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Trevor Gates Apr 2013
Walking back onto the street around nine O’clock
Pizzerias, Clubs and white guys with dreadlocks
Moving like sea urchins with an urge to mock
Hey 2 for one at Roxy’s for black rubber *****

I’m carrying two bags of groceries; One with a pie
There are no stars in the city. Just the moon in the sky
I move lazily and tired as evening joggers pass by
“God I wish I was more active.” I say with a sigh.

I ascend the stairs because the **** elevator is broken
One flight. Two flight. ******* wood surely is oaken
2 minutes of climbing the obstacle that’s unspoken.
I suffer for being the Asian, the part-Korean token.

I reach my apartment, music playing through the wall
I feel worn out and about ready to fall
But I walk in and proceed, feeling anything but tall.
The time has come. I walk to the kitchen from the hall.

I live with three roommates: Sam, Dean an Owen.
Sam is shut in his room. He’s a DJ and I think Samoan
Dean is weird. Don’t ask about flagellated protozoan
And Owen is a reader and blogger. Just plain Owen.

I place the groceries on the counter, I stumble.
Owen is reading and I hear him mumble
“Did you say something?” I grumble
“Wrong Pie.” He says, his words fumble.

“What?” I don’t understand

   “Wrong pie.” Owen says again.
I point towards the pie on the table. “What, this?”
    “Yeah.” He says.
    “What’s wrong with it?”
    “Everything.”
    “Like what?”
    “Well, it’s the wrong pie.”
    “How?”
    “It’s apple.”
    “Yeah, so?”
    “But I thought you were going to get cherry?”
I shrug my shoulders, “Yeah but they were out.”
    “Where did you go?” Owen asked, but he knew.
    “Just that corner market.”
    “Well why the hell did you go there, you know they don’t have **** there.”
    “Does it matter?  I got most of the things.”
    “Yeah, most.  Not all.  You didn’t get the right pie.”
    “Does it matter?” I tell him. Owen closes his book.
    “I think so.”
    “At least I got a pie.  You guys said, ‘Hey man, make sure you get a pie’. You didn’t say get a ******* cherry pie!”
    I try to calm down, but the blasting of dubstep remixes warp my thinking process.  Owen leaves the kitchen and knocks on the doors. He tells them I’m back and that I ******* up the groceries.
“I did no such thing!” I yell, “You ***** think you told me what to get but you’ll all too into yourselves to ever know what the *******’re saying and you come off as ignorant over-privileged *******! Yeah Owen you’re so unique” I mock sarcastically, “Must be why you dress exactly the same as every other hipster here, going online and vlogging about the same **** a 12 year-old in suburban America would talk about and his ***** probably haven’t even dropped.”
    Owen’s eyes are wide, never seeing this side of me before. Sam and Dean open their doors to see all the commotion.
I walk back in to the kitchen and grab the pie.
    “Here *******!” I toss the pie as hard as I can so it hits the ceiling. The tin tray falls to the ground and the apple crusted pie is splattered, stuck to the ceiling like an IKEA fan made of butchered apples.
    I open the door.  “Dubstep is just edited noises of transformers having ***!”
I slam the door and leave, walking back downstairs and onto the street


Roommates ******* ****. I was tired of their **** and rules.
They used me for their homework, Working me like a mule
I’m barely able to pass my classes, let alone graduate from school
So trivial to help them just to earn my cool.

I flipped up my hood and rushed through the streets
I didn’t know where I was going, I didn’t care who I’d meet
A slice from Death Metal Pizza, a drink from Fat man Pete.
I need to let loose. Relax and take that invigorating leap.

I stumbled upon an old movie theater, playing classics, new and old
“I want tickets for all the shows.” To the box office I told.
I bought popcorn and milkduds. I think my chair had mold.
And watched as Al Pacino was out of jail; being paroled.

Carlito’s Way, then intermission
A glimmer of previews then Pulp Fiction.
Ezekiel 25:17 and blasts of omission
From Jules’ and Vincent’s handgun ammunition  

After the credits roll I get three hot dogs and a large soda
Next movie: The Evil Dead, enough to put me in a coma
AH ******* demons Killing like the cancer of lymphoma
Scaring me and making me spill my watered-down cola.

