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OVC Apr 2015

The girl that I like is young, quite petite, I might add
Bluish-greenish turquoise eyes, like the forest and the sea combined
Her voice, a sweet, gentle overtone; the ocean, calm waves that reach ashore
The breeze, blows the forest trees; a rustle, soothing to the human ears
Her skin that luminesces; the white sands of the Riviera Maya
Here and there, little sprinkles of darker sand on her pretty face
Her natural dark, red hair, as fiery as the midday sun,
And her lips a vibrant red, that melt you in the summer days,
So warm and cozy as the winter rays.


Not sure about that last line, but here you go. Hope you like it.
Cheers.
JANE, Jane,
Tall as a crane,
The morning light creaks down again;

Comb your cockscomb-ragged hair,
Jane, Jane, come down the stair.

Each dull blunt wooden stalactite
Of rain creaks, hardened by the light,

Sounding like an overtone
From some lonely world unknown.

But the creaking empty light
Will never harden into sight,

Will never penetrate your brain
With overtones like the blunt rain.

The light would show (if it could harden)
Eternities of kitchen garden,

Cockscomb flowers that none will pluck,
And wooden flowers that 'gin to cluck.

In the kitchen you must light
Flames as staring, red and white,

As carrots or as turnips shining
Where the cold dawn light lies whining.

Cockscomb hair on the cold wind
Hangs limp, turns the milk's weak mind . . .

Jane, Jane,
Tall as a crane,
The morning light creaks down again!
Chuck Jan 2013
Verbiage

Sagacious humans would concur
Salacious verbiage is trenchant
Verdant language withers a guileless soul
Hubristic linguists deem limpid oratory irksome

A Didactic, petulant, boorish, garrulous, nefarious, obtuse, and insolent
Overtone is not my intent
Puckish, risible, mannered, jocular, antic, and adroit
Reverberations I am manifesting

TRANSLATION

Words

Smart people would agree
Healthy words are sharp
Unripe words die naive spirits
Self-confident word users find simple language annoying

Moral instruction, rude, insensitivity, wordy, wicked, blunt, and contemptuous
Feelings are not my purpose
Impish (silly), laughable, artificial, playful, clownish, and clever
Reactions I'm hoping to create
As a poet, words are always on my mind. I do, however, believe that words are worthless if they are not understood.

If $2 words aren't comprehended by the audience, they are not worth a cent!
John Alex Jan 2018
Lilac, purple, or shades of mauve
There's no defeating the color of the sky
The hue
Of loyalty
Of expansiveness
Of trust
I lay my eyes
On the ripples of the ocean
On the color of the sea
On the backdrop of clouds

Triumphs the anger of red
Gushes out green
Yells at yellow
And black gets dim
The penultimate tint
The top tincture
With an undertone of sad
And an overtone of hope
It's the color
The hue
It blooms and pops inside my mind
When I think of you

It's the color
The hue
It's there
When I go diving
When I go running at the morning
Whenever I awake and look at the windows
Sometimes the windowsill
Makes perfect frame
For the beauty and grace that that color brings
Like a mountain range cuddled up
To look like waves
Like the clouds running rampant
Whenever the wind decides to rush

And I get mad
Because somehow, people link it
To being sad
It is not
It does not bring sorrow
It brings joy
It does not bring melancholy
It brings beatitude
It brings beauty
Like your eyes do
Like your smile does
And like your heart did to mine

How can a color
Be so potent
So mighty
That it has the ability
To sway the human mind
To pinch the human heart
To lift the human soul

How can a color
A hue
Do all these things?

I do not know
But that's alright
Because sometimes wonders
And things alike
Cannot simply be explained
Just like how magic tricks work;
Known by many
Understood by few

And love,
I want to be the only one
That feels this way about blue
Dawn of Lighten Feb 2015
Ate with South Carolina supervisor with his wife and his parents! He is definitely a country boy, but very awesome lead tech! Thank god I been travelling around the states, while seeing the working environment as it is, and I must confess the southerners are truly nice people! I know good people lies within anywhere, but in the north (schools) it made it feel like the south was lagging in that department, and from experiences it's just media giving wrong impression also! It might be because I am only exposed to bigger cities, but thus far people in the south truly feel like a genuine people with good heart!

Aside from friends in Minnesota, which by the way were good people, it was very hard to feel in place with Minneapolis suburb area. I always had my guards up for racial tensions, and mis-treatment from officers for stupid ****, but in the south I honest don't feel like I have to prove anything to anyone! I feel at ease, and I feel job market is more equal in here! It might be because I am with fortune 500 company, and their culture is different, but in Target to Best Buy, and even the same company I work for now felt like they were always dividing people in Minnesota. So **** glad I no longer work for retail giants, while don't feel like I am getting segregated! I felt more like a human being in the southern states than I felt in the Minnesota, and mentally it was super exhausting, and emotionally depressing! While I felt discrimination in Minnesota, writing, art, and classical music was always my escape to ease abnormality I felt as a person! For the longest time I felt like the environment was choking the living life out of me, and I was suppose to be the bad guy in Minnesota! It felt like people were always judging for the wrong reason, and you couldn't hide yourself from those judging eyes, while they made alliances to back stab! If south is driven by racial overtone, then Minnesota was driven by undertones!  

I feel I belong here in the south, and meeting right people at the right places helps me feel like I'm a human being.
This is a self reflection I did in facebook today,  not a poem, but more like a journal!  While the experiences for people may differ depending on your social, racial, gender, and political views.  This is how I felt in Minnesota as an Asian American, and not simply as an American that we should be considering ourselves! In my humble opinion, Kentucky, Indiana, Tannessee, Arkansas, and now South Carolina have friendly people from my first impression!
craig apogee Jul 2015
shed the care
she can bear
universal pain
while you stay sane
take care of your own
chase joyful overtone
live wild and free
be who you need to be
An old poem sitting in my drafts from a good few months back
A bit light hearted approach to the way I had to stop trying to care for someone who caused me pain. It really is something that will keep you in that dark place. A lap dog for someone who tossed you away
Bryce May 2018
And I gave my First Snowglobe to them.
…And When I had given that to them, I had told him to give me a gift in return that may have more to itself than just simple life.  

