theunproductiveones-blog

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This Is Not Your Father's Poetry

This is not your father’s poetry This is the Holy Matrimony that led to the consummation of Rosemary’s Baby This is the Anti-Christ spraying antifreeze Into the I’s that mind their Q’s and P’s That mind their own business and keep peace This is anti-bodies spreading anti-sneeze Into the oxygen of redundant “thank you’s” and a mindless “please” No, this is a plea to say something you mean Handicapped, disability, and special needs Differences are labeled as abnormalities Uh-oh I think the Devil’s got a hold of me Is it 3 O’clock already? It’s 3 a.m., do you know where your kids are? Hardly This is not your father’s poetry [This is not your father’s poetry Apparently Someone named S.O. Jr. beat us to this title already So it’s another Woodchuck and Bailey’s Some more whiskey, no Hennessey To taste the vivid cliché of unoriginality As a testament to being defeated that easily And we will never be our father’s poetry Because we don’t have a thing to say about anything Our fathers said many things firmly and quietly As we shout things hoping for relevancy Maybe we do want to be likes our fathers Almost exactly And just as silently This is not your father’s poetry This is a collection of recollection That isn’t aimed in any particular direction Because though our heroes stood high on their pens And used their words to defend truth and live in our heads They slipped on their ink and impaled themselves dead And I don’t know if we are anything like them “It was their own doing,” their murderers said] And our skin will break out into riots And our sacrificial virgin’s blood will be diet Contradiction will be defined but we will defy it Until Mother Nature burps us and we’re hush, hush, hush, —quiet. This is not your father’s poetry --T.J. 

#poetry #writing

[theunproductiveones-blog]

Wake up to a placenta in my room Roll over, laugh, hit the snooze Fails to clean its act up with a broom Returns under rug, hits the snooze What's 5 more minutes? What's one more Guinness? What have I to lose? I can't choose Ivory towers made of soapboxes Drink from transgender Mr. Coffee's more often Going to the same place but I was here first Living every day like a bathtub birth

[theunproductiveones-blog]

Doo-Da Day

This food for thought's just giving me the shits But at least you have each other (Pssst: He didn't live) Oh, I mean At least he had you? At least you had him? Shit And still we say: I'll try to live, nah, outlive, yeah, outlive, my former life, in an afterlife, in another life. But what the fuck? You lived yours! As it was and as it is. Love, Alma (Sincerely Yours) P.S. Know that you are missed. --T.J. Piccolo

#Alma #Michigan #Poem #Death #Mourning #Celebrating Life

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Easter on the Shankill

You hid colored eggs in a graveyard    ------as if it's where they go to die, while wearing a half-priced bunny suit, all because the park was closed. Some shells were colored black, like the pupils of button-eyes on an old sock puppet, red, like blood stained embarrassment, green, like disease-ridden pus discharge, yellow, like those big sunflowers that died across from the senior living centre, and multi-colored, like the tears of a coloring book that your wrists couldn't help color. Some shells were colored like the bones of a closeted skeleton whose body wouldn't admit it was sick, and passed from an illness. You knew one day I'd find them, and stick them into a woven basket, not sure of what to do with them, as you sit in your casket. But that day, drip-drops dropped like F Bombs in your Loyalist Pub. You mumbled "fockin' rain's getting the fockin' rental suit wet," in that grumbly and endearing Shankill dialect, and someone took a picture, of you as a bunny smiling and rushing me, as I hopped higher than the pitch of my laughter, proving real kodak moments are flawed and unphotoshopped. --T.J. Piccolo

#Easter #Shankill #Belfast #Northern Ireland #Loyalist #Bunny #Colored Eggs #Kodak Moments #Graveyard

[theunproductiveones-blog]

Dunce Caps

It was a conventional black and white, the printer paper sign, handwritten with a predictably thick "fuck you" sharpie, crudely taped to the transparent door, of the All You Can Sleep Buffet. It read: No Challenges No Strong Opinions No Service Despite being right by the door, I turned away. Apparently I was underaged, and didn't want to spend my money anyway.

