found poem #12

but who can stop you

if you wish to try again

i wish words can weave the world

there are children

and dreams, ambitions for the blind

always neglected and unattended

we can always pretend to fall asleep

in this place of sadness and sorrow

i was still a child-dreamer

talking about god and foreign films

so high and proud

and I'm right here,

in your warm hugs and kisses

and i wish for nothing

deliverance

the man shot himself

in the bathroom on the third floor

everyone in the house are so busy

talking on the phone

red bubbles of filth

dripping from the dark hole

under his chin, spilling over

the edge of the plastic tub

everyone in the house are still busy

talking on the phone

dialing and cursing, head bowed

in prayers hoping for god himself

to pick up and deliver

his guidance to those who are

still busy screaming and shouting

begging for another story

in their short restless sleep

every frame a painting

every line is poetry.

every day is a good day to start

it all over again, their hearts

beat heavier day by day

in the middle of a pursuit

for perfection, suddenly

everyone is wishing for a gun

he holds it tight, that night

he is Isaac, he is Ishmael

inside the flesh of Abraham

worshiping nothing but death

the man shot himself

the bullet pierce through his skull

straight to the blood sprayed ceiling

a black sun in the red sky

his neck slumped over

the edge of the plastic tub

everyone in the house are too busy

talking on the phone

play it cool, text me when you walk out

adele-rolling in the deep (jamie xx remix) ft. childish gambino

first of the year

They told me that we
are already at
24
(cool)

twen-ty-four

Another one to the quarter
of this amazing self sabotage,
if I happen to make it
to a horrible hundred years.
16 to 40

four-ty

Easy on the tongue but
horrifying in a mess
of endless anxiety,
and disposable days.

I promise that I'll never
(give it up)
tell anyone anymore about how
great it will be, you know
super grand when it's done,
when I never tell myself

"you really should start now
 you idle, day-dreaming fuck"

and a child will never give birth
to itself,
and I will be the worst father
(sigh)

and March is about to leave
without looking back at all.

found poem

by Mike Essig




The days piled up too high and then collapsed.
Everything was sadder than it used to be.
What we are concerned with here is unhappiness.
It is not a question of enlightenment, but recognition,


that chameleon of vapid, disinterested change.
What does it all come down to in the end?
Feeling furtive needs isn't living;
you weary of feeding your needy, mammal body.
We must extricate ourselves from this repugnant spectacle.


The gates of the world open and close to no end.
The cosmos uses your own voice to complain.
The summit sings what is spoken in the depths.
The boulevards of your brain become smaller.
The wars are far away and oddly peaceful.
The lamps we light at dusk are for nothing.


I found this poem in the flea market of old words,
paid for it with the sorry shards of my memories,
and offer it to oblivion with whatever else I have stolen.
Consider it a final toast to everything that didn't happen.

sorry miss

I can't come today.

I just got into an accident.
I can't find your office just now.
I didn't recieve any emails.
I've other plans today.

I'll come tomorrow,
I promise you.
I'm already here.

Will I be seeing you there?

Sorry means nothing.
Too guilty for goodbyes.
Too afraid of failing.
Too ashamed to admit that
you're such a shitbag,
just like those fuckers
you cursed to death.

So sorry miss kelly,
I can't come today.
Thank you for the call but,
someone just passed away.

communication

her stare

was a sharp, piercing

"how could you leave me?"

he's trying his best
to say

"so that we'll meet each other again"

with the look on his face
while wondering if she
knows them long enough
not to take it as

"so what?"

chasing dreams

The safest place for a ship is at harbor
but that's not where ships should be, 

I've always wanted to begin it
with these lines, even though it's not mine-
but the one I had in mind was something different.
It's about how we should always
fight, live, and die for our dreams
even when we're already at peace with ourselves,

but this is not that poem. Not that one.

This one is to remind myself that I'm not dead yet, 

and the one before this is not the last one-
in case I'm dead before I could write another.
Make sense?
What time is it?

