The Web Poetry Corner is a Dream Machine Site The Dream Machine --- The Imagination of the World Wide Web

• The Short Page of Innocence
• The Quest to Action
• End of the Novel
• Fair Wages
• Fate
• Eliot's Stranger
• Cycle
• Erosion of the Soul
• Ink Rain
• Notebooks
• If We Ever Fall
• Castaneda
• Punctuate
• Boxed Kill
• Eyes of a Scarecrow
• Sunflowers
• Polls
• JUSTICE -- court tv
• A Car Needs Repair
• Fairy Tail Highway
• Broken Bottles
• Spaces Rendered
• Big Catch
• The Dress
• Human Means
• Free Bees
• Shattering
• Blair Witch
• Twelve Billion Eyes are One
• Broken News
• Love?
• Bleeding Puppets
• Assimilate
• Leaders Dream In Color
• beacon
• delicacy
• Deflated Flower
• Darwin's Vonnegut and the Minneapolis AGT Protests
• full circle
• The Hit
• Fare Thee Well
• The World You Now Control
• Paint the Sky
• Passing Light
• Reflect
• Insane Drum
• Flower in Venus
• Creatures

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Poetry Competition

You turn that page again

thinking it will all resolve itself-

the final chapters...

Where we found ourselves,

to envision the clouds

tinged with sparkle and malice,

frail and crystaline romances-

it would have made the strongest cry.

The flaw was hope of our chances

to break through something

we never knew...

And come back again

to our treasured yesterday...

the pages we passed through.

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Confused but conscious

of no direction...

the seedling is left

to grow on it's own,

with only the help

of genes and nature.

Life...always a mystery,

eternal subjects of our

eclectic

electric

minds.

The summer of green horror,

while we awake in the flames

or our own story...

the end of time we know.

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Freeze the wages...free the slaves,

the turkeys will come out again...

unionized...dressed in picket fences,

dancing in circles.

The man upstairs looks down

upon the pecking, no more

worms for the dour faces...

shouting madly at this final hour.

The shock...negotiate...a wage to wait...

a bargain,

the man grins boyishly.

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Predisposition

to kill

paint

build

hate...

to a gun

brush

hammer

love.

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The flounder, swimming along like driftwood-deadwood.

The fish is dead, the smell of fried death.

In the summer sun, an apathetic sun...the swell uplifts.

A sun from a meaningless, hollow time...a time of Kurtz.

He dead.

The stranger frolics in the sun. The beach is still, like a

smooth swimming silence, narrow and empty. The shore smells

of nothing. The smell of dead fish. Anger swells like

the tide...the piercing light grapples with the eye.

A time not good enough to base a movie on...a B-movie at best.

The stranger and the fish.

Fish and stranger.

Dead and nothing,

stuffed with straw

and apathy.

Poetry Competition

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Take me to the inspirational catalyst, the integration of euphoria and

feelings of natural dyes-

Ebb and flow with time.

Around me is a web, keeping out the sounds around me-

trapped within my head.

I salute the wire in my veins-

keeping me socially sane.

I am stimulated with conditioning beyond my senses, choking for air

concocted by maturing media forces...I'm playing cards with shaded

doubt.

The sounds implanted with a carcass defense-decays my brain away with

fast rythmatic bolts of sheer strength-tinged with the shape and grace

of my human race.

Control...feel the body take hold, rejecting the false prosthesis of

mentality. I am not a fool you think I am, born of this earth and all

that goes with it. Nature...grows, gives, and depends upon us...we go

with it. The tyrant, the cool, and the capital mongers...selling your

souls for the good of your own earth-the world you hope exists.

But as you grow, as you take and control...remember this...remember

this...perhaps in bliss...as the earth erodes...we go with it.

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...say some words to the mike...uhhh, come on!

Your jokes are stale in an oblique requiem.

Faltering on the edge of a disease, she keeps on reading,

for the knowledge will conquer all elements.

The truth is the ultimate goal...philosophers know.

Your mind...an empty canvas, a jar of captive curiosity,

the products of the journey.

Stale saline whispers...the killers of a tear. Some comfort is

all that's needed...to quell the ancient fears.

It's all remedy to the parody...we call survival...

the clowns in a trampled world,

the tramp tips his tettered hat...

reinforcing the mind diseases.

mind shuts off from backlash of the day..

the torso...maimed and torn...from solid

sinking work... the kings live on and prosper...

but the words go on without us.

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.flowing through madness and obscurity, your piety is somewhere

in between. I sing without voice...therefore i write poetry. I live in a

wilderness of substance and dense nothings...therefore i experience. But of

course the older you get...the more foolish and wise you get at the very

same time.