So I continued downtown with a skip in my step, wearing a propellerhead hat, licking an oversized lollipop, while reaching out to the farthest corners of earth that wore dunce caps, because that's where real grit begins, and where what you say goes ends. --T.J. Piccolo 

#Dunce Caps #Propellerhead Hat #Oversized Lollipop #Noshoesnoshirtnoservice #Sharpie #AllYouCanEat #Poetry #Underaged #Creative Writing

[theunproductiveones-blog]

ASK US SOMETHING

Anything.

We're desperate.

#desperate #sexy butt fungus #tags #ask us something #big wieners

[theunproductiveones-blog]

ROBOTS OR DINOSAURS?

Robots, because I like when they get turned on.

[theunproductiveones-blog]

When The Future Looks Back (On Sunday Morning)

She loved a good hole in the wall And Brand New songs She hated mass texts And cheesy embroidered pillows Realizing I should apologize to her while wondering what to type Looking at home through the screen on skype He's got a Labatt, I got a Murphy's, We joke that after one beer he's gotten surly My other friend's graciously checking up I ask him about his former love He writes back with profanities and epiphanies How he's hurting and healing About how she's gone I'll start with "I was wrong" "I should have said something" I hope that says enough --T.J. Piccolo 

#embroidered pillows #Brand New #Mass Texts #Apologies #Creative Writing #Poetry #Labatt #Murphy's

[theunproductiveones-blog]

The Curse of Luci’s Bluff

by Preston Hagerman

Scotsdale, Michigan was first discovered and settled in the winter of 1856 by Scottish immigrants en route to the Upper Peninsula. As fate would have it that season would produce one of the century’s most bitter winters known to local historians. Unprepared to face the long winter ahead, the company of 75 made camp in Scotsdale for what was to be a temporary stop. Lucky for them however, the nativus-solum, a kindly indigenous tribe with an English speaking chief inhabited the land at the time.

Upon successful negotiations of their leader with the nativus solum’s Chief, the small company of immigrants settled peacefully into the tribe. The nativus-solum had extensive and amiable contact with outsiders before and saw no reason to distrust their newfound friends. Eventually, however, aggressive missionary work and a bad case of ironic xenophobia had almost completely driven the tribe out of Briarwood County. Those few tribal members who remained were assimilated to the point where their own language seemed like foreign gibberish. The Chief was the oldest member of the nativus-solum and only of those left who could speak their language. Every day almost up until the time of his death he would walk through the woods of Scotsdale; singing folksongs and relating in his native tongue secrets of the universe to the mass of fresh faced trees, with hopes that generations to come would be reminded by the whispers in the wind.

As Scotsdale became more industrialized and local businesses were established in what used to be the Evergreen Woods, The Chief’s constant presence and silent cross-legged protests became a nuisance to the local capitalists. He was, on more than one occasion, physically removed from the woods. To keep him from entering their “private property” they eventually burned down what was left of these ancient trees during one of the nights they had him locked up. Even though he had no way of officially knowing what had happened, The Chief knew the very moment the first spark hit the first tree. He was lying on his sheepskin cot in a deep sleep when the poignant screams of the forest spirits pierced his ears much like the veracity of truth did that fateful day in the Garden of Eden. The pain which dwelt within him was far too great. For to him the death of these ancient trees was the second death of his people and all of the wisdom they had to offer. 

The day after the burning of the forest, The Chief remained within his cot with his teary eyed gaze fixed upon the grey brick wall of his twelve-by-twelve foot cell, where flashbulb memories of the great many walks and talks through the evergreen wood undulated across the wall like an antique film projector. As the final image dissolved from sight, The Chief slipped out of bed and dropped to his knees to pray for the spirits of the trees.

The very second he rose and ended the prayer the mischievous god Malsumis came to The Chief at the Briarwood County Jail. Malsumis appeared to him from the outside of his cell and passed through the iron bars like an apparition. At ten feet tall, Malsumis had the head of a fox with the ears of a rabbit, a long slender human torso attached to human legs with large bear paw feet, and broad eagle’s wings extending from below his scapulae. The god stepped toward The Chief ominously, but the elder man was not afraid.