I don't mind

if this will be the last thing here.
Not because this will be fucking good,
which until now I know that it will only be
some shitty paragraphs that will be forgotten
seconds after you've stop reading,
and disappoint secret chasers
if you're one,
because there is none.

I'm just scared
of knowing that our dreams
will always be laughing with us
and living life is just a lie we tell ourselves
before the real thing comes
and swallows everything into black.
Makes me grind my teeth till it bleeds
when I can't sleep. Wondering if this time
my eyes will stay shut forever.
Don't worry. That's not real.
I did not grind my teeth.
I just can't sleep.

And sometimes I hear myself counting days.
Maybe I'll keep doing that till I'm 40
and when I realized that it's always
an impossible task,
I will tell myself
that it is alright to dream
even to the end.
Hope dies on daily basis.
Every tap tap on their keyboards sounds
like they are typing their last will
but what came out are reports and excel files.

Funny, now that I'm one of them.
And they sleep early so maybe this act
of lying awake
is the best thing I could do tonight

before they lock me deep.
Again my dear.
The safest place for a ship is at harbor
but that's not where a ship should be,

now lets get back to sleep baby 

shall we?

carver

by Neil Hilborn




 

Accordin to our maps
we were more than halfway there. 
My hands were frozen into claws 
around the climbing rope. The cold 
was crawlin into my legs, bitin me 
through my clothes, and I just knew
that if I let go I’d slide all the way down the mountain 
back to New York. Shiverin in the cold I opened my eyes 
and all there was was that rope 
disappearin into the blizzard. 
   
Let me take you back three years. 
I was workin for Sam Carver, 
puttin up posters for his speeches: 
Sam Carver! Adventurer Extraordinare! 
Has seen all known continents of the world! Now, 
Mr. Carver said that Americans had a right to everything 
to the West of us–he called it Manifest Destiny 
and I just couldn’t get it out of my head 
like it was a hymn to the lord and Sam was the mouth of God, sayin 
“Go west, my son. Go west.”

So when Mr. Carver said he was going to California, 
I told him I was the kind of woodsman 
that could chop down a tree with a stick and a sharp rock. Hell, 
I could start a fire with a piece of wood and some wet moss. 
Y'see, I grew up in the mountains of Kentucky 
where just breathin is like pullin a tornado into your lungs 
and spittin out the debris, where sunset is like all the gunpowder in the world 
goin off in reverse on the horizon. 
Mr. Carver said the sunsets in California 
were like the Pacific closin its eyes, and when he talked 
the distances collapsed until China coulda been as close as Baltimore 
and he talked all the way from the eastern seaboard, 
shrinkin the Great Plains into a patch of dirt under our feet.

Accordin to our maps we were more than halfway there 
when Sam said that God spoke to him, 
told him to turn south, turn south. 
Some of us thought we was goin the wrong way, 
especially when we started climbin that mountain, 
but he just kept repeatin: “South. We’ve got to go south.” 
And I’d'a trusted that man as long as I still had teeth in my head, 

but then there was that rope, disappearin into the blizzard. 
Manuel yelled back through the snow: 
“Richard! There’s blood coming out of my shoes!” 
I ripped off his boots and his feet were rottin 
from the bottom up, burnt black like firewood 
with coals glowin in the center. He asked us to shoot him right there, 
but a Christian man can’t kill no one, so we built him a fire and just left him there.

I was leanin back on the rope, 
pullin Johnson up an ice shelf, 
but when he came up over the lip his leg snapped. 
I ran up to Carver and said “Charles’s leg damn near broke off!” 
but all he said was “Well, 
he’ll just have to get it put back on when we get to California.”

Then the meat ran out. 
I caught myself starin at McNabb as he laid down in the snow. 
I’d never been so hungry. 
When Sam smiled I saw the gates of heaven clangin shut 
and he said providence wanted us to eat, 
wanted us to have this 
and we bit into his raw and frozen thighs 
and his blood tasted like every single word of Manifest Destiny 
spit out in a howl from the devil. 

The last thing I saw before I passed out was Carver, 
headin west, with two human legs slung over his shoulder. 
He was just whistlin, walkin to California.