Reason, are you thinking twice?
Idea, freely roll.
Poison, pen, and paradise!
Grind the golden goal!
When do dreams hit deck deterred?
Carrion crow, thy bird.
When the winner comes in third!
Anguish, how you stirred!
Hell and Heaven, hither hie.
All good people lie?
Warrior wounded, thy cold cry!
Dismay means to die...
Tympani, tomorrow.
Roll like a river deep.
Source, sail through the sorrow.
Caiman, time to creep.
Weather? It gets cold outside.
Weakness? Best to hide.
Windmill? Charge and woe betide.
Wharf rats have no pride.
Jamboree, thy goers.
O party, hand out fun.
Lawn, best call thy mowers.
O sugar, best get spun.
Dark fire, with me one more time!
Burn in riddles black!
Breaker point, upon me rhyme!
Heart of mine, attack!
Gods of death, deal wisdom out!
Suffering, to come!
O steppe horseman, when to shout?
When you have no drum...
Submission leads to sustenance?
In what world is this?
Death, dynamite, dominance!
Blowing Doom a kiss!
High cliff force in summer late?
Staggers in the gait.
O ye gods above, strife? Sate.
Too much on thy plate...
Drums played by the war gods?
Poets, by Fate required.
Nuclear my temper-rods!
Mercenaries hired!
Tyrant of tomorrow, time!
Knee deep in the slime!
Sullen silence slight sublime!
Wind, blow well each chime...
Mime, form well thy boxes.
Prisoner, poison pen.
Where the golden phlox is?
O dragon, from thy den!
Then again, old vampire:
Is succor still a curse?
Pinnacle, apex and spire!
Son, you could do worse!
Versed in rite and ritual?
Flickering fine and free?
Sing within me, brazen bull!
Fire fancifully...
A goddess on the worldwide scene
A shooting star of stage and screen
So gracefully across the floor
One curtain call and out the door
A flame that shines neath starlit nights
Her name on high in neon lights
A slave for what the part demands
An autograph for all her fans
But history then turns the page
The roles dry up with time and age
All hope soon dwindles day by day
Then takes whatever job she may
And when she's crushed by harsh reviews
When splashed across the morning news
A critic lies in lion's den
Her career dies from poison pen
Bear witness to those dying men
Conscripted fate by poison pen
The scorched remains of foe and friend
Their ashes scattered on the wind
Pawns sacrificed without a pause
Death descends from steel wings and claws
More martyrs of a nation's cause
Forged and fired by enacted laws
Wart of hubris, sweat of cursed
Jealous eyes and greed at worst
Blood from pride, tears from pain
Some wretched feelings from disdain.
Sordid juices caused by lust
One liberal dusting of distrust.
A pinch of squander on path to diet
Then splash of anger from disquiet
Two parts grease; on one’s own behalf
Once can of echo, from mocking laugh.
Grind chains of office to subtly blend
Add some waste from overspend
Ignore the stench and simmer down
Wait for pride to rise don't let it drown.
One last step for this magic spell
Free a poison pen with a tip to quell.
Premiered at The Panic Room, Shreveport, LA – 11/25/2006
ACT 1
Bed of Nails
Typically Brueghel
Got To Be Blue, Boy
State of the Onion
My Cynical Career
Damage Control
ACT 2
The Same Damn Thing
Elfreth’s Alley
The Death of Rock and Roll
Bwana Wanna Boogie
Supermarket Tabloid Blues
Poison Pen
ACT 3
Carnivore
Commentary
Refugee Rain
A Typical Day in Hell
I Don’t Want To Go to Heaven
The pen is tidier than the cord.
A garrote provokes an unsettling gurgle
That reverberates in the midnight hour
When one is trying to pursue a guiltless sleep.
The pen, however, resonates
With an uncanny mystic harmony
That allows the comforting lullaby
Of literary reprisal to carry out the hit.
Character assassination: a cowardly villain’s vengeance.