“Inahah oona sept amni kquestal”.

Yet I had no other thing to give, this broken soul, beyond more than just flesh, I was naught. And so she had nothing more to me than that of the great overtone, the great silence of the earth, of space, her arms stretching invisible to hold our gaze to her innumerable foreign light show and state--

Perhaps there is another lover of soul somewhere within?

And he said simply to me, that there is someplace for me to be, someone for me to see-- that there was innumerable and inexplicable, incalculable and incomprehensible, powerful and overwhelming deterministic fate that guides my eyes, lets me chose without choosing, think without thinking, know without knowing.

And he knew—and she knew—and they knew with a knowing that I can never know; true and whole and unspoken, I can only dream to describe.

"We made the world for us, for you."

And I felt their love radiate that ferrous heart, steeled with centuries of pain and removal, heated by the ***** of her truth and guided by the loving, tender hand of his true brilliance that blinded and pleasured my aching eyes.

The entire web of the cosmos, in my eyes, dreaming and thinking that maybe I’d be back there one day, whole, float-- bool and cruelty of world inconsequential within the vast expanse of everything—

A powerful, emanative, restorative code of the universe that held itself no information but all, no hate but the misidentified ache of longing love, differed from the soul of the grinding earth—so far away from god through sickly skin and broken bone that without expanding into time and vaporizing into pure light, these feelings which we can never know.
Julian Aug 2020
Eyelash blinkered in hubris Rubik’s knight
Elevation of pogrom ennobled by triaged triumph minus the cynic summation of all light
Littoral swank bronzed like starlet fantasia with a Carey mountaintop jeer
Reichstag extinguished blaring sirens of cacophony capers to benumbed Linkin Park cheer
Knells intrepid by quakes of remonstrance staged in histrionic applause
Southern Colonies shifting in Charleston surgical in orderly slugabed dogged laws
Slipshod through ribbacles of rengall zenkidu among the sertivine poison ivy
Grimace at gamboled rivulets of a moribund Vanilla Sky for departed wiseacres of savvy dicey ICE toxic Harvey Dent slimy
A mannequin Marx Ralph alienated the truest alien by pioneering disdain of a hostage giraffe summiting a Swiss Alp
Master of time 12th bradycardia for Generator design parked beneath escarpments of base aphasia milquetoast in killjoy Strickland nickels away from a gubbertushed mouth
LOST legend enunciating the furor of epochs of egalitarian traipse
Trapped by the bootlick of a wrinkle of Van Winkle revolutionary agape
Curved by soliliquy master of belletrist prose
The vogue can’t help but bunt, balk, denounce the remembrance of Lady Madonna pose
We beat the muckrakers of rummaged lisp of culinary suns that the sons of privilege are emoluments to apolaustic zeal first known to transmogrified nuns, before the poppies made the few into many and the notion of an insuperable line of infinity into a spherical nullification of the concept of none
Estrapade engorges the fustilug magnet of the kitsch Kenosha Chicago Demolition drive-by-derbies “once read”
That two kings one Titanic by skin-color dashed dreams the other both the coins of tails eloped with heady dreams of head
Sacrifice shadow dancing with pettifoggery in slumps of aboriginal dances of marsupial rice
Native to extortion gouged blind as Samson exacts lachrymose cremations of Pikes Peak trick-or-treat aghast with fright
Temples raised in 46 years cemented never in the Mumbo Jumbo politics of those lacking the oceanic schadenfreude among queers
That by their exclusion the panmixia of fluid alchemy is dauntless scrabble limited by NORAD notions of Tears for Fears
Henpecked rooster awakens the serfdom of Ronald’s (sly spy) Drugs sailing with dovetails of elapse downtrodden in modern clubs
Drunken *** addict sell-out charlatans berated  by Ingram Angles sent by maleficence are the grubhub of Harriet Tubman torching promising tapestries with rugged rugs
Slinging the bait of fish-hook dimples on freckled effigies of ****** humiliation outmantled by Mickey weight
I thunder a fulgurant explosion against recrimination of white-collar criminals that philander saturnalia in pretense with facetious swarpollock freight
Crooks of tyranny exhort the paranoiacs of indemnity to sunken canned soup applause of a Warhol extortion
Berating my audience with drooling slavers of inelegant tortoise byzantine like an Istanbul dredged with intortion
Mr Deeds is not a champion of BRE Properties nor the pinnacles of inertia, a psychiatric squeeze
My orange juice is not a car chase against treecheese in terminal punitive disease
Soaring with the prosperous tongue against the walloped nativism of pounced impounds having too much fun
I let the other guardians of the order of salvation pivot vitriol in loaded dice against Orangutans of Swedish minted gum
Caesar died for the seizure of Anglican pride of a namesake percolating millenia for Brutus in the Washington Bullets of a conquered Ottawa on strike carnal with Chauvinism in regional divide
Never has there been a more hollow trope than the agency of deep state defamation of a scurrilous backbite of gnashing pride
Lost to pollster tricks of acquiescence and caricatures of a menacing personage Swift on the Riff but never the snarling Menace of a Blondie Biff
I tower above the anthills of conformity of luxury in Jamaican Bob Sled Teams testing the curiosity of enlightened “What Ifs”
Canada Dry for striking people enthused by Rye abides in the memory of reform that skulks the skunks that make every Scudworth cry
Because a Dental Dam damsel living in streets of peril fascinated by distance is the contortion of entreaty in the pasquinade of attempts at American Pie
May the city of a figurative crucifixion burn with the irony of a thousand suns as Wendy’s burgers unload on prejudice with albatrosses of winsome puns
Fixed data interpolated by convenient lies of serial killers who aim for blue skies shanked in Oswald infamy for the imposture of any flashbang revenge against cinematic guns
I blacklist the Zemeckis villainy as a trudge of travesty
Hedged lies blinkered by Batman and Robin puns redeemed by Dinosaurs of Amnesty
Obviously belittled by futures etched by a more honest infinity
Because 88 keys are not a stroke because the infinite bees know the parlance of divinity
Invited lissome taxidermies of Capone against teetotalers of parvanimity of vainglory overthrown
Showers the honest hominist reckoning of a world where neither crudity of know-nothing radical polarization owns every inept baritone
Crusading a secular war because the gubbertushed eccedentesiast spinsters of Santa Cruz deserve a gassy overtone
Torch the SC Pacific Avenue for peace
Let the world unite behind a singularity with purpose in ventilation of Speedman’s release
That antithetical Jacks of many names are wed with the progeny of enduring lists of NSA protection rather than rentgourge Denver PD eager to chaos decimated by the decimals of a region forever boycott and impeached
