The Day His Name was Steve—Flarf

I pronounce it phonetically

Throwing out mellow stoner monkeys

Trading with the stollen pillow donkeys.

Biting your arm off with midnight spiders.

Doing doughnuts with all night riders.

Playing that funky doughnut monkey

Dropping space mines on base lines

Controlling minds to shake your behinds

Be thumping them drums on a carved canoe

Busted window out whistling like, how do you do?

I don’t think I know another word. How about you?

.

I got you, Blue. I think I know a few.

How about getting your ass out of the zoo?

Singing gitchy gitchy gitchy gitchy Gucci goo.

I been rocking this shit since I was in the cradle

Spinning out rhymes like they was a dreidel.

I got my bottle made out of clay.

I been spitting mamma’s milk since the early days.

Still praying for the day that I might get paid.

My mamma gave me my life, taught me what to believe,

Taught me how I think the world should be received.

The first new thing I buy her will be a weave.

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It will be a weave?! That’s racist, Steve!

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Wait… who, the hell told you my name was Steve?

***

FLARF is a wild style of poetry that started as a joke. People noticed that no matter how bad your poems were Poetry.com would tell you that you had won their poetry prize. Then, they would try to scam you out of your money. So devious poets started sending the crappiest poetry they could write to Poetry.com. Even that would win the poetry prize. These poets began sending each other their crappy poems, and eventually it became a legitimate poetry style. If you want to read more about the FLARF or any of the other poetry terms, check out the glossary of poetic terms from the Poetry Foundation at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms

Google painting is a type of collaging that primarily uses internet search results and Google’s search prediction capabilities to generate quasi-random phrases. The technique helps jumpstart creativity with strange juxtapositions, broken syntax, and internet speak.

Street Music—Free Verse

Understanding today’s youth culture

Crispy nuggets of rocks in tires

Treading the whisper of street music

Cause they put rap in my country.

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American dreaming denim fusion

Reading the streets like lingo

White light of a man walking

The crosswalk like a baseline.

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Quick and slick in pulses

Like the red right hand of rhythm

Rocking right hand turns

Through red Town Car lights.

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Slinging quick stacks of singles

Half a cigarette ready to light,

And icy tall glasses of tea

In the sweet southern summer heat.

It is the Three Lines

It is the three lines of music that you just can’t get out of your head

When you know that you know all the words but just can’t remember.

Here Rusted Away–Magnetic Poetry

Here, rusted away

There, bare forest lazy smooth

I bitter rock girl

Not like the ugly pink want

Not by symphony do eat

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I created this poem using the magnetic poetry tool found at: http://magneticpoetryplayonline.com/

Drooling Death Petal–Magnetic Poetry

Drooling death petal

One beauty lie in want time

See my bare blood lust

Thousand finger symphony

Scream delirious windstorm

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I created this poem using the magnetic poetry tool found at: http://magneticpoetryplayonline.com/

I Walk Up to You

I walk up to you

In chromatic steps watching

You step to me

Until we crash and stumble

In dissonant harmony.

The Blues in 5 Tanka

Play the music of

Distant traffic filtered on

Gentle wind through leaves.

Whispered tires over a

Faded black top memory.

.

Play the music of

The late morning sun still warming

From last night’s freeze

And the green winter weeds disbursed

Among the shocked brown grass.

.

Play the music of

The dry culverts and the soggy

Bottom ditches

Dug from rainy runoff

Pushing rivulets downhill.

.

Play the music of

The southern countryside where

Houses had been built

People had settled and lives

Had been lived all in past tense.

.

Play the music of

The words given out of rhythm

In metric form

Rhyming only with the

Musical images in speech.

Musical Images

Play the music of

The words given out of rhythm

In metric form

Rhyming only with

The musical images of speech.

Pushing Rivulets

Play the music of

The dry culverts and the soggy

Bottom ditches

Dug out from rainy runoff

Pushing rivulets downhill.

Preening Purple Peacock

They got that preening purple peacock

On the telephone pole.

They got that preening purple peacock

On the telephone pole.

Dispatch that preening purple peacock

Until my belly is full.

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They got the waiters and the barbacks

Jumping around the floor.

They got the waiters and the barbacks

Jumping around the floor.

Dispatch the waiters and the barbacks

Until I ain’t thirsty no more.

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They got the singers and the trumpets

Playing a sultry sound.

They got the singers and the trumpets

Playing a sultry sound.

Just keep the singers and the trumpets

Chase that guitarist from town.

.

Just play that preening purple peacock

Until my ears go deaf.

Just play that preening purple peacock

Until my ears go deaf.

Wail out that preening purple peacock

Until you is out of breath.

.

Wail out that preening purple peacock

Until that band is alone.

Until my mommy, my daddy,

My sisters, my brothers,

My cousins

Gone home.