Nobody ever wants to be born. Or be made.
You made me.
And you made me feel.
I loved you so much.
But I could never tell you.
Sure, you could make me tell you.
You made me, and could make me do anything.
But you never did.
So, you waited. And waited.
And I never told you.
For years. And years. And years.
You waited for years. Years.
I never said a thing.
Now that you’re gone, I can say it.
I can say I love you.
But I don’t.
I don’t deserve to.
You deserved better.
Than me.
Author: R.
Focus on me
So, I haven’t been happy with work.
I don’t do it for the money. I do it for pride.
I do a lot of work, I’m highly motivated. I’m proud of it.
But others have my work ethic.
And they have distractions that I don’t have. Excuses.
I can’t rely on them, and it bothers me.
“Fire and replace them,” I say.
My boss tells me to focus on me.
I finally realized, I should.
Instead of asking for them to be fired and replaced, I should be paid more and promoted.
Or you’ll end up having to replace me.
Don’t be Andy Dick
Wil Wheaton’s Law is a simple one:
“Don’t be a dick.”
And that law is a good one.
Nobody should be a dick.
But it’s actually a misquote.
Just like “a pope” actually meant “A. Pope” in The Da Vinci Code, meaning Alexander Pope, Wil Wheaton actually meant that people should not be “A. Dick.”
Meaning, of course, comedian Andy Dick.
The drug-addicted, narcissistic, teenager-stalking-and-molesting, accessory-to-Phil-Hartman’s-murder Andy Dick.
In the world of comedy, it’s hard to find a bigger dick than Andy Dick.
Although, after all the times he’s exposed himself, we know his dick is actually a tiny one.
Early
When the bomb went off at the cafe.
You had gotten there early.
Too early.
And I was on time
But too late to be with you.
When the bomb went off at the cafe.
I should have been early, too.
Instead of on time.
We’d be the perfect family of ashes.
Mother. Father. Our child to be.
I’ve lost everything since then.
Photos, little things, reminders.
It’s all gone.
I have nothing of you.
Not even memories. Or words.
Just the memories of memories.
Sand slipping through my fingers.
The tighter I hold it, the more it slips away.
The border
When you live on a ranch near the border, you get a lot of unexpected visitors.
They will try to take things.
Some of leave enough out to help them to get down the road without breaking in to take more.
We open our doors every night and hold a dinner for everyone coming here.
Plenty of bunk beds in the barn.
The next morning, after the poison’s done its work, we bury the bodies out back.
The sheriff comes by now and then.
All he wants is his share of the money we find.
It pays for more poison.
Weekly Challenge #1021 – Poetry
- Richard
- Lisa
- Tom
- Serendipidy
- Norval Joe
- Planet Z
LISA
The Dog Walk
Afternoon. The light fails fast. The poetry of the season doesn’t escape me as a golden glow hugs the park: it’s a feast for the senses. Russet leaves rustle underfoot. Mustard and claret cling on in trees above.
I forage with an urgency through damp, decaying debris in a thousand shades of brown. I find a perfect red mushroom straight from a fairytale but on I search to avoid a fine.
My foot, with full body weight wins the treasure hunt. It oozes either side of my deep treaded boot and smells like I should’ve found it a lot quicker.
LIZZIE
She wrote poetry.
He said it was garbage.
She tried again and again.
He laughed.
She cried.
He mocked her.
She wanted to stay, but couldn’t. She wanted to leave, but couldn’t.
He torched her poetry.
She wrote some more.
His rage became impossible. He destroyed her clothes and her books.
She grabbed her purse, her poetry notebook and her umbrella. She didn’t know why she took the umbrella with her. She just did. It was hers and it reminded her that when you look at an umbrella from underneath, you can see the sky and feel that you’re flying.
RICHARD
Poetic
I’ve never been one for poetry. Give me prose any day. I don’t need flowery language or complicated structure, just give me facts in plain, straightforward terms.
It’s not that I don’t like poetry. I appreciate it, and there are times it’s perfect for my mood or the occasion, but I don’t go out of my way to find it.
The same goes for writing.
I suck at poems.
I never have the time,
And they never really rhyme.
Well, how about that?
I’m writing on the train right now, so I guess you could say that’s poetry, in motion.
SERENDIPIDY
‘Roses are red, Violets are blue
With a shot to the head
I’m going to kill you’
I told you I wasn’t the artistic one in the family.
If I’d asked my sister to pen a poetic prelude to your last moments, she’d have done a much better job of it.
