bring; last week over beer, I exchanged fears with a King. Possessed in some foreign church, this dream had me glad to blink while he cracked the Da Vinci code, digging to find the King of Kings. Our minds froze, as we came to realize how deep we’ve grown… time is old, I knew then our faith and freedom would have to come bold. It’s a strange time in my life, at the same time I’m deeming the name of my wife. Dog marked Kemet as next to thrive, same line, I might get me a Queen or stone my life at night. Envision the sight, with a Nefer that should be…breathing life into Pharaohs that died. Of course, kids will know what Mommy’s womb means; I mean no offence but watch the Mummy movies. Reminds me of a dream Mommy had, I was drunk and so old, I really think it’s nothing bad, I’m just young with an old soul but ex-factors be spinning my head though, and I’m hoping for some Excalibur spinning ahead, you know. Slaves are made to be industrious in a place they hate but I’m tired, it’s time for hearts to get paid. But hay, wrestling with time like I’m messing with mine got my final warning signed. My boss said I’m immature; I need to pull up my socks until I’m in for sure. I saved her the cause coz at times passion gets passionately *******, even words can’t open the door. Not to mention, I’m all bushed with hair like Samson’s intertwine, I don’t want to cause tension, hence let’s all push affairs like Santon, sipping wine. No more talk about the word, blind. They’ve been too kind, as the world gets embarrassing through their ‘eyes’. You’ll think it makes sense, when you realise how much they miss in a chance, then it blends, The first sense. It’s scary, I mean Harry…would you know when you’ve met the Carpenter? Will he be fairy or nostalgic with a scent of lavender or may be carrying messages like that guy, the Messenger? How will you know, if you can’t respect another? and yet you’re still awaiting him, who lives in you forever. Man lives forever between the lines, God how can we ignore it? My cousin is as passionate as I with no job, how does he endure this? I’ll do whatever I can to help you out Cuzz, hold on, I promise. I’m not known for counting my losses but don’t be so sure I’ll cater; fraternizing with sources is just my second nature. Pick up this heavy Rock and take a good look at the ants, in this manly clock, many subscribe to false pretence. No one wants to be in the dock and that makes perfect sense, but why all the false defence? Might as well play tennis with church, serve an ace to the priest; confess my habits to purge, in search of reason why my people fail to merge? My Dead Blood bless my verse, and my high school friend, I missed his piece called Living on the verge back then. I can remember being so young and thin, shy and dim, I couldn’t tell how it’s been ever since. Looking back being juvenile, it just seems like we dwelled in better sins. Free Mandela hit White students wild and Blacks at the same time flying with brighter wings. Nervous minds in the hall, my friend questioning the principal whether or not he’s racist. First time, I see an old man running away from the ball, explaining principles with no basics. Standard 9, every one in line curious to know who’s going to make prefect, SRC was just fine but not on the same intellect. Matriculated with a distinction but articulated no instinction. We could’ve married some of those chickens if it wasn’t for those unresolved feelings. Now the eggs have hatched, gone with those legs, a dream of the past, but then you gave me that eye on the streets to **cache…
©2006-08-01
Aaron Wallis Feb 2014
A lowly wooden bench lent itself to a lonesome aged narrow man in a common garden in the smallest hour of the day’s beginning. In the thick haze of the summer’s waking light the common is thinly met with the company of others. Just an old man and his acquainted bench who came to give his eyes sight to the grass and trees, and to rid himself of thought.
He and the bench creak as he sits back; clutching at the satchel veiled among his dull drudged garb that bleeds into his pallid slack and cracked skin.
The wiry hairs bushed around his nostrils recoil to the deep inhale before the sigh, his yawning blue eyes sliding behind a milky glaze follow a bushy tailed rodent hurry into the confidence of a tree.
Through all nonchalance a pair of hobgoblin lugs under a brown woollen hat slides up the flanks of his head to outlying drowned tones of laddish laughs and lewd levity, an unseen clutch of kids filling the common’s spread with their foolish louting prances. Intimidating the preferred and performed with their innocuous idiocies; a mere asocial array of follies without the thought of good manner.
The thoughts of the old man are only briefly drawn; his ears leave the sounds of reckless recreation and back to the hushing song of the swaying grass, the rustling shake of the seasoned leaves on gorged and drooping branches. To his own wilted waning heart, the tremors, quiver and shivers within his own cage, his thoughts turned to his own temporal passage and to the re-joining of his love, of whom no longer lays her head on his shoulder, whom no longer wraps herself around his arm on the lowly park bench.
His lowest lip gives to an emotive tremble as he heaves himself over to the hem of the seat, his hands without any other part to play; frenetically tickle one another with frail kinked fingers.
With what little his body has left to give the eyes well to the upmost point of a tear, as he feels the weight of his wallet in his side trouser pocket against the rough of his skin. Where there within lays an image of a most loved face in a prized time, so that it may be remembered so it may fetch ease to a remittent floundering morsel of a man who could justly with the dead.
The photograph within his keeping need not be looked upon from under the shine of a laminated holding; it needs only to be there, only to be known that it is there.
The satchel was undid and fetched from within the clutter came an elderly notebook now held in his hands. A phlegmy husk of something said breeches his gummy chops, and he spits as he spat shouting out at the still of the garden.
“You should always write more than you do,” she would say, “you are better for it when you do and it lifts me as it does you, when you do.”
The old man reads from the notebook with a weak hate for the world.

