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Khoisan Jul 2018
Extermination decapitation
Nocturnal obliteration
Armadillos anteater bafoon
Typhoon heatwave...
Mr Grim Reaper
DON'T YOU KNOW?
No grave can keep Her...
Men march on as to heaven
Twenty four seven
Three Six five days
Ten different ways
Passionate professional
Daring sharing nurturing
Caring...Monsters within Minions
Amazing people aren't they
There is no substitute for hard work
Just observe Ants.
There is no substitute for hardwork
Just observe ANTS not a lazy bone there
Imagine the Queen becoming A motivational Speaker?
Like new summer wine
We were green in our time
And the yellow rose
never smelled better

But like the weeds in the road
Armadillos , horned toads
The truth was spelled out in the letter

You know some days are just fine
Others will find that your lying
But most of the time
you're barbed wiring

Well the rains came on down
Washed away most of the town
I found you boarding the bus to Dallas

You said you gave it a go
It's time to go with the flow
Then I watched the bus
dissappear with sadness

Well the high plain's never tame
Life's not long there for the lame
And one can drown in the dust
of your sorrow

You can ride on and mend
But you will never be able
to bend
The land or the will that's known as Texas

So goodbye my dear friend
You can write but I'll never send
I'll be waiting for you
at the nexus
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2015
last night, the same woman from a previous night prior to last night, walking with shopping bags into an affluent area of the town, giving me the ultimate evil stare of all famous superstitions. the second time, last night, the same woman, the same diseased stare, and this poem - as a result of being impregnated with too much evil; call me superstitious, but not all witchery is softened by psychiatric reasoning and antidepressants.*

and then i hear of my parents meeting a friend of mine's father,
an "antique" dealer for the tourists
slander me for drinking too much and not glorifying marijuana
while insults were thrown like snowballs
before my mother and father entertaining guests from canada,
i talk a bit more with him in a pub a few weeks later,
he tells me of the topic of conspiracy to commit ******
with haemorrhage symptoms like nothing: but how do you know
he says; i offend him with courting: but how do you know
whether i'm telling the truth or lying? in silence.
i raise my hands upon parting, we part:
diana wanna hugs? no, diana wanna scrap metal.
his father made our friendship less by not including a monetary
exchange of power, i'd flex a bicep my way had i a necessary
drinking partner; but i don't: the chip man sold whole potatoes
deep fried in the shape of fabergé eggs... his father sold
traffic cones in the shape of trombones at a higher price, only
because all the buyers were tourists.
socrates was wrong though: poets are not rhetoricians
or sophists, what we are we are because we use rhetoric and sophistry
to insult people, trying to remain in tact: better that
with any army, we're more armadillo word-to-word than the hoplites
shield-to-shield; idiots never known an insult for a gimmick
unless a chess-precise knuckle is utilised on unchaining linkages;
but like the saxon i too, on the vibrant islands of celt and caramel,
the second wave of saxons came, the scot and irish celts worried
about lambs of isaac, but lessened their concerns
with the norman landing - so i too originated upon using
my tongue to a disadvantage, and it worked, for hastings and for all,
"lying" myself abrupt with a burp for the sparrow to ease lighter spacing
of the advantaged footstep.
we were poets, word-to-word tighter than the hoplites shield-to-shield
for what the gladiators called armadillos of a farm.
socrates didn't get it, since he reasoned: i to noun, equating it only
as questioning pro to the guise of inquiry, but among the native nobility of greece,
poetry survived, songs and jests supreme, park bench hollows
for the termite lisp in sounds of the multitude,
had but the termite song bore a chair to rock a baby blue,
i'd too rock a baby in suffocating termites song,
but we known nouns are not delicious "out of time"
in the adjectives, for we know nouns as static insurmountable objects,
and given the unitary subjectivity of sport statistics,
they are only worth a passive commentary of nodding and passivity
to please - i.e., never was sloth a gamble to ease a fission of gambled lessening;
but if philosophers corrects poets, then poets end up correcting furtherance
with philosophy simply plagiarised for academia's salary bogus;
wishing that socrates only took the bribe rather than the poisonous brine.

