a lone ancient dark night
Your engine stumbles
rumbles, coughs to a stop
so close to E
The gas pump, blocky, digital
smells of gasoline
like a primordial dance
an intercourse of machines
rape of a Mesozoic age, processed
Petrol in a tank, deep
Swipe card, digital hum of circuitry
Choose your poison, your savor
Buttons—regular, premium,
Reek of diesel
Corruption
So many fingers have touched
that white square button
almost flesh-looking
White, pale, cracked, peeling
The horror of the mundane
You need to touch it
You want to
You have to
You have places to go
And miles before you sleep…
Categories:
blocky, analogy, art, dark, depression,
Form: Free verse
Better in memory
It was an adventure.
It was community.
It was friendship.
But with time, all things must fade,
Just like a mascarade.
Long long long ago,
I would play,
In the blocky world of make believe,
Nothing built can last forever,
As so they would say.
Categories:
blocky, 12th grade,
Form: Free verse
I recognized the hand immediately
Daddy never used cursive
He dropped out of school in eighth grade.
He always printed.
Maybe he forgot cursive?
His blocky dark blue letters were put painstakingly onto a page.
He wrote his memoirs more than once.
Having Alzheimer’s in the end, he forgot what he had already written.
The pages are a bit faded now, but the penmanship is Daddy’s.
He is braggadocio about the southside gang.
His pals and he.shooting rats in the city dump and chasing cats
their exploits captured for anyone who chooses to read about them.
My twin sister and I are probably the only two who ever will.
I doubt our children will be interested.
They never have been.
They haven’t even read my exploits.
Which I write daily.
I begin to read, recognizing most of the words.
As I have read this notebook many times since his death in 2014.
Categories:
blocky, writing,
Form: Narrative
Tidy boxes, appealing to the eye in a calendar,
office space, sterile wall, driven in circles mad by desire
for stimulation, a place beyond walls
does such a place exist? and if so what fear lies there...
unwinding years of pre-k programming
system lined with debonair intrigues
if you do this you can have that and then some...so what?
leisure becomes the devils playpen
you are a baby outside these walls
so it seems, they lead and you follow
kick back? relax? hustle culture tells you NO.
stern blocky letters to the face
anonymously tracing lines down the sidewalk...
well what when the sidewalk ends?
maybe you will realize what is really pretend.
Categories:
blocky, america, angst, confidence, corruption,
Form: Free verse
Sponge Bob Square Pants must have originated with Boterismo
I can only imagine the responses by the socialized.
They would not have understood the blockish faces
Or the stocky blocky bodies drawn by Angulo
People with art in their souls readily understood it
Flocking to his shows in droves - duplicating and imitating
His art is not for everybody, but it is for those with soul.
Which is why it is recognized all over the world.
Categories:
blocky, art,
Form: Free verse
Shy Adrien fell in love with Rocky
He is not arrogant and not cocky,
These two loved each other
Both also loved her brother,
Took care of bird named Mr. Blocky.
Apollo Creed match was a disaster,
Rocky was fast, but he was faster.
If there is any doubt
It finally worked out
All lived happily ever after.
Categories:
blocky, tribute,
Form: Limerick
Merry ride down the isle of summertime,
I said to the willow outside my window
I asked you when the cherry blossoms will
Bloom outside my schoolyard Garden again
You gave me eighty cents for old ice cream,
“Not the blocky kind, you teeth will burn”
When you are still drinking that Summer Wine
Merry cruise down the road of summertime
Watermelon Hawkers down Long Wind Road
The ice cream man constantly drunk on heat,
The earthworms, gold leaves, and that Summer Wine
I asked you
When will the cherry blossoms bloom again
How can I run, a little faster, to the Isle of Summertime
Categories:
blocky, 1st grade, garden, growing
Form: Free verse
a scant mere
seconds to late, when with a crash, which near
concussion smacked noggin
hard against blocky chunk hove ice
informing gap toothed email
(actually, that incident
me quite traumatized),
i.e. unpreparedly tasting solid rock hard material -
with ugly reflection that didst stare
from a looking glass re: mirror,
which aye avoided at all possible costs where
to cast and fit mouth
with a provisional crown entailed maybe a year.
necessitating cupped gloved hands
to punctuate every muffled word
to be but barely heard
akin to talking with mouth full of custard
above the quiet riotous mirth
analogous to twittering bird
winning sympathy from parents,
who did level best to tend distraught son
who ushered playback of events
with less disastrous rerun
praying for a high lee angel
to grant reverse outcome brought none
gut wrenching grief
immediately terminated former fun
damage irreversible
and perfect smile of pearly white
forever broke
NOT the least itty bitty funny, comical,
nor countenanced devastation done.
Categories:
blocky, age, angst, bereavement, depression,
Form: Free verse
And I walk
across numerical figments
speaking hyperbole dialect to their imaginations.
Numb, blocky gaps
whisper invitation to secret club.
Enticing my stature
to belong
to become exponent’s side-kick.
So they can welcome me with open arms.
Coating my digits with inoperable tumors
double-knotted in hot pink laced bow
and baby-breath scent.
They even left a Walmart Rollback smiley face sticker
with crack residue on right cheek
and a comic-style bubble caption, “welcome home puppet”.
Yes!
This is exactly how Mother 1 told me it would be.
Kinda like marriage,
but less detail-oriented.
But, I could never fit in.
For I am neither positive
nor negative
about their (cult) ural ways.
Timing would always be off.
An arm from the clock that suffered a stroke at Midnight…
They’d never understand,
how they’d alter this unevenly, odd numerical figment.
For they’ll just calculate,
deduce,
my sum with rusty protractor.
This Zero, into a fraction...
© Drake J. Eszes
Categories:
blocky, art, computer-internet, fantasy, friendship,
Form: Free verse