Author: LaMorteNoire

  • Cab Calloway, Hi-De-Ho Man

    Hi-De-Hi-De-Hi-De-Ho!

    (Hi-De-Hi-De-Hi-De-Ho!)

    Whoa-Whoa-Whoah-Whoah-Whoa!

    (Whoa-Whoa-Whoah-Whoah-Whoa!)

    When that sax begins to blow

    I know where I gots to go

    I gots to star in my own show

    Cause I feel it in my soul

    Give the people what they know

    Get them beggin’ for some mo’

    So I start to tap my toes

    And I proudly lift my nose

    Then you know I’m in the throes

    Of that Hi-De-Hi-De-Ho!

  • 9/11

    The day the dust came,

    and the people fell like rain,

    pleading as they jumped

    “Please remember my name!”

    How can a skyscraper crumble

    From impact with a passenger plane?

    How can hate and religious zealotry

    Make someone suicidally insane?

    Furthermore, how can we know

    That it won’t happen again?

    I, for one, do not

    want to replay that game.

    Now we have a memorial,

    But is that really a fair trade?

    2,977 people spent their last moments praying to heaven,

    2, 977 people died that September 11th.

    Twenty plus years later, is anything

    different, or merely the same?

    You say “Never Forget”,

    I say never forget to change.

  • Still

    No knowing where,

    I try to go somewhere.

    Trod-ding along,

    Plodding along,

    Humming a song

    That was never there.

    Should I go East or West?

    Which would be best?

    Maybe South, or maybe North;

    I cannot plot a course!

    Oh, the inherent indecision

    That shadows revision;

    Lacking wonted precision,

    I simply stand still.

  • Gother Than Thou

    Yeah

    You’re so edgy

    With your “Made In China” corset

    and feigned sex positivity

    I bet they call you “Mistress”

    While you ooze rehearsed hostility

    How many shitty poems did you write

    When you felt inspired by Type O

    Do you regularly visit cemeteries

    And speak of absinthe

    But are actually a wino?

    Oh, girl, I know: there’s no point and it all sucks

    and you soul is so dark

    That the eternal night

    By contrast

    Is eternally fