Tag: poetry

What Were You Looking For?

~ varjakBaby ~ Leave a comment

Into the revellion the ever astute demise of calamity the catastrophic meandering two-step I’ve-got-to-make-it-mean-more-than-this that your parents wouldn’t have wanted for your (but these are just borrowed words)

And these, in our coat pocket withdrawn at the cusp of an edge so lightly intercizing the skin rending in half

the forearm and the mains

I never know whether to mutiplex it or not but have at it in one go and remember your times

I will remember your times

There is no nasal spray but that we often get caught up in memories that are grotesque and try to clear them

So to make sense of it

But in speaking: There isn’t any

What were you looking for?

Craft

~ varjakBaby ~ Leave a comment

The arctan of a turned reversed dot-matrix

Pointwise colored black and white

I had no opportunity

They do the math

For fun

They do it

I had

No opportunity

So tell me

Like, Do you

Do it like this?:

Authority

~ varjakBaby ~ Leave a comment

You, hug

Lug, me

In out of the tree divine-side

Wanton slide off dumber said than done and I

Once led a coalition to the new rhyme why they

Went there in time to stay like there were no heathens

But ourselves

Selves

Selves and selves and cells of selves and

Others hitting hidden clubmen clubbing

Like love like lubbing and struggling to make do

In the streets with gash and bruise the politie

Of the times said No, of course, we did anywho

Where there were two and started the love royale

To stale-mate the lungs’ architect in other direction

Of the train that was bombed

And no one called it off so here we are

And I look down and see how far it is until my body hits

The floor, the ground, the concrete

Mangled bones

Turn to stone

No other worry

When we’re all extinct

But does time sink?

And so time passes

But does it sink?…

I Want Not to Want

~ varjakBaby ~ Leave a comment

I and want to like like

I want to like

You

I want to and like the people I am with

I want to want what I have

Too

I want to like my best friend

Instead of looking for new people

Or pining after social media stars

Even the dim ones

I want to know my family better

Instead of making a new one

I want to love

Instead of craving

Should I not want?

~ varjakBaby ~ Leave a comment

Should I not want white teeth?

I think, as I look at my yellows in the mirror

Should I not cut my nails short and prim when they are long?

Should I not want my mother’s dead brother

Back from the dead?

She loved him

I should too

We call him that

Her brother

Not my uncle

Because that’s what she calls him

Should I not crave power?

Over others, the right to dominate and consume

To own

Should I not support the autocrats, in jealousy and nothing but?

Should I wish for eternal life?

Fearing death

The truth is I don’t care much for any of these things

And I’m still unhappy

So if people say living ascetically grants happiness

Well, it can still be complicated, I’m sorry to break it to you

But do try anyway

It works for some time

And until it doesn’t

Maybe you, too, will preach of simplicity

In all good intent

Or is it that I still have my faults? Even with so much clean

And that there is a long way to go?

A drug addiction, front and foremost

The ultimate craving for cravings

I’ll settle for less

And less and less

Until I have none

And then I will have all

Red

~ varjakBaby ~ Leave a comment

This won’t come off too kindly but, to fuck you, to fuck your race out of you, to make you go faster than your ejaculation to make you cum like a nigger on the street with blood splattering spewing in an instant out of his brains onto the concrete pavement like a work of art

To tell you I love you like his red hair now that it is stained with the matter of his prior thoughts to know that I loved you like I still do that this announcement

On the loud speaker in the bedroom of the police officer’s chambers came down on me like a hammer

And in his hammer I was still in pain though still knowing, still going, still growing…

Collapse

~ varjakBaby ~ Leave a comment

His liminal-subliminal-superliminal sublimation of ideas in the lumen of his mind sent

cravings cross his dandelion heart

no abstract ideation in the lettering of his diary came through

but in the end his girl knew that they two had the left-handed gestures of pattycake pattycake

tossing the baby in the bathtub

drowning the noise in the light

and cleansing the distrust with candlelit vigils

it’s hard to say why they moved on but there were reasons

And the others knew them too well to say much more

much less than one another, the candles slowly waned

the space for their thoughts collapsed

and the lettering caught fire

it was an askance betrayal of love

not lust

they made clear of that

but in the morning when I see their faces on my mirror

I know that they love their family very much

and that is that

[Alternate Route] Issue #2

~ varjakBaby ~ Leave a comment

We’re still accepting submissions for issue #2 of alternate route! [ALTERNATE ROUTE] are creating a zine of poetry, prose, and art | Patreon, @alternateroute. The magazine is free for anyone to view, but donations on patreon are accepted. We have two patrons so far! =). Our first issue came out in january and we release quarterly, which means the next is end of april. We’ll be paying our contributors once we amass enough funding (that is to say, more than little-to-none thus far lol).

Feel free to check out issue #1 for free on the Patreon page linked above. More information about how to get in touch is on our Twitter Profile, including email to send submissions to.

We accept poetry, prose, art, photography–more or less anything aesthetically palatable. When in doubt, just check with us.

Adieu,
varjak

Fresco

~ varjakBaby ~ Leave a comment

The pain of a dyspeptic diabetic interlude swing-song sway-on down the cruise to the river colluding with my mother’s–WENCH she was–last living brother

No jovial touch-down on this beach or that planet

Just juggling apples and twiddling thumbs as cataracts build in my middle school mathematics teacher’s eyes

She had surgery and told us

No, she didn’t lose her eyeballs out of ‘r eye sockets

Like a zombie

But I did attend Math Club

And it was just riddles

He, the brother, told me not to go too hard on my own

For they are your last

Psycho freak he is, I had to trust him

For once he was soft-spoken

My insulin comes in packs

They don’t mail it one at a time

Lye and Rum

~ varjakBaby ~ Leave a comment

You stumble on the stairs to your brothel in the sky. The cairn at the bottom rests as memorial to your emotions of yesteryear. The seasons change, wind makes due with itself, girls play in the corridors of the city streets. Not grimy, but definitely nothing rustic, either. There are ways to go about being yourself that, you say to others, a normal person could not feel without insect feelers. There are eyes on the underwater shrimp which emits supersonic pulses to kill crabs and open clams that sense 18 different photonic ranges. Science only knows.

But that’s the half of it. There are things in this universe which painters would love to get to know, darling, but darling, no painter will paint. The hue of the sky when you weep limits my personal damage to a min. and there are sweets on the table. I kiss you. Your eyes dry. There there, there there.

Simple patterns enter my mind and I whisper in your ear that the elephants can hear us from Africa. The glue drying on the chair to fix its cracks of age are disparaging to the elderly but beautiful in the mend’ment they bestow. Lye and rum all around the bar. Lye and rum.

Not sweater season yet, we must wait nine months to inoculate the generational gap between you and I. And were we older it would not matter the least. So take the stopwatch hanging on the wall and stymy gender, wage, and schooling disparities on the nickel, on the dime. Stopping a quarter past the wheel mistakes no sense to the courier. Stopping so fast does not do.

Lift your folder and smack me across the face with it. I listen to tunes of jazz and blues to lift the blow. Powerful candles hiss in the corner of the room but no one sees them, for they are hidden in jars of rainbow steel.

I left the era knowing some things change into things that victims of hate remember because some remember to hate. It is nothing new. It is nothing revolutionary.