i start the night off reading *the offence of poetry
, by an emeritus prof.,
hazard adams, gets me ******* to the point where i forgive the culprit
of rotten *** and jealous ****** born lute worthy out of wedlock...
why the violins i ask, chopin played a few dirges on piano,
why the sentiment to imagine Dickensian paupers?
a violin dropped from the sky with frogs & lepers didn't **** anyone,
but a piano did, once, in bad key.

i started the night off reading a book: the offence of poetry,
got *******,
walked off into the jiggle night starry for some beers,
walked past a family: mother, father plus 3, a boy and two girls,
headphones on, hushed, then my hairpiece the attention,
walked into the off-lice, picked up 8 cans,
stood there imitating conservative *******,
spotted the mother eagerly brushing shadows with me,
tilted from my eye corner into her face
and spotted a ****** up face of smiles:
girls talked about me like zoella,
i donned my pseudo self-inventive chonmage,
hair too thick;
but i egged them on in rugby, loving the tetragrammaton geometry of
two H, y for threes in dimensions and
all the tactic being: // \ for the w.
pardon me wrong but was it: eager eagle's nest the jester in clown's face paint
**** of splash in conversation?
but don't you just love a married woman with three kids
putting two wine bottles on a counter looking at you
after her children said something noticeable about you only secondary in dreams?

well... there's the rude story of a friend's father among many
to claim the accent in jealousy,
father ****** no. 2, hide his ***** in a ******* prior to the girthed birth
experience of: "rising to the top of law and commerce."
idiotic ******* the load of them;
happened in leicester sq. i have you know,
irish was blazed in ginger that day too reminiscent of celtic,
but as you know, intelligence and the irish swing into the maxim:
a man walks into a pub - they delivered the concrete!
the pub is emptied, the irish run out for hands on prayer missing -
in shakespearean metaphor of folding monks giving prayer to ****
the ***** and lips the kiss, for whatever reason was worth a rhythmic suffix as towed into -ed, -ed.
Skyscrapers and green fields
The opposite of what I had pictured it to be
No dry grass or cactuses
But suddenly a tornado struck Dallas
And we were stuck at the hotel
We were like "oh well!"
No complains, just smiles
Didn't tip the valet guys
Sorry fellas, we're not used to your system yet
The next time we won't forget!
Stopped at Dairy Queen for a banana split
It's too late anyway to try to stay fit
They played the Banjo song from Deliverance
and some gentlemen with Cowboy hats started to dance
Finally I got to see the stereotypes
in the land with the stars and stripes
We missed our turkey but saw some coyotes instead
On every road armadillos lay dead
Waved good bye at the border of New Mexico
Hated to see us leave but loved to watch us go
Zumwalt Fan Aug 2011
Something Bad

Something bad is coming
Worse than any Grand Funk Railroad Reunion Concert
Worse than watching a full episode of Meet the Kardashians
With all commercials included.

I not only have read about it
I can feel it
So much more bothersome than
Hay fever in May.

It's the Universal Fender ******
Havoc beyond compare
It's Universal Affliction and Ruination
Heavy weight and high-profile kind of stuff.

This universe is dumb
So much stupider than the armadillos that get hit by my little Fiat
This universe is worse than any teen age driver
Not watching where it goes
Or what is coming down the road.

Ten to the ten to the ten to the ten and more universes out there
Outnumbering all the cable channels both regular and High Def
More numerous than all the cockroaches in all the cities on the East Coast
Going any which way they please
Not planning ahead
Or working with the AAA or the highway safety department

More universes than every single observation ever made by every single person
More than every single argument between all the married couples
In all countries
On all existing planets
In all existing galaxies.

Each time you think of a possible universe, it exists!
Unless we all stop thinking there will be more and more and more.

Each universe moving
Some fast
Some even faster
Some inches apart from each other
Concealed behind some hidden dimension
About to turn the corner at full speed.

There's a collision
A crash
Not too far up the road
Every universe distracted
As if they are texting away
Following their own set of laws
Without regard for any right of way.

There's a smash-up coming up very soon
One universe piles into another
with one of those universes being ours in particular
The one that I live in.

