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Chris Voss Nov 2012
This one's for me
and I'm gonna watch it burn.
Watch it flicker and pop and crackle and spit.
Gonna take lessons on how to dance with the draft,
also hoping she doesn't ******* out.
I'll make poems out of smoke and shadows
and fading, lonesome, sepia-tone summer photographs.
I want to make dusty picture frames feel like well-loved tuxedos.
I'm gonna see if candlelight can be all the company I need to keep.
Gonna sweep this floor clean,
like it's not what we say, it's what we mean
between the lines of
one too-polished table setting:
one knife,
one spoon,
but two forks for wishful thinking.
I'm gonna eat my fill
and fill my cup again and again,
to the point that I begin to make conversation
with my reflection in the bathroom mirror.
I'll tell that *******, "My friend, you are drunk."
and he'll tell me, "Kid, look who's talking."
Then it'll be back to a glass
that treats its brim like a suggestion.
Gonna have whisky and black lager and champagne
'til my toes and thumbs tingle.
Thin blooded and numbed;
Steeled by my father's novocain.
Come morning, this house couldn't get more hollow.

In these hallowed halls where I wallow in the way that
I only seem to appreciate the preciousness of days
Once they've passed,
here's what I'm gonna do:
I'm gonna write questions on one side of the wooden window blinds,
and write punchlines to completely unrelated jokes on the other.
I don't know why. Maybe just to **** with people.

I'm gonna reminisce with full streets of ghosts
That glow like kerosene lamp posts
all the while, stomping my feet, just to prove that I can.
Gonna make toasts to the isolated;
to the quarantined and the misanthropes.
I'll boast that lovers are not unlike poachers,
but I'm not gonna mention that in every other under-cover dream
I seem to swoon like ivory elephant tusks.
I'm gonna gamble on Dusk
because I think it's got a little less honesty,
but a little more promise than its
attention-*******, good-for-nothing, go-getter big sister Dawn does.
That flirtations *****.
Gonna give Christian names to half drawn caricatures
of people who only ever existed when the lights died out
and the snow fell heavy.

I'm gonna let the levies break.
I'll go insane, just ******* lose it--
do the Boot-Scoot-'n'-Boogie in a onesie
with the hind flap flying free and the Greek Theatre masks of
Comedy and Tragedy painted on my *** cheeks,
(because no one should ever take their art too seriously)
And I'm even not gonna even care who sees,
partially because there's no one around to watch anyway,
but mostly because I want,
more than anything, to just be me.
Or at least I want to want that.
See, I read somewhere that,
"You should always be yourself…
unless you can be a unicorn,
then always be a unicorn."
And that really struck home for me because,
even though I've never really ached to be
the ******* love child of a Narwhal and Zebra
(In my imagination, unicorns are
striped and impecable swimmers)
I truly believe that Men will always dream of being Titans
and Titans will always dream of being Gods
and Gods want nothing more than to be Wind--
to twist with lit candle sticks
and teach the lonesome how to dance.

A one-step waltz tip-toed to distract.

But the fact is, I'm bound to take a few back steps.
I'm gonna think about her.
Gonna harbor hard feelings towards back bedroom dealings
that I have no right knowing about.
Gonna pray like a desperate atheist
that they keep their knees locked in a one night stand.
I might break down.
Only once, just long enough to regain my strength.
Then I'll tame the earthquakes in my hands, like I always do.
Gonna find what it takes to move on.
Not just regenerate, but to grow stronger than I ever was before.
So I'm gonna meticulously straighten these place settings:
One knife.
One spoon.
A healthy dose of wishful thinking.
Gonna try my hand again at dancing with the back draft;
I heard she's been aching for a duet,
and with all the life of candlelight
I'm gonna ignite the coal shafts beneath my eyes.
Gonna finally see me as the man I am,
not the titan I wish to be,
because I heard somewhere that,
"You should always be yourself…
Especially when all you've known
all you've ever shown
is some mythology."
So raise your glass because this one?
This one's for me.
RW Dennen Sep 2014
Upward I swirl
into the swirl of death shrills
Discontented about absolutism; the lies of war
Discontented about the perversions against nature; man's egomaniacal tendencies
Upward I spiral into the swirl of darkness
Gravity has no power to keep me bound
within myself
I let loose once again
I float towards another endless spiral of dark clouds,
these clouds spin expeditiously within its air-vortex
I see carnage,
I smell blood,
I witness the land of all misanthropes
Into the blackness as I spin,
my vision catches a chorale begging to be autonomous
in the state of sovereignty
The impetus in my desperate and saddened heart
I curse the gods
My tightened fist fails at at the darker darkness,
at this ominous swirling
I see no light ahead likened to the event horizon
on the outer rim of a black hole
My breath is being ****** out as the greed-succubus ***** out life
I see you in me, as we both are caught in this uninvited storm
Will we ever survive?
Will we ever survive?
So we must fight on!
Pearson Bolt Apr 2015
human detritus deaf to empathy
misanthropes bound by apathy
just above the dotted line we
signed our own death warrants
guilty as charged
existential and intellectual suicide