What i am saying is...you work for much more than you recieve...there

really is no progress in the world we think...

As those gymnasts peak in the realm of symbolic peace...we see the

shower of blood on our streets and the hypnotic drum of our sick

culture...make it all go away.

What else can i say when i do not know...the power and mystery

within...without. Out of bounds of our captive soul is something

unanswerable in a questionable world.

To many lost souls...lost philosophers...lost musicians...lost love.

I admit i am among those lost souls...but i recognise something's

missing...like the sunless daylight sky.

A fathom of ungodly mystery...trivial to the simple minds,

ignored by those more prominent...the protrusion of wealth and filth.

Do not deny that we are all wrong in some extendable way...

relatively we are all right, but in the bold direction of guilt we

continue to drove on like mad creatures from our worst history.

What else can we do but watch the end on television...watch the selling

of our eyes...what we see is truth...what we see is a winning game.

Work our lives for fame...money...the material goods of progress.

I cannot say that I am free...cannot say I am feeling..

It's all a jingle and a contest and all is well again.

Fall down upon the eyes you see in memory...its the seething snake

you see... the romance with the past...never the same...never now again.

Place your hands in the hot coals..

dance all around the red cinders.

Feel-feel-feel...

put deep thoughts to rest...

feel the pain.

It's the way to the voice i cannot explain...

Inner sanctity.

Hold on to the sorrow of yesterday

and reassess your pain.

The thoughts fade away as the old dust-covered

notebook burns away...

the soul slips away to silence.

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The porcelain sun sits in the sea, floating within

the space of time between

you and me-

the base of all humanity.

The oceons dissolve all that's past-

the earthquakes, the fires,

and the struggles of war.

Down below the surface comes

you and me, surging upward in the spray

of the surge we go.

This love, thicker than the oceon, thicker than air...

moves us to the summit, the peak we'll

always share.

Let's continue to rise above it all,

the earthquakes, fires, and war...

to embrace forever,

if we ever fall.

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It's the secret dying to come out, the burning wishes we construct.

The silence of the world is in our minds, let it out to grow. God knows

you have it, disperse this gravitation in volcanic expansion.

We vote for strangers to go out and spread our concocted

words...burning the crowd against the walls. Remember the iron curtains of

sadness, oppression...the story of falling dominoes. The sand man only

brings our dreams in passion...keep the flames alive.

There before our babies, our message...passed in hope again to move

forward our taunting lies...concocted by strangers in the white houses

covered in vines to keep our eyes from terror.

The terror of it all...faded into omnicolor tainted screens of all

three media giants...our friends. Our friends that control by cameras, the

stories come out again in fiction.

So let it come out again...the freedom of our heart and mouth, what we

thought was right, screaming in the streets in fear. Your heart races and

mouth waters at the thought of such freedom...animalistic and weird. But

somehow we forget it's written on the yellowed paper encased...closed in as

if it's an ancient relic of the past...

We're nice and neat like the language,

stealing from our minds.

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Once the morning dew invades the canvas of this tragic moment...fear

pushes the hair on the spine to needles. Cannot turn back this night, it's

finished...it's mine...drunken episodes. It's a blur...the canvas paints are

mixing into gray...a nightmarish haze of confused laughter and crazed

screams. Replay it again...the moment progression in delinear fashion...as

if arranged by a dyslexic expressionist of strobe terror. The behavior of

madness...opened past contortions of sanity...the tears within it all.

This story is left for the imagination...the eyes of each and every tale

and action...for even the actor's eyes and words are missing here...

all that's left in the clearing light of dawn is the bloody mess

and the swelling tears of sadness.

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Sitting in solvent songs of silence, breathing out

the insane tones of violence, the soul begins

to drink it all away...

on the ground the sky is spinning.

The beauty in my hands is held like steel

but the grip is lost in thought.

I run away, run away into a forgotten field

of sunflowers-heads pointed to the moon.

Down in the lonely halls of growing stems

lies the answer, but it's much to sad to tell.

The words I take from shelves, the tears I take

from my bitter past...all I want is some feeling from

this night to go on and grow.

This field, in the damp summer night, holds some wisdom...

so silent from down below, the party of adolescence

dancing by the fire, the lake reflects the glow.

This hand...pulling the stems of wisdom in birth, out

comes the roots that grip the earth in desperation.

Down the hill to the fire, sunflower in hand, the roots

pull me back down to my friends below,

giving me power to grow.

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Heartburn and pain

republican in vain...

an old friend of Watergate.

Jesus in sandals, selling books

to sell out--

a message.