To the decisive curling of the frolicked Abandoned Pool servitude crass disasters are the sheol of impudent flagrant overreach
Regnant on the turmoil of invented throne
I scowl at the chicanery of Capone’s Chicago sweltering with Kenosha infamy tossing contortionist strippers a vulcanized bone in a DIA Diamond that even 11,500 years of knowledge is surpassed in condemnation of screaming E.T. calling the right home
Speak Now because the reach of forever is God appeased not by a kowtow but a mobilized ambition for Why? When? And How?
History will remember gentility as the kind steward rather than a Disco Demolition Derby of urbacity venerating a seasonal Golden Cow
Hipsters flock with folly to South African extortion for freebooters who bootlick the aceldama of war against the sublime currency of a winner surrounded by thugs
TOO MANY URBAN KIDS ARE TAUGHT BY REDUCTIVE TAUTOLOGY TO HATE The United States of America RATHER THAN NURTURING SYNCRETISM IN PATRIOTIC HUGS
Imperfect in design with disagreement in plainest sight
Sometimes libertarianism with a Democratic twinge is clearly in the right that should believe in reform even when the footloose girouettism is too tight
Yet forestalled for authentic grit the grisly rentgourge of venal abysses knows the countermand against Rand with hyperboles of the clearest *******
The true flock congregates around scepters built not with militant graft but a promenade of sultry dance for the defiant C.L.I.T.
Exercise with the Rock knowing school buses of dogmatism inferior are distraught
Dying dogmatism is a peacock of industry the yeggs can easily unlock rather than truckle with truculent Scottish Rites tasty with Connery Scotch
Defenders of the misleading staircase because of the carapace of Hovering pertinacity easily won and bought
Neither scary nor deliberate streets are rumpus of elevations of unbounded anarchy considerate but robbed by the illiterate
That the delegated mansion will be robbed by the cooperation of the remorseful idiot recognizing his snide mendaciloquence in destructive Roswell Records limerick
Scowls are on petrol and patrol hoping Tesla is a short of bravado too intrepid to sanction free-for-all profligacy in alleys that bowl
To the Emerald Street lie of hypes of perdition rather than merely a seasonal token embarrassment coal
The fossilized future is the irrevocable past because more respect is needed than the ***** of a maskirovka caste
Diamond Lightning in Bhagavad Gita prancing with the delusion of the everlasting mummification of Brawndo ash
Dinner with Egyptsy malingers on tomes etched flippant in integrity and all about the curated snare of kitsch cash
The cache valley of LASER tag shattered like Joseph Smith flagellating the confederate hayday with articulate gnash
Fast & Furious the amused by Suburban subway know the trailblazer trashes of The Stupids’ being Einstein about Boogie Dubs rather rash
Streaking through a Tucker rule the Buccaneers live for the SoulSeek of a riddled ruler benighted of prerogative of Roger Goodell bumping in his Ferrari the tucked serenade of Tool
Wrong band because they linger in the shadow dancing backpages of scandals of Norweigan hourglasses of shameful hush hush Vikings mining furloughs of pulverized anticipation sand
Humbled retinue shelves the ossified limpid droll drool
As the haze of submarines scouting pridefall galls of indolence betraying innocence becomes moral cigarettes of Menthol Kool
Reparations for chappy chapstick games of bowery riches
The urbane needs to read, discern and maneuver against whiplash found in Navi witches
Swapping homes with crack addict legalese an *** to a bronzed party crackling with cackles Home Alone
Knows a toiletry of escape gullible like Seahawks wishing they could contain a fumbled season by Mahomes
Jones methamphetamine paranoiac manure desiccated by folksy homilies of brimstone cremation deserts his flock to abide by a flagging wayward temptress
Decimated by the agency of time his Austin crenellation flounders in grimace of the untimely swoon his covert empress
Blinded by the light of darkness in subversion
Excoriated for the deeds of his permission to demote commotion into only an acquiescent dance with barbed etch-a-sketch conclusion- a half-baked *******
Quacksalver poetaster wrinkled with hatred simpering paranoia strangled by Hendrix abeyance of turgid delusion
Lurid underground Princeton gilds infested with defected dementia in cozens in the fritty of heralded mistress SHE appointed
Sandlot ravens cloistered the bravado of thirst for chosen words scrappy in clawed henpecks the pointless illegal sanctioned to brusque witticism anointed
Lamps of pathway sparkle with coruscated stargazer Winslet dreamy swank illustrious by providence
Engrenage of delopes of pettifoggery identity staggers the woozy dismal day of disjointed wounds on Native sons Denver can’t damage in a lonely campaign for the prodigal bends of Overlook Lorraine Motel bent
Intrepid in gallantry I swoop the scrivello tusked with might
Penetrating the vivid dreams of the serenade of alpenglow daylight
That love might rule over chance and probability above the specter of dynasty prodigy progeny tithing gravity in rent
Yet this taper of majestic poise will outfox even the careless gambles of the prodigal son Mr Sender already traipsed conquered and went
The mountaintop is so clear from the cloister of authenticity drinking Eminence Front of the WHO rather than the coherence of the near
Because titans shepherd the good flock without insult and not quavering with insuperable time flackey with tremulous fear
I dare this day to outlast benighted ignorance of the narrow gate of a persecution tsunami on a Lisbon tear
Because galloping ahead of the internecine sheds the serpentine craft of 3:1 Genesis met with the worst fleeced fleer
Not auctioned off like ******* vogue to the disfavor of poor taste
I am the true Royal Flush that can always count on the aced basic but mostly acidic flourish of a jest in bass predicated on the basis for Mozart pH
Today could be the summit of acclimated prodigy in startled degrees temerity could never bet against
Because you better bet the Bros and Cos of civilization are skilled in ostentation of Sterling Pound defense
Never offensive to the liturgy of triumph beckoning an apocalypse now tentative memory on a Manifest Destiny frontier rarely on wickers of extinguished cattle ranchers knowing the gamut of acumen to defend a fortress with the best fencing James Bond could dispense
Now is either a cordial joke of a flagrant anarchy balking at destiny
Or the sunrise majesty of the twelve tribes and beyond defeating the stingy bees of infamy
Your choice doesn’t defeat my voice
But your action heralds my loyalty with a triumphant Victoria of an age not for agelast geeks intimidated but living clairvoyance with fidelity to the right choice for the right time to swim in elegant rejoice
(1977 Words)
**** it, my curiosity is too strong. I take my first steps and hope at the same time, a staff member exits at the same time. To help with my nervousness and attend to me.

