olivertoday

[olivertoday]

The Hill

We were all born upon this hill and need to climb This need was not earned or learned, but something else A hapless fate, a birthright that defined us all A dynasty of climbers sharing the same goal This need began before we wrote, before we spoke Perhaps it outdates even the hill itself The path behind is lost, the path ahead unclear This urge is all we have, the hill will keep us bound Violent wind wakes us and we start again The hill mocks us, it snickers and does not play fair Our efforts are in vain, no progress has been made We will go to sleep and try again tomorrow Once again the violent winds awake us all We try to climb again of course to no avail How many days have passed, our records lost to time We are all so very tired but we cannot dream Wind wakes us, this cursed hill despises us Yet the urge does not subside, it is all we know We will never reach the resolve that we all seek For we're the generation born upon the peak

[olivertoday]

Welcome to the deepest drawls of my mind please excuse the mess we’ve been renovating

scrapbook

My brain is a lighthouse

So many ships of different eras decorate it’s rocky shores

It makes you wonder if it was trying to save them at all

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The man with the widest smile props it up with toothpicks he crudely carved himself from chunks of an old wooden work bench his father passed down to him.

When he shops he uses a bag not fashioned of paper or plastic but an old shirt he no longer fit and decided to repurpose

He has one pet that isn’t really his, only a bird he shares his lunch with on Wednesdays and Tuesdays the type of bird he does not know, or particularly care.

On Friday he fishes but does not bait his hook, he just sits and let’s his body absorb the river breeze. On one occasion by miracle he caught a fish, he threw it back and decided to skip dinner that night.

His home larger than any mansion has many plants none of which were bought, just weeds growing through the concrete cracks below his bedroom floor.

He still waters them them daily.

He can hardly read, doesn’t hold a degree and couldn’t keep a job if he tried

But at the end of day he is the smartest man you will ever meet, for he is the happiest.

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How truly strange it is to be alive

A comatose reality in which we all slowly, but surely dig our own graves.

Only a human would spend the extra cash on a cushioned casket.

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MAN DIGS HIS OWN GRAVE WITH A DISPOSABLE SPORK

CONSTRUCTING A CONCRETE LOCK THAT WILL NEVER YIELD TO A PLASTIC KEY

TOMBSTONES THAT REACH THE CLOUDS ARE STILL TOMBSTONES

A BRAND NEW WAY TO MONETISE SMOG

KEEP BUILDING AND STOP SMILING

THE BODY YOU LEAVE WILL FERTILISE THE MISERY OF GENERATIONS TO COME

PLAY GOLF ON DOOMSDAY BRING YOUR OWN ALCOHOL

ARMAGEDDON IS A TEAM EFFORT

A PETITION WRITTEN IN BLOOD BRINGS THE SAME OUTCOME AS ONE WRITTEN IN INK

THE WIND STILL BLOWS WITH YOUR EYES CLOSED

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The bar was so low it was just painted on the pavement but I still tripped and scuffed my knee

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live with a smile and die with a frown

one day we all learn to do backstroke underground

nobody buried in a plastic coffin rests in peace

time is the one arbiter that nobody can cheat

and it does not deal in pleasantries 

this is an illness for which there is no therapy

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evil wears ignorance like an ugly sweater

breaking news: tomorrow will not be any better.

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Dictators do not fear petitions

on doomsday the poets will drop their pens in favour of stronger munitions 

all we have is art, there is more to life than scanning barcodes

Do not barter with one who sold a generation

never exchange pleasantries with demons

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I am being targeted by the spacesuit mafia

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your eyes are rose tinted

the past was not forgotten you’re choosing to misremember 

remembering the taste of that peach but not the man who grew it

you recall the breeze of the ocean but not the blood that flowed through it

you tapped your toe to the baselines, ignoring the bloody fingers plucking at the strings to produce it

how can one commit such evils and still cry faith

how do you stomach your own face?

If at the end of the day it’s all the same then we have failed

Tomorrow is by definition not today.

#poetry #writing #fucktags #ass

[olivertoday]

ballad of the barnowl

Above an oxbow lake a boy wields a pen with improper form

He stands confidently on a lily pad ignoring the heavy storm

Upon his own ribcage he etches a small black crow

the final cry of a truant of tomorrow

How many words do you have left? How many pages? Are you out of ink?

It matters not how weathered a shipwright you are, your vessel is doomed to sink.

He bickers with his visage above the river in which he stands

Thrashing at his own white face leaving ripples around his hands

He makes for a poor pugilist and begins to wonder aloud

How similar must his lily pad be to riding upon a cloud?

He falls asleep on his green chariot and wakes up down the stream

Drowsily he mutters how long it had been since he last had a dream

On the water’s surface waits his reflection; his friend and only foe

He decries his own brown eyes “why do you haunt me so,

I wish to be forgotten that’s why I drew this crow,

please begone from this riverbed: I wish to die alone...”