I am scared
I know that adding a shoulder harness to my office chair
is not going to be enough.

I am terrified
I cannot figure out
as I make my last will and testament
who I can leave the house and dog to.

Today, tomorrow or maybe later
It is sure to happen
All my plans for no purpose
All my purposes to no point
I panic
Abandoning all my activities
Crawling into the attic
Taking a pen
A flashlight
And a notebook
And wondering
If there is any new thought
I can have that might make this all better
Without creating
One more
**** reckless
Out-of-control
universe.

--Zumwalt (2011)  (copied from www.zumpoems.com)
Jonny Angel May 2015
It's a quiet sacred place,
deep in the oak hammocks,
way beyond the pine flatlands
& cabbage palms.
There I commune
with the crows
and the crickets.
And at night,
a bullfrog symphony plays.
The mosquitoes,
*****,
and armadillos
come out to play.
It remains sacred,
but is not nearly as quiet.
Miss Masque Feb 2012
That time I stooped
down really low to the ground
just to hear where the cricket
sound was coming from,

lingers just as the smell
of the wet grass in
springtime when it's
a vibrant shade of green
instead of dead shade of brown.

That time that we pinky swore:
"I'll go if you go",
untamed matted hair flying
through the wind as we ran
as fast as we could right up to
that hill and tucked into a tumble,
rolling like over-sized armadillos
down our very own
vibrantly green
nature slide.

That time we were at
your house, and the permanent
markers were begging for us
to pop off their smooth shiny caps,
as our Barbies relaxed in your
Malibu Barbie Pink Sports Convertible.

The makeup and tattoos
in red and vibrant green and blue
that graced the hard plastic skin
of their smiling faces
never came off.
Tammy M Darby Dec 2013
The noise beyond the roaring city bustle
The cars
Harsh blaring horns
Frogs croaking in a pond
The whippoorwill its sad call
Solitary
Quite forlorn

Crickets talking in a  secret rhythmic language
Bats fluttering eyes shining
Left to right
Snakes wiggle across cold ground
Wildcats scream calling
Into a eerie starlight sky

Silver speckled fish leap out of the water
Splashing
Continuous  ripples
For the winged bug in flight
Armadillos root for their food
Having sufficient but limited sight  
The owl swoops into predatory dive
In its sharp claws his meal clutched tight
These are creatures of the darkness
The unique musical sounds of the night



This poem is copyrighted and stored in author base. All material subject to Copyright Infringement laws
Section 512(c)(3) of the U.S. Copyright
Act, 17 U.S.C. S512(c)( Tammy M Darby
Jonny Angel Feb 2014
Once I was best friends with
the greatest hunter ever.
A genuine killer.
Anything that came
inside the fence line
was fair game.
Armadillos, 'possums,
turtles & even a couple of hawks
met their demise when he locked
his keen eyes onto them.
Three or four tom cats
barely got out alive.

He licked & he loved,
scratched doors & glass
with his manicured-nails.
Once, he ate the red paint
off my garden pail.
He had chips in his teeth,
it was funny as hell,
glad it wasn't lead-based.
The cucumbers I grew
rarely made it
to the dinner table.
He'd lay in the vines
with a look on his face
of sheer contentment.

Rolling grapes & peanut butter
were his favorites, but really,
he'd eat just about anything
'cept kale.

When he went blind,
he still got a squirrel
or two & went to
digging up shrews,
left several lying around dead
as proof of his skill.

When he died,
I cried an ocean of tears.
He's buried out
in the backyard
along with his two sisters,
I miss them & their
familiar barks  every day.
Adam Mott May 2014
Whipperwillows and sacred cards
California shattering down upon us
Armadillos driving cars
Minnesota blathering all around us

Car parks, yellow museums
Degraded writers, fellow men
Air marks, mellowed athenaeum
Traded fighters bellow again

All in the head and under the bed
Yelling out, loud and clear
What was once dead is now unsaid
Shout about fear

As the rain slicked catacombs entomb such a thought
A refrain sticks honeycomb blooms, touched and bought
Kimberly Eyers Feb 2017
We all do it.
Videos.
Either it's massive *** organs and bad acting
to hilarious music.
Or it's baby armadillos being tickled.