“Bird of the Moon,” Malsumis said in a manifold of human voice, fox’s bark, rabbit’s cry, and black bear’s growl. “Come to me in the pre-dawn light at the highest point of the tallest face of rock. Come and with song bid to me the gifts of your people so that you may know my justice.” Malsumis then placed his long bony hand on the Chief’s shoulder and the two of them instantaneously evaporated from the room, then were as Sunday rain upon the countryside. 

“Be free.” Malsumis said, and with that he extended his mighty wings and took to the diamond-eyed Upward Canvas, leaving The Chief alone on the back roads of Scotsdale.

That same day before first light The Chief hiked ten miles Southeast to Luci’s Bluff, a precarious cliff in the heart of Bovine Valley, the soil upon which was said to be fertilized with the blood and tears of the great spirits of the sky. On his trek, The Chief carried with him the bones of a fox and rabbit and a fresh crow’s carcass nestled within a burlap sack strapped to his back. When The Chief reached his destination, instead of resting he instantly emptied the contents of his bag and delicately buried the bones beneath the enchanted earth. He then adorned the trifecta of animal graves with a prodigious wreath of several meadowsweets laced together, at the center of which he drizzled oil derived from animal fat. 

After lighting the meadowsweet and oil, The Chief wafted the indigo fumes towards his face and inhaled deeply, letting the ritual-vapor slither their ways through his veins and fill up his body. When the numbness of the saccharine-scented smoke reached his skull and draped over the back of his eyes like tiny blankets of fog, he then stood upon the brink of Luci’s Bluff and looked toward the sky. Then, quite suddenly, the flavescent Celestial Iris of day appeared upon the variegated face of the Upward Canvas before him. It was there within the renascent cluster of clouds and the sudden coruscating clash of nature’s atmospheric blades where the mighty face of Masumis was luminesced in the phantasmagoric distance.

“Father of chaos,” The Chief cried with desperation. “I beg of you: show these people your justice. As children are fools to their parents, so too are these fools unto the glory of the wood. I implore you; give unto them the fool’s death; that they may not know when they have died.”

“Bird of the Moon, I say to you now with every drop of blood from the Just Son alone shall justice adorn the land, your mother, who borne your flesh.” Malsumis said.

“But father, no such man exists--”

“Bird of the Moon, the blood of the one I require is he whom I have beckoned upon this bluff.” The Chief was genuinely to hear this but did not refrain.

“I am ready father.”

Just then Malsumis’ arm appeared from below the edge of the cliff, and surged through the clouds to grasp the spark discharging bolt of lightning. “Take this and make complete my promise.” The god said, tossing the bolt in solidified form at The Chief’s feet.

“I am pleased to make this sacrifice.” he said, retrieving the massive icy fulgurite. 

As Malsumis watched from above, The Chief propped up the solid bolt and ran his throat across its razor tip. He dropped with a satisfying smile and kissed the earth with lifeless embrace. As the incarnadine fluids leaked from The Chief’s gash and pervaded the earth around his motionless body, all that was and was to be in the land of Scotsdale were as pre-shroud fibers floating high above a grey man’s final bed.

Malsumis then stretched forth his arm from that plane through the Six Overlapping Layers above and snatched within his quasar palm the Celestial Iris that once gave warmth to the bucolic life below. With the light of life cusped in his hand, Maslumis motioned ated the other along the Upward Canvas like a brief streak of light from an anxious star racing above the Newaygo desert; setting forth a forty day frost that would congeal the blood of the land and the heart of its people.

By the end of the forty days Malsumis removed his hand from around the Celestial Iris and permitted it to gaze upon the land of Scotsdale. When the light returned and the blood pumped once more within its veins, the mending city flourished. In truth, however, the ailing of our tiny little world never really came to an end, but rather subsisted like the remnants of a suppurating wound to the soul. Scotsdale was infected with a cold, the symptoms of which were shown in the black-blooded age of corporate industry and the deep-seeded rage of patriotism. 

Had he lived to see the product of his sacrifice, The Chief may have been pleased, for the curse was not the smiting of an angry god but rather the tragedy of progression and its ten thousands deaths under the eclipse of unseen duplicity. Slivers of the truth that is and the terrible path which lies ahead are visible only to those who feel as The Chief felt that day on Luci‘s Bluff. Only to those with the courage to hate.

