Trying something a little more comedic. It went over well on stage so I thought I’d share it here.
Category Archives: Spoken Word / Slam Poetry
Armageddon
This is because everything comes full circle.
Sometimes
I feel like I’m smart enough to know that there’s something going on
I’m just not smart enough to figure out what it is,
but some of the greatest minds in the world
aren’t curing cancer, or aids,
they’re curing hair loss up top and hair growth down under.
We are going in the wrong direction
like a derailed train that doesn’t seem to need tracks anymore.
Now there are document I can cite for every piece of this poem.
I think this social system is coming to an end.
There are too many repetitions hiding behind our biological limitations
even within our names;
Hugh Williams
December 5, 1664 a ship sank off the coast of Whales
with a sole survivor named Hugh Williams.
December 5, 1785 a ship sank again with a sole survivor names Hugh Williams.
December 5, 1860 another ship sank with a sols survivor named Hugh Williams.
August 5, 1820 a schooner went down and only a 5 year old Hugh Williams survived.
August 19, 1889 another ship sank, but this time there were 2 survivors,
both men were named Hugh Williams.
Have you ever felt like there was just something going on?
Look and Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy.
Lincoln was elected to congress in 1846
Kennedy in 1946
Lincoln became president in 1860
Kennedy in 1960
both have 7 letters in their names
both wives lost a child while living in the White House
both were next to their wives when they were shot
both were shot in the back of the head
both had a secretary who tried to stop them leaving on the day of their deaths
both were killed by Southerners
succeeded by Southerners
both successors were named Johnson
Andrew Johnson was born in 1808
Lyndon Johnson was born in 1908.
The assassins John Wilkes Booth was born in 1839
Lee Harvey Oswald was born in 1939.
Lincoln was shot in the Ford Theatre
Kennedy was shot in a Ford Lincoln.
I think that something is trying to get a message across.
How many countless civilizations have fallen
and how far back can we really remember.
There’s this map that was found,
the Piri Reis Map.
He was an Ottoman-Turkish admiral and cartographer who found the map in 1513.
It was labels as a copy, etched in leather and shows the Northern coast of Antarctica,
this map shows details of a land 300 years before it was discovered
and with modern technology we’ve sent frequencies down through the ice to measure land masses
and this map has been shown to be accurate.
This would mean that the land had to have been mapped before it was covered in ice back in 4000 BCE.
We had the technology to map the world before the last ice age,
but we still wound up back at the drawing board
so what part of us is going to survive the next shift?
Now maybe I’ve just spent too much time on Reddit
but I don’t know about you,
I cant even keep a plant alive
how the fuck am I going to grow my own food?
Almost made it
There comes a time in every poet’s life
when they realize what kind of poet they really are,
and I…
am a heartbreak poet.
I don’t know how this happened,
But my emotions can be seen from space.
I have the ability to articulate an emphasis on the description of my feelings
like I was taking a highlighter to smiles and tears.
Half the time when I’m on stage
it’s only because my feelings got hurt
and I wanted everyone to know,
not only that,
but I want to take you all down with me,
I’m that drowning asshole grabbing peoples ankles on the way down.
So this is a letter to one of my ex-girlfriends.
We became what I never thought we would become,
but for a while
it was like we couldn’t get our hands on enough paint
to cover the canvas at our feet.
When we met,
you were more like a road map torn in half
and I was a GPS speaking a broken language.
Everywhere we went,
we left behind the people giving us guidance.
It was as if the creases in our directions
wanted our imperfections to match each other,
to meet each other half-way
so we started touching each other a little differently,
we began reading it in each others skin
like homemade tattoos,
or bedroom back scratches of nameless acts.
I liked you so much
that I wanted to delete my browsing history
before I invited you over.
But I respected you so much that I didn’t,
and I just left it like an open window,
you made me fearless when it came what turned me on.
I don’t know if this is a misogynist poem, or not,
but I still want to call you mine.
I can deal with being alone,
just not both of us being alone at the same time.
Because you were the answer I was looking for
and I was a reason for you to stay behind,
just to keep your mind busy,
this perfect distraction,
just tall enough to keep you from seeing
what was waiting for you,
until we became more comfortable
with telling each other about our days than actually sharing them.
You were the hand written letters
lost in a stack of memories.
I was the envelope
that cut the corners of your mouth open
when all I wanted to do was kiss you.
Now,
I have written the first half
of too many emails to remember.