He is the word, he is risen--

Jesus TV,

Jesus in prison.

The cornucopia of grand wisdom--

all right when the story

is backed by fear,

the holy guiding light.

We got our fingers crossed as

we hear of life on Mars...

What will the voters think?

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At home in my ideal soul

the place i scrape my time away

on the weeks of wonder

entombed in all alone.

The pasture of ebony, colors,

and pale...encircles my

fragmented mind of all dimensions.

This hole inside gets deeper

and grows at the sights

up above of the grand illusion-

pushing me further down...

much like the label of the clown.

Perceptions of others become

my own, a product of

the grand illusion

given from above.

Colored, blackened, and whitened

from my true self...

i am now a mirror

of all the eyes

from hell...

as the judges gavel

strikes the

masses blind...

leading to

the mise-en-cell.

Poetry Competition

This is our filthy cavern of baggage,
crumbling beneath our feet. Budgets...battles, while we spend overseas for
further dying interests, seems the Greeks did much the same...before the
fall. But as all this continues, something spoils in the meantime...our
inner fabric becomes discolored and hollow...murder is just another word.
Seems Camus should have been here today to live out his dreams...but it's
just another tragedy...like we see on the news each day. I think we should
ostracize the entire House of "Representatives" and the rest of
them...somewhere where they can resonate...hollow words...perhaps Eliot's
Wasteland.

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You sit pondering the soul's fabric of yesterday,

that road that led us into plastic,

no paper for today.

You wish to wander, make it go away...

the evils that rest,

only in your mind.

Make the moment...

the sun will always set again.

Take new moments...

memories will only come again.

The highway blues is potent...

dark dank night of yesterday.

ITS OVER, ITS OVER.

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Remember when the blue moon happened every night? We would capture the perfect seasons and scenes of the evenings to perfection on the canvas we shared.

The air would fill with the greatest inscence and virgin rain...we could walk on water, no one really cared. Cares are filled with tears today.

What happened to the sunflower fields and fires that burned all night? What happened to the friends we shared in the brisk walk on the golden shores of happiness?

We were so young then, most of our moments captured in less time that we see today...

the phone only rings in memory tones, the man on the other end is gone.

The music steeps in fire, gone are the acts that follow a good tune. All we do now is imagine

paint-coated nothings. Nothing happens when youth is gone, all the life that's lived is just living. Living to live, working to live, as innocent whispers fade into guilt.

It's four-thirty A.M. Tuesday morning, been awake through night comtemplating green apples and sour grapes. Nothing breaks the silence so sudden as the day, the reality that slaps across your face gives you enough shock to make it another day, into the dark night again. Night plagued with the voices of yesterday telling you it's all wrong...eventually the voices are turned off forever, for sanity is all but lost.

I remember a wise man from Vietnam telling me to keep the fire burning bright,

If you let your guard down for one second, you're good as dead.

His music turned to my music on a sudden beer-soaked day in June.

But I witnessed a divorce...definitions of love turned black.

what do I believe anyway? For all we know, everything's an illusion...

I guess that's why it's so important to believe.

I turned my mind off today, everything made sense to me...

but the human.

Why study the mind? It lies and it's full of grime. The sword never

slew it's master like the mind slays it's body.

I awoke upon the golden shore...

only to cut my feet on the broken bottles

that once held all our dreams.

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Spaces Rendered

by

Chris Lahren

The circumstance at daybreak brings on all the chances,

the traveling wagon that draws near only takes a dollar.

The fool is made of television, joining the masses

fatal thoughts of travel...only for the magic.

What's lost is the soul struggling to get by, in an

imaginary world of reason.

Find some meaning in it all...they say, whoever that is.

No one is strong forever, no one is brave forever...all

the great people before us are now dust blowing in the wind.

So take the ride casually, without force or direction...

no one will ever know our destination until the end.

...lonely spaces rendered for you my friend, for those

that will never find the magic of their souls...joining

an ongoing procession to other pastures,

struggling to find meaning in the dusty

winds outside.

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Big Catch

by

Chris Lahren

This is the pot-hole of old age,
standing at the crooked bubbling blue creek.
The angler decides to cast out dismay,
with the world that brought him by this quiet side.
His whiskey bottle's full of worms,
crawling around in drunken confusion.
That bottle used to hold the dreams of youth,
now stone cold fluids run through his veins.
Cast upon cast,
fishless as the waters ripple and flow.
As many attempts as one could follow,
his life was lost to thirst.
A fish story no one could tell,
Standing at the quiet side...the bubbling creek whispers
as he disappears into the bubbling blue swell.