we'd rather gouge out our eyes
bury our heads in the sand
than give a moment's pause to
consider our own arrogance
**** sapiens
we carved our legacy into the globe
and we will rest in the husk
of a massive unmarked grave
a solitary chunk of floating rock
adrift in outerspace

"the fate of every successful species
is to wipe itself out"

can we harness the courage to turn away
from our vapid lives before it's too late
can we unplug our minds from the machine
extricate ourselves and learn to breathe
with lungs instilled through millennia of
evolution before we suffocate in ennui

humanity is on life-support
it's tempting to pull the plug
let Mother Nature reclaim her earth
from an entitled race of
self-destructive fools
coddled from childbirth but

there is a nascent impulse that
echoes in every heartbeat
living within our blood
to regard one another with the new eyes
science has built each of us
no longer can we trust self-styled
leaders of the free world
the impetus rests within the crux
of self-acceptance

anarchy is the litmus test
AJ Aug 2013
Angst
That’s all that I’ve become
Someone who worries about the future of life
Plagued by fear and guided by misanthropes
That only care about the name and the value.

Without much choice I am led to believe
That my only purpose is to work and to stand
Atop a legacy that collapses on itself
Falling to the ground like a gauntlet of dripping black.

I’ve become branded by an iron rod
Entrenched deep inside the reaches of my mind
That stings like a gunshot but mends like a stitch
I’m guided by what everyone else wants.

Sometimes I just sit in my room and ponder tomorrow
What my life could be if I broke free of this madness
As if I’ve been reduced to some kind of foreign philosophy
That is commanded by shouting and not by words.

Angst
Is what I’ll continue to be
If money and power can’t restrain me
Falling off the deep end of a far off land
Hanging from a rope that cracks as I fall
I gamble with my life every second, every minute
What will I become?

The lacerations are too deep to be mended
They bleed profusely like tiny waterfalls dyed in scarlet
As each droplet falls is more pain for me
Yet I can’t hold it back because it is what I’ve done.

My body gives in to the haughty blackness
That drinks my joys like a cannibal does blood
My lifeless body is a puppet for everyone
Yet they are unhappy with the result.

Angst
What will I ever be?
Rich, maybe, but is worthiness defined
By the amount of trees one carries around in a wallet?
Apparently so; worthy people plague the streets.

It is hard to continue living
When all around me, people have said
That vocation is my purpose
I used to think it was not so, yet now
It’s all that I have come to know.

Work, work, work is all on our minds
We must make money to free our intentions
Yet important things are stomped on
Like gathering fires on fallen clothes
They are discouraged because they are dangerous.

Angst
Will I die with this thought?
My sole question, one that people fear is death.
But is it to fear? What’s the use in fearing something
That brings us all back to our beginnings?