You became the price tag of my future
I wound up being more like the receipt of your past.
We left each other buried
in my wallet and your purse,
beneath other people’s pictures,
beside transit passes and
behind all the things we used more often than each other.
I think at some point trying to keep things playful,
we only started playing games with each other,
like hide and seek
became the way we moved through the room.
Speaking only through notes on walls
and tagged pictures online.
In our minds
we created an impossible future for us,
one so disgustingly romantic
it kicked the shit out of the Notebook
in a Pulp Fiction kind of way.
I don’t know
if you believe me when I say I’m sorry,
but I mean it.
Like when I was mean to you
for no other reason than to get your attention.
I meant it.
But I just wanted to be your dirt,
that rough filth scratching you clean,
caught beneath you fingernails
after such long days
of building these sandcastle housing projects together.
I’m not even with you anymore,
but I still toy with the idea
of letting you go
and I still keep the pictures you gave me,
but I haven’t looked at them in a long time,
they’re somewhere in the distance,
kept at bay,
stacked in a folder,
tucked into a bag and
locked in an empty room.
Life
Life, like urinal cakes in a bar bathroom,
You can only take being pissed on for so long
Before you begin to disappear.
Left to slip down some drain made to look like a water slide.
I don’t remember much from when I was a kid
But I do remember
How I used to brag about
All the things I was going to do with my life
And what I pictured for my future
Had too many bells and whistles,
Too many accomplishments
For any one life to contain,
But now, at best I can be the bottle in my hand,
Something capable of any shape
But so breakable
It cuts like self-defense
And I keep climbing in and out of these ruts like nets.
Every time we meet
We still greet each other like strangers
Because
I feel like I’m always changing something about myself,
Like only my name has survived the days we’ve spent apart,
Left only as a reminder,
Written on a name-tag,
Like the street signs above intersections
Where I crossed my heart
And hoped you’d find me.
All I have now are my reactions.
I’m an unknown speech impediment
Heard only when listened to closely.
I keep claiming I know the words
But still left asking how to spell them
Because maybe I just don’t know anymore,
The thought escapes me
Like I’m a cat spending my life
Trying to catch the red dot.
Someone once asked me for a truth, so here it is:
We might still be people,
But we’re not human anymore.
We’ve forgotten about our grandfathers
And waited to long to know our grandmothers.
When they left
They left us only photograph footprints
From a black and white world.
I still keep thinking
I’ll get a do-over at some point,
Like if I wait long enough
I’ll get one more chance to back paddle,
One more chance to repeat myself
And all this time I’ve wasted
Might be put to better use.
Like tongues o what they’ve tasted
And a love for what might have lasted.
I want to repeat myself,
But draw a different outcome,
Like sidewalk chalk could erase bare walls
The way leaf’s fall over dead grass.
I don’t remember what I did today
I don’t know what I’ll do tomorrow
And I’m fine with that because
All that’s left of this moment is a shard of light
Clinging to the sky
This entire evening is dropping opportunities like bombs
And I cant fit anymore regret into this bucket list
So for now I’ll keep spinning these circles
Like the hollow tornados leaving deconstructed houses
And I’ll make my mark
In some other way.
To beginnings
I only write
of the things that bug me,
things that constantly tug me
and torment in tones
that make me blush.
Like that rush
of our infinite world
where the best are curled-up
and the rest
are thinking
and sinking
into their own dilemma’s
where even their own agenda’s
cant save them in the end.
And as constant friends
might sometimes pretend
and begin to provide
more then one side
to the mass
that is our stories,
our endless glories
where stampedes adjust the crowds
and one mind becomes created
from something so frustrated
where a craving
was driving us crazy.
Where even the lazy
will slap us in the face
as a testament
to being intimate
and gargling-up words like
love and friendship,
where our thoughts are above,
but our actions are below, in fractions
where crowded dance floors
help us to ignore
any other possibilities.
Even to see a pattern
in the abilities
that turn
away from earned reputations
that pull our eyes
with longer sighs
to the floor,
where we don’t have to see
and we don’t have to watch
all those moments
that seem out to get us.
Those long moments
that must’ve been sent to us,
like the crashing,
smashing feet of higher numbers.
Ones that linger
with neat little smiles
that stretch miles
into wretched things.
Those things that bring
such a vague release
and makes us feel
for just a moment,
only a moment
until everything else
shakes their way in
from other forms of sin,
tearing what’s torn
while just trying to begin.