For me today, it was the glossy pages
Of National Geographic
depicting beautiful, fragile ocean life.
Everything was as it should be in the tiny reserves.

Or was it? Doublethink asked.
Were there really no plastic bags floating by?

The miracle of life
Is so addictive.
But the synthetic version,
In two dimensions on your screen
Or the shiny pages of my magazine

Is no replacement
For the intimacy, reality, or
beauty
that overcomes
without filters.
KxBird May 2017
Do you think one day he'll look at me?
Do you think one day I'll be more important than a screen? There are treasures to plunder, worlds to explore, battles to fight, people to be.
He spends his time escaping from reality and I spend my time wishing he would notice me.
Is it a wasted wish? A futile matter of want pulled by the marionette strings of my parched heart?
There is no void for him to fill in me for I'm not half a person I'm fully complete. I just want someone to see me and think I'm more important than a gameboy or TV.
Am I worth anyone's while?
Is he a man or still a child?
Do I even like who he is or just the words he's written?
We are strangers, I am too shy and have no right to be smitten.
Who was I to think our palms were made to fit?
When my fingers are broken glass
Cracking shards no one wants to risk
touching for fear of infection
Held up by my arms that are vines I am twisted and limp with skewed perception.
That there is not beauty in this patchwork organism. Disfigured irrelevant objects sewn together. I am the antonym of humanity because my beating heart requires attention and we'd rather offer that commitment to things pixelated. Cyber connection no flesh relation.
Distant. Uninvolved.
Short attention spans because we don't want our hands in the soil of struggle we want them pristine in the waters of victory. When was the last time you felt mud between your feet? Your skin thirsts for the drink of the sun but instead you feed it wifi lethargy.
Binging every day
Looking for a reason to stay
Alive to stay connected networked together the new social interaction when no ones really saying anything we just throw ourselves out there with such little respect for transparency
We've forgotten how to laugh and how to live without our phones on our hips.
Love documented in texts and dating apps. We don't love anymore with phone calls or physical contact.
We are armadillos, turtles, and porcupines with our defenses up ready to strike or hide at any moment if you get close enough. But I want to be a comb jelly, all my insides you can see. I have no hard exoskeleton and no tentacles that sting just a rainbow illusion that propels me.
Then maybe I will be I intriguing enough. For you to put down your controller and start coming undone. I am vulnerable, I'd like to unravel you one thread at a time, I am fragile but we can make a three stranded rope that will be unbreakable overtime. And occasionally you can run back to your inviting adventure world of virtuality but please promise me that I'll always be more important than a screen.
Honestly probably one of my favorite pieces I've written.
wordvango Jan 2017
there where dark is sleep among the tall pine
forests
a bed of soft pine needles a pillow
the sun and moon kept out
and silhouetted in the morning dew
the current steams in the cool
around the bend forever
makes a curtain
for the dream
the characters the trees
no villians but the
armadillos and possum
the fox the villian
the wolf
who is hungry
?
all of them
and me and you
we have to have nourishment
and play
or I do
I play
I play amongst the teardrop drips
along the cliffs
right beyond the limbs
that hang down
evergreen
in mists
of            
the base of the mountain
we all
are under.
wordvango Feb 2017
upon every sunset the dew awaits
mornings and the dark creeps up
trees close pores and reconsider
the heat
grass leans over
to the right
bears forage for one more treat
armadillos wake up
possums wipe their eyes
a new day for them
every season has a turn as does dark and light
and nature covers all avenues
of valley lows and dales
of every creek river  misty stream
cloaked in grey
with mysteries teeming and unknown
discoveries
all forseen
but magic
to me
Ellis Oct 2021
I
It’s not what you and I expected
The opposite actually
Nights are a lot darker out here
The dozen spindly legs of insects crawl
Across my foot to prey on some poor roach
But I still talk to you when you aren’t listening
Out past the fields of nothingness and livestock,
Where the car headlights freeze Armadillos
And crack their shells like eggs in a pan
I will wait for that day
The day you come to me and I tell you
That dream still waits for you