The sun
So bright in the sky
So vivid in sight
Keeps me wishing, hoping, that one day
This madness will all just
END.
matt nobrains Jun 2014
it's the smallest voices that scream the loudest
I've never been a fan of the trending hero
or the underground superstar.
slam poets make me sick.
your attitude is a well concocted ploy
to touch indie hearts and
I hate it.
I love the ignored
the militants
the trashman painter,
the gas station attendent that
makes ****** artcore ******
in her boyfriend's garage
the sixteen y.o. with a tape recorders
and a circuitbent casio
howling blood into an old
speakercummicrophone
slash and burn
leave your best work sitting
on a park bench for me
ignore the plight and shove
your fingers down your throat.
I love the broken. the hurt.
the misanthropes the schizoids
**** victims
homeless
suicidal
single mothers
drug addicts
if that fire is in your shattered
legs reflecting the age of
a
billion dead scaffolds
soul of revolution raging
knife in paw
I will fall in love with you
and sigh at the detrious
in your wake.
let me see you naked and crying
my own wounds fester quiet
when everyone else is asleep.
have a drink,
you earned it.
The invalids,
misanthropes-

Spell-check your ego at the dooooooooooooor
And though I fancy that fancy liqueur
I'm of sound mind and jaded-
Gore doesn't bother me and my eyes are all faded-
I'm a child of the devil
So let me level with you-
I don't know what I abhor more,
All this violence in the world, or the lack of haberdashery stores
So I'm of reasonable theory,
And awfully good at this-
So let me circumvent this infinite abyss-
Yeah, I'm *******-
Send me your tired, your weary,
your weird and your eerie,
and I'll eat them with a spoonful of peacock ore-

So I'm better at this than you are-
And I'm from France-
That probably makes you leery,
But my pants are clean and I'm the God of War-
Inadequate!
Mundane!
The pedestrian,

Heretofore-

I crush you, I'm a crusher-
A garbage compacter pall bearer usher-
I'm of appropriate quality-
I spit at inequality with a certain measure of frivolity-

I'm the benefactor of a luster-
So let me rush you into a hasty decision-
"I don't know about that," I hear you utter,
"Stuff it, yo!" I tell you, this is intermission, not the gutter-
So I'm a trap-

As comforting as a spinal tap-
Happy as a lark but fashionable as a jester's cap-
and with a wire cutter mouth-
With which I eat things with a forkful of infidelities-
Though I find the rings hard to chew-
Pearson Bolt Dec 2016
we are not
who we are
at our best
anymore
than we are
the sum
of our worst
aspects.
we are
what we pretend to be:
misanthropes
possessed of empathy.
walking paradoxes.
amalgamations.
spectrums
in multicolor.
Lucius Furius Jun 2019
Here's to those who suffer voluntarily,
who rise above the mean and merely momentary
pleasure that we feel sitting on a couch,
eating Cheetos, watching reruns of "The Brady Bunch";

those who exercise, walk fast (raising weights
with their arms in rhythm to their feet),
jog, or actually even run --
as long as there's no clear goal in mind,
no Olympic medal, no short-skirted cheerleaders
proffering kisses;

residents of Blakely, Georgia, and Moosejaw, Saskatchewan,
who steadfastly resist removal to California
and similar climes, knowing intuitively
that delight in perfect weather is born in sub-zero winters,
in summer's humid swelter;

those who do without air-conditioning,
using the money for a violin
or books or trips to the local swimming pool;

those who fast, mortify the flesh, --
or at least skip breakfast occasionally,
refusing to indulge every ****** whim,
letting them ripen, at least now and then,
into actual, robust hunger;

monks in solemn Kentucky silence,
some, I suppose, are misanthropes, here I speak of those
with a normal affection for chat and hubbub
who restrict themselves to a reverent silence,
speech being used only in extremity;

blood donors.
Hear Lucius/Jerry read the poem: humanist-art.org/old-site/audio/SoF_047_suffer.MP3 .
This poem is part of the Scraps of Faith collection of poems ( humanist-art.org/scrapsoffaith.htm )
an earlier draft of this barely satisfactory missive ex post facto, i chomped asper with upper dentures upon evincing a couple of typographical errors, in up rye or draft, and did not wanna dodge being a spell bound stickler for typing words correctly.

though no obligation to trot out this fixation sans zero misspelling tolerance, a compulsion with any concomitant obsession found me reposting before a repast of dessert - so there Ghost of Marie Antoinette, wherever you might be hiding - i can have my cake and eat it too!