Not seeing anyone, no-one at all, staff or patron.

Inside it’s cold, darkly lit and reddish in the background. With no soft or hard light from the sun outside, where humanity can benefit from. It doesn’t look like a church but does have the feeling of a dogmatic overtone and a place for shared and public worship. But I do need a staff member, really not to help deal with my angst. I walked to the front where a picture of Baphomet hangs in human glory. Looked past and saw a sign, ‘office’ with an arrow below it. Finally some help.

This is all on account of freedom of movement and beliefs.

And naturally my angst slowly leaves and I accept at the same pace as my reasons for being here. Plus my intellect had begun to be curious and that must be indulged.

Standing outside the office, it’s closed and enorcaged anyone to sit and pray to Baphomet. I shrug my shoulders and walked back and waited for the general hall.

A moment sitting alone in the hall. A strong acceptance fell over and cleanse my inner world and everything here became beautiful and privately said goodbye to my old life.

Looking at my watch and realizing I had been here for three hours. I wanted to laugh very loudly. I turned around and the only person is sitting here in the hall. A brunette, middle-aged women who dressed so much alike to the middle class. We instantly made eye contact and returned in a polite British head nod. I smiled and waved hello. She looks highly innocent, so to notice all the art here, to know what this building is and it’s intended use. The sight is quite amusing and it’s not a clap at her. I do not even know her.

I turned around and the painting of Baphomet stole my eyesight. She sat next to me. “I’m Carol. This is the third time I’ve seen someone from the public here. It seems they all come at night. I and the staff have started to run out of things to talk about.”

When she stopped talking, I made polite eye contact with her. Her hand is extended. “I’m Ayn.”

We shake hands. “Like the author.” She giggles.

“Unfortunately.” I breathe and go back to looking at the painting. “Have you been a member long?”

“Most of my adult life.” Carol looks middle ages, sweeter than honey and reminds me of a first crush, the girl down the street. “I found it practical and fulfilling. A place to learn about self-responsibility.” She faces the same painting. She sighs. “Glorious, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I must admit. Very appealing, very tempting and aesthetically satisfying.” I replied.

“What brings you here?” Carol asks, adjusting her body to face me. I’m wondering why she isn’t at work.

“I’m starting to believe it’s false hope or misleading information.” I light a smoke. When I first saw the signs encouraging to do so. “It’s vice.”

I breathed out, thinking I just ****** it up for myself or just stepped on the wrong feet. Carol laughs and giggles. “Well, I don’t support that reason to join. But you’ll find a lot of that around.” Carol asks for a smoke. I oblige. “You know, you don’t need satanism to fill out your vice orders. I’m sure there are theatres for that.”

“I’ve tried the **** theatre’s, it doesn’t help,” I replied. Happy she isn’t angry. She’s cute.

“You’re not moonlighting are you?”

I wanted to laugh. “No. I’m a writer.” She pulls back. “Don’t worry about it. It’s romance and despises the media.”

“We got a lot of journos. And you know what they say about the romantic artist?”

I smiled. I knew what she is implying. “They’re most honest people in the world. I can’t speak for the rest of them, that applies to me. I just know what love is and what lust is. I can only find lust and when in love, something pulls us apart.”

“Maybe it’s destiny. I’m happy you’ve taken an interest, but you shouldn't watch those propaganda videos.” Carol stands and extends her hand. “I’m still a woman, so you’ll need to work for my holy parts, but I’ll take you home and school you.” I think about it for a moment. “You know it’s hard to start over alone.”

It’s senseless to think one can live without the other. Firm delicate poetry life. Modern and it goes beyond meaning with words and I guess it means it’s in her. Filtered sunlight. The full context of myself, trying to find one place here on earth to fit in and to go beyond that size. Silver moonlight. But when one fights their own monster, fights against death, respect for trying, but fails regardless. But my own desires is too overwhelming and wanting everything now to be acted. Learning at her place, *** came later. The first lesson, that the devil takes on more faces than God himself. An enigmatic holiness.


DONE FICTION

The perfume of fame is desperation and the insecurity is high on inside one’s soul.

Translate from the metaphysical is in inarticulated words, faceless and the meaning is in the symbols, changing patterns. Few paths lead to personal enlightenment. Devout only to thyself, my own will, thoughts and toiling hands, open to my artwork. Stellar like the patterns of constellations. By accident, I stumbled upon something I should never know about and finally, I comprehend the totality of existence.

I head out west and found myself close to central Australia. I took only two full outfits of clothes and the clothes I wore wearing on my back. No food, just only books, and writing materials. Everything else including the bible had grown proven of no need for me. I set up camp, rented a room to this middle-aged couple, who lost their spark and self-questioned if they even had started with pure love in the first place. It’s hot on a constant thread, it didn’t bother me, I grew used to it and when I’m alone, I worked and read naked. Languish for eternity. Magic in isolation.

My method of writing just writes like what I’m doing now, over the typewriter. From the second edit, through my grammar software on a computer from either the late nineties or early two-thousands and if I’m really hot passionate about the project, I work naked. Like everyone should.