#short story #creative writing #Religion

[theunproductiveones-blog]

Thangorodrim Dream

when i came home, i drove past strings hanging from heaven, i was a fugitive, and the children reported me, when i leapt down from the roof of my childhood play house/ tree house/ courthouse, the elves were enslaved in a million minds, and the asteroid was yet tethered to the ethereal earth by its immortal spring leaves, lessened a little come fall. when i ran from the children, Bill Kurr was rusty Humvee, non-proper Jacob posse,  racing over the underwater ramps and the orchard ramps, below the meteor mine, graced with the touch of a thousand dead strings, and the parting of the living forest aware of him, though eyes on the skies.

god was in the orchard. hand above the bridge backing, hand above the road, plucking up trees was he, when i ran from the children, and i watched him, his hand, and the dirt root falls, the trees were moved to my side of the road, the tombstone orchard, though the death allegory was uncertain. 

-W.C.Smith

#Poetry #Poem #Writing #Dream

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Haunt Your Ghosts

Lake Michigan waves beat the shit out of the boat, I don't miss my demons, but I do miss my ghosts

I'll haunt them

I swear to God when I get home, I'll haunt them

I'll possess their bodies of water, manifest my destiny farther, and continue to become my father

I'll roll into town like long lost tumbleweed that was necessary and longed for, a lost transparent spirit that scares you:

just so you feel alive

I already know I already know you I already know you miss your ghost --T.J. Piccolo

#Poetry #Creative Writing #Ghosts #Haunting #Haunts #Michigan

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The Common Douche Bag Poet

by Preston Hagerman

  Wary eyes of hopeful faces-the poster children of child poets

Watching always watching, seeking and seeing through phrases

The meaning behind the endless wisdom of black and white;

Text and type covered pages created by the taste of moonshine

  Plagued by adolescent hope and shaped to judge

By the scholastic web of collegiate intellect

  Butt-fucked by the mincing sodomites of Aristotelian persuasion  

These bright eyed bastardized hopefuls-

The shallow minded hipsters-

Baptized in the blood of existentialism

Beguile lesser minds by fake and lofty words of rhythmic wisdom

Into a child’s belief and lover’s adoration

  Tools of mental rapist factions

Who fashion tools of Windy City apparel;

The frame thinning pea coat

That adds a touch of wealth

To the otherwise middle class;

Thick framed spectacles of trend

When the sight of sense is clear

Sway like waving arms of athletic cheer

Minds of fashion into their favored direction

  These stylized liars who fool even themselves

Speak with finesse and clarity of sound

But obfuscate simple points and themes with metaphors

  Like the words that seep from leader’s lips

They speak no greater truth

Their minds’ eyes are blind

To the sightless nature

Of their regurgitated wisdom

  These students of the pen are so crippled by social inexperience

That the throbbing cock of literary pedophilia

rapes them into conformity;

The concrete  prison of plain naysayers, would-bes and wannabes,

Should’ve-beens and has-beens, broken minds of bastard wardens

  Zones of comfort for some, warm hand-sewn quilts of tranquility

These professors are parents to their pupils, children not their own

While they blanket them with mechanized rules of form and structure

Unwittingly shielding them from the cold poignant wind of creativity

  For these teachers, these classicistic fiends are unfeeling

Numb to the touch of necessary pains of commonplace

Through which the heart of ingenuity beats and beats and beats

Like the rhythmic drum of a post-Nam Hootenanny

  But their true heart of originality is a tragic one

For they are the type who find God’s face

Stained upon the rusted frame of an antique car

The tragic many who flock to see the bleeding crotch of an alabaster Mary

  And cry silver tears of sweet adoration

Until their souls ejaculate in climactic celebration toward the euphoric ambiance