Minus trimmings and over stuffed ego freezers,
but altruism, civility, Dharma *** ethnocentrism,
gratuitous homogeneous internationalism,
karma mosaic opportunism, quitessential righteousness,
unpretentious vivacious wide world yipping,

brouhaha dutifully emphasizing friendliness,
antithetically booing critical, popularly pugnacious
spoiled trump petting uber western yikyak,
zealous antipathy craving everything.
---------------------------------------------------------
a hypothetical, mental, rhetorical thought question
   occurred to me just moments ago
sans, milk of human kindness bubbles frothily
   upon major American holiday,

   whereat figurative bro
   thar and sisters exhibit philanthropic ambitions
   especially, towards indigent that crow
for bare necessities

   other than
   when Thanksgiving rolls around, and dough
nuts to dollars even most frugal misanthropes
   play feigned charitable card egoistically glow
with ambient benevolence, civility,
   diligent energy, and friendly hello

and sundry pleasant greetings
   hook hood be some
   soon tubby rich entrepreneurial stranger
   ready to make shares available vis a vis  IPO

   to dirt poor anonymous guarillas G.I. Jane or G.I. Joe
   who cross paths with each other,
   even those one doth not know
when ordinary biases, callousness,

   denigration...doth full low
out the mouths of hoity toity MainLiners
   towards working class people - mow
awe less trying to remain financially afloat,
   and with plea for handout
   would receive an emphatic NO!

Thee exception to unspoken aristocratic rule
   arising on feted buzz
   feed ding occasions where oboe
players invoke cobra to deliver riches galore to the 'po

whom sincerely show gratitutde,
   yet wonder why status quo
reserves select calendrical dates for handouts
   proffered after standing in a row
of similarly bereft individuals aware at stark

   outpouring overt nurture minded, humanity
   (with perchance a guest appearance by Sean Hannity),
this public denouement,
   an atypical venue for his television show

where generosity spills forth
   from said personality and others alike
blithely, demonstrably, fortuitously, happily,
   jubilantly, lovingly, modestly, poignantly,
   where an announcer speaks thru a mike

to open their doors and hearts asper,
   those down and out
   pushing belongings along the pea king pike
of broken tureens with
   only a mangy dog as companionship,

and though I admit tubby hyperbolical,
   hypocritical, hypothetical hypoteneuse of hippopotamus
   no charity less valuable then self and spouse,
   whom both experience spike
in anxiety since net income purportedly
   below the poverty level, though we reside

   within subsidized housing (outliers
   here at 2 Highland Manor Drive),
   yet random acts of an effortless smile,
   cordial greeting to passersby, or
   waving fellow drivers right of way,
Page Number Three:

such minimally polite services today,
the most within my limited monetary hi say
means, which behavior aye strive ray
   dee to maintain zero cost politesse, which doth pay
highest dividends, which reciprocal acknowledge may
be the greatest reward,

