Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Cullen Donohue Sep 2015
Most species of rattlesnakes control
just how much venom
they release into their prey.

The hemotoxin destroys tissue,
clots blood and sometimes
causes a severe paralysis.

A necrosis:
a caused premature death
in its victims.

Now, as far as monsters go.

The rattlesnake is one that scares me
less than the ones I've seen of late.

The rattlesnake offers its victims a chance to run.
Before the venom is released.
Before the deadly bite.

Before the pain
and the paralysis.
There is a rattle.
Tss - tss - tss

A warning for the victim
tss - tss - tss
to run.

The monsters I've seen of late,
they have a rattle, too.
But it serves a different purpose.

tss - tss - tss

It serves to reel, meant
to draw their victim in.

tss - tss - tss

A drum beat.
A dance, a club.
Bodies meet.

tss - tss - tss

A forked tongue, and a flash.  

The venom consumed:
uncontrolled.

And still
tss - tss - tss

The rattle goes on.

The victim sees no danger.
Rather comfort in a monster's smile.

The deadly bite,
it happens next.

And the necrosis,
the premature death,
begins to take hold.

A darkness consumes the conscious.

A paralysis takes to the body and mind.

The victim no longer has control.
No longer herself.

Fear, now is only of the monster --
no longer that of
snakes and clowns.

And nightmares make what memory exists replay.

tss - tss - tss

The darkness consumes again and finally.
And the rattle continues.
Carl Barton Dec 2012
Tss-dat-ts-tss-dat-ts-tss-dat-ts-tss-dat…
The beat repeated over and over as the band plays on.
As it approaches I feel the butterflies flutter.
My arms start shaking nervously.
My hands begin to sweat and grow clammy.
The drumsticks become harder to hold with each stroke.
The band crescendos….
LOuder!.
LOUDer!..
LOUDER!!!... Then,
silence.
Only the drums are playing.
Tss-dat-ts-tss-dat-ts-tss-dat-ts-tss-dat.
Everyone is waiting, all of their eyes are staring.
The band now holds the beat, as the drums take the floor,
Center stage.
Shivering in a cold sweat, fearing failure, I change the beat.
Bass drum and hi-hat start off…
Boom-tss-boom-tss-boom-tss-boom-tss
A snare rolls…
Dadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadada… it crescendos… GAT!
*** dum da de dum bop a duba de dop pop…
I play several measures.
All of them unique, but connected.
Finally the band joins back in, and the pressure is off.
Back to the same old groove, the comfortable beat.
Tss-dat-ts-tss-dat-ts-tss-dat-ts-tss-dat.
The audience roars with applause.
I look to my father, and the smile on his face is all that I need.
Jasmine Marie May 2013
(I think I've lost the ability to start things, so please forgive this poem for not having an attention grabbing genesis)
I've been twiddling my thumbs for almost eight months now
Putting off all that I care about
(And especially everything that I don't. Here's lookin' at you, AP World History)
Sitting around amassing a booklet of words to use in the future for novels and whatnot
But only using them in essays so I seem smarter than I am
(For example, susurrus means 'a whispering or rustling sound; a murmur')
Hoarding anything affiliated with Ben Folds because he makes me feel things on occasion
(I currently have 189 songs of his on my iTunes library; No one understands me.)
Making **** jokes at lunch while masking the thoughts of substance ricocheting around in my head
(Also your mom jokes because no one would think that you're crying internally about the uncertainty of the afterlife whilst making lewd stabs at their mother's integrity(and ******. Ba dum tss.))
Apparently craving the lingering feel of another's touch
(I had a dream a few weeks back that Ben Folds licked my hand; My stomach folded (hahahah, folded) in on itself.)
Thinking that my feelings of misanthropy and apathy and everything else I can't find the words for yet are mine alone because everyone else is too stupid to have thought them themselves
(Even though I know that I'm not particularly special and I should stop being so elitist and stupid)

