The Young People With Their Instant Children

grooveamatic

When I see the young people
With their instant children
So happy they nearly cease to exist,
I am compelled to throw fruit at them,
Or at least to trip them
As they pass.
It is not physical damage I wish them,
But rather,
Humiliation.
Or, more succinctly,
I wish to make concrete
The humiliation the rest of us feel
Watching their lardy sucklings
Trouncing through our world
Sans coordination or manners,
Summoning full-moon faces
At us from deep within
Comfy plush strollers
As if we were teats.
When I see the young people
With their edible infants
So content they almost entirely explode,
No heartfelt sentiment paints a smile upon me,
Nary one sincere hope for humanity in born
Within me.
Their helpless little creatures
Cling to them like needy snot
As they watch their carefree lives vanish,
Replaced by cacophonic mewling,
Senseless baby jabber,
And oatmeal-poop leaking onto sofas.
Even in restaurants sometimes
I spy these pubescant parents
Bending at the waist
To retrieve dropped food particles
Which had been cut into carefully tiny pieces,
Or stooping to search befuddled for keys
To go warm up the car,
Tucking just the right amount of blankies
And obscene stuffed wildlife
Into the car seat
So the clueless
Fully formed zygote won't take ill,
All in the name of pushing things forward,
Keeping their surname active in the world,
Inching the life cycle round it's loop,
Letting the planet twirl lazily
For another seventy years.

Ms. Haiku

Hello! when i think of young people with instant children i think of teenage mothers, but that doesn't seem to be your target, is it? when i think of teenage mothers i think of people who have an uphill battle socially, and it's possible they don't care, but the targets in your poem seem content. in fact, you use the word content. who are the young people with instant children?

justam

Why do these people with children make you so angry?

grooveamatic

This poem is not written from my point of view. I am not the narrator. Hope that helps.

olderman

groovematic this is very interesting.. i am going to read this many more times.. many of these observations are natural .. well written .. i'll post on this thread again.

SweetRelief

Originally posted by Bibliobella
Hello! when i think of young people with instant children i think of teenage mothers, but that doesn't seem to be your target, is it? when i think of teenage mothers i think of people who have an uphill battle socially, and it's possible they don't care, but the targets in your poem seem content. in fact, you use the word content. who are the young people with instant children?

When I read it I took it from the perspective of an older person who has been trying for years to have a child, looking at young people...teenage or otherwise...who get pregnant so easily...and not caring or even thinking about the young people's possible uphill battle...to the narrator they *must* be content...but the narrator is clouded with his/her own frustration.

Just another perspective.

Probably wrong.

grooveamatic

SweetRelief wrote:

When I read it I took it from the perspective of an older person who has been trying for years to have a child, looking at young people...teenage or otherwise...who get pregnant so easily...and not caring or even thinking about the young people's possible uphill battle...to the narrator they *must* be content...but the narrator is clouded with his/her own frustration.

Just another perspective.

Probably wrong.

Sounds like a pretty good interpretation to me.

FancyFacade

makes me think of abortion maybe

grooveamatic

Divinely dressed,
They get on at the third floor
Wordlessly,
Push their button.
She clears her throat.
The skin on her jaw is like vibrating mud.
He glances at me.
He has seen many just like me.
He pities my youth,
Remembers it as though it were a dream
Thinly covered in pea soup.
He is uninterested in the bravado
I carry in the gesture of my shoulders,
The immortality I feign with my knees,
The smile in my eyes.
He takes her hand gently.
The doors slide closed with a hiss.

FinsburyParkCarrots

He pities my youth,
Remembers it as though it were a dream
Thinly covered in pea soup.


That's a poem in itself. Spot on writing. Thanks.

grooveamatic

My life is laid around me on the floor--
At least, that part of my life that has been spent
Creating things--and it is a bit discouraging.
Just words, mainly, on thin sheets of paper
That, taken at face value, mean close to nothing.

A stack of poems written when I was nineteen years old
Is sitting three feet from a piano stool,
A solid structure with use,
Girth, weight.

Mass.

And next to that, my shoes.
Oh, my shoes, comfortable, broken in,
Reflecting my style of dress and economic strata.
None of these poems are broken in.
They are slick, controlled excercises in language,
Far removed from daily life,
The grind of bodies, commerce, motion.
None of these poems fight back.
I don't dream about them or their subjects.
They are false, and their creator, a phoney.

Another stack of poems--
More recent ones, from only months ago--
Is close to my roommates guitar,
A heavy, shiny thing that changes the vibrations
In the air around you,
Makes people dance and move.

These poems could change the vibrations in the air around me, too,
If I whispered them at the walls,
Or shouted them
Out a window.

jamit

I like how when I read your writings I can get a visual picture in my head of what is going on and actually see what I'm reading, if that makes sense.

Thank you.

grooveamatic

jamit wrote:

I like how when I read your writings I can get a visual picture in my head of what is going on and actually see what I'm reading, if that makes sense.

Thank you.

Thank you very much...that is quite a compliment indeed! I shall endeavour to continue that...

EvilToasterElf

I like reading competent poets, your images mesh seemlessly into the narrative of your works, it's a very refreshing burst of talent...carry on.