   whether or not a response elicited tis quite o kay
the satisfaction arising breeching comfort zone
   viz exposure therapy lighting up gray
matter analogous to a cerebral Christmas tree
   and any regret avoided, asper congenial efforts    
   generate “hi” kickstarts my day.
Stephen Walter Aug 2013
I start this off without any words. But they will come. This is the blessing, and the curse. Regardless of what has transpired in my life, or how much I wish to forget, the words will come. They are my salve and my damnation.
  The words that find their way onto these tomes soothe and comfort my weary soul, yet the ones that hide in the spaces between curse and condemn. They haunt each fiber of my mind, traversing the expanse between my neurons on the backs of false pretenses, the sugar coated electric lies that I tell myself and repeat to others.
Alcohol is not a crutch; it merely plays the role of ticket-taker, ousting the transient, stowaway misanthropes from the boxcar of truth that is my thought pattern, allowing me to take an accurate head count.
I am afraid. I am so frightened of being who I am and making myself happy that I settle for making others happy in lieu of my desires. I am paralyzed by thoughts of failure, as well as dreams of success. I am terrified that if I should start screaming, I may never be able to stop. I am usurped by panic at the thought of another day in this drudgery that is my own existence.
I am discontent. I am not happy with the way that I have allowed my life to turn out. I want it to change before I have reached the point that I only look forward to its end.
Yet, still I continue to laugh. Again and again, I regurgitate the same old sentiments of positivity and hopeless hopefulness that I have grown so accustomed. “Tomorrow is another day,” or “It can’t rain all the time.”
But tomorrow is another day. And how should I face it if it ends up being the same as today? And it can’t rain all the time, but better men than myself have drown in a flash flood.
So why do I continue to say these things? For the benefit of myself or for the person who is listening? Which one have I become?
fire spitting mouths
ashe stained lips veiny
and engorged, hard loving
is easy for misanthropes
self aware narcissistic
tendencies to the insomniac
life full pleasures and pains
never realized smokey eyes
of an ember beast touched
never felt God in the
Kingdom of Heaven
glass roofs, cracked
cadenced inner light
dimmed and whimpering
David Ayres May 2014
Having loved and lived more than many, you're one that has feared and toiled in the garden of life. This garden that is now untended, dried, and withered; a vast wasteland, littered with cigarette butts, broken beer bottles, used condoms, and bullet casings. Those seeds of ruin are sowed by your very own callous hands of destruction. Once, golden opportunities and golden showers were warm and comforting, till you realized you were being ****** on by weak hearts and failing bladders. An ongoing stream of liquored up nights, self-loathing heathens, and rotten misanthropes now have you bowing to the porcelain gods beside a freshly dug grave, fit for your honor. One more shot is what you want, finely driving that final nail into your coffin of a liver. Feeling flushed and torn, nobody will be bringing you flowers, you wilted oaf.  A half-eaten vegetable, you are. Left with nothing more than skin and bone,  there's a sign that sustenance has not been a friend of indulgence.
am i ee Jan 2016
She said she liked my art
Except the paintings she didn’t understand
The abstracts
Except the ****** paintings
Except the paintings of women touching themselves
With glassy eyes, with fierce eyes
But she liked the rest.

Art, a spiritual pursuit
That takes energy, gives energy
Sometimes a trip into the unknown
Sometimes, but not always.

The grinding of light and dark
Male and female
Of love and anger
(And indifference, sadly)
The unreconciled, the out-of-balance.
The enlightened, the flashes of wisdom
That disappear over the horizon
Like a flock of ravens. Misanthropes all.
New work, new words, new insights
Bubble up from deep down in imaginary worlds.

Don’t mind the chaos
Creativity is chaos.
Nature isn’t what we want it to be
Nature lives by its own rules
Prerogatives
The endless search
To claim little bits of sun energy
And the cycles of water
In search of the ocean
Yet again.

The creative force of nature
Chaotic, full of competition.
And destruction.
Of those things
Beautiful things are sometimes made.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful,
We must carry it with us or we find it not.
    - Ralph Waldo Emerson
read this just now... loved it....
Months ago I awoke
to an almighty hypnopompic brain-zap
provoked by dreams of lisdexamphetamine-laced cereal.
Forceful, shocking, agonizing; strange to have felt this
when I lack any acquaintance with Vyvanse, and
when I am clean of residuals. That a dream
should cause real pain, such reaction
in my being, I wonder how
my brain contoured
the experience.

Weeks ago I grappled
with a prolonged tension headache
so I administered paracetamol, ibuprofen/codeine,
And buprenorphine/naloxone. Those opioids
provoked strange daydreams, to countenance the many idioms
I've grokked over.

I used to think my superpower was depression,
I'd go around seeking pain
because nothing else would sooth me; and with each pang
I came a little closer, chasing it
like a true addict, savoring my damage,

Exalting in my lonely conscience.

When I awoke the opiates were leaving my body
so I lay in their dark waves of intemperate sensation
among what thoughts etch onto the inside of my skull
and found myself driving with a concussion
towards a home for misanthropes.
Frank Cavalo Nov 2024
~Shatter me, Humpty! Into Faberge~
Paint — the cracks, laden:
Urushi, gold leaf, lame.

~Drape me, King! In novel robes~
Hide thine – from naked eye
Of unsightly misanthropes.