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The Dress

by

Chris Lahren

Catching your visage in that precious time of life,
where the sizzling summertime haphazardly sorts out desires of romantic quest.
Over the painted-green hill I capture freedom within gusty wind pheromones,
the butterfly dances like a marionette while my eyes run into you.
You sparkle like a new-found star,
flowing with ease through the universe, flying through your dress.
The aqua-green lace dazzles the midnight sun
while the collar surrounds the racetrack of your graceful neck--
longing to caress her smooth tides of youth.
And even if I try win those waves of flowing captured time,
I may lose sight of your punctuated grace--
surrounded by the fabric that may hold our lives as one.
The endless reign of showering crimson petals
encapsulating world beauty,
the inner lining one cannot feign to see--
peaceful whispers and strong tomorrow.
I'd love to remain in view of season,
but your power may crush my soul
if your dress comes off without reason.

Poetry Competition

---

Human Means

by

Chris Lahren

I think I'll take our troubles to the river...
purified power and renewed spiritual strength of ageless currents.
Meandering it's faithful way through dense collections of broken truth,
the cities and countryside plagued with human wishes and human filth.
Somehow the river holds an answer to misdirected questions,
the waters cleanse and flood our building insanity within us.

And as the flood waters recede...
I pick up a fractured skull of you,
where my afterlife exists within these ivory features of bone.
Cryptic stirrings revolve inside the shadows and cracks,
asking me perpetual mystery:
I must solve the riddle of the sphinx.

This riddle, without proper and unbiased direction...
we've failed to solve the plot of our life story.
For gain and paradise, it's been ignored,
the division left us with hollow definition.

Can I solve our riddle?
Can we learn to live?
>From Shakespeare to Sagan and all those in between...
satire, philosophy, and science,
the seven wonders of prison-cell minds.

Maybe I'll pick up the black phone and ask a clown...
to come and entertain us with more nonsensical charm.
An explanation that makes as much sense as all the rest;
Biblical allegory, Thoreau, and Copernicus.

Mass media, mass hysteria...
musical chants dilute the air,
propaganda that relies upon hypnotic beats.

We'll find the answer,
It resides within you and I.
It's in the clown that fabricates a laugh.
It's in the waters that meander though our path.
It's not a riddle filled with shadows and cracks.
It's too simplistic for our micro-chip minds.

For it is filled with passion, proper, wisdom, error, ignorance and guilt...
created half to rise and half to fall.
Doubting yet certain, manifestation of all.
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled,
the glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

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Free Bees

by

Chris Lahren

The dreamy context centers,
mangled comet coating-
and the star spangled flag
brought us to the dancing procession.

The speaker, bearded and free,
wiped the sweat from his high brow...

and we all noticed the crowd,
the great big explosion-mushroom cloud.

and a fly caught our eye
that we must die
and to fly free like a pest
and live on waste and devastation...

the highest form of life will be...
the infestation of catastrophe.

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---

Shattering

by

Chris Lahren

I gotta get away...
it seems as if my debts and obligations
have tightened some strange invisible noose.

and the hoard of famished slaves continues
to run through my brain.

I can't get away of the fact that
I may possibly fail.

Somehow it's not possible in
this world of idealistic treasures.

I cannot measure the depth of my loss...
somehow youth had masked every person's
tragic outcome as a romance.

It's a novel we've studied,
something Camus would have discovered
for a fictional character.

but the fact that it's enveloped
my own existence...
it's shattering.

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---

Blair Witch

by

Chris Lahren

You captivate the imagination we call legend...
and hold us unto disbelief.
Out in the woods we hear the cackle cackle of all around,
and the seemingly shrill screams we call terror.

The faces down into the fog while we pray,
tha lady of the forest proclaims doom.
And hear me in your disbelief,
calling out your name in vain.
While we hide away in our own lies,
your ingnorance becomes the myth.

But ponder this as you try to ease your
pretty mind,
at the midnight hour you may hear the wicked sounds...
pounding and crackling all around.
It's a deer in the woods perhaps,
but it's wrapped around the camp.
And you still disbelieve the stories,
of fishermen and sages that have seen it all.

Your mind freezes the night while every sound
becomes a chilling amplification of your
every worst fear...

but you continue to breathe,
yet you hold your breath
as you sit in absolute darkness...
in a place dead souls never rest.

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Twelve Billion Eyes are One

by

Chris Lahren

Sometimes you see the clarity of it all...
from the roots of an oak tree.

Each miniscule tentacle shoot of roots
that collides with the rest of entagled humanity.