But I've finally found a light at the end of the table in the last place I'd expect--
(I meant to say tunnel, but hey, the source of said light does sit at my lunch table.)
A cherubic Presbyterian boy with an aversion to all things perverse,
(Which includes my sailor's tongue and occasional tendencies to want to put it on a member of my own ***, though he doesn't know about that)
A spec of cleanliness on the grimy waistcoat of humanity who makes me want to be the best I can be
(Today when I saw him, I only swore once; I was very proud of myself)
But maybe I'm just jumping the gun
Because what would a good Christian boy want with a heathen like me who isn't even sure she believes in God?
Maybe his prolonged contingencies were merely contingent and I'm just overreacting because of my few and far between incidences of human contact.
(Seriously. Don't touch me.)
Maybe I just want someone to talk to for hours about everything and nothing at all.
(What with me being relatively antisocial, it's hard to find people with similar mindsets.)
Maybe I just want someone to funnel my adolescent attention into
(Because teen movies have taught me that one obviously can't be happy without having a crush on someone at any given time.)
Or maybe it's just because the way the Bible quote on the back of his t-shirt conflicted so humorously with the way he shook his hips to a J-Lo song on "Just Dance."
(Seriously, though, it was hilarious. I was dying.)
Or the way our fingers brushed when we were catching frogs
Or the way he blushed when I stepped out in my bikini
(I went to a pool party today.)
Or the way he held me momentarily in the delirious confusion of the flashing strobe lights
Or the way he got one point higher on his research paper than me a month ago
(He was excited; I was upset.)
Or the way that he does everything nearly to perfection.
I could go on..
But I don't know.
Maybe I'll get over him in a week and slip back into myself.
Because, like I said, what would a good Christian boy want with a heathen like me?
I don't think that I'm particularly good at formal, or informal for that matter, poetry, so I thought I might try a more comfortable format.
You're my favorite cake;
I don't get you too often but when I do its exciting. It's the best one. That's you. I be like, oh can't wait try her!

Like that one time you gave me that head. I was like omggg this *****... esta mujer, gotta be my girl.

You wanna be my girl?
She laughs, and roles around as if to be searching every Window surrounding for faces. No!

Oh, so now I get it.
You hit me up every year or whateva, you make me beg every time I see you Mami. And when we finally ****, it's amazing, & then you wanna bounce. so I'm here to serve you, hu'?
Aye, you listening to me?
Yeah
I'm serving you? You come here but can't **** it mami. Here chula, put it in your mouth.
She laughs, I don't want to.
Psh, agghh.You get me so tight, so why you come here then?
But he's right, she thought, why had she come? She had imagined it wouldnt happen this time.

Did you ******' slap me?
What? That was hard?
Tss
Come on, we was playin' around. If you hit me I wouldn't get tight. I know it wasn't hard.
It was unnecessary.
You like that ****, why you playin?

He turned the lights off while she laid on the bed still fully clothed.
He was taking off his shoes then pants.
She waited.
He creeped onto the bed headed her ways.
Why didn't I try to leave again, she thought
Come on mami, you gon' take this off or what?

Is that mine? Is that mine?
She moans.
Who's is this?

Huh, he grunts.


Yo..
You..
Youurs.
Yeah!

No worries, I'll always serve you. As long as you're alive.
We laughed and I walked down. The last three steps and out the foggy air of season June,
Kenneth Gray Oct 2020
The music of insanity
plays its song inside of me
The snare does snap and
The crashes crash
Inside the mind of me
The hi hat goes tss tss
And the ride says ting ting
Inside the mind of me
The tom drums role
And bass drum booms
Inside the mind of me

Inside of my chaotic mind they ring
With the hateful opposite of silence
The music of insanity does sing

If you ever ask if I am mad I will
Surely hear ding ding ding!
Just a poem about feeling like I'm going nuts and all the crazy stuff going on in my head all the time.
Dante Rocío Aug 2020
Though another day passes,
once having arrived,
cinnamon sunny
with a misguided preaching
from a catholic church,

I recall our gorgeous
misty evening
right by the waves
from yesterday
and its one peculiar
moment:
my dad pointed to
a far away regatta
sailing in
a distance
whilst standing to my
right and asked
me not quoting

“Do you know why
I wanted to go
to the sea?
The vastness of that body,
no endings in infinity,
no one to tell me
what to do,
and once you sailed away
from the harbour
it was just
it
living.

Whilst I was on my night shift
at the very front
of the ship
on my ever first voyage
by sea,
heading to
England from Gdynia,
I felt as if I
was the very first
man to discover the oncoming
land,
like Cristopher Columbus
with his dear Santa María
breaking the waves”.

Yes, Dad.
I would add,
settled in my question

“Why do I long somehow
in smaller
or bigger
ways too at
times for that
aforementioned harbour
and otherness with so many
sounds, details,
lights and
dancing dangerous like
knives in a tavern
thrown?
For so similar
yet
so privately schemed
departures I paint?”,

I would answer
without Brain,
even if it would be solely
in perfect, dreamy way
sketched:

“Because there is
some greater and
truer breath
of mine held out
by a foreign hand
or by standing lonely
from the other mirror’s side
in front of some tremendous
waves of Kanagawa,
hugging itself small
yet with fearless Child’s
patience, like
the Young Verter
on his painting.
Some more abstract
and
breathtaking
with charisma image
of me there
stands, flowing
instead of walking,
through called aisles.
Beige coat into the
blue falling.

