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Redshift Apr 2013
i was just lying
with my cheek
against the rug
of my room
panting
wishing
my breathe would stop
and i suddenly saw
amidst a flock of papers
on my floor
nestled there
my little
quarter-sized
green plastic
turtle
that i used to keep in my pocket
named bartleby
i found him in the mud
one day
outside
in the winter
i washed him off
and he kept me
company
until i lost him

i
put down the sharp flower
i was about to slice my wrist with
and i pick up
bartleby
this probably won't have much meaning if you haven't read bartleby the scrivener.
CharlesC Feb 2013
My work yesterday
I pursued with fire..
dead letters burned
letters with news
for countless intended
recipients Unknown..
news shadowed or light
these notifications of
paths NOT taken
met their end by
my flaming torch..
My role as destroyer
carried my reverie
ignited a wish
a blessing and curse
to finally know NOT..

My work today
new letters appear..
copying not burning
yet sorrows abide in
slow repetitive death..
I must rise
stand tall
Find face and soul
in that wall..
I must proclaim
I prefer NOT..
PREFER
this delicious word..
freedom's choice
tasted with short
bursts of joy..

Facing my wall
searching for NOT
into emptiness flowed
a bright wholeness
of  letters and light..
but a price to be paid
for other's disdain
they are forgiven for
not knowing NOT..
NOT holds those
letters I've known..
Ah humanity...*

Based on Herman Melville's
short story, "Bartleby
the Scrivener"
Ellie Belanger Feb 2017
Asexuality?
Nah,
I am the Bartleby
Of ***.
memories sweep me and under the magic carpet i hide
awaiting both wings and flight...
i remember the first time i was exposed
to a music: a band... namely: Iron Maiden...
it was during their 1998 comeback
with Brave New World...
and the single that bypassed BBC Radio 1
cencorship of their one no 1 hit:
bring your daughter to the slaughter:
underdog slaughter: let's have poodle fights
in the pit: and when i heard: Wicker Man
i was ******... by gravity:
it pulled me into the cyst of my face's pits
and i puked a sensantion equivalent of laughter
and constipation: or perhaps diarrhoea...
or rather i like to think of the elemental study of music:
in modern metal rock music
who is more relevant:
Bach and polyphony or the madness-delight
of Mozart with "too many notes":
let me remind you:
i'm reading Jon Fosse and i'm mingling with
Thomas Mann: and one is a painter with a doppleganger
and the other is an amateur pianist:
compare Nietzsche Chopin Liszt!
don't make out that Nietzsche inherits
thje rite of passage of Kant of Hegel of Socrates!
drums are definitely the earth seismic boom boom

please remind me:
and he will reside in the lake of fire: what?
alcoholism: you mean he will mistake water
for *****?
and he will emerge from a people of the land
that were so
and were so tolerant that their tolerance
became extinguished by ****** and Communism:
feminism was the third wave that imploded
and like Freud said of the Irish
so could any Western Feminist concerning the Slav:
or specifically?
the Czech romantic
the Russian catholic pan-slavic mensch...
Pole the stoner in a field of grass
Ukrainian the bowman the bending of the mistook:
and eternity and perhaps a heaven
is like a familiarity:
a design of simply being there: Heidegger:
and being allowed to know you are in heaven:
equal perdition and redeem:
of those in Hell...
that they be granted the power
and no longer the choice of knowledge:
rather: more will than power
b ut then daffodils and i conflate...
in heaven you shall
in hell you shall: no longer have the stress
of supposedly "knowing"
what "difference" is and it is mesure:
to be able to teach future generations through
ALPHABET AND LETTER
AND NUMEROS
LICZBA
LEECHBACH             ha ha... my demon curator...

the spirits still reside:
i might have to transvestite and gay my appetites
for the tonic of the humans
and stop drinking: the ***** they said was
water and the water was *****...
so no blood and no wine...
right... i need some wine the period pains of women
and not the jovial Valhalla of the beer and men...
right...
need a walking stick pretend i'm old and dead...