It’s a miracle

My God, it’s a miracle

  But God and time and life I wager

Will smite these bastards where they stand

In the beautiful form they crave

But not the form of structure

My God, does the world love the form of structure

No, the form of destruction in another form

  The form of something new

The form of anarchy

So their silver tears of sweet adoration

Dry into desiccated lines of black resent

They’ve been beaten dead

It’s a miracle

My God, it’s a miracle

  Miraculously dead like the gutted whore in the ditch

On the outskirts of Detroit

Dreadful side by glorious side

With the rotting corpse of ingenuity

Who lolls beneath the mounds of dirt

Lain down by the hands of modern men

  Like Founding Fathers disgraced by We The People,

The spoiling hunk of meat tosses and turns and rolls

In its undersized capsule of eternal discomfort

  For those he touched and those he fucked

Have come to forget his unparalleled influence

  Mislead by the glorious cum stain of history

We are left with the odor but not the orgasm

For those weighed down by Holy Writ, wrenches-

Lodged deep into the machine of poetic industry-

It’s one hell of a hullabaloo

  Do I alone long for the days gone too soon?

The days through which words once were as prisms

And strays of truthful light shone through

To project the world in all her diversity;

The vast polychromatic arc in the sky;

The feast for children’s eyes

And movement’s inspiration

Am I alone?

Am I alone?

Am I alone?

  Am I really alone amongst those who seek to learn

That which cannot be taught ?

Am I really alone amongst those who seek to tell

That which cannot be told?

Am I alone the Hebrew slave in times of old

Worn down by the whip of modernity?

I tell you, I am alone

Absent of companions in my cause

I am alone and I am grateful

I am alone

I am alone

I am alone

It’s a miracle

My God, it’s a miracle

For I am alone

#poetry #bitterness #ceative oppression

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The City

by Preston Hagerman

  Through somnambulant wanderings I come to a city in my head

a city of vast and fast vitality and prodigious brilliance

illuminated by the ghostly viridescent glow of the Western eve

  As I pass through that always sleepless city you see in movies

and hear Howled about in Other Poems

I come upon a pack of sororicidal Soroptimists who tussle over kindly clientele

like starving carnivorous cats and a fresh sloppy kill

  I press on, stumbling with torpid intransigence  

through the black singing ghosts of a Harlem bred fifties trio

who subsist in Jazz and song on a lonely hipster’s boulevard

to serenade the dim street lighted night of lost and wanting wanderers

  Where I am bombarded by hoards of raggedy clothed rugged faced

yuppie outcasts voluntarily outcast from privileged lives

and stratospherically high on waves of Benzedrine and psilocybin

that guide them through otherwise soporiferous nights

to pre-light mornings of poeticized sybaritic encounters

  until these fantastical and frantic Beat Gen fanatics gravitate with ease

through university streets in groups to Six Gallery reminiscent nights

to regurgitate with pretty syllabic rhythmic sounds their youthful angst in art

or the too few who dig deep enough in pain to weep and spew on stage

their free verse calm collected rage

  These free willed fresh faced transcendental troubadours

inspired and obsessed possessed by the city

take me with them as we make our way

to late night pharmacies for pockets full of Coriciden

to roam and float with slow moving clouds

and come down like settling fog

upon the black shingles of a coffee shop klatch

  Denied of our sweet bitter treat of caffeine

they strip and frenetically thrust their naked cadaverous frames

into populated market squares

stylistically screaming their anguish to the alabaster moon:

  How/How/How

How am I supposed to write my damn poetry

How/How/How

How am I supposed to go to work today

  Suddenly present day McCarthyites

march unto the scene laden in police uniforms

wearing the face of modern misunderstanding

and brandished in the sheepskin pages

of their little black book of blacklisted behavior

  The generations are going to war

but at least there is a dialogue

  It’s love and hate in the night

as I saunter about

going to battle with my companions

  and as our groups meet face to scolding face

in the unholy union of war

  I feel the sudden undercurrents of dawn

swathe its fingers around my astral body

and force me back into the harsh vicissitudes

of conscious flesh

  In the warm confines of my apartment

I peer through the open window

as the Tri-City tenements across the way

tower above the tenebrous population below

while milky Mother Moon looms in the starry distance

casting the great city’s bright eyed silhouette

  I shed a single silver tear

of poignant disappointment

as the beauty of the night dies and dissipates

later reborn

to be the ugly day

  In the city of a diminutive lifeless glow

stained across the iridescent sky of the western morn

#Poetry #The City #reality #creative oppression #Preston Hagerman

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Welcome new followers!

