The factories no longer exhale fumes but fillers
Clanging steel is traded for selfie stick.
Whip is gone but the gaze remains.
Wage is still dingy and stale.
Accepted without questions.
When the labour was visible, we called it brutal.
Children with soot in lungs, blistered hands,
bodies bent before they grew.
Now the soot is scrubbed, hands are clean
but the bending of spine begins much earlier.
They are raised in pens of praise.
milked for their innocence like diary calves
hooked to the teat of validation.
They don't toil but trend.
Sweat has replaced sponsored smiles.
The mines are gone but digging continues.
Rafflesia has been renamed Rose
and the stench smells like aspiration
bottled, branded
and sold as hope.
Law shields the body not the soul,
factories can be condemned not studios.
A worker is trudged; a creator performs.
And performance is the wound taught to pirouette.
Fists won't rise nor will ink spill,
as the table is set too neatly
and the chairs are too soft.
Even after a century
money still has grandfather rights.
Sitting at the head of every table,
blessing the hunger and
deciding who eats.
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun.
Her skin's mahogany, not regal white.
She slaps on paints and fillers by the ton,
and has the dress sense of an anchorite.
Fastidious? Only in her brand of beer.
Brash burger joints are where she likes to dine.
She'd rather look at Fonzie than Vermeer:
thinks maybe vampires dwell in Wittgenstein.
It's Oprah Winfrey over Orson Welles,
and Justin Bieber beats Thelonius Monk:
she'll read "Hello!" before the Book of Kells,
and Chateau Margaux's just for getting drunk.
A fiery, funny, perky popinjay?
I wouldn't have her any other way.
The First Commandment
we have got a message
if anyone writes from the river to the sea Palestine will be free, and will not be published because it is upsetting for Israel to hear what
is an obvious truth
Notice this will not be published it is not a ban we who believe in the “First Amendment” is there is a limit to freedom of expression when it goes against the sitting power structure Even the cherished X, knows that
As the evening progresses one notices fillers in newspapers, one such filler says that a test has shown that 87% of Israel’s Jews are not Semitic at all, they are mostly Russian Zionists, and Polish Warshaw dwellers, misfits not fitting in among the general population
The real Semites are the Palestinians going back 2000 years about the time of Jesus Christus What we see is the Zionists are wedging war against the real Jews who call themselves Palestinians possibly to avoid detection that it was those who crucified Jesus
Your vanity is insanity.
And it is a painful sight to see.
Whilst looking through the looking glass.
How did your life become so crass?
Why did we all become so vain?
Reflections in a windowpane.
Remember when that no one cared?
Now everybody seems so scared.
With thoughts that hurt the way we feel.
Like peeling back an orange peel.
And as the surgeon sharps his knife.
Now these procedures are so rife.
Why do you want to look the same?
Lip fillers are in part to blame.
Conform to look a certain way.
Procedures that are so risqué.
Whilst looking for the right procedure.
Whilst scrolling through your social media.
Not comfortable in our own skin.
Just looking like a mannequin.
Our beauty now it runs skin deep.
Procedures done, yes, on the cheap.
Procedures done more harm than good.
We are beautiful, not made of wood.
Obsessed about the way we look.
When really no one gives a ****.
Our beauty, yes, it runs skin deep.
And while we get our beauty sleep.
We'll dream about there was a time.
This beauties yours and so not mine.
Rock paper scissors,
popular events have seat fillers;
seven minutes in heaven,
a bingo call of legs eleven.
Sweet and sour,
rising dough needs flour;
popcorn watching a movie,
forty years celebrated with ruby.
Smiles and sorrows with nostalgia,
a new year’s resolution mantra;
feeling outside and forever looking in,
hearing that theme alongside shark’s fin.
Prophecies predict fate,
women are told to fear being late;
wolves howl at the moon,
humming just one bar of a tune.
Opposites really do attract,
cliches mock the abstract;
digestion and enzyme,
but do poems have to rhyme?
Thrillers, fillers, spillers line the garden wall!
Artful, appealing, alluring thrall!
In morning, at noon, or night,
pinks and purples, bright!
Stupendous
sight!
Tremendous
beauty at its height!
Magnificence to delight!
