yaaqov

[yaaqov]

If someone were to say they were going to commit suicide, would you try to stop them? And what reasons would you give for staying alive if so?

I would try to stop someone, despite my declared allegiance to "right to die." I would remind someone that a person's current state of being is not permanent, and that feeling hopeless does not mean circumstances or perspectives are unchangeable. Also, I would invite this person to call me!

[yaaqov]

Waltham 620

My patience, verve, and will are gone. (I'm losing all the time.) The chance to triumph has withdrawn. (I'm losing all the time.) My cells obey a finite span, Compel to death a finite man. Each day abates duration's brawn. I'm losing all the time.

#poetry #formal poetry #rhyming poetry #iambic #paronomasia #wordplay #play on words

[yaaqov]

I Copy Myself and I'm Obviously Okay With That

I'll trade the future for a day. Tomorrow's bloodline ends. I'll sacrifice a sack of rice To find the perfect grain then say, "A peerless moment has no friends." I'm buying now, no thought of price.

I pack my stuff. We're breaking up. Your "sorry" came too late. It's getaway then get my way, Supine, my hands combine to cup The brine you shed, your weekly spate. I'll trade the future...for a day.

#poetry #formal poetry #rhyming poetry #iambic tetrameter #paronomasia #play on words #wordplay

[yaaqov]

Tricky

I'm raising the populace.  No, it's the inverse: I'm razing the populous, picking till skin hurts. I'm scalping each follicle, snatching a trophy. De-thatching the canopy.  Hardship is only Advancing the atrophy already killing Restraint.  I would stop, but my hand is unwilling.

#poetry #formal poetry #rhyming poetry #paronomasia #wordplay #play on words #amphibrachic tetrameter

[yaaqov]

kind bad sorry

Please don't be sorry.

[yaaqov]

#poetry #formal poetry #rhyming poetry #paronomasia #wordplay #play on words #amphibrachic tetrameter

[yaaqov]

Grasp (a Do-Over)

Love handles love handles. Love handles love handles. Love handles love handles. Love handles love handles.

#poetry #not poetry #paronomasia #play on words #hypocorisms #nicknames #wordplay

[yaaqov]

Bulking Should Be a Phase; Bulking Should Not Be a Phase

The ghosts of every doughnut that I should have spared line my windpipe in protest. They're choking traffic.

My pants seem labored, my lungs and diaphragm lose to the world in a tug-of-war for oxygen. Yesterday (and after) my pants seam labored. My thighs imitate scissors humbled by lockjaw. Tomorrow I'll have discipline. Today I'm a fucking liar.

#poetry #not poetry #wordplay #play on words #paronomasia

[yaaqov]

Eternity by Way of Asking or Begging

My arteries and my views have become less flexible. I'm in the TV room with Darren, with Jack, and combining their ages makes one of me. They're playing video games--I remember those. Vividly remember. I talk to people born in the 1970s who pretend like "Atari" is the only console they can name, they saw one at the World's Fair in Omaha (William Jennings Bryan was turned speechless by the crude cargo vacillation of Pong). If I collapse here, lungs impoverished by a thrombotic blockade, forehead immodestly vomiting blood after gagging on the pressed wood corner of the side table, that will not be my death. This is not my life.

#not poetry #poetry

[yaaqov]

I Included Everything That's Necessary

My care has been skidding, so aimlessly skipping. The edge of existence procured it for keep-ups. Maintaining that apogee strengthens my apathy, Cancels a path to me. Memory reflux

Endeavors to down me, with bitterness drown me. My brain is a rock and my chest is a portal To ether dimensions. I flee indiscretions by Turning to nothing. Because I am mortal.

#poetry #rhyming poetry #formal poetry #amphibrachic tetrameter #paronomasia #wordplay #play on words

[yaaqov]

This Is From a Booklet I Found While Cleaning Someone Else's Apartment, It Inspired Some Wordplay, That's All.

The bullet points before the bullet points.

#poetry #not poetry #ekphrasis #paronomasia #wordplay #play on words

[yaaqov]

So Deep, So Profound, I'm a Dumb Bitter Fuck

I can hear the neighbor yelling through the wall. His voice likes to breathe, will yank itself from his throat, belly flop to the carpet, then crawl with its man-o'-war legs into my room. "I have PTSD from my past relationships, but I don't hide my scars like you do. I wear mine." Goddamn it. With the perfect typeface and lack of punctuation, that would get a million likes. He would get a million likes.

#poetry #not poetry

[yaaqov]

I Shook Those Icy Guts in a Radiation Chamber

This box is a plate. Years ago, decades ago, I would scrape my fork on the faces of Bert and Ernie, now it's on a picture of the other food I just ate. They, I don't know them, they wrapped a hodgepodge of fragmented corpses in a flour tortilla. This motel is not a home. Your deliberately sporadic silence tainted the air, now nothing is sound. The scream of stillness won't back off.

#poetry #not poetry #paronomasia #wordplay #play on words

[yaaqov]

Hammer Anatomy

Head-to-head. Face-to-face. Eye-to-eye. Cheek-to-cheek.

It will not be neck-and-neck.

#paronomasia #not poetry #ekphrasis #poetry #wordplay #play on words

[yaaqov]

Composite Safety Toe

They were hover-tanks, armored with alien metallurgy and the talismanic top coat of my admiration. They were shiny and sleek, blackened with the blood of Erebus, and they would lift me away. On the applause of a million snapping slime-pit tendrils they would lift me away. Until they became size 10 sledgehammers. Spring-loaded battering rams that forfeited every argument via confetti-making demonstration.

#not poetry #poetry

[yaaqov]

Everything Is a Mystery, If It’s Vague and Shitty Enough

You bodiless coward. I can’t jump as though pulled by a tractor beam then snarl a justified canine through that idea of a neck of yours.

#not poetry #poetry

[yaaqov]

Careless Breathing Can Break a Fast Via Casual Self-Cannibalism

I’m not biting my nails. My top floor incisors have a goddamn meeting with the bottom floor opposition--nothing antagonistic, though. This nerveless, unfeeling skin happens to be in the way.

#poetry #not poetry #paronomasia #wordplay #play on words