We hope you'll enjoy the writing more than popcorn at the movies (or poems on a poetry blog)!

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Th3ree

by Preston Hagerman

  Three pigtailed sisters played in a sandbox. The box was massive and filled with glistening sand as gold as the threads which adorned their hair. Built in the Basement by their Father, the box was grand enough a playground for even a goddess to enjoy. There was at the center of their sandbox an enormous plastic Easy Bake Cauldron filled with the theses-and -thats which children find. On one side of the box there was craftsman’s loom as white as an old oak’s bark. Directly across from the loom on the other side of the box there was a tall shelf with all of the appurtenances to keep a garden.

Cloe, the eldest sister was pedaling away upon her loom, spinning a long strand of flaxen hair which she had plucked from her own head. Even though she had done this countless times before she somehow managed to keep a head full of lush and gorgeous hair that was no doubt the envy of all who knew her.

“Is that about done?” Lacey, the middle child asked suddenly. “It seems like you have been at that for years.”

Cloe continued to pedal and looked down at what had become a heaping pile of golden thread. She scoffed. “Yeah, seems like it.”

“What are you making anyway?” Lacey asked.

“I don’t know. Father just told me to keep on spinning until you tell me to stop.”

“Okay then…stop.”

“Really, just like that?”

“Why not? I think that little thread has lived long enough. Why not sew something new? Something prettier…”

“Very well,” Cloe sighed. “My fingers are tired anyhow.”

Atty, the youngest of the three sisters was near her garden nursing the broken stem of a flower with deep purple petals and a bright blue center. A flower of its size and unparalleled beauty probably had no earthly business being in a place as dark as their Father’s Basement but she somehow managed to keep it alive.

“I tell you, if this flower were going to die,” Atty said. “Then it would only do so by my own terms.”

As with most things she vowed to do, Atty was actually stubborn willed enough to make this a statement of truth rather than a mere point of naïve determination.

“Come along, Atty.” Cloe said, climbing off the seat of her loom. “Lacey thinks it’s just about that time.”

“I have got to hand it to you, Cloe. It really is beautiful.” Lacey exclaimed, grabbing one end of the golden hair and stepping backwards so as to uncoil it.

“How do you always get it to grow so long?” Atty asked with childish amazement at its sheer size.

“Must be magic!” the eldest sister replied facetiously.

Cloe grabbed the other end of the golden strand and started to lengthen it out in the same manner as her younger sister. Lacey and Cloe continued to extend the hair across the sandbox until all slack was gone and it hovered above the sandy ground in one straight line of absolute glimmering perfection.

Atty stood between her two sisters with a giant pair of shears and severed the massive strand of hair in a single snip. The three of them skipped joyously up the stairs of the Basement to tell their Father the news, giggling along the way. Miles above ground at that exact second a man they never met stepped onto an empty street and was struck dead by a double Decker bus.

#Creative Writing #Flash Fiction #Th3ree

[theunproductiveones-blog]

Surströmming

when once i wade through boyhood dreams, stood silent i seine baitless, a pantomime scarecrow of the gentle lap of the waves. when once i crawl to the shore, and found me upon a balmy bed of eyeless beauties, where once were living flesh of the lake, where now were, death and fleshy stepping stone, pile on  pile of yore slippery swimmers; carrion, but not the proudest of the lake. when once i gaze upon the dunes, were pounding musclers mounted, strong in blue, murky and green there hung they, with all the colors of the lake, pounders, proud, proud, proud, but rotting all the same. when once i looked backward, at gentle lap of waves no more, the lake was dead, bait-less for the baited no more, grown brown and stagnant, from the impatience  of growth, on the lake was death, but i did not move.  -W.C.Smith

#Fish #Poetry #Poem #Writing

[theunproductiveones-blog]

Where There's Smoke There's Fire

She wouldn't fuck with cigarettes but she'd butt in and butt out, we'd blow smoke out our asses as we'd kiss on the mouth, she went upward in smoke-- she wouldn't reroute Smoking out smoke and mirrors for the first time in years, still, ash tray to ash tray, we all burn out

--T.J.

#Short Poem #Cigarettes #Poetry #Smoking #Butt #Creative Writing