I’m writing a novel about two lovers. Cliche now, but people like it and at the moment with fiction writing. Romance seems to be what I’m good at. Now, the two lovers, man, and woman. The man, a young poet, constantly homeless and the woman, a painter. In the evening heat, meet and the woman runs, not able to embrace love and the man, insecure. Nothing special. You’ll have to read the book once it’s published. It’s where the poets live. Now, this is the current book I’m writing on. ‘When Love Steps Outside’. I got a few pages in this days writing. A knock on the door, it’s her, Sharron. The wife who owns this house.

I stopped typing. I whirled around on my old fashion chair. “Yes, Sharron.”

She peeks her head in. “Good, you’re not naked.” She closes the door behind her. “I’ve got a young lady here, she says her name is Anastasia. You know her?”

“No,” I answered, lighting a smoke and trying to recall the name. “Is she in a suit?” Hoping she is from the publishing house.

“She isn’t. But is dressed very posh. Like a royal.” I told Sharon to bring her in. but not to leave my room once she is here. “Maybe a girlfriend? Afterall you spend all your time reading and writing.” Sharron said as she left my room.

I dusted myself off and attempted to finish my smoke. It’s always obvious we miss.

Sharron knocked on the door and I stood up. “Come in.” My face turned blank. “You must be Anastasia? It’s nice to meet you.” I extended my hand to shale, instead, all I saw was a woman who is beyond the beauty of this world.

She wasn’t replying to the gesture. Looking back now, she seemed a touch scared. Not of me. “Are you the writer on French couple who stumbled upon the pope’s library?” An old book. Anastasia moves around another book with her hands, across her belly. Maybe she didn’t shake my hand on account of that.

“Yeah, it was my third fictional piece.” My shoulders shrug. I turned around and spoke. “I must admit, I’m not as scared as I thought I’ll be. When meeting such a devoted fan. I moved to Sydney almost a year ago. No one here knows who I am.” I begin to sign my autograph. “It’s flattering that you found me.”

I lift up my autograph. “I have read your work and I am not a fan.” She sits on the bed and I realize Sharron isn’t here. “That book, it sounds too familiar to me.”

“Well, I”m sure it’s been done before. Most things have in literature and film.” I sat too.

“I mean, like in my personal life.” She cut me off.

I breathed and lit another smoke. “Look, I am no genius. I’m sorry you like a boy who doesn’t know you exist or you fell in love with your man and learned he’s an *******. I don’t even own a cat. I just write about love. It’s fiction truth.” I took a puff from the cigarette stick and enjoyed heavily.

She shakes her. “No. it’s a combination of past and present, maybe some bad grammar. Your book. It tells the story of my parents.” She takes a photo out the book she walked in with. “Here.” I take a look, her mother is more beautiful than she is. “Do you know them?” I told her no. “I would like to come with me.”

How easy is it to judge things we do not understand? This isn’t a sermon or something to be pretentious about. Not do I wish to look down. Sinners are everywhere and most of them have been drenched over and have a public veil with saints and worse, praised about it. Where Anastasia took me. It’s where evil dwells.

I had sold my soul
Miss Masque Apr 2010
Sitting in solemn silence
all around me the deafening roar
of thoughts flooding through
my mind

Heads bent over their work
as they contemplate the
significance that this will even have
ten, twenty, thirty years from now

Looking around and seeing
stress on people's faces
as they sit and wittle away
the fifty minutes of
fluid time

Twiddling their thumbs
the equivalent of me
here
writing this poem

Bland revising conversation
with an overtone of educational
******* wrapped in a blanket
of disconcerting melodrama

Whispers of unfocused chatter
and my mind wanders lazily
from one thought to the next

Conflicted as I should be writing for
another purpose
to complete an assignment
that I couldn't possibly
care less about

Oh the joys of institutionalized
education
and yet
the irony:

I want to become
a part of it
in order to remedy
its imperfections
from the inside out
Written: November 20, 2009
Garrett Johnson Aug 2019
Blueberry tears.

We saw through the eyes.
The electric highway.
The lips overtone.
The winds.
Celestial.
Neon Bohemia.
Cathartic Breath of air on neck.
The melting of the surface.
Suffice in the face of thee ocean.


Garrett Johnson.
Jaden, Syd and a cup of pine tea.
I can only summon feelingfulness like the passing of a dove,
postponing its arrival mid-air, somewhere along the tucked
bramble across Poblacion, starting with metaphorical sensibility
or an insensibly bland space to procure wanted meaning.
Girls prefer roses and their bright foreheads diademed with more
flowers, and boys, their chiaroscuro or lack of a color thereof, seems
to be fitting in this maladroit contrast, and so I begin, as always,
with your very vague and caged memory. Your face, the whiteness
of snowcapped alps. Your strut, my slalom in a treacherous course
of words reduced to whisperings, to flutings. Your voice, though nuanced,
flitters with an overtone of arrogance: if sound was clothed, yours would
be flamboyant ermine. And the line in front of you before I, my arbitrary turn,
assimilates into a picturesque form of waiting somewhere in Cubao.
I wanted to smash myself with train-speed towards the metallic turnstile,
which, would then famish me even so, just as much as I wish to be a car crash
somewhere within the outskirts of your town, heavily vandalized by the swill
of squalor hefting itself like the rest of the world conscious of its viscera.
  This is how I start you – like waiting for the sun to emerge by Borobudur,
or the clandestine *** of mildew and grass, a hundredfold of images appear
before me and I cannot choose upon my whims and caprices. Are you a dove?
A spear of Sun? A thunderous crackle of an impending rain? A harlequin?
A moseying cirrus? Or just another by-stander in the crowds where I ultimately
seek your being?
      This answerlessness measures my knowledge of star, and my breath snuffed
out of me while I sigh from exhausted penchants, outweigh dissimilarities and symmetries.
A progeny from all superseding conundrums arises: are you a retrogression of a wave
back to its saltine wound, flailing in brine? Or are you just the vast sea and nothing else
on a fine and lucid day where children skip stones and chant name-callings?
                   I sense the peril in this undertaking, and much to my chagrin, I still
   do not know how to end you.
The jazzy overtone leaves me alone
In a beautiful world, away from
Difficult to breathe now
I drown in purple terrorism
Just to see if it's possible
Useless absence of past
Torn into pieces that're now pulled through deadly veil
Improper destitute-grey scenery
I am now
I am then
I am after
You can't send your materials into me
You must take them back
You are a monster of loose-luck frill
And then I nod beyond the sod
Of the
Other side
Of the
HILLS
Joanna Oz Jan 2016
i want to ***** out everything held inside of me,
yank the remnant gunpowder from my throat
and load a pistol to destroy the ghosts that crawl forth
from the cramped black holes of my memory.
The sound of your name makes my vision turn crimson
and my feet cling to the ceiling.
What you did
is too much
for me to carry,
haunting me in ways i do not understand
morphing me into creatures i cannot bury.