“Am I for the worms yet? Am I to be from this rock?
Am I not yet too mad for this mad maddening world?
Four corners of an empty house, a homeless place of curling wallpaper and aloneness for company.
A room in a vagrant house with no light to fill it with a decrepit fool for a keeper
His stink stinks the walls for days as the blow flies form a speckled haze as they feast in filth of his unnoticed demise
With no manner of intention and for relation or friend, there is no cause and no mention for any to attend
He will rot with the house and his memory with it, with his memory does his love die and together they are ghosts in a world where ghosts do not exist.”

The old man pauses as he forcibly triggers one finger to his temple and ***** in his lips. His empty cries fall to a mumble as his hands tremble with his dear notebook in their grasp.

“Take me now cruel are the fates, take me now and rid me
The worms will welcome me, my flesh for an endless night
My life for a world without this life, for a life without his world
I would hold with a brim smile if it was not for my memory of her, if she was not to be lost at the close of this stint
I know not or want knowledge; I seek not of a design and not of meaning
Just a cure for this affliction for my must to her who brings me so much sorrow
Through blissful ages I can no longer hold, and can barely recall
We are all just people who will soon be once living, to be unlived and to forget is a conflict in myself
I have no answer as I have no question, you can have no answer to a question you do not seek nor ask
I dare not speak but I have no end for this, I have no solace and I have no end.”
The old man; the poor old man began to close his dear aged notebook and find the need to bring a smile, perhaps a moment of lunacy to calm the tightening knot beneath his breast.
He pulled a scratching cackle from the pit, wild and uncooked wiping the drool from the crook of his maw with the back of his blotched, mottled hand.
The old man found some seconds of a stoic amenity as his wild eyes grew gallant for those mere moments before the grey metal heft of his sullen vesture fell to his shoulders, he became heavy once more as the world retook him and cloaked again in the present - the light ebbed from him as swiftly as it came. The old man reproached his satchel to humbly return his dear old notebook.
There was a crack like a pick to ice with a hollow thud like a boot to wood as an immediately dissipating claret mist fizzed above his head. The make shift found-about cosh still swinging through the air and over his crown, the old man’s wilted body twisted and slumped to the floor face first. The concrete path before him tearing at the skin of his chin, his frail bones cracked as the meagre weight of his body forced itself into his neck. Laying perverse and unnatural the life was soaked up into his woollen hat and out across the concrete, to the grass – to the worms that writhed below the muck. His eyes were as lifeless as they were when he lived.
They did not wait for the gentle hiss of the spray or the bubbles that popped in the pool that surrounded the old man. They had snatched the satchel and ran off into the spread of the common until they were nothing but outlying drowned tones of laddish laughs and lewd levity.
Crazy old *******.
A lowly wooden bench has lent itself to a lonesome aged narrow man in a common garden in the smallest hour of the day’s beginning. In the thick haze of the summer’s waking light the common is thinly met with the company of others. Just an old man and his acquainted bench who came to give his eyes sight to the grass and trees, and to rid himself of thought.
I wanted to look at the people we never notice or avoid and there potential differences, whether it be an old crazy man on a bench or a group of youths in hoods. I wanted to follow the man though and his reason for him to be sitting in the bench a momentary peak into his life. I also tried to paint a scene with a little detail as I could. I only hope it all worked.
Robin Carretti Jun 2018
I was circling seeing the symbol at
the square like great ***** of fire
Making his move the checkmate
The overcrowded City all sharked Inn
Persian cats  the parade of top hats
The women with her furry-coat
She has some woofing bark
The time to be happy but sulking

