glass eye of the egyptian janitor, reflecting neon flicker off the linoleum.
maharishi mahesh yogi,
a ghost in a half-smoked cigar's haze.
queen of spades, dealt face up,
the game rigged from the start.
luxury cars, chrome gleaming,
but... – by Joe Strickland | 7 Views added 4 days ago
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cheap whiskey burns,
a familiar sting.
another year gone,
another blurry mess.
same faces,
different shades of regret.
auld lang syne,
they croon,
saccharine and false.
shoulders slumped,
the weight of it all.
nobody remembers
... – by Joe Strickland | 4 Views added 5 days ago
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bottle of cheap red,
swirling dust motes
in the weak lamplight.
thought it’d wash the gray down,
the grit from under my fingernails.
it didn't.
just stained my already stained
carpet a darker shade of regret.
self-help book,... – by Joe Strickland | 9 Views added 7 days ago
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grace.
no lord.
just a woman,
carrying the weight of myth,
blessed by nothing
but biology and bad luck.
blessed fruit?
a screaming infant,
a life lived under the shadow
of a fabricated god.
pray for us?
we'll pray to... – by Joe Strickland | 7 Views added 7 days ago
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don't want the empire anymore.
just enough warmth
to scrape the frost off my bones.
a body, willing. not love, no.
a small, manageable affection,
like a chipped teacup.
waiting. again.
the years, paper-thin,
tearing at the edges. ... – by Joe Strickland | 4 Views added 7 days ago
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pavement saints,
cheap halos rusted.
the ghost, a wisp
of stale cigarette smoke,
vanished.
no pearly gates,
just a slow, greasy drip
of apocalypse.
fear, not of god,
but the mirror reflecting
their own emptiness.
the choir... – by Joe Strickland | 5 Views added 7 days ago
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coffee cup.
ash tray overflowing.
another dawn bleeds in,
a sickly orange smear.
never been to mars.
doubt I ever will.
they say it's red.
dusty. cold.
sounds a lot like this life.
except the rent's higher here.
and the air's... – by Joe Strickland | 7 Views added 7 days ago
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breath, a prayer
in the december air,
rises towards
a church with a leaking roof.
little doesn’t matter.
very few kindred souls
aren’t too lonely.
very little originality.
what matters
is waiting for monday.
i was given this... – by Joe Strickland | 13 Views added 8 days ago
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tattered bible,
dog-eared pages
whispering dust,
next to a deck of tarot cards,
shadows playing on the worn wood.
the quran, a silent witness
to centuries of prayer and war.
hitler's ghost,
a thin cigarette smoke
clinging to the... – by Joe Strickland | 8 Views added 11 days ago
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saw the cracks
in the foundation long ago,
the mortar crumbling,
the lies seeping through.
this whole structure,
built on dogma and fear,
it’s always been a house of cards.
so i walked.
no grand gesture,
no fiery speech.
just a... – by Joe Strickland | 9 Views added 11 days ago
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said it was an accident.
bullshit. collective intelligence,
they call it.
a hive mind buzzing
with unseen agendas.
donovan, that weasel.
the british, of course.
always the fucking british.
facilitators of shadows.
they knew. ... – by Joe Strickland | 9 Views added 11 days ago
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weathers,
a single grave,
rust blooming slow.
hammer blows echoing,
a ghost of sound in the stillness.
chipped paint on a forgotten shed,
maybe a jailhouse.
oasis of weeds,
a concrete bird bath
overflowing with rain.
powered... – by Joe Strickland | 6 Views added 11 days ago
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gravity is irrevocably drawn to your orbit.
my faculties are unraveling like a fraying rope.
my gravity is irrevocably drawn to your orbit.
another cigarette burns down to ash, another day wasted.
her gravitational pull is quite significant.