i never even notice you've seeped into something,
until its too late.
i surface gasping in the middle of a fit of confusion
to realize that your grubby, sticky hands
are tainting
my every movement
waking
and
sleeping,
dancing
my legs on puppet strings.
Iron-locked hinges control my hips opening,
closing,
opening,
rusted and stuck in a position i refused,
a place i did not agree to be folded into.
Weighted down by the heaviness of you
your mass
your gravity
bulldozing me into glass shards, and blindly
mixing my fragments
with
mud
and dust
and
ashen debris.

A resin of my innards is caked dry
under your ragged fingernails.
They snag at the holes in my tights
and i feel the unwashable stickiness of me
skid
against my skin.
The room is pitch black
but i can see splotched neon demons
lurking in the corner behind my back.
And the gurgling of the television
is harmonizing with my rasping,
and my tired anger,
in a key i can't decipher,
although it sounds minor.
What an ominous overtone, dangling
over our dizzy heads.
Stop trying to scare me,
soften me into your arms.

I am the monster in this room, remember?!?!
There is almost too much guilt
in my sandy mouth
to make room for another insistent plea.
Stop.
STOP.
I
am
not
joking.
I
am
not
a
joke.
I
am
not­
a
target.
Or something
to crush
and ****
up your nose.

i'm much too grotesque for any of that.
I'm the monster here, remember?
Khoisan Aug 2021
Raw burnt fingertips
hell bound blown
overexposed
scull thought to the bone
in the overtone of death's
ever risising crimson tides
still your love for humanity
must never die
I heard it in the rain
falling from so many eyes
you are free from it all
for the meek and mild
were also the bold
blood became water,
streaming
from a fearlfull heart
of stories
never been told.
nivek Aug 2023
pumpkin or cup cake
are strange in a male world
Keith W Fletcher Feb 2018
With every shard a picture painted
Of.... a world that has been tainted
By the overtone
And as the colors fade or run
A picture... overworked or undone
Seen or shown...
...Emerges from the ashes of devastation
To become an interdictum
A visionary injuction of ....
... How to prosper or cease to function!
Emeka Mokeme Jun 2018
Yes,
I am a poet.
I dream while awake,
expressing the ability
to heal with my words.
I have faith.
Poetry is my therapy.
My pen and my words
are my weapons,
of war,
of mass destruction,
of peace,
of love and happiness,
of friendship.
My pen,
is the commander in chief,
the director,
not a dictator,
with an accessible space,
and the key to the
nuclear weapon
i can direct it
to make war or peace,
just as I choose.
I got me a brush to
paint words with
melancholic overtone,
of ecstatic bliss,
for my thoughts to flow,
on the canvas,
with different shades
of colourful words,
time to dwell
and ponder
and meditate on life matters.
The issues of the mind,
and of what the heart feels,
i translate into reality.
The control of the united emotions
of my feelings and thoughts are in
the hand holding the pen to paint
the words of living in the canvas of life.
Poets have the power to make
the invisible things to manifest,
thoughts hidden and
not heard to have a face.
The secular world,
the whole cosmos,
the galaxy is at their command.
I am a poet,
I make the mind see the heart,
I make the heart of man flow
in ecstatic bliss.
To dream is unwritten poetry.
A poets joy lies in the portal
of the divine.
©2018,Emeka Mokeme. All Rights Reserved.
Mike Adam Sep 2017
On small boats
Beneath high swells

Seeking cash from fish.

Smashing through
Wild white horses,
Spray splashing
The face.

Headway or sinking,
Journey in stasis

Undertow

Overtone.

Feet on terra firma
Shaking from
Quake

And unseen particles
Shooting throughout.

Body tone
Muscle song

And the dissolution
Of being.
By Darcy Prince

“I’m standing out the front of the house of the reclusive author. As you can see in the background. Fans and other journalists have gathered. It has been close to tens years since he had left his enlarge block of land. Thomas, known for his Satanic themed novels and philosophical based essays is preparing to come out and talk about his forthcoming novel.” The journalist stand for a close to five seconds and his cameraman gave him the cut signal. And the journo relaxes and turns to the front of property. Hoping his had pass enough time.

So far, nothing. Just more a growing crowd. The fans range of age, no younger than sixteen and no older than sixty-five. Some hold books in hopes for an autograph, but they won’t get a chance for one. As for the media, they’ve spreaded out and close the local police force.

Mildew dropped over the overtone farming land. With an attached string anticipation sound. Anyone in the immediate sphere, stood and looked to the front door opening and a wave of hushing complete silence fell. And Thomas gestured a hello with both hands. Than a clap of appreciation took place. Despite a vast distance to the front door and the road. Only one young person jumped the fence and did their best to run to the front door. One police office tackled them.

Days later in New York, Thomas hopped off a private plane, supplied by the publishing company. A small team of people run to Thomas on the ground. He initially signed a copy of legal documents and his assistance took him by his shirt to exit out of the airport terminal. The weather lightened and provided some heat for the east coast. It’s been years since an author had turned out enough success to become a celebrity in a landscape slowly losing interest in any literary works. Outside in the public street, a limo waited for Thomas. Sitting inside, writing notes down and ignoring the business conversations held in the limo by the publishers and PR team. Molding boredom for Thomas.