Promenading Nature's sexy sprawl,
thrillers, fillers, spillers line the garden wall!
who's counting bridges in shiny town
the air-cutting sirens sound closer today
and newsmen run to compile their shows
around the sidewalk sleepers
trucks reversing shout their intent
to ear-phoned hoodies and baggy jeans
swinging necklaces of vape machines
these eyeless rats they scurry
shop doors suck and spew their prey
where round white gum stains every step
and windows stack like giants high
sit suits above the gutter
seeming bots are running late
while others dawdle killing time
these faceless fillers with coffee cups
and phones to other worlds
It starts with a smile
A bright flash blinds
Captures the moment
Look at the memory
Filter applied to maximise
Shared to friends alike
Waiting for something
To create that feeling
Approval of likeness
Vanity mirrors and fillers
Sunbed replaces sunshine
I need to look fine!
Is it a generational guise?
A picture perfect state
To be accepted today
It starts with a smile
A bright flash blinds
Captures the moment...
Repristination: to restore to an original state
A humble home of yore
Caught the flames ablaze,
Burned down to ash-floor
Razed to a smoky haze.
Only if we could
Line up the pillars
Renew the floorings
And set up new fillers,
We could dust the cinders
Paint the charred walls
Hang tapestries of trust
Place daisies in the halls,
Foundation of love and lenience
Rebuilt on cleaned ground
As it once was before
With felicity roaming around.
In such wise, we could regain
The seats on veranda at gloam,
Look at the dying embers in sky
And restore the pristine home.
20th March 2023
Pick-A-Title Vol.35 Contest
Sponsored by Edward Ibeh
Blank space, white noise
Miles of useless matter
Hours, days, and years
Filled with futile chatter
Boxed memories
Disregarded
Neglected roots
Where you started
‘‘Twas familiar
Some moons ago
Where you once dwelled
Yet failed to grow
Just fillers of space
And thieves of time
That were required
To walk the line
Before and after
The in between
Season fracture
Remains unseen
Our freezer must always have ice cream.
A low supply sends an alert
But my husband’s last trip to the market
Brought home something called “frozen dessert.”
The packaging looked just like always.
We missed the distinction at first
So we ate it, but knowing the difference,
I thought we should have been reimbursed.
For a “frozen dessert” needs no dairy –
Just some fillers and sugars and oil
As compared to what’s used to make ice cream;
Well, the thought makes my blood start to boil.
Now I’ve learned to read all of the labels
Since dessert-wise, my number 1 goal
Is to know that my favorite flavor
Of ICE CREAM gets put in my bowl.
I find myself foraging, basket in hand
among the cocoa harvests of distant lands.
A shaft of light crashes
like a Chinese paratrooper
through the store’s skylight,
rays pierce high-stacked shelves,
beam upon all-consuming shoppers,
flash briefly upon brimful spandex.
It is then I realize that all I need is you,
not cut-price plastic hole-fillers,
from this warehouse of empty dreams,
nor anything blue, green, or yellow
seen on T.V.
but then I remember the wine
and beers in aisle twenty-two -
but I still I love you.
You looked like you were arranging flowers in your head,
eyes appraising something I would never appreciate.
Later, I could tell by your silence that you were dumping
whole bunches of blooms - then you left,
leaving me with Baby's Breath,
Cattails, bamboo stems,
and thin things with bumps on them;
fillers, just the left overs --- no real flowers.
Now I have so much space,
and our best vase is full of crap.
Time, that old saying, about
a watched kettle and how it
never boils: nothing longer
than Time, if Time alone
is all one has, excluding
the fillers of Right and Wrong,
Love and Hate –
I can see why God, owner
of Time, would choose most
anything, not to be alone –
even chance mankind and man
unkind...
(though immersed with His
failures, in fires He has deemed
eternal: for one cannot entirely
alienate himself, from his
creations)
Countless poems have been
written, exploring the subject
of Time – so many words
anticipating a tea that has
yet to come to steep – for
the pen, mightier than the
sword as said to be, is yet
another Watcher
if not lived also at the
cutting edge –
not simply
enamored
of glitter....
Who needs words of description?!
Those are mere fillers of space,
They are poets' addiction
When they have nothing else to say.
Adjectives just make me shiver -
Shudder me with creeps and chills,
Should be banned from poets’ quiver -
As font of frippery and frills!
July 2, 2021
That is a tongue in cheek for a non-adjective contest. Treat it lightly please!
Sponsor: Jack Webster
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