ETE

ISN

I went to the poetry Olympics last year
it was very hush hush
there were poets of all sorts
and some others too
we all eye-balled each other
and held tight our work
(as though they were worth stealing)
last year I went to the poetry Olympics
ah, life, what's its value
I went to the poetry Olympics
and finally I realised
we're all poets
ah, life, what's its value?
we're all the same
too bad
too good
smirk/wink/nudge
we like eating ice-cream and fudge
oh, I went to the poetry Olympics
I had such a blast
(even though I came last)

grooveamatic

ISN wrote:

I went to the poetry Olympics last year
it was very hush hush
there were poets of all sorts
and some others too
we all eye-balled each other
and held tight our work
(as though they were worth stealing)
last year I went to the poetry Olympics
ah, life, what's its value
I went to the poetry Olympics
and finally I realised
we're all poets
ah, life, what's its value?
we're all the same
too bad
too good
smirk/wink/nudge
we like eating ice-cream and fudge
oh, I went to the poetry Olympics
I had such a blast
(even though I came last)

wow....makes me smile. Makes me wanna write more poetry. Makes me wanna hug you. Thanks.

grooveamatic

I read about us
In magazines
Or journals
All the time.
It seems
There are too many of us
And we depress those chosen few
Who have--
On occasion--
Recieved money
To do
What I do
In order to breathe;
These professionals
Horde more money yet
By churning out
Insightful how-to
Articles and
Detailed diagrams on
How To Break Into The Biz.
Meanwhile, the rest of us
Keep grinding it out,
Pushing life through
A hole in a tomato.

Somewhere there is a
Probably small patch of
Imagined land,
Where
The poet who is paid in money
And the poet who is paid in toil
Can meet, if only
In ideals and dark dreams.
If all us classes of poets
Were to someday have a meeting there,
I think I'd raise my hand
To point out
The only professional poet
I've ever met
Is the tree which stands in my backyard,
And it hasn't written anything new
In ages.

grooveamatic

The large oil tanks
By the side of the road
Mean that we
Are close
To grandmaw's house.
Once we leave
Grandmaw's house
The large oil tanks
By the other side
Of the road
Mean that we
Are close
To home.

grooveamatic

All this darkness, I said to her,
What are we to do
With all the darkness?
She assured me
Crossly
Light was seeping
Through like holes
In a tapestry;
The summer evening sky.

Her furrowed brow
Lit a cigarette,
Released breath.

All this darkness--
I pounded my point home--
Slips over department stores
Like a coffin-lid,
Draws horses
To empty troughs,
Wayward feet toward
Soaked taverns.

She exhaled smoke-breath
And expletives,
Another hole
Punched in the birthing sky.

grooveamatic

Scores of us populate the world;
So many of us, in fact,
There are houses and magazines
Set aside for us,
Whole towns of us.

There is the defective
Who cannot swallow one caplet
Of Tylenol with Codeine
Without being lost to the world
For months;
A domino effect of staggering size
Being tipped and running it's course
Through woozy alleyways,
Poorly-lit basements,
The naked paying arms of strangers,
Ending at last
In any number of sanctioned
Sanitary humorless barricades,
To be taught how to not start it
All over again
When left alone.

There is the defective
Who cannot be trusted to eat a steak:
The glinty cerration of the inevitable
Knife to them a siren's call,
Promising moments of actual emotion,
Something truly felt.
And when all the dinner guests
Have left, to the hall closet
They'll retire,
Blade and bandages at the ready
To pierce and puncture in a wholly
Sloppy yet methodical manner,
Taking pause to ensure
It is nothing a long-sleeved shirt won't hide;
And again and again over years,
Drawing maps of mended sensation.

There is the defective
Who cannot rent certain kinds of films;
Movies in which folks disrobe and exchange
Closely personal things, heaving
And gasping as though in shock.
Upon viewing these images
The defective person would be set upon
By a precise personal demon
Which will force them to force themselves
Upon any number of strangers
In a rippling series of carnal escapades,
Finding closure perhaps
Within a cold set of handcuffs
Or the sights of a perturbed father's shotgun,
Never quite reaching that hightened plateau
That the films so clearly showed as possible.

There is the defective
Who cannot imbibe a drop of the wrong
Cough-syrup lest they be thrown
Into the oubliette of self-pity and rage,
Seeking out and certainly finding
Syrups suited to illness beyond coughing,
This journey taking them through the simplest
Daytime restuarant to the scourges of the night,
Anything with running liquid,
Money fleeing pockets faster than they can swallow.
They'll dream about it,
About running from it and into it,
Until substantial reality fades to be replaced
By a hyper-subreality of smoke-filled places,
Sweat issuing the odors of brand-names,
Their insides churning the pain of death.

Scores of us populate the world;
So many of us, in fact,
That we are quite everywhere.
We are not to be pitied or feared,
Merely expected.

grooveamatic

These reporters keep asking me,
"Where do you get the ideas for your poems?"
Usually I tell them, after clearing my throat,
That I do a little dance in my bathroom,
One part Waltz,
One part Tango,
One part Mashed Potato,
Followed by a complicated hair ritual
During which I part my hair three ways
And then reverse it.
After that I scrawl complex verbage in the steam
On my mirror,
Which is always golden anthologizable verse.
That is what I tell them when they ask.

But it's a lie.
I have no idea how to Tango.