Passing a few blocks. The city had took Thomas’s attention. Lifting his head towards the driver. “Driver!” The passengers stopped talking and the driver lifted his head, giving Thomas attention without taking his eyes off from the road. “Could you pull over.”

Leaning. “Thomas, we’re too busy to play tourist.” Thomas wanted to laugh at his assistance.

“Stacey, relax. We got two days before the book tour starts.” The limo pulled over and Thomas gave a polite nod to the publishers and PR. And before anyone else made an attempt to talk to him. Thomas made his exit.

Thomas stood outside a dogmatic alluring building, unveiled in dominance and aesthetic stealing from it’s neighbours. Thomas sighs as he let his shoulders down. Nodding his head and made his way inside. The description of build will show the uselessness of words. But it can cure bloodshot eyes, minor aches and provide meaning and fulfillment for one’s life.


Humanity can create their own hell. Despite what others might say.

Thomas waits in the leaders office, with the door opened. A group of children run by. The coldness of the room gave Thomas permission to smoke and the ashtray on the desk. Thomas smokes, wanting to sleep. His cellphone continues to alarm with every text sent. Noticing some of his works mixed in with others. Thoms shakes his head.

A hand clap at the door. “Tommy, I’m glad you’re here.”

Thomas smiles and opens his arms. “Teacher, it’s good to see.” They embrace. “I’m here for my book tour, it won’t start for a couple of days. I’m hoping we can catch up.”

“Of course. One of my successful students. I’m glad you stuck with the teachings.” The teacher replied.

The sun is almost setting and the residents of the city finish their daily chores. “It’s nice to be here, the city hasn’t changed, besides it’s people.”

“That’s because of people like us. The Devil never sleeps and still holds his greatest trick. He favors you.” Teacher finishes his bourbon, crossing his legs over. Thomas expresses a slight disbelief. “Really, he does. That’s why you coming book is already been praised without a single word been read by the public. Tell, what’s this one about?”

“Two lovers. I’ve been reading too much romance.” Thomas answers.

The teacher giggles under his breath and orders another couple of drinks. “True love is always neglected. Tell me, does in in suicide?”
Nick Steel Dec 2019
⁣Open scene, we begin, lights dimmed, back alley vibe, ominous.⁣ ⁣⁣

Air thick with viscous mist, ambience anxious, overtone venomous.

A young woman walks slow, headed home, fixated on her phone⁣ ⁣

ambulance tones punctuate the foreboding sense she shouldn’t be alone.⁣ ⁣⁣

Discounted high heels click, sticking slightly to flag stones, pace quickens⁣ ⁣⁣ ⁣accelerated heart ticking,

we feel her doubt, poisonous fear of this, modern Britain.⁣ ⁣⁣

She cups her hands, lights up a cig, grabs a bottle from her bag, takes a swig,⁣ ⁣⁣

⁣tosses the empty plastic vessel to the ground where it sits on a bed of moss and twigs…⁣

⁣⁣and hurries home safely, escaping the scene of the crime, unconvicted.⁣ ⁣

450 years later, a bottle lid chokes it’s 78th fish, last of a long list of murders unlisted.
I wrote this poem for an Instagram poetry competition. Each round contestants were given a prompt to write from, the first of which was this “last of a long list”.
Poetry has well thought out a collection of words. To articulate, perhaps the metaphysical essence inside of us all. Short impulse drops of wisdom. To comfort us, as either read or write. That internal voice or maybe a poet is someone with something to say, just no one in their life to tell. Poets are either deep thinkers who cannot write out or simply doesn’t have the patience to write philosophy, romantics without lovers or have, but no soulmate, maybe just physically formed anxiety. Regardless what makes up a poet, where few had any fame and if they have, it’s normally skewed and absurd. Poets had and still do contribute a large part to humanity and have nearly the same duration of history as humanity itself has. Here is a spontaneous stream of thoughts on poetry. For me, in modern times, poetry is a high taste in high art for people in high culture, like the theatre, ballet, and classical music. A snob overtone in terms of the audience. Despite the aesthetics of it all or the poetry for the rebels and the poems full of hatred towards parts of life and humanity, constructing words of resentment, in order to master than mood.

A common trait that I hold in terms of my friends who are interested in poetry, in particular, my male friends. Is that at one point experienced an intense boyish love towards a female they knew or know in their life. It’s normally a strong take to the lust that is veiled as a fairytale. Turning to poetry to have words to say or in hope to impress them. In most cases, it’s failed. And yes, I became interested in poetry for these same reasons. If you asked Bill, ‘It’s better to love and lost than to never had loved at all’, ‘I cried because I was full of dead stars and broken debris, but you still called me beautiful.’ As Catherine Hancock would say. I’m a firm believer as far as my convictions would take me to, that only hopeless romantics die of a broken heart and that true real love that poets make a big deal about, delivers a particular horror to the human soul, devaluing anything earthly. Romance in novels, romance in poetry, love. Seems to be the constant and strongest theme in literature. But it’s an experience most of us desire for. Even in the world of philosophy itself have discussed this. A sentimental fact of mine, I do believe that each of us has a soulmate in this lifetime, that isn’t a deity or character in those romance novels. A particular person that is personalized made for us. A soulmate to experience life and love with, while knowing the meaning is in the other person that brings in contentment. And one’s own destiny lay’s solely in their attention given to you, while a hell of angst, breaking down your soul experiences when their attention is turned away. Know this now that the smile on your face, knowing that you are blessed to be somebody, and that is you are a soulmate yourself for somebody else on this earth. It’s an Angel singing when you know love inside. Brave to follow it through and unforgivable if you don’t.