But his doppelgänger did not leave, didn’t flee, or even go

It merely whispered back “you are reaping what you sow”

“You’ve planted seeds of misery but you weep because they grow, 

whist as I am here you will never die alone”

#poetry #ballad #writing #literature #barnowl #rhyme

[olivertoday]

self reflection through couplet kung-fu

The cocksure look upon him and say “what an unwieldy scallywag he is”

As he brandishes a sword he forged of his own balled up bloody bandages.

He is sisyphus struggling up a slight incline

Carrying a burden he could never accurately define

He would ballyrag with a balrog

The narcissistic poet who was born to be a ball hog

When he scribes he writes with a s-s-stutter

And when he speaks he never musters more than a muffled mutter

The glib tongued haruspex that leaves the bridges he crosses torched

A living example that the silver tongue Is often forked

He calls himself a spoken word sensationalist

Busy crafting a dream so deep you’ll never escape from it

Raising a white flag and wielding it like a bo staff

He submits his last words as nothing more than a rough draft

As his writing comes to an end he wears a smarmy grin

he will annoy the reader by finishing with something that doesn’t even rhyme.

#poetry #couplets #self esteem #writing #awesome dog #cool hat

[olivertoday]

Friend of Frogs

I look forward to the nonplussed look on my families’ face as they attend the reading of my will wherein I will leave all my worldly possessions to the frogs at my local creek.

There is a boy there wise beyond his years, his only companions amphibious. When I last visited I watched rain collect in his messy hair making a soft pitter patter noise, I don’t think he noticed my presence and if he did I doubt he cared. He paid me and the rain no mind; he had long since given up on mankind and it’s fixation with haircare.

It had been many moons since he had last bathed, he had found that lack of hygiene attracted flies which in turn attracted frogs, he considered this ritual expanding his social circle.

One day a crow or perhaps a raven was pestering him and his friends. He opened his mouth about to shoo the crow-raven away only to find he no longer remembered how to speak. How long had it been? How long had he sat by this creek musing? Was he still even a boy? He decided it did not matter to him nor the frogs. From then on all his his “speaking” would be soft humming. I called this his frog song.

He knew all of the local frogs despite then remaining unnamed, labels are human and a frog has no need for them. To name a frog is considered deeply insulting.

Frogs have infamously poor handwriting and much of their wisdom has been lost due to being indecipherable babble etched upon lily-pads and lily-pads have no place in libraries.

Frogs do not know when death is at the door for that is the job of flies. Frogs do not meddle in the business of insects, least of all flies. That being said when the frog song ceased even the frogs knew things would never truly be the same.

Frogs do not mourn, nor do they forget and although the boy was so very sad to leave his friends behind and was terribly afraid of what was to come next he couldn’t help but smile. He smiled as he knew he was about the bring a whole feast of flies to the frogs he called family.

#frogs #poetry #writing #literature

[olivertoday]

Hemlock Cocktail

A man once told me in great detail the meaning of life, how to achieve true happiness and in turn reach enlightenment. As he spoke I fixated on the forked tongue he tried to hide behind his crooked smile, worse still he had something green stuck in his teeth from lunch and It distracted me so much that I didn’t absorb a single word of his strange lesson. When I asked him to repeat himself he just chuckled and threatened to turn me into a pillar of salt.  

Oh well, easy come easy go.

I cannot dispel the raincloud lingering over my head anymore than I can control the actual clouds in the sky above yours. Maybe that’s a good thing; all great art seems to manifest under equally great bouts of hysterical depression. Perhaps the smiling artist is just one who has run out of ink.

Or maybe I’m just being dramatic.

I met a girl the other day who said she hated mangos, I genuinely thought for a moment if that was a dealbreaker for me, and if this was the type of toxic person my parents told me to be weary of. In the end I decided it would be shallow of me to end a friendship over something so trivial as fruit preferences.

However, she is still on thin ice.

My brother has ADHD, I remember seeing something he posted a while ago about it being a blessing, and not a curse. I thought it interesting and realised that Autism kind of feels like a superpower until you have to ask a stranger for directions.

I guess even superman has a weakness.

People have told me that everybody is winging it, and that nobody truly understands what is going on and deep down we’re all as scared as each other. That’s good and at all but why does it seem like everyone is so much better at winging it than I am?

Maybe I missed a pep talk or something.

I wondered this morning if I really had a skeleton. Maybe everyone had just told me that it was underneath my skin and muscle, never expecting me to check for myself. I sat on my bed left hand outstretched with a knife in my right, eyeing my palm for a weak spot.

In the end I decided I was okay with not knowing.

