As You Read This
Beds
Dachau Dreams
English Is My Language
Hair
Inside
Memories Lost
Ode to A Squashed Bug
Rain
Sole Survivor
Street People
The '80's
The Gold Covered Pearls
The Nuns Said
The Ring
Two-Way Mirror
¶A woman will become an exact replica of her mother. Once aged, she will
sit in her apartment and, fearing the silence of old age and death, will play
the radio incessantly. ¶Her son will hold a dying swan in his arms. It
will be his mother. She will say, "it is time," and die. ¶A man
will kill his God and realize only then how alone he is. ¶A young artist
will slit his wrists, but nothing will come out.
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I think that I shall never dream
To be in such a mound of cream.
Rest my head against marshmallow,
And let my body there lie fallow.
To stare up at the ceiling cracks
While thighs feel crumbs of recent snacks.
To drowse, to snooze, perchance to dream,
And ride aloft on the white moon's beam.
This nest of mine has no compare;
It sails me well in foul or fair.
Mortals may try until they're dead,
But only God can make a bed.
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icy corpses
hanging frigid
screamless gaping
sightless staring
gusty wind blows
ribbéd wind chimes
bony beatings
4/4 rhythm
dusty ashcans
human fleshstink
burning bodies
charcoal shadows
convolutions
all made simple
genoseismic
'verberatons
The English language is
my native tongue.
Of all languages on the earth
It is the one most capable
of expressing a certain
je ne sais quoi
an elan vital
or zeitgeist.
You know what I mean.
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black hair
turned grey
grey turned blue
blue gave way to white
and the cigarettes
turned it yellow
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Inside
this usually respectable
relatively normal
human being
is a lurking shadow
which seeks bloody
death
at the end of a razor
blade.
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A man, alone, lies in a
rest home bed.
He lets his mem'ries go,
into the air.
With each release
remembrance
disappears;
The last experience will
dissipate--
None will remain.
He'll have forgotten all.
He can not stop, not hold
those past events;
Against his will he
speaks them as they
come,
And as the echo fades,
thought vanishes.
He relishes his recollections dear--
But suddenly has
none. . . .
alone. . .sits. . .sits. . .
stares. . . .
You, insect, squashed,
Whom did you bug
Who slammed this book
shut
And trapped you here,
Forever more:
Stuck to page 287
Of this copy of
The Master and Margareta?
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The morning fog turned
into an afternoon
shower
Black and brightly
colored umbrellas
sprang up like
mushrooms
I saw them from the
library window at
midday
All the people tramping
back and forth
through puddles
All of them searching
for knowledge here
at the university
We all have problems
sometime with our
sense of direction
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He felt euphoria at first,
having survived the plane crash.
Yet he returned year after year
to the memorial for the victims.
He couldn't allow the euphoria to overtake him;
The guilt from surviving was too important.
Carnival always ends in Lent.
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a man in the middle of the street
directing traffic
says his name's Bertolt Brecht
says that he'll be killed
one day
by a micrometeorite that will drill into his skull
"separating corpus from collosum!"
and let free his soul
prediction finished, he narrowly dodges a Mercedes
"Damn asteroids!" he spits
another man, with a fire hydrant on a leash
grows mandrakes in window boxes outside his apartment
isn't that a scream?
outside the neighborhood theatre
a child stares into the window
watching a rehearsal
another world created by actors
before his eyes
yet he doesn't understand it's not real
and he wonders
in his pre-adolescent way
what is going on
Inside, a director manipulates an actor
playing a character who is a director
manipulating another actor
who plays a character playing an actor
imagine that
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In the good old days
of the eighties
I had such an eye for
the ladies.
But I lived with too
many fears--
Those were, alas, the
Reagan Years.
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I had a pouch full of gold-covered pearls.
Only one is left.
I checked the rest, and none of them had a pearl under the gold shell.
But I know for sure there's a pearl under the last one.
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The nuns used to tell us
that we were not to sin
on any account,
and also not allow
anyone else to sin--
the sin of scandal: to
lead another into sin.
If a person was about to
hurt us,
the nuns instructed us
to jump out a window,
if we had to,
and injure ourselves,
so that that person wouldn't hurt us or kill us
and thereby commit a sin.
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She checks her brand new engagement ring,
Making certain it is still there.
She still can't believe he bought it
Neither can he.
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On the one side a person
looks at himself.
On the other side I look
out at him.
Do I see more than he?
Who sees the truer image?
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© 2003 Stephen A. Schrum
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