Poetrysoup Footles
1. Poem Taking a Vacation
Footle
Tootle
2. Poison Pen Poet
Stinker
Inker
3. Long Poison Pen Poem
Septic
Epic
4. On Suffering Writers Block
Lamebrain
Quatrain
5. On Finishing a Heavy Going Poem
Complete
Concrete
6. Short Asian Religion Poem
Hindu
Haiku
7. A Poem Written in Europe
Metric
Lyric
Bitter words spew out of your well-polished poison pen
Insult me, go on belittle me with your vile vitriolic venom
Think you are better than me – hell no way!
Every word that spills from your pathetic pen sucks
My one poem to your river of rancid rubbish
Each to their own, but I will NEVER change my style
Bite me, go on bite me - like a sweet juicy apple
I can bite back like a Rottweiler – taunt me enough and I will snap
Tart sour words full of malice I CAN pen perfectly
Except I keep my opinion and hostile words in my head
Me, I don’t pretend to be anything I am not
Every word you pen is pure malignant malice
A fiction write purely for contest.... or is it! You decide!
05~31~15
Contest: Bite Me – John Lawless
A poison pen
And a hypocritical conscience
Can so easily be cloaked in
High morality
Prate on
Knock them down
With words
Slay them in the name of
Public opinion
Write on
Right all the supposed wrongs
That provides fodder to pay your bills
With that pen of ignorance
With the ink of ill-will that
Masks all your inner demons
Traduce them all
Surmise
Assume
Prate
Slay
Affect moralistic outrage
The transparency of everyone else’s wrongs
Apparent to only you
Who feels the need to spare no one
And to condemn all
The power of your mighty pen
The deftness of your opinion
Acquires a following
Of feckless drones
Who lift you on high
Parading you as a modern day hero
A champion of the little man
None can see the Janus and Cant in you
Nor the hypocrisy that fuels you
Or the revenge that maintains you
You are a monster
Happy with words of destruction
No fairness
No compromise
No letting be
You are king
But only for now
The short term mind-set that compels you
Will conquer another day
Those that praise will
One day slay
Boisterous and bold
With an acid wit
Misunderstood for cold
Exhaustion exasperates but can’t quit
His poison pen
I know so well
His thoughts betray him
With his wicked spell
His caustic tongue
Cuts like a knife
Destroys my soul
Leaves me in strife
But there’s another side
I sometimes see
With eloquent devotion and decadent beauty
Cascading in the whimsical tide
Rumours spreading ink
Blots on a character,
Insidiously virus like,
Duplicating cells,
Touching and impregnating
Once lucid beliefs
With embryo taints and
Darker schema.
“So, that’s him, there he is
That’s what he did,
Let’s hear more;”
Truth warped out of shape,
A shifting balloon of
Malleable bad blood,
Twisted beyond all
Former recognition.
Poison pen Chinese whispers
Uttered, scratched,
Scrawled, trickled asides,
Poured and decanted
Into the ears of those dupes
Susceptible enough and lazy enough,
Evil enough
To propagate the lies.
If said enough times,
It becomes tangible, factual,
A construct of the real world.
Initially I trod
Upon an ant,
By Easter
I killed Jesus;
By Christmas, guess
I’ll hang for it…
Much like the chip paper that crawls the alleys,
Or the landfill refuse that rapes the valleys,
Her thoughts like rags and malicious hags
Cackle and crackle like old bin bags,
And snake through her head as poison pen letters,
Shaped into forked tongues licking my eyes.
Bounding, though, free from my chains and fetters,
Armed by the truth of my elders and betters,
My rush through cold and the young and old
Bristled and whistled with tales untold,
Yet trapped my bones in the sleaze of her coils,
Numbing my breath with her venom and lies.
Much akin to mad hatters at manic tea parties,
Or the pills by the handful like sedative Smarties,
Her brains oozed fudge and toxic sludge,
Simmered and shimmered whilst holding a grudge,
And boiled in their dreaming of vengeance anew,
Repugnantly slithered lusting for my crying.
Sleeping, though, free from her garbage and grue,
The black skies transformed to a bright cobalt blue,
My devil-may-care and my fading despair
Turned my heart into stone for her then and there,
For the touch of Medusa turns back on herself,
Frozen cold and alone, an eternity dying.
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