The worms swirl in organic rot,
dead soldiers and decomposed masterpieces.

The silt and soil we till to feed new life...
it connects us all together.

We are on working organism, a gigantic god of our own.
Perhaps we ar as strong...perhaps we are god.

Up from the roots they become the core, the hard
wood we combine into solidarity.

Up from the ground we stand free,
our leaves blow gently in the wind
we breathe.

It takes our greens and pushes the
colorful pallette unto us.

We require eyes of the world,
to folow the rules and become
the guides of the body of fate
that lies before us all.

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Broken News

by

Chris Lahren

If you ever had to wake up to the any day of news we see...you know what
it's like.
Yes, you know the misery that's felt by most each day...the pain.
Somehow there is always a top story of doom and gloom, a war in Kosovo.
And like never before we've been broken, we're at the terrible end.
Happiness no longer exists on the evening news...it's been murdered, like
everyone else.
And who's convicted? It's fallen upon our very leaders, they are now infected.
But somehow my own world is not included...
every day I see some form of love and laughter, selfless arbitrations.
I don't see the day to day suicide and homicides that are reported to be
everywhere.
I don't see the blackened sun and the seven plagues that harken doom.
I see my mother and good souls that I call friends...ready to break my very
fall.
And the walls we paint each day are colorful, unlike the abysmal darkness of war
that is everywhere else but here, I guess.
And after the news I see violent stories and hate...
and blame pointing their fingers at the messenger.
The tiny box that captivates us all each day and night...it's become what we
are.
It's a shadow box, it's a greedy liar.
It's a wicked soldier, it's murderous cancer.
Yet we flick the switch each day to ask for more.

Poetry Competition

---

Love?

by

Chris Lahren

Open up your arms and spread some of your infectious laughter....
we contain bottles of wine inside our hearts to open on occasions like this.
We're not afraid to tell the truth...not afraid to understand.

And the crossroads of our intertwined lace of love, that word...
much too overused as if it were void of content.
It's a word that's not easily understood yet overdefined,
it's full of contrived fictions and an endless topic of lyrical wisdom.

It seems as if those that have the worst time with it are those
that sing and write as if they know precisely what it is.

Does it even exist? Is it equal to God?
It seems as if it's an anchor, continually tugging the few tragic
souls that feel it down to the bottom to be lost forever in the abyss somewhere.
Whatever it really is, it's caused alot of pain...violence, shame, and devastation.

Does it control all action? Is it merely an evolutionary function...tricking us into reproduction?
Survival of the specious...those with the strongest love will subsist.
If that's the case, animals must feel it...right down to the cockroach hotels we despise.

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Bleeding Puppets

by

Chris Lahren

Crashing down upon us, it's some kind of jelly...blood coagulation and strawberry preserves.
No, it's a time bomb in our burning house...and we're outside laughing, like children we were full of energy and that sustained laughter you only witness in a school playground during recess hour.
Anything could happen, even the most absurd turn of events, and we'll still be laughing...
are we crazy? I don't think so...I just think we finally know the truth.

It's about as insane as the world losing balance and tipping over into the sun,
and about as intense as the mad rush of soldiers in the heat of battle...blood stains the soul,
black as it was..somehow turns to the red you only have nightmares about.
But this is different, there is no fear or confusion. The anger seemed to shimmer and fade away like a ripple in a glassy pond...all the wrong emotions became strangers.

So you see us in a wheat field, dancing and dashing like mad school children,
yet we were sane and we had no worries...just what we had inside.
Somehow we learned too soon...somehow we found out what you cannot find out.
We were never supposed to know until our time was up...
you know the time, where your heart gives out and the soul flies free.

But we were very much alive today, in the field as the building burned to the ground...
some kind of seething jelly and coagulated blood began to boil in the distance...
yet we had no worries, no pain or that thing we call shame.

Once again...we knew something no one ever took the time to understand while breathing.
Every one else aspires to reach this destination yet never ever do.
Many steeples stand proud in determination...only to carry the bodies out to this pasture ahead.

But we have somehow arrived...premature epiphany of sorts. We know what it's all about and
we're not going to follow the evil lies no more...no more!

We were dancing like some twisted marionette figures...like the demons we appeared.
Of course we were misunderstood by those around...all around, we were surrounded.
Yet we already knew, It made no difference to us what they would do now.

We would tell them, but they refused to listen...they covered their already deaf ears,
the children were told to run home and lock all doors until given further notice.
We were surrounded sheep, all of us were black sheep and inside we had fierce wolves...
this happens all the time when the truth gets out...we're cornered.