shh shh hide the meaning:
i think it was carpet did 'em...
some magic some dreaming some digital excavation
project: calling dinosaurs and ghosts
and speaking without tongues
just breathing air
air in rai out
something like Julius Ulysses Joyce
and his daughter's schizophrenia
like Sant Martaan... the spacelord of the void
the catapulted astronought ought
i know you need fire and ballistics
and rockets to fly into the element of vacuum:
so lost
not to have the Trojan:
pst... i'm sneaking at least two more elements in...
vacuum: nothing...
will no longer be an ontological mirror of man
as he will soon learn to renevate it like
he might with fear and potential of fire...
nothing... vacuum: anti-matter:
will be given the Status and Domain of the Elements...
let's not get into my concern for
Zeus and Sysiphus...
i coupled them...
insomnia, electricity
and fire:                      music and air...
earth
sonar
         blue and ice and salt and ice and salt
and salt and ice and ice
my concrete con-cake-crate...

                 such mischief allowed in this playground
of intellect
and while mere mortals go to places
like Hyde Park's Winter Wonderland...
and this playground:
like 4D chess with mech arena
this robot simulation game:
Hungry Cavill was superman and *******
i want a book written
by an actor:
Jon Fosse was a painter
and Nietzsche was a limp **** Liszt, Chopin:
composer...
so we have the painter...
the pianist...
we might need a mathmetician...
we don't need philosophers
besides like we might need them like ******...
and all that presupposes philosophy
via psychiatry to the count of bones...
we need a Mathmetician...
as a writer...
so we have a painter: as a writer
a music: as a writer...
you have me as me as not me as: gravity...
vanity...
      but we need a mathmetician...

so weird watching French cartoons... Asterix
twelve tasks:
but so the North men relocated to Normandy
and Rolo my Russo:
but these English so influenced by Rome
as if they were always here:
but these Anglo-Saxons came at a time when
Rome was not Might but Decline...
and we all know that the Britons the Welsh
and Picts and Irish were like the modern day
American intervention in Afghanistan...
so these blah blah lingo Saxons
these Australians of the old world:
*******: settle these isles...

the Scots had to be reminded about
reinvention and being humble
while these new Saxons
these Anglos became trippy with megalomania
and cleptocracy
and so much more...
because when i think of Britain i think
of the Irish the Welsh and the Scots...
there's no English: concept or question:
to begin with...
if you are to make humble claims as and of
being taught by the Roman Empire:
you better tell me what it was that was
taught...
letter by letter: perhaps even in a cascading rubric
reminiscent of how orientals write...
teach me: of **** of Germany
the Saxon that founded Australia and more
meta-*******...
   remind me of the fabble of the Saxon:
when asking a Swabian? ask also the Silesian
the Moravian and the Musovite...
ask the Prus, the Wends and the Veneti and Sarmatians
             and then: your banana boat camel jockey
      execution style **** for the daughter's pride
for dowry...
                      and also ask the Galician
and ask the Pomeranian...
Angie Acuña Dec 2015
I do not write to spare anyone else's feelings,
but to save my own
It is the only time when I can be as honest as I please,
when I can speak what's on my mind in more eloquent ways than my stumbling and stuttering sentences

I have not the gift of the musical language the way Ravel does,
nor that of Tesla and the natural sciences
I cannot explain away why in fact the limit does not exist nor Pythagorus' innate ramblings,

but I can understand why Poe
was oh-so-miserable
and accept his love for beautiful dead women

I share Whitman's love of birds and their tales of woe for long lost lovers

Dickinson - hides herself -
the way I do - in her writings
and the ****** fly interposed itself in my light as well

Emerson and Melville tell tales of self reliance,
with Major Molineaux and Bartleby taking life by its reigns
but even Dante seeks Virgil's aid in finding hell

I am by far no writer of substantial merit
and have much to learn,
but that is exactly why I love what I do

I write to understand that which happens to and around me

I write in often vain efforts to find solid ground beneath my tired feet,
But most of the time,
I end up with paper scattered around me, full of words that I have yet to know

I write when I don't know what else to do,
even when I don't mean to find myself locked away,
scribbling meaningless words onto paper

I write to learn more of the errors of my ways,
maybe if I can gather my thoughts into one coherent phrase,
then I can finally accept my wrongdoings,
then I can grow

There is a sad realization that knocks me down with every ripple of its wave each and every time that my words cause grief or hurt

It is never my intention,
but even that is hard to believe

To say that i am sorry for them is pointless
I am not and never will be

How could I betray myself in such a way?

I write to escape
to understand
to create
to learn
to stand
on my own two feet
I write to be honest
among other things,
but most of all,

I write because it is all I know
and I thought you understood that
December 3, 2015
Mortal Mind Matthew Scott Harris
ENTER YOUR OWN RISK!