Next was the Monty Python to ease the chills
Ensuring talking fish, puking and hilarious thrills
I really enjoyed the collective animation stills
I was relieved from the films and I had my fills

Now I had a good place to come and let loose, relax and laugh
And I wouldn’t have to display my clustered, boiled wrath
To my ******* roommates. Maybe I’ll move out on their behalf
We’ll see how it plays out. I’ll write a “*******” graph.

But thanks to them I found a new way to survive
Which is better than the alternative; a desperate suicide
Watching movies late at night is better for me than to die
All ascertained from the incident of the wrong ******* pie.
Please forgive me for that middle section just being a straight narrative.  I thought it would add comedic effect. This whole thing started out as a short story. I was converting everything to the rhyming scheme but I just loved what I originally had for that part that I just kept it like it was.

Lot's of fun in this one. i couldn't help but laugh to myself some of the ridiculous rhymes (or lack of) I was trying to squeeze in.

Good references in here to Pulp Fiction, Carlito's Way, Monty Python's The Meaning of Life and The Evil Dead.
Tiana Marie Apr 2018
The life of a Youtuber
new and just trying
hardly any subscribers
and barely surviving

She pulls out her camera
and then everyone stares
she's vlogging publically
and suddenly everyone cares

had she have no camera
she'd be just a normal girl
no one would even look her way
and judge her like an ungodly pearl

yet she still talks to the screen
for they are her only friends
the 19 subscribers
she talks to without end

she smiles as she watches
her view count go up to 40
and dreams of the day
it'll turn into 60

She posts and posts
but what no one really sees
is the girl behind the camera
in real life, she'd freeze

she's now in the store
and talking to her screen
people look at her like she's crazy
and she wishes she couldn't be seen

But someday she'll earn
ten millions of subscribers
and those very same people
will love her with each one of their fibers

So she just keeps on going
hoping and wishing
that someday she'll make it
so she just keeps on keeping.
I JUST STARTED A VLOGGING CHANNEL! You guys should subscribe! I'd love you FOREVERRRRR. I'm barely starting out so any feedback on my channel is accepted and encouraged! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTUVqEPpQV2q_qNvfs3Q1bA
Zoe Roberts Mar 2020
(with apologies to Gil Scott-Heron)

You will have to stay home, sister.
You will charge up, tune in, drop out of all activities.
You will scroll through memes, trawl the news,
Skip the tea, you're running low.

The epidemic will be endlessly televised.

The epidemic will be brought to you in a trillion parts,
With declining commercial interruption.

The epidemic will show you pictures of Trump and Boris blithering,
Dreaming of fried chicken at the end of televisation,
"Oka-a-ay...".
"You are a terrible reporter!"

NHS-badged Hancock will look the part,
But cannot answer the question
Should I look after my sick self-isolated seventyish neighbour?

Fauci facepalms
And is gone.

Watch out, guys.
The epidemic will be televised.

The Epidemic (starring Tom Hanks) will not be brought to you on the big screen.
There will be no big screen.
The Epidemic will not play Glasto
Lit by 300,000 Androids.

The epidemic will be brought to you by friends and strangers.
The epidemic will be televised.

The epidemic will not inject fat into your posterior.
You will not need to shave or deodorise.
As it turns out, you are not worth that expensive holiday.
The epidemic will make you a bedroom star
Vlogging your incarceration to ten followers.

The epidemic will be televised.

There will be pictures of coughing queues at supermarkets
Toilet roll riots, thermometer wars.
There will be pictures of you and your best mate
Pushing that cart down the block,
Packed with Branston Pickle baked beans
Though you posted fifty times online about hoarding.
You will not have dressed for the occasion.

You will not care who wins Love Island.
You will not care who wins The Great British Bake Off.
Eastenders will be cancelled
After 35 years of continuous drama.

You will dodge the police for a quiet walk
On a brighter day.

The epidemic will be televised.

Reporters will cough.
Ministers will be replaced
Suddenly
Parliament will be suspended.
Politics will cease to be televised.

The epidemic will be right back, after a message.

You will have to worry about a germ in your bathroom,
Your food supply, the tiger in your tank, your loved ones,
Whether, if you cease to breathe, there will be a ventilator.

You will consider getting in the driver's seat.
Where to go?

Would you like to see your mother?
Would you like to cross a border?

The Caravan Park is occupied
By the Military.

Slowly, slowly
The screens will darken.

The epidemic will no longer be televised.

The Epidemic is not a game.  You cannot return to a previous Save.

The epidemic is live.

— The End —