That's when the cry came out...the cry that not one living soul should ever hear. As a burning stake twists inside the gut, those around will be entertained by the scorching pained shriek that ensues. What they still cannot hear in that cry is the truth...words that would set everyone else free, chained as the slaves they now are. They are full of hate, lies fed to them at mealtime, fear drives them to make excuses for living...to stay awake in this murky world of confusion. We somehow cast those chains off...but for that, they will make us pay.

Yet no price can be placed on eternal freedom and the power of the truth we found out...
they were boiling, their blood on the inside coagulating and seething like intense jelly.
The burning inside to ward off whatever threat that may haunt all that's been instilled and perfectly programmed inside them. Their shame and comforts that they feel with the pain that was handed down generation after generation...father and mother. We had to be destroyed, they had no other choice, they couldn't deal with the fact that their entire lives were built upon lies and deception that goes beyond the fabric that held it all together...what they were working for so many years. Wipe it all away...so they can continue...until the flesh is forced to part with all that's known...forcing them into an obscure realm they had been forced to ignore all along.

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---

Assimilate

by

Chris Lahren

From the ghostly howl of the storm,
from the insane stobe-light fury of thunder
and torrential sheets of black rain.
I walk casually into it's thick fist.
and in it's foreground are two trunkless
legs of rock bearing callous words

of my past. They came here cautiously
in the face of adversity. They were tongueless

and awkward with a passion to overcome.
They spoke or read no language of the land.

They farmed and fed this soil with their souls
for nearly a century,

until my birth...

I lost their language, I lost their land

and these rocks are all that stand.

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Leaders Dream In Color

by

Chris Lahren

Was of a neutral color, land of heroes and inverted
rainbows united. It was written in epiphany, a call
to connect with the age of reason,
to reflect and initiate new words.

And the oaks trees became our fires inside,
full of intense synaptic connections.
Believe all that you feel before it's thought away.

The sway of dizziness provoked a sick afterthought.
World of whiskey and other conditions of learned reflex.
World spins yet no one falls down, and the ground
breaks the fall from our dreams.

The man on the hill lights up the field beneath him,
it's full of famine.

Don't you think we should fill fields with food
before it's filled with famine?

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---

beacon

by

Chris Lahren

Stricken of an evil pain,
molten of an armored cross,
he sees what's true and sane.

Come with me to the city of love,
come with me to the harbor of blood,
and you too will be the guide.
he will show you through,
through the gates of nevermore,
and the love will lead you there.
the air of putrid violence,
the pain becomes the laughter,
and hills become your fire.

like a lantern in the hills,
it shall present itself now,
or my sanity shall fall away.

stars above remind you of home,
you are far from home,
and the loss that came between.
flowers now wilted like old ladies,
tears dried up like the sands between,
and the fear becomes your guide.
home...home...home...
only to find one weary soldier left,
on hobbled legs and whiskey.
he will show you
the passage to your freedom...
he will be your guide.

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---

delicacy

by

Chris Lahren

a velvet beauty with no money on the plate,
it's a carcinoma and a cherry,
and they spend all their money on an education
that's merely ornamental.
but the concensus that sucks tells us to rely
on the thieves that take our needy and educate.
man and woman,
born without an education and a cherry...
lost without a slice,
of our delicious american pie.

Poetry Competition

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Deflated Flower

by

Chris Lahren

upon the haunted hour of waking,
still-faded sky becomes the hour of morn.
and you watch the sun's struggle to be born,
while the worm is there for taking.

your new soul is prepared to step out,
to be the man you've always dreamed.
and you craft your dialogue to be king,
while your white horse is there to mount.

breathing deeply as a new-born believer,
to scratch the surface of gold-plated sky.
full self-esteem ahead you reply,
while you plot a life as the overachiever.

stepping languidly steeped in trash,
outside your door is gray obsessed confession.
ego's balloon filled with hot air obsessions,
while you step outside you crash.

into your muddled back yard you bleed,
trampled by confusion and blame that flies.
your brave courageous soul blocked out by cries,
that your life's not of a flower but that as a weed.

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Darwin's Vonnegut and the Minneapolis AGT Protests

by

Chris Lahren

Boring and useless burns on the inside of the skull. You fuse cathode-rays to your brain and zap reality away like the language that's lost forever...

forever, such and insane word. Perhaps overused and deeply wrong because it implies an expanse of time that we'll never fully realize.

and how come evolution produced giraffes and zebras while humans were never born with an instinct to survive?

and in the meantime we multipy exponentially while rapidly devising new and elaborate schemes to die.

and at the same time, most of us sit planted like lobsters in the sun, playing cards in Vegas, oblivious to the fact that China stole our secrets of self destruction at a Clinton poker party. Yet we're more concerned about other affairs and the stain left in the oval office.

and the animal rights activists with their psuedo-dreadlocked rasta hair donned in new-age hippie wear, contrived and desperate for another Vietnam. and they lose respect for human lives and dignity while they fight for the souls of bottom feeding mud-fish and cats.

after they've been kicked and beaten by night sticks and gassed, they return to their Volkswagon Jettas to seek out a new revolution.

