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.
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...
285 reads
3 Comments
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.
288 reads
8 Comments
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
308 reads
13 Comments
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
189 reads
7 Comments
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 ...
226 reads
9 Comments
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...
181 reads
4 Comments
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...
269 reads
7 Comments
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...
203 reads
12 Comments
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,...
228 reads
6 Comments
hooked
some hardened poets speak straight shots to the gut—
left hook, right cross, choked up and clenched,
while others strum chords on the heartstrings,
transform their eulogies into epic love ballads.
and some resonate in empty stomachs
with the ragged rumble of want.
an army of voyeurs writes in curves to the hands
to touch, caress, fantasize, idealize...
still others place the wrists upon pedestals
worshiping them as the front doors to and from life.
the scholars propose postulations to the brain
elaborately weaving...
left hook, right cross, choked up and clenched,
while others strum chords on the heartstrings,
transform their eulogies into epic love ballads.
and some resonate in empty stomachs
with the ragged rumble of want.
an army of voyeurs writes in curves to the hands
to touch, caress, fantasize, idealize...
still others place the wrists upon pedestals
worshiping them as the front doors to and from life.
the scholars propose postulations to the brain
elaborately weaving...
210 reads
8 Comments
Rebirth
There's something vaguely infantile
about the way I love the contrast when I step outside:
warm, stale, exhale-heavy air, caving in with the door
opening to give way to the crisp wall of chill rushing in
to revitalize the dark heavy space. The old woman
at the guard's desk stirs her bones, shifts. She's past
the era where she'd welcome the smack to her cheeks,
long forgotten the newborn's love of sharp divides.
I step out of the wooden womb into the afternoon sun.
There's something somewhat neonate
about the way I love the...
about the way I love the contrast when I step outside:
warm, stale, exhale-heavy air, caving in with the door
opening to give way to the crisp wall of chill rushing in
to revitalize the dark heavy space. The old woman
at the guard's desk stirs her bones, shifts. She's past
the era where she'd welcome the smack to her cheeks,
long forgotten the newborn's love of sharp divides.
I step out of the wooden womb into the afternoon sun.
There's something somewhat neonate
about the way I love the...
203 reads
12 Comments
At the edge of worlds
It was never supposed to happen.
It was never meant to come
to that crashing nexus in time
where everything was so sprawled
and scattered and exploded
and spilling out of our arms
as we desperately tried to contain it
and carry it with grace,
and so human, and alive
and at the same time so very
crystalline in its perfection,
its clarity,
ten thousand scattered muddy pixels
(wretched slippery parcels)
but a sharp, crisp picture
on the whole.
It was never meant to come to that.
But here we are, that crossroads...
It was never meant to come
to that crashing nexus in time
where everything was so sprawled
and scattered and exploded
and spilling out of our arms
as we desperately tried to contain it
and carry it with grace,
and so human, and alive
and at the same time so very
crystalline in its perfection,
its clarity,
ten thousand scattered muddy pixels
(wretched slippery parcels)
but a sharp, crisp picture
on the whole.
It was never meant to come to that.
But here we are, that crossroads...
244 reads
8 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by mjs211 (MikeTheEngineer)