Though we’ll only
become so lonely
when it’s something else
that teaches with candy,
that way of using one thing
just to do another.
The way we play
and then run for cover
along clever
lines of conversation,
like condensation
dripping from the other side
where it’s a strangers pride
that pushed it aside
to the space
we’ve saved for thinking
where we’re placed
in the midst of understanding
where breaking away from branding’s
means first
to start holding each other.
Those that are all
still ours
in our days full of hours
where we stay still
in our thoughts of compassion
and there are no rejections,
or angry objections
that feed off frustrations
and rely on the limitations
of the underestimated.
The ones that’ve calculated
all the possible possibilities
before composing
the lasting lyrics of emotions
and the motions required
just to get them
to a beginning.
Used words
I felt anger that day
where it still broke through
and your words then ricocheted.
They were all around
through the rest that lived
and everything they’ve said.
There are problems with our language,
ones that sometimes stipulate.
Both standing on
and floating along
to where we often congregate.
Forming words to make a thought
that may lead to something clear
and looking for meaning behind such things
that are known to be severe.
It’s the final touch
that breaks the ice,
but it hides in rhetoric
where those who still look you in the eye
are just doing it to make you sick.
Our intentions have become
the things at stake
among other forms of thought.
Other ways
we say these things
to describe what it is we’ve got.
That description of what’s going on,
one that hints of a certain vanity
and through such words
we justify release
and drowned in ambiguity.
There are functions
to the way we speak
and we analyze what we hear.
We place value in these different things
if they last throughout the years.
There’s describing things
that have happened,
or directing something next.
We might interrogate
to find out more
cause we often get perplexed.
Emoting feelings
and evoking action
to evaluate their reactions,
then persuade someone
to perform a little
and feed off those distractions.
But it’s also how we say
the things we think
while wandering through our days,
smashing into
so many things
only meant to be on display.
When it comes to knowledge
it’s the way you learn
that’s like an antidote,
but even that cant cure the empty pockets
of those who’re living broke.
Because splinters come
from everything
even people you don’t know.
They’re barely felt
until what’s done is done
and they’ve already begun to grow.
What else but words
could do so much
in the mouths of the confident.
They can build things up,
or brake them down,
or make them seem opulent.
So when you’re thinking
just what you might say,
no matter what they’ll bring,
think them through
and choose them right,
because these words can mean anything.
Slip
I feel a pressure
when you feel concerned,
like it might be returned
and otherwise learned
that you cant believe me.
Believe these actions
in reaction to you
and how I feel
when you steal those looks
and I hear your smile
over phones and distance,
but I think you
question me
and my chosen friends
and that I might just pretend
to like you this much.
I’m just reaching out
for the way it’s turning out
and I’m just as blind
as you are.
Keeping an eye
on the kind
who know how to smile first
and satisfy their thirsts.
You see,
in many ways
we’ve both been chewed
and with some help
have been renewed
only to see the changes
in ourselves
that range past years
or fears
where the tears
could’ve filled nearly everything.
And we’re sometimes occupied
with being pre-occupied
while time’s magnified
for hidden meanings
that could rectify
our first assumptions.
Where it’s easier
away from trust
and those things we must do
for ourselves
and each other
just to support
that moment of comfort
and all those decisions
that might come with it.
The line
It’s all about the senses
that rely on having fences
around what we think we want.
But it’s that want itself
that’s breaking shelves
that makes us want to flaunt.
And in this time
we try to shine
between what blocks the light,
just to feel bliss
and not just amiss
and always wanting to fight.
It’s because it’s as if
our hands just sift
through the things we need to hold,
like words that slip
right off our lips
that makes us seem so bold.
Bold in the answers
like conversations cancer
when what should help never does
and it’s left to comfort
without the effort
of worrying about a cause.
Because there’s always someone
who’s forcing a fathom
into the mouths of other people,
they take such care
and are constantly aware
of such things as good and evil.
But this is about who cares
and to those who play fair,
who respect that there’s a line.
One to be known
in respect that it’s grown
from mumbled warning signs.
Because it’s on top of towers
that we let things sour
and fall into darker states,
where no one can lean
and nothing is seen
and nothing no longer relates.
To the way we feel
when we’re forced to steal
and pride is what we forfeit,
I say we see the line
and say it’s time
that we all now finally cross it.