I like the rich college bums that suck the wealth from ma and pa, suck the puff from the bong, dress themselves like impoverished charity cases and pretend to raise awareness from some lost trees in California, while simultaneously saving a simulated Playstation world from the evil grip of blood frenzied zombies.

In the background plays a Marley tune, chanting about togetherness while the only thing stuck together are his pages of a magazine.

Sometimes I wonder, in today's world, if you have the means to fund a college education at a reputable institution of higher learning, do you really need that degree in the first place?

I like how the gifted and privileged are more eager to profess that the greatness of this country depends upon the struggle and will to overcome adversity.

Remember,

this is the land of opportunity!

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---

full circle

by

Chris Lahren

and like a flower in eden,

untouched by human intervention.
heaven-sent like the rain-drops

on drought-stricken acres.
the shriek pierced the untouched ears

and awoke the senses.
to be here on this day of creation,

this rebirth or renewal that
becomes us day in and day out.
a reawakening to be the model of humanity

tilting on it's axis,
spinning like it will always spin,

full circle,

coming back again.
everything returns to its creator,

everything retracts, sinks,

falls, and weakens once more.
to return like a butterfly...

only to fly free.

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---

The Hit

by

Chris Lahren

Cancel my mind. Those actions that falter upon the very thought that creates. Delete the
spaces that become nonsense, we can make it better now. Which denomination are you?
Are you cataclismic? Are you Arabian or Mongol? Past or present? Has or has been?
Samples of coffee cake on the coffee table at coffee break...
We’ll have a bake sale, raise alot of dough. Nuts we all are, yes, sitting on the porch with
our canes and Ovaltine. The drink our fathers gave us to grow up big and strong, just like
Elvis. Are we the Wheaties generation? We seize every grain of truth and make it
crunchier, stays so in milk as time wastes away in our bowl.
Simple, let’s keep it all so simple. Do you understand? How we can become
simple like single cell amoeba.
Remember simple? Remember as you always do, sitting under some tree as a
child? Staring up at the clouds in the warm fresh springtime air you become the sunshine,
whispering as the breeze comes across your newly formed nose that smells everything
you’ll miss as a child. This was simple. No conflict, no egos, no putrid odors. You still
dreamed with meaning, not nonsense. At least you could connect your dreams with
reality. You questioned everything before truth became distorted by political ambitions
and controlling influences. You’d mimic violence for fun. You’d dress up like your
heroes. Everything was black and white....

UNTIL IT HIT YOU.
It may have been of any age or come in any form. Depending on the
circumstances that surround your soul, it may hit you sooner or later. You’ll never recall
the moment, save a few traumatic life circumstances, that it hit you. Time blends it all into
young adulthood. You can never remember that instant, but gradually it invades one by
one. You find that you have to conform now, no more childish thoughts or actions. You
find that your dreams actually are those fairy tales that only belong to children.

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Fare Thee Well

by

Chris Lahren

throw your bombs at some other party while you climb that corporate ladder, thief.
believe in the soul that sheds itself on the dance floor and not the one that kisses ass to achieve notoriety.

alone, so alone that your deranged senses take control of your beliefs of pure wisdom. chain smoking and whispering quietly at the window side chanting that you'll never grow old as long as there are innovations to grow another lung in a petri dish while your own dishes are growing fungus unclassified by any expert that exists in any book you wish to exist within, dream on.

and I'll have cream in my coffee, please. investigate to evaporate any truth that can be painted in distorted colors and inverted like some expressionistic work of art. you may believe it as if the LSD had conceived it's image in any way shape or form. what could it be, please?

cream peas and ham on the table, the waitress drops another dish while on the first day of the last day of the rest of her godforsaken life, handed to her by another dysfunctional and somewhat self-imposed lifestyle...learned behavior is very underrated, thank you parents.
and to those of whom deny that a little hard work gets one nowhere...

don't forget that your trailer has wheels underneath your stagnant beer swilling denial of neverending failure.