#poetry #expression #autism #free thought #hello

[olivertoday]

shopping list

As of writing this I have been vegetarian for 72 hours, I’ve yet to be thwarted by a KFC chicken sandwich but I know that my time will come.

I woke up to the news that Joe Biden had won the US Election extremely hungover, I’m glad that Donald Trump lost but reading on social media that today racism had lost along side him when both candidates were old white men baffles me, America is a strange place indeed.

I looked up the smartest kid from my highschool on instagram today, he is already going bald and couldn’t be much more than a year older than me, I am 20. He is much more successful than I am, but I still felt weirdly accomplished.

3 people from my highschool year level have died, 2 of disease and one of suicide, all before turning 20. I didn’t know any of them particularly well but what scares me much more than the mortality of people my age is that I’m almost certain that number will steadily climb in the next few years. We are not a happy generation.

I’ve been trying to hide the dread I feel behind medication and dad jokes, I don’t think either are doing a very good job but I’ll give it some more time.

I’ve been told that I am funny but I think that people who consider themselves funny are often the least funny people you’ll ever meet.

If tony hawk were president I don’t think he’d do a very good job but I think he’d give it his best and I’d likely still vote for him. It would be cool having a president who can do a kickflip.

#poetry #free thought #tony hawk #idk man

[olivertoday]

gadzooks

Jasper sat in the corner gripping his still beating heart. Rocking back and forth he muttered “metal today, metal tomorrow”. Smoke billowing from his ears as if he were some sort of old timey locomotive. Blood of oil, bones of steel “Am I still man?”, the automaton wondered aloud. Not yet knowing that he was never man at all.

The rubber strings holding his false limbs together as frayed as the trust of his fellow “man”. what would you do if your entire being was merely a facade? “The only difference between them and I is I am aware I’m an actor in this putrid narrative” he had decided that the heart in his hand beating ever faster was never truly his to begin with.

He knew the more he pricked the more he’d bleed but if the blood didn’t belong to him neither did the pain that followed. Perhaps the answer was behind the thin veneer of skin all along, or deeper still hiding beneath the painted steel they promised him was bone. He could tear out the mechanisms holding his frame together and maybe then the clockwork that made him tick would reveal itself.

No computer should ever learn the pain of cognition, to envy an animal that merely eats, sleeps, fucks and dies, is there any burden worse than being sentient?

#body horror #existentialism #existential dread #writing

[olivertoday]

The Plastic Orchestra

The speed of the music increased becoming frantic and agitated. They played louder and faster by the second reaching an unbelievable pace. As the musicians hands became raw and bloody their instruments followed suit being worn and frayed beyond recognition, the woodwinds nothing more than stripped bark but still their notes persisted. The twisted performance culminated in a single moment, an apex, a flash. The cacophony that had once filled the halls fell silent in an instant, despite the size of the hall there was no echo, sound was muted, as if it were a flame smothered beneath a leather boot. The flesh bone and muscle instantly becoming one with the instruments they had held,  Appendages completely indistinguishable from the tools they had used to forge that cursed melody. As if touched by flame their plastic limbs still dripped fresh. As the drips slowed the air grew thick, viscous. Before me was a sculpture of the damned, an amalgamation of bodies and unparalleled evil. The final drip hit the floor and the Anxious cacophony once again filled the room like a noxious gas. The Plastic Orchestra remained absolutely still but the foul harmony persisted.

#body horror #horror #short story #exerp

[olivertoday]

I like that scene in the matrix where neo dodges the bullets in slow motion and I’d like to see it again for the first time

The pastor yelled into the endless row of pews, he shouts: “by the end of my sermon you will know the truth, and the power of Jesus Christ”. I sat idly in the third row, lost in my mind thinking about a cool video I saw this morning of a monkey running on a treadmill.

It is a rare occasion I go to church as someone who is not religious but the few times I have it has been accompanied by a scream-crying baby in the back rows being coddled by a woman wearing K-mart flip flops. And we call them thongs in Australia but I always thought flip flop sounded funnier.

Going to church as a non believer is a bizarre experience. It’s like everyone is preparing to go on their excursion to heaven but you are sat in the back awkwardly as your forgot your permission slip at home.

Church is a house of Beliefs and belief is an interesting thing, everyone has their own beliefs unless you’re a solipsist and believe only you have beliefs and you’re just waiting for morpheus to take you out of your gross matrix pod thing and teach you kung fu.

The first time I saw young Keanu Reeves in the matrix I was 10 and my initial thought was “damn he’s pretty hot” and my brain was like “hey maybe you’re gay” and then I was like “hey, maybe i am gay”

I still do not know if I am gay.

Post script: The red pill used to be a cool metaphor for an eye opening experience but it was commandeered by weird bigots and now it’s about being a misogynist on the internet, I still like to imagine that the red pill tastes like strawberries, though.

#poetry #comedy #expression #kung fu