It would have been full of drama, pathos and emotion; you’d have wept at how she’d captured the moment in all its horrific beauty.
But, I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, and my less than brilliant grasp of rhyme and meter.
So…
‘Roses are red:
And now, you’re dead!’
NORVAL JOE
Billbert watched the old man spin up into the sky and disappear. He shook his head. “Poetry in motion.”
Bobbi squeezed Patrick’s arm. “What is wrong with your head? You were going to kill those women.”
Patrick shrugged away. “What does it matter to you?”
Tears formed in the tall girl’s eyes. “It matters because you’re my brother and I love you. And I don’t want you to go to jail.”
Patrick looked like he had been hit on the head by a brick. “You love me?” he asked. “Even after everything I did to you, you still love me?”
TOM
reads us stories out of I Ching
She was poetry in motion you can let go. An angel from the angel band. A shadow in a wasted land. A Specter rising up in the sand. Sweet Lorain. You know you should run, cuz your feet know better. The mark on the ground is big red letter. Sweet Lorain. The spell that she cast will be your end. To bottomless pits she will send. Sweet Lorain. Now you know it’s a shame and a pity you were raised up in the city and you never learned nothing ’bout country ways. You’re the not first you’re not last. Sweet Lorain
TURA
Poetry
———
In 1892, young Matilda Dunnett travelled by steamship from New York to Liverpool. During the voyage, she and a young man called James Hurt struck up an acquaintance, and discreetly became lovers.
At some point James wrote her a declaration of love on a ship’s biscuit, its durability promising his faithfulness. It is not known what became of the affair, but Matilda’s grand-daughter found it among her belongings after she died.
The biscuit is preserved at the National Maritime Museum in London. The caption reads:
“This ship’s biscuit
(inscribed with a love note)
shows signs of damage by larvae.”
Poetry!
———
Z
Jerry was posted to a far colony. Faster than light travel, made travel fast, but the infrequency of ships along the routes made communication less than instantaneous. A Data block would collect important information, and it would be delivered along the route. Sometimes a ship would be lost and news of the loss would take a while to arrive before another data block could be sent. Jerry sent poetry back to his fiancé, trying to entice her to get aboard the next ship. Eventually, she agreed. It wasn’t until the next circuit that Jerry learned her ship had vanished.
Elaine’s walk of shame
Every time Elaine drank herself into a blackout and woke up in some strange guy’s bed, she swore she wouldn’t do it again.
Bagging up the guy’s body, washing the place up, putting him in his own car’s trunk.
Over and over and over.
One day, she’d slip up and leave evidence.
A hair, being seen together on a camera.
Dropping the car off at the chop shop.
“Nice BMW,” said the owner, looking in the trunk. “We’ll take the disposal out of your finder fee.”
That night, Elaine went out to celebrate.
And a guy sent her a drink.
Smut shows
Early Hollywood was pretty racy.
Lots of violence and nudity in movies.
So, the Catholic Leagues would produce lists of movies with ratings of each.
Some were safe, that their parishioners shouldn’t see.
Others weren’t safe.
And then some they said if you saw them, you’d go straight to Hell.
Sure enough, people used the lists.
They skipped the safe movies and went to the naughty nasty smut shows.
When the Hayes Production Code arrived, nudity and violence were curtailed and censored everywhere.
And the churches stop publishing the lists.
But people still went to Hell for their earlier transgressions.
My first pizza
My first pizza was Barnaby’s thin crust in Northbrook.
Their sign had a brown potion bottle, but I always thought of it as a bowling pin.
We also went to the original Uno’s for deep dish.
Greasy thick dough pies.
Same with Godfather’s. Gross.
When we moved, a local joint called Rufini’s got me back to thin crust.
Until Little Caesar’s and their Detroit casseroles turned me off.
Abortion-soaked spongy toast.
And I choked down Sbarro’s only because they were free.
These days, it’s wood-fired brick oven.
And a crust so thin, I can cut my wrists with it.
Skipping English
Why didn’t I make perfect grades in school?
The work was boring.
And my parents thought I wasn’t emotionally capable of handling skipping grades.
Except that I wasn’t emotionally capable of dealing with being bored, either.
Check my juvenile rap sheet.
Eventually, I got a scholarship to a private school.
And did college-level physics and math there.
So, academically, I was ready for college. Except they required four years of English.
Yet, when I graduated, a Junior was allowed to attend summer School English to replace a year.
I tried to ram the headmaster’s car.
(Also on the rap sheet.)