~Devour me, Men! Unbecoming~
Break thy yolk and stir it, runny –
Scramble over my gutting!
~ tilde is used to indicate italics as I do not comprehend yet how to edit them in
the machined being
control or be so
manufacture hope

the machined being
plastic or be so
molded misanthropes

the machined being
alone or at home
the phone doesn't know

the machined being
control or be so
fight or let go
finish or fold
at the cold feet of time
father might have met his match
Bo Tansky May 2022
Does your conventional mindset
Upset yet comfort you
Your constraint
A mental constraint
Stronger than….
Our man of steel
Who came to us
From another galaxy
Outside the solar system
And landing on planet earth
Stoically foretold
Of dire warnings
And consequences to come
For all dastardly misdeeds
Misinformed misanthropes
Past heroes of misfortune
And misdirection.
Have you met your doomsday?
Scenario
Take off the shackles of the past.
Extraordinario.
Superman Of the future
You are here now.
And now is all there is.

Don’t you know
If you go down in the battle
We all go down
You fall
I fall
We all fall down.
And London bridges too.
Arlene Corwin Oct 2017
Peoplephobia

You’ve heard about them all,
The misanthropes, misogynists,…
But have you heard of peoplephobes?
Detestation of a group,
Fear and loathing
Women, men, trade deals, the globe:
You-know-who - I think he’s got it.
Actions show it,
Does he know it?                      
Groundless, baseless,
Senseless
To the point
Of being foolish.
One who has it
Doesn’t know it,
Has not conquered anger, temper and self-interest.
All those traits of vice that simply aren’t nice!
Traits that ultimately cause destruction
Of the self and those who follow.
Hollow traits that scoff the poor,
Prizing, praising the well-off.
Leaving Latin, leaving Greek
And colloquially stated,
New created,
Peoplephobia’s the thing
For understanding would-be kings
And you-know-who,
Thanking God that it’s not you
Or me.
Which would be woeful, sorrowful and lousy.

Peoplephobia 10.17.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin
Love to the world!
Noah Vanderwerf Sep 2019
the night fog, thick with dust and smoke
a depression over sea for ages

tainted by this void, a lighthouse remained unlit
silent until an inevitable, habitual spark

the lighthouse burns a beautiful flame
its warmth and radiance drawing many from the distant dark

sentimentalists, misanthropes, vagabonds
all converging and communing around the beacon

its heady inebriating light bringing wonder, vigor to lives

as the density of benefactors grew, so did their warmth
the heart fires and body heat compounding greatly

storm clouds replaced by an inescapable, passionate blaze
steaming and suffocating the view from the lighthouse

the stairways inside collapse into embers
the dancing of which entertains the visitors

patrons each take bricks from the lighthouse to claim their own
but lament the lost stability

the tall pale structure, once hardened and obscured in darkness
now fragile when it's most featured on the horizon

the beacon dismantled
consumed in twisting, combusting delirium celebrated by all who witnessed it

until it left them no guide through the raucous cliffs,
and ashes to further shroud their view

like they had been for so long
Aditya Roy Jul 2019
I find your lost words
Kind of appealing, I love how you found yourself
In the wrong places, and ended up at the broken places
With the traces of the past, hanging like fearful destiny
That you don't want to come back to, a morning sickness
A glorified dream, just forget it when you go to retirement
Sleep comes when the money stops
Misanthropes following tropes of evidence
Conclusively positing them as logical statements
Seen the resourcefulness of people, conclusively work
I'm pretty sure, they work under flickering lights
Trimming and trespassing, savage gardens under lighthouses
Right under same old blue, and the turquoise shells
That hang on your shelf, like dreamweavers of blue embers
The breaths of the wind, touching your skin moonlit
You moonlight as the nighttime savior, bringing tsunamis
Washing out daydreams, and people looking at the blue sea
Sea green is where the horizon is, the turbulent tempests of thunderous storms
Stream of consciousness doesn't break the thoughts and doesn't stop with acrimony
Aspersions cast upon Poseidon's seas, like murdered mysteries
Bows and arrows slower with the samurai swords that light up the path for death and decrease
Breeze and the moss green, celadon, and ninja seals
Bursting your bubbles that flow and dissipate like distant memories
I might be flowing and collecting my shells, but, I never give up the search
The journey never stops, like the blue center of hope
Cinemas and music, that flow like beating cotton buds and blossoming drained flowers
The sun falters like these forget-me-nots asking for something in epiphanies
Qualyxian Quest Feb 2023
Hermits are part of society in China
A very important part
They help people.

Hermits in America are misanthropes.

— The End —