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The World You Now Control

by

Chris Lahren

do we just concede and take our turns to die?
or do we drink it all off our minds?
we could run home and cry,
or take down all your internal statues
and become the figure that you really are.

on this day it’s raining,
inside your eyes it’s raining...
you miss the sunshine and the laughter,
the eyes form punctuated sadness
while you try to make it all the way...
the way you felt as an innocent child,
full of discovery and exhibition.

a new union signifies the end of the pain,
and where it ends is where you find yourself...
the time you’re most happy and expressive.

but the walls have packed it all inside,
somewhere the magic breathes
like the roots of newly felled timber
continued growth beneath the world.

I like the butterfly to signify our colors,
the colors that come through following enclosure.
intense beauty unwrapped from the magic of time,
to be the full body that is meant for exposure.

molded and fed your mystery beads,
you are encased in pain that will make you.
the unjust cruelty of erroneous decisions,
the struggles that make you feel all alone...
they will make you.

and as soon as you break free,
as soon as your world seems to be crumbling...
a new soul will emerge that’s stronger than tempered steel.
it will make you fly,
like a butterfly,
to the world you now control.

Poetry Competition

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Paint the Sky

by

Chris Lahren

The sunrise laughter brings me to the canvas of another day,
the acrid summer dew-filled morn finds me preoccupied with ecstatic joy.
harmonies of the avian creatures unite with the sky
while our eyes are full of sleep and the wonderous color of the neverending canvas before us.
stretch to the rustle of the bright little furry creatures that feed upon the fading twilight.
go out to the world and show them the colors that you've absorbed from the sunrise,
mirror the music and creativity of the natural world...
demonstrate the power that the new day brings as if it's your newly formed canvas,
painted from the palette that surrounds your heart.

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---

Passing Light

by

Chris Lahren

big black monsoon world, hopeful and desolate.
a monster in heaven becomes the crazy theme of a rainy day,
you sit there shrieking at the sun every time it pops it?s head out of cloudy shapes.
is that God taking another soul from the earthen grave?
the moment that the sun creates the Hollywood lights from the sky,
the beams of radiant sunlight that scatter and send the swords of light to earth,
and it?s all gone as soon as you blink,
and you?re saddened by it?s passing.

Submit a poem for analysis.

---

Reflect

by

Chris Lahren

at the end of the day, you reflect.
it?s like an ashen sea of gray madness.
everything you?ve conceived, everything you believe,
it?s become what you see as reality.
and even if you stop now, if all your vital functions stop,
what you have created will continue into eternity.
and all the questions answered, all the people saved,
your new angles and definitions, your painted worlds and inventions,
and the love you?ve left about...
will continue to shape the world exponentially.

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---

Insane Drum

by

Chris Lahren

beating on an insane drum, the beat beat and drip drip,
faucet conceives a memory, and the music of the time,
brings me to the dead pan alley in my mind,
and the apollo astronaut, woman on the shuttle,
a teacher in space no more, and the insane drum keeps it?s beat,
and a juggernaut president, a bully in class rules once again,
the telephone rings hello, you become your father,
yelling at the sunrise, approach the yellow line,
walk the yellow line, insane drum beat,
falling down and out, up and down and all about,
the CIA and the Iran Contras confused, the evil empire amused,
and twinkies feed the planet, the golden arches conceive your children,
insane drum beat, the Y2K glitch eats the time,
and a bug becomes the economy, the Wall street beat,
keep on risin? risin? like a sorry star in silence, drum beat,
yellow rain melts the pain, blister on skin breaks away,
can?t make mistakes again, history never ends,
shot in the sky, paint in my eye,
another dead president, another tragedy,
insane drum beat, taxes and despair,
red white and blue, the stars and stripes are you,
everything in between,
insane drum beats.

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Flower in Venus

by

Chris Lahren

like a flower in venus, burning up in intense inscense of liquid heaven...
wide open and quiet dimension fills the void before me,
and the shadow on the street beams like a vibrant characature of violence,
this is where I stood the day before the innocence died.
it was where my heart gave away the love it soaked in,
bath salts and cinnamon spray spread the beacon of joy that tarnished.
the evil ray gun that diminished my soul and licked it?s butter with relish,
and the gargantuant figurehead before me froze, stood still, and devoured what spirits left
hiding in the trampled garden of my past.

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---

Creatures

by

Chris Lahren

An umbrella arranges the deep tonic parade of laughter,
At the raindrops and hat droppings on the side of the road.
A tear splashes the pavement while the boy trembles for tomorrow.
And the groans of sorrow fill the atmosphere, while the sparrow
Swoops down upon breadcrumbs scattered by old men.
The park benches are freshly painted by city labor,
At night they become beds for the creatures beneath them.

Submit a poem for analysis.

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