Poetry is equipment of living for the living, while praises praise for the dead and a craft to help shape genius while they are here. Freedom or an attempt to touch it, poetry is. Comfort for introverts in isolation. Silence in their mouths. While others cannot shut up. Another firm belief I  have in poetry (perhaps all parts of literature), for poets and readers, is that one group of people have something to say, while the others don’t and are happy to listen. In the realm of poetry (and literature) a collection of the lonely.  I'll quote Ibsen, "The strongest men are the most alone." Or maybe, “All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.” Said by Tahereh Mafi. I hard music is what emotion sounds like, perhaps poetry is what emotion would say if it’s mixed in with thinking. Poetry for comfort in isolation, words as friends and words to cure the physical separation from society while dwelling amongst them all, perhaps poets suffer from such grief in knowing how brief this life is and undergo such a transformation that parts them from everyone. Like the heart of life. Maybe it’s them is unwanted. Pulling up reality and dressing their character with it. Unable to contain it and they vent in words of potent beauty. No one likes the harshness of life and poetry is stranded in that realm. And if I’m dying today, let me die original and society is no service if fails of it’s grappling with those who cannot face away from reality. I’m the younger, ready to put in my time.

Maybe poetry is a way to confront death because we have definitely have sinned, like the monks who follow Buddha, leading the wild ways of the hearts of humanity. It’s a sad life that avoids death. I wish to be in a state crossing over that is in poetically articulated as Atticus wrote, ‘I hope that I arrive at my death, late, in love, and a little drunk’. In the unknown is the fear of death. To inspire me now is in reading Marcus Aurelius, ‘Do not fear death, for it’s definite, fear rather than never beginning to live one’s own life’. In a humanist point of view, perhaps there is no ethical reason to die or on how to. Like in music, poetry is here to ease everything while putting in words in tongues to articulate such fears in dying. A person's metaphysical state lives on after the physical act of dying, in such ways as memory, paintings, photography and reading poems by past poets. So far, the overwhelming held belief in life after death is either peace in Heaven, suffering in Hell or reincarnation. Perhaps resurrection. Heidegger the German philosopher, despite his writings, another point of his fame is in the translations of his works. But in his book, ‘Being & Time’, there is no reference to and of God (yes, the same of Satan). Heidegger’s analysis of death is not concerned with how people feel when they are about to die nor with death as a biological event. Its focus is on the existential significance which this certain ‘yet-to-come’ death has to human life. The use of poetry for death, I’ll leave these words that poetry can be used as a personal statement, like the rapper 2pac, ‘if I shall die before I wake. I hope I died for a purpose.’ Providing one to motivate to live now and live over purpose. Poetry can pay homage to lost ones to death, writing lines on what they meant. And if asked about the sadness of losing peers and family, ‘regret is powerful’. Or perhaps poetry can express hopes to the afterlife, whether it’s in either Heaven or Hell, maybe it is only the bleak numbness of nothingness. But still, poetry bangs out more than street fame. Though death happens, currently it has nothing to do with us, for one will die one day.
(Checkout current publications on Amazon)
James Mar 2020
Sing the song of gratitude,
should the grass grow.
Felt beneath our feet,
the soil breathing its song.
Let it growl a languid tone,
for its tongue rests underneath its greenth overflows and wild creatures.
A picture of placidity it draws, hidden under its overtone of yellow kingdom.
Don't let it loom over you,
for its stature is everything but onerous.
Tell it why you fear not the soil nor its engulfing sky, and it shall move the winds easy.
Speak with candor and imbue it with your love.
Because when it hears your song of gratitude, it too will sing.
Tyler Jul 2019
Hands in my pockets
with a jazzed overtone
Strolling a swagger
Thad jones
Bummer Aug 2019
I'm not satisfied with you.

Hell, I don't even like you.

I've put my time into you,

My tears into you,

Even my confidence into you.

And still you fail me.
And still you disappoint me.

I've drafted my work and practiced my craft.
I've read from the greats, and still I'm not content.

Do I need to include a ******* metaphor for me to like this?
Maybe give it an overtone of gloom and despair?

My poetry is a name on an old tombstone.
Unread and dead.
My pen is in the hands of an "Artist,"
Who's words will never be said.


I'm not satisfied with you.

Hell, I don't even like you.

But so long as I have a pen In my hand,

Ill try to get a little better.
i don't like my poems.
Andrew Rueter Dec 2021
I can still remember going to school
when it was raining
morphing into a mule
for things draining
from the life I thought I would rule
it's enflaming
all of this taming
with no one to save me
when the student meets master
whose whip is faster
than the policeman's blaster
protecting their interests
on the command of corrupt arbiters
so I can't make up the difference
when their money muscles are bigger.

They turn my peers into overlords
I can smell the overtone
of the rear odor grown
living in my motor home
parked at my job
the ark of the lost
heartless and tossed
friends of the frost
counting the cost
of commodity crops
guarded by cops
so I must pay the right price
or get filleted in a knife fight
by members of a different ark
their difference is stark
like they're the FARC
from Jurassic Park.

We once went to school together
until we were unspooled forever
diverging cultures sever
our tumultuous tethers
until we're rats racing
to the flats facing
the cliff casing
of a bullet blazing
through rodents raging
while automatically aging
in a game not worth saving
until our grave is paving
so the rats contract rabies
and try to enslave me
through shameless shaming
their nameless maiming
is grating gravely.

Their laugh of wit
a crack of whip
they slap I slip
in their pool of spit
which is fuel for grit
to not take their ****
until they break my hip
with the quake of work
I'm too raked and hurt
to spank their skirts
so I bank my irks
for another day
when I want to play.

The days continue to pass
as they misuse my ***
their issues last
through the time elapse
I can't seem to grasp
my life from their clutches
I tightrope with crutches
until I break for my lunches
or break from the punches
of a million miniscule crunches.

They break me in
they break me down
I can't hear any hymns
over factory sounds
I haven't been to the gym
since I developed this limp
being their gimp
getting ****** on the regular
my only communication is cellular
feeling so molecular
kicking for a living like Shane Lechler.

I look at the analogue clock
sitting next to my Econolodge cot
to see this is all the time I got
getting high smoking ***
pretending I'm something I'm not
which is happy
childhood friends outlap me
all the while laughing
about old jokes from school
like forgotten jewels
carried by a beaten mule
working for wool
so it can dress like a sheep
so it can get some sleep
to forget the regrets it's reaped.

— The End —