Seedy gobbledygook ergot
visibly argot bubbled, burbled, bustled...forth
yea...give garbled, jangled, warbled shoutout
if ye doth render
mug gadabout totally confounding,

this unfettered voluminous confection
ruff lee in toto as sample
doggone freelance gargon
sublime red rover - misaligned with
twenty first century time

emerging, fishtailing, kvetching,
slithering, whipsawing
during springtime
thaw - oozing out primordial slime,
schlepping aboard bissel mishuga train

while kibitizing with longfellow
ghost hosts Bartleby,
thee Herman Hermits,
and Stray Cats caterwauling
scrivener circumlocution showtime
evidences troubadour prima facie

tremendous struggle rustling rational rapport,
ruminating, citing his dismal schooltime
track record muddled, and hence
questing to cobble a rhyme
distilling, harvesting, and

leaching (out pulpy, knotty,
Max Headroom Ancien regime
filmy... gray matter) in realtime,
while strains of Ragtime echo
from late nineteenth century

tin pan alley, nsync, linkedin
cubist, dadaist, existentialist...
mine poetic melange jerry rigs
flashes random discordant phrases
kickstarting hotmail...faintly

analogous to processing quicklime
mucking with abstract alphabetic
mire ranks as playtime
forging whimsical tactical trippy thoughts,
nursing eternal idealistic Earthly peacetime,

worrying away looming mortality,
noshing post death as pastime,
welcomes input and alien abduction – ME,
mine "FAKE" existence, sans charade,
facade, masquerade onetime pantomime,
no second act allowed, nor

revising questionable tour de force
I claim NO pièce de résistance, nor overtime,
asper waning game
of thrown away Life
approaches nighttime haven

soon...forever rest in peace
surrendering requisite burnt offerings,
sans (cremated ashes) - meantime
fete grateful dead
scythe lent hoodlums on warpath

to incite bedlam
postprandial mealtime prayer final -
deathly hallowed gleeful grimace
witnessing successful electroshock therapy

of yours truly emotionally frozen
decades long comatose state
thankfully oblivious, when impending
curtain call signals finis!
who doth like 2 gab a boot
i yam no goth thick ****** villain frum a no vile root
boot kin zee writer iz 4 re:al - here my hand there my lil shoot.

ma gray matter nada mess
of 50 shades of gray more o less
2 impress
than sentiments for female passion i metaphorically express.

this me stir wordsmith viz Bartleby the scrivener
   wordsmith doth sit alone
   playing knick knack paddy whack
   please give this dorky, goofy,
   loopy, moody, nerdy, quirky
   n wordy proto simian artfully dodging
   the erstwhile shadowy bogeyman
   more'n a herring or sun bleached wish bone
communication skills daily he doth hone
awaiting 2 convey an auditory
   familiar voice message on the telly phone.

   i readily admit not 2 be a dusty huffing marathon man
   using me phallus as a leg like runner
hoping said golem like creature will
   (upon my stern request) stay
   nor does this generic guy participate

   in any competitive reindeer games nor sports
   type son of a gunner
who knows life doth newt always go this way
which wood prompt to snag the eye
   of one tiger esse to roar with a yay.

this self anointed beastie boy bard of schwenksville, penna lives
   just a rolling stones away
   from u2 and you know moody blue who
felt avaricious, chivalrous, efficacious,

   impetuous, spontaneous view
especially with...a gal 4
   ma doo *** motley crue
2 be earnest, frank and true

n would be ambitious 2 ply
   my cognitive, furtive, intuitive
sans this salient knight thee ma sought
   after queen kin ponder n rue
computer technical challenges

   that might bring out bovine prompting a moo
maybe absorbing symbiotically genius abilities
   from one imaginary asian figure named hu
or his identical twin brother mister ma goo.
Qualyxian Quest May 2020
Tupac my friend Alex would canonize
For his talent and exposure of racist lies

We're living in a kind of Tupacolypse now
Trumpfuck hate  the demagogue allows

5 per cent of the world's population
But 25 per cent of its prisoners

The U.S.A. formed in despair
Just ask Bartleby the Scrivener

I don't listen to much hip hop
I'm more old school as I have said

But if you see God first
Tell Him **** got worse

                And God bless the Dead
Qualyxian Quest Aug 2020
The incredible meaninglessness
Of American life

Ishmael. Billy Budd. Bartleby.

I prefer not to live here.
But no money to go.
So.
Qualyxian Quest Sep 2020
Said Bartleby the Scrivener.

— The End —