II
I can’t drive without grimacing
The roadkill piles atop each other
Deer, boars, Coyotes
When it's all done
They leave the same red mark
You probably don’t see this in the city
The black eyes of an animal punctured
By a white gem-like dot shining
Before sunrise, the body is coated in fresh dew
I’ll stay where I am, waiting for you

III
There’s a dysfunctional couple
that fights upstairs above me
Nearby the cars race for their kind of high
The backlights behind the building of a restaurant
Makes its way around the corners of my walls
I thought I saw you, again
Looking from outside my window
Walking past me on the sidewalk
Opening the door from within my closet
Listening when I wasn’t talking
Did you see me break glass at my feet?
The hydrogen peroxide sting reminds me
To remember you once waited for me
Much inspired by Thomas James' "Letter to a Stranger"
wordvango Jul 2017
The scenery, first I would need to be outside
where birds perch on telephone wires
squirrels scurry away unworried
on crooked limbs of scrub oaks
jump like circus acrobats onto a cedar five feet away
and then I would need to open my eyes to
the vast sky blue receding far away into deep yellows
buzzards on parade so high up,
crimson shadows foretelling the coming turn of day animals
from visual to stumbling creatures
possums  and armadillos
bats
but I am entombed on a stool in my combo
living room kitchen dog port-a -***** cat
highway and playland with last night's fork
a bit of cheese on it still
a cigarette in the ashtray
wafting a trail of gray
into the air while
I study how to make sense of the
inner with outer
the fresh air with stale
the sun midday with
the foreseeable sunset
and sit and wonder in awe at all of it
Lawrence Hall May 2021
Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                            Scheduling the Execution of a Friend

Oh, yes, that oak is a friend, a fine old friend
Happy companion of lazy summer days
When I sat in its shade and drowsed over a book
Gently fanned by the leaves in those dreaming hours

Home to the mourning doves and angry jays
Preening cardinals and shy chickadees
Flying squirrels by night and grey squirrels by day
Armadillos, opossums, and raccoons

But dying now upon its grassy lawn -
The tree service will come for it at dawn
A poem is itself.
Cliff Perkins Jan 2019
Today I found three armadillos
The dogs had killed

They drug them home and humbly left them
In homage to the Lord of their castle

I got my shovel and carried them
Far enough away from the house
That I would not smell the stink.

I used to bury them
But the dogs thought it a game
Dug them up and returned them to me.

So I threw them in the lake for a while.
They sank like little submarines
I quit doing that when I started swimming

I walked by the carcasses yesterday
They were all covered with flies.

Today I sit on the porch
The dogs alert to some intruder.
They are very excited so I’ll check it out.

The intruder is a trio of buzzards.
The dogs are beside themselves.
They chase them off.

As I return to the house
I wonder about the complex webs of ecology.
Are the dogs in concert with the flies?
mike Jul 2023
i am three armadillos.

one that tucks and hides,
rolls away if it has to.

one, who fights and stands, rears on its haunches, exposing its softness, ready to live and to do the opposite of living.

and one who knows, it is just a fiction,
in some song or meditation or some story, who has the upper hand on its brothers,
who seem to think that they are whatever the opposite of fiction might seem to be.
on its brothers.

they seem to think that they are whatever the opposite of fiction seems to be.
John Destalo Jan 2019
They woke me when I was still
dreaming.  

I have about three months of sanity left in me; I don’t think it will be enough to carry me to the end.

I can feel myself fading in and out.  Images (more like flashes of images) I can’t explain appear then disappear just as quickly.  They seem to be set to a timer.

The slightest, most sudden, sounds become as a cross-fire inside my shell; like bullets pinging off of my plastic helmet.  

The front lines were never meant for men like me.  They say I am weak and fragile; a feeble man.  I am yelled at frequently.  

They do not understand, I can not allow things that enter me to just pass through me.  I hold them tightly; it is more like I am inside of them than they are inside of me.

They were born armadillos; protected by their inner armor.

I was born a jelly fish; found far from the water of my birth.

I look up at the star-like creatures fading in and out of the dark matter and I realize there is no logical defense against the senseless.

— The End —