The No Man’s Skies
and Lands
(or yet
Of Some Men)
to be felt with all
the body and
upraising in all hues
and minute sacrifices
in speechless
wonders,
like lagoon’s turquoise
water that would shine
in a cave’s dark
with krill dancing.”

Some upholdings,
some blind images
and all rest
fresh,
windy,
dark
and light with grey
whose voicing
I cannot make,
not just to keep
it in immaculation
to stay non-maimed.

Tss
Ouch.
The Missing.

El,
ese,
acantilado.
Why do I keep having this dream?
These might be now only flickers
Of a proof to come and test it once for all.
Probably a family inheritance
I get in blood or sight
From Adam
So often yet at times
Eric W Apr 2015
To reach out at dusk,
across the near-night sky
where all is turned to dust,
past the galaxies,
and completely around a
cylindrical infinity,
to discover:
that she is nowhere to be found,
not a single sweet breadth of her existence,
none,
not even a sound.

So the rain falls with soft
tss tss and patter pitters,
and is oft what withers
away my desire to quell the hunt.
For the rain reminds me,
of the cycle, the infinity,
the growth of the 'morrows and
divinity.
No matter the cloud-cover,
the star-blocking puffs,
I see the suns, moons, planets,
the habitable and the rough,
to know,

That to reach across space and time,
with a few short words,
and a few short rhymes,
is not the way to a soul
as pure as hers,
but in the way the
lone bird cries out in the night
as the rain falls upon its nest,
it is all I know to do.
To fly out among the drops
as would a butterfly
and to be returned to the Earth
as the water explodes on my
so delicate wings,
and the darkness traps
my mind.

And in the dirt
of such loving Earth,
I search.
To reach across every entwined root,
and to extend to every network of the fungi,
which so dutifully disposes of me,
and to strain and grasp
toward the center that burns
as hot as the scars within
my lifeless body,
to discover the gems of millinea
and the gold of centuries,
but not the treasure
which I so desperately seek,
even in my destruction,
not her.

And to reach across these words and thoughts,
as they bloom like the Spring trees,
and as the grow like turkey's tail,
as vibrant and recognizable,
to dissect them with razors
and hang them with rope across
the headboard of our lives.
We search for the meaning of our demons,
and our demons search for each other
in our words, in our motions,
to tear each other apart
for their emotions.
Until we scream red
to make it stop,
to erase the dead,
to bury the pain of our
childhood battles.

And I search within myself,
as the cold seeps in, and the wet
turns to an ice only for me,
and the lonesome star peers through the clouds,
as if to keep company with its
solitary light.
I sift through the darkness and
mushroom driven decay that smothers
the soil of my being, my center,
my soul, and my heart,
for her.
I cast aside the dejected and deplorable
self
to reach into the nucleus where all is
pure,
to find her,
to find you,
the only place where you belong --
within.
Phi Kenzie Aug 2018
Oof

Ow

You got me.

What now

Tss

Ah

What a
crushing
blow.

Mm

Yah

You showed me
Ya hurt me
congrats
hope it helps
Gideon den Tex Nov 2024
Mister Two Point Two Miller considered himself always in need of free cash. He put his money where his heart was. Could he call himself wealthy? Well, maybe medium prosperous, medium-lite rich or ultra-lite tycoonish. So, the world was his treasure island.

Mister Two Point Two Miller washed ashore and looked around. Wait, there's another guy on his turf. What you looking for, the other guy said. How about anything over two point two mil? Ah, why that number? Random. Don't you dig that way. No, when I stumble over it, I'll find. Yeah, you'll stumble alright.

Mister Two Point Two Miller woke up on the beach and … eh, no looking around. He had a heartache. Two guys were digging a hole and dropped something in it. They sneaked away. Let's see what's in there. Hashtag. It's x point x mil! The two guys visited him in his beach hut. When they left, he was unconscious for two point two hours.

Mister Two Point Two Miller couldn't sleep. His head was a jungle, his mouth a desert. But his heart was his money. He picked up a torch and went for a prowl. An unlucky moon rolled around heaven all night. Jeez, you scare me, a voice said. I'm not looking for you. Well, you sure found me, the avatar said. Are you real? Hear who's asking. Uh, yeah, you got a point. Thnx for the point, but I gotta go. Seems you haven't found the two point two yet. How do you know I'm looking? Tss, we virtual things have a line on each other.

Right, I'm sticking with you. Mister you're welcome. We two got the point, let's go find the other two.

— The End —