... – by Joe Strickland | 8 Views added 14 days ago
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world was a carnival once,
bright lights and cheap thrills.
now it's just grey dust.
in my descent into integration,
i aim for destruction.
i'll be back after one more
reversal of fortune.
another lie to myself.
her absence... – by Joe Strickland | 12 Views added 16 days ago
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smile, i remember the smile.
a flash of teeth,
perfect teeth.
and a little purple in her hair.
her name eludes me.
gone. vanished.
like tap water down a cracked drain.
another lost postcard in the overflowing mailbox of my life.
but... – by Joe Strickland | 3 Views added 18 days ago
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shot? maybe.
the ice is melting too slow,
like my hope.
going sane is a goddamn horror show. worse than the drunks,
the liars, the whores.
a tremor? i believe so.
in the bones of this family.
not the good kind,
the earthquake... – by Joe Strickland | 9 Views added 18 days ago
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what’s the price of this
forced kindness?
what do we pay
for not saying,
“you wasted it.
this is the outcome you chose”?
maybe the cost is greater
than we’re willing to acknowledge.
maybe the true burden
isn’t theirs to carry... – by Joe Strickland | 11 Views added 20 days ago
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a face in a dream,
a landscape i've never seen
yet strangely recognize,
engraved in smudges of charcoal. the weight of unshed tears
in eyes i can't quite touch
but can feel the glow of,
... – by Joe Strickland | 12 Views added 23 days ago
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needles,
sharp and strong,
they stand.
winter's cold embrace,
cone-bearing,
evergreen,
life persists,
through snow and ice.
they kiss the... – by Joe Strickland | 12 Views added 24 days ago
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dry leaf skittered
across the cracked asphalt,
a brown thumbprint
on the city's grimy canvas.
it wasn't falling, not really.
more like escaping.
from what?
the question hung,
sour and unwashed,
like the breath of a drunk
... – by Joe Strickland | 2 Views added 24 days ago
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a sky of endless grey
is punctuated by frozen peaks. the shadows cast by giants
extend far down the desolate path. the wind howls a song of mourning. lost to the influence of the ages,
... – by Joe Strickland | 7 Views added 24 days ago
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ephemeral,
like a cheap motel room sunrise,
the air thick with cigarette smoke
and regret,
a fuchsia stain blooming
on the chipped formica.
zephyr
whispers secrets,
loquacious gossip
of the wind,
obfuscating the truth
in a... – by Joe Strickland | 5 Views added 24 days ago
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serpentilla,
chipped nail polish,
cheap wine staining her lips.
another mess she'd orchestrated,
the fallout a slow-burning bead.
the mutt, a mangy fuck face,
nudged her hand,
a dumb, happy suspire.
she scratched behind its ears,
a... – by Joe Strickland | 4 Views added 24 days ago
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insanity,
a warm blanket
on a cold concrete floor.
it's a nightmare,
and the dreamers are all chained up. melancholy
drips from the cracked pavement
like stale beer.
another sunrise,
another day of fighting shadows.
this is all there... – by Joe Strickland | 21 Views added 25 days ago
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she's a girl who has six or fourteen senses,
well-acquainted with intimacy when the touch is still a forked thought.
like a carp with a manifesto daydream,
he swims, slick,
through her.
the man in the church with the multicolored tie
and... – by Joe Strickland | 16 Views added 29 days ago
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captain noah,
the ark a rusted tin can,
drifting on a sea of cheap beer,
cheaper whores,
and regret.
carter merbreier says i'm too old.
now watching the television static,
snow blooming
on the screen, mirroring the blizzard ... – by Joe Strickland | 13 Views added 1 month ago
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pluribus unum
we are a nation fractured,
a chorus of discordant voices,
each note a discordant shriek
echoing through the pages
of our shared history.
the work,
it will always be ahead of us,
but we can choose to approach it
with... – by Joe Strickland | 19 Views added 1 month ago
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we're all like penny stocks.
the smell of rotting fruit lingers,
a metaphor for our lives,
slowly decaying,
consumed by apathy.
the plague of complacency spreads,
a silent epidemic of indifference.
we're all victims,
caught in the... – by Joe Strickland | 6 Views added 1 month ago
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weight of others' sorrows,
a cloak she wears, a burden she shoulders.
not with a grimace, but a quiet fortitude.
her eyes, a lake of empathy,
reflecting the pain she takes in,
transforms,
and somehow, carries.
a strength i desire,
a... – by Joe Strickland | 16 Views added 1 month ago
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cars,
a ribbon of chrome and glass,
snaking through the sun-drenched landscape.
the third car, ours,
humming with the radio's rhythm,
a wrap of shared space,
a bubble of laughter and dust,
the world outside a blur
of passing green.
... – by Joe Strickland | 20 Views added 1 month ago
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