Submissions by mjs211 (MikeTheEngineer)
POEMS AND SHORT STORIES
Poet Introduction
Oh, Mike the Engineer can build your brand-new hip, or synth your pills. But engineers left unfulfilled poor Mike's creative writing skills.
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
9th Feb 2013 4:16am
9th Feb 2013 4:16am
Keep driving through
Go ahead.
Keep driving through.
Don't slow down any further
than you're already driving
in the left goddamn lane
of the goddamn Turnpike.
Keep driving through.
We don't want you.
Take a deep breath as you pass the refineries
belching over exit 13,
you'll tell your grandkids about it.
Get it straight though--
that's the only part that smells.
Keep driving through.
Don't clog up the Parkway
thinking you'll go take a trip down the shore
stupid shoobies. It's all knocked down anyway
and the City got the fuckin'...
Keep driving through.
Don't slow down any further
than you're already driving
in the left goddamn lane
of the goddamn Turnpike.
Keep driving through.
We don't want you.
Take a deep breath as you pass the refineries
belching over exit 13,
you'll tell your grandkids about it.
Get it straight though--
that's the only part that smells.
Keep driving through.
Don't clog up the Parkway
thinking you'll go take a trip down the shore
stupid shoobies. It's all knocked down anyway
and the City got the fuckin'...
866 reads
2 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
6th Nov 2012 00:49am
6th Nov 2012 00:49am
Falling
I.
I remember the first time that my
father picked me up and walked me outside
into the warm dark summer night,
nature breathing soft and hazy on us
and he pointed up at the stars.
"D'you see those?" he asked softly,
as I wrapped my arms around his neck
and looked down his shadowy arm into the sky.
Little speckles of white in black, like looking through
the holes of my grandmother's crocheted blanket.
My world was as big as my father, and my mother,
and my preschool classroom. The stars
were my father's, apparently, and he'd put...
I remember the first time that my
father picked me up and walked me outside
into the warm dark summer night,
nature breathing soft and hazy on us
and he pointed up at the stars.
"D'you see those?" he asked softly,
as I wrapped my arms around his neck
and looked down his shadowy arm into the sky.
Little speckles of white in black, like looking through
the holes of my grandmother's crocheted blanket.
My world was as big as my father, and my mother,
and my preschool classroom. The stars
were my father's, apparently, and he'd put...
1106 reads
10 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
25th Oct 2012 6:27am
25th Oct 2012 6:27am
rocks never die
when you die
i mean when your earthly body
rattles its resignation speech
to the room
your body's nothing but an oddly shaped vein of
improperly fired carbon
that coulda been a bright shiny diamond
if it didn't take the low road out of town and
marry a commoner for love
too doped up with oxides and phosphates
to be allowed atop a duchy
but you go on living
in those that knew you
all you've lost
is the ability to change what they see
which is all you really are
anyway
but really
one leads to two leads to...
i mean when your earthly body
rattles its resignation speech
to the room
your body's nothing but an oddly shaped vein of
improperly fired carbon
that coulda been a bright shiny diamond
if it didn't take the low road out of town and
marry a commoner for love
too doped up with oxides and phosphates
to be allowed atop a duchy
but you go on living
in those that knew you
all you've lost
is the ability to change what they see
which is all you really are
anyway
but really
one leads to two leads to...
1060 reads
12 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
5th Aug 2012 6:08am
5th Aug 2012 6:08am
Upon the closing night of a mutual opus
And so,
the curtain falls, the play finished.
The audience surges in ovation
then prepares to depart.
Some will question whether it was right
to set the play in motion at all,
as the ending was too dismal for their taste
and you could see it coming at curtain rise.
In a perfect world, others would argue them down
from this position, for what is the point
of acting if it doesn't come crashing down
at the end? But the critics will always
have their say, and the world
will turn.
—But for those actors,
the earth...
the curtain falls, the play finished.
The audience surges in ovation
then prepares to depart.
Some will question whether it was right
to set the play in motion at all,
as the ending was too dismal for their taste
and you could see it coming at curtain rise.
In a perfect world, others would argue them down
from this position, for what is the point
of acting if it doesn't come crashing down
at the end? But the critics will always
have their say, and the world
will turn.
—But for those actors,
the earth...
1020 reads
3 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
16th Jul 2012 00:55am
16th Jul 2012 00:55am
The gaps between living
Stasis,
warm and sound,
bubbling up from the atmosphere,
sucking back down again
with a green
slurp.
It's lukewarm, and
it's cloying, and
I don't want
to get
up.
warm and sound,
bubbling up from the atmosphere,
sucking back down again
with a green
slurp.
It's lukewarm, and
it's cloying, and
I don't want
to get
up.
1037 reads
8 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
13th Jun 2012 11:12pm
13th Jun 2012 11:12pm
take solace in the parallel existence of happier possibilities
the clock is ticking
but time isn't moving
the tick that you hear
is just the same tick
over
and over
and the clock is turning
but the earth is not
the same minute
cycles through numbers
to pass
eternity
and we do not exist
for you and i are just
nothing more
than a single point
along
possibility
but time isn't moving
the tick that you hear
is just the same tick
over
and over
and the clock is turning
but the earth is not
the same minute
cycles through numbers
to pass
eternity
and we do not exist
for you and i are just
nothing more
than a single point
along
possibility
1365 reads
13 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
24th May 2012 7:04am
24th May 2012 7:04am
protection
some nights
i just want to throw myself at the fence
wrench myself up it and be gone from here
other nights i gaze at it with its razorwire crown
and wonder if it's the reason i want out
in the first place
i just want to throw myself at the fence
wrench myself up it and be gone from here
other nights i gaze at it with its razorwire crown
and wonder if it's the reason i want out
in the first place
956 reads
7 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
7th May 2012 3:59pm
7th May 2012 3:59pm
Idle dreamers
I'm always still awake
when the Aussies log on
and the Indians and the Kiwis
and the expats in China
and I don't know if that's
unhealthy
or if
they're not actually perched in such
exotic places
and they're just
desktop wanderers
like me
without a map
to take them
far away
to live with the beautiful
and the interesting
and the living
perhaps
they're right
next door
on the other side
of these comically thin walls
head in hand
daydreamyfaced
waiting for a map ...
when the Aussies log on
and the Indians and the Kiwis
and the expats in China
and I don't know if that's
unhealthy
or if
they're not actually perched in such
exotic places
and they're just
desktop wanderers
like me
without a map
to take them
far away
to live with the beautiful
and the interesting
and the living
perhaps
they're right
next door
on the other side
of these comically thin walls
head in hand
daydreamyfaced
waiting for a map ...
978 reads
9 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
6th May 2012 00:51am
6th May 2012 00:51am
golden age
the morning bird perches fat and proud on the rooftops
belts out his song of the airy state of the world as he sees it
bursting with pomp and pride
little feathered head full of steam
i hear him down below but his confident trills
fail to register with my fading senses
seems he's spent so long on the rooftops
he's forgotten what the torn-up concrete looks like
between sooty cracked-plaster walls
can't fault him for staying up there i suppose
i head back inside and flip on the news
where my proud congressman's mapped the path
for our...
belts out his song of the airy state of the world as he sees it
bursting with pomp and pride
little feathered head full of steam
i hear him down below but his confident trills
fail to register with my fading senses
seems he's spent so long on the rooftops
he's forgotten what the torn-up concrete looks like
between sooty cracked-plaster walls
can't fault him for staying up there i suppose
i head back inside and flip on the news
where my proud congressman's mapped the path
for our...
1035 reads
4 Comments
SPIRITUAL POEM
Published
27th Apr 2012 11:20pm
27th Apr 2012 11:20pm
For Debbie, but more for myself
For all the reason against religion,
heaven and hell, God and grace,
the grand gears of science
decoupling God from nature,
setting Him aside, a detached idea
like a vine which was thought
to be a root, but was discovered
only to be wrapped around the trunk,
for all the facts funneling down
into the ever-hardening mortar of knowledge
which is used to construct everything sans God
and for all that implies superfluity...
I need a door to believe in.
A door on the other side of the eyelids,
where everything that was a spark...
heaven and hell, God and grace,
the grand gears of science
decoupling God from nature,
setting Him aside, a detached idea
like a vine which was thought
to be a root, but was discovered
only to be wrapped around the trunk,
for all the facts funneling down
into the ever-hardening mortar of knowledge
which is used to construct everything sans God
and for all that implies superfluity...
I need a door to believe in.
A door on the other side of the eyelids,
where everything that was a spark...
1084 reads
7 Comments
SELF POEM
Published
9th Apr 2012 11:56pm
9th Apr 2012 11:56pm
Stone by stone
I'm tired of the choppers causing the vinyl to skip.
Always thuk-thuk-thukking over the high-rises,
following lead-hearted killers
as only another machine can. They're there
to protect me, but the music wards off the
silence. And that's the greater danger.
. . .
I always feel slightly cheated
when I cross the street in the middle of traffic
and the light changes for me. How dare the world
take away my only little means left
of taking what...
Always thuk-thuk-thukking over the high-rises,
following lead-hearted killers
as only another machine can. They're there
to protect me, but the music wards off the
silence. And that's the greater danger.
. . .
I always feel slightly cheated
when I cross the street in the middle of traffic
and the light changes for me. How dare the world
take away my only little means left
of taking what...
991 reads
12 Comments
SELF POEM
Published
4th Apr 2012 2:26am
4th Apr 2012 2:26am
Unwritten
Writing, writing,
scribbling away at the page,
at your life, at your very being.
Tossing the page, and the seconds,
and starting again.
Trying to find that sound
that, when felt once, though another,
reminds you of you, and all that you stood for
when you stood for anything. You felt it once,
like keys to life waiting to be pulled from the page,
ink holding humanity like the gods only dreamed.
But that was a projection, and you were a project,
molded by yourself into the very latticework of self.
And you knew it, too.
Yet here you are,...
scribbling away at the page,
at your life, at your very being.
Tossing the page, and the seconds,
and starting again.
Trying to find that sound
that, when felt once, though another,
reminds you of you, and all that you stood for
when you stood for anything. You felt it once,
like keys to life waiting to be pulled from the page,
ink holding humanity like the gods only dreamed.
But that was a projection, and you were a project,
molded by yourself into the very latticework of self.
And you knew it, too.
Yet here you are,...
1014 reads
6 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by mjs211 (MikeTheEngineer)