Dark, what? (Dr. Seuss Square Hats)
what happens when no one listens

Eyes far away masquerade to glisten
Holy water so purified  this earthly planet
A give or take got terrified all flatten
linked face and body invasion of the body
snatchers those crazy cats like a
A boy to the crunch snicker
were squeaking someone saw
something squealing card dealing

What the (Bobcats) cat napping
Stray cats ***** pack City rats
Were stinking up the alleyway
The whole nightclub was a square
the Disco ball have it your way
What time is it anyway 
 his hangover jerky

  Eggs Benedict Times Square the
formula of love project what did I do
for the next subject

What I did_ go daddy so diddy I was his lady
And he was so
___
square toast Arnold
So  dorm dorky was a big ball Porky
Pig glob New York Times all I read was What I did
The girl has to have ***** but the Victorian doll face
Christmas red glitter ***** came to be a disgrace

He's such firecracker handball the soccer ball he wasn't
showing up and what I did I met the Canadian Cups
I met someone else named  Rob what a dip drip dribble

He was fixated on the TV square rabbit ear antennas
Feeling like a round bubble brain chit chat yentas
In his RV square cell phone apps laying their sedated
Twins overlapped taking naps

Archer Ball hotel Archie what a "Bunkbed"
  outside in the lobby 'Talking heads' group,
they could see you talking in your sleep
that sleepytime tea Vampy crime
with his beat-up square chair
the doorknob speckled all dotted polka dot 
 Magnifying glass ball someone will fall

Itzy ritzy French bikini he fantasized
Into her curves, he needed
better ***** going firm up
The New Year was germ cup
To many Apple computers like
Jumping Jack more apple phones
it's the New Year you hear
So many serial murderers here's
(Jumping Jack)
he got trashed
Such a comic Jughead so bushed
He was outdated so Square he didn't
have one square in his head I was in the mood
making  round's
With celebration drinks ball twister looking
inside my crystal ball

New light counting 1-2-3-4 waiting without a
care 5-6-7-8 my head is pounding for the
New Year, everything is a number
People are like lemons
square cakes
All we do is have a fight to
the nearest rounding
A perfect round stone
Diamond why exchange silly name
Diamond Exchange
You know what I did for
Times Square right?
Don't go back tumbling in the past
Tumblr no one has time to check
your pictures all science and physics

Why does everyone want your birth number
Getting dimmer adding right dress
The ball did go up or what I did put a lid on it
  Holy hot tamales stick to the
new year priorities
Did I have a kiss or another year to miss?

The ball going down I need him to get up
Basket-Ball Hoop Snoop Dog
The concert felt like Ms. Betty Boop
New York necklace of fruit loops
  Please allow me to introduce
myself symphony
of the devil
I am a man I will do anything for my lover
When our time is right I will just leave her
Foreign Cat tongue milking let's be personal
Times Square New York New York
The Billboards and mural "Marilyn Monroe"
names of Doe look at her new legs
Her white dress flew away
with her money
gold bonds
She's the love talker he's savvy
(New Yorker)
New day, every hour, every time
Times Square
Jailbird meeting the blue square tie bird boss
He was the show wicked crime light cross
Is it really such a waste of time?
College teens of frats scholars

No one cared to have principles
What will I do for twin double
Eyes coupled
What I saw multiple personalities
what will be the resolution?

Singing in the New Year
he takes a New Year ***** Diva
her one of a kind glass
Someone threw it in the grass
Hum, Hum, Hum singing
He's downtown going forty-second street
Are you kidding me this is
Times Square
Do you have square curved
into your bone body
Go home and get some sleep
on your *****
This squares it up no extra rounds
That's what I did 4 Times Square
No love circles just being
you Square
Married diamonds square
shape worth it.
Kiss the whole earth lit
Time is many things we hold a moment and we watch the ball celebration or see all the killings we live in warfare no one, unfortunately, cares let us be the change and rearrange our hearts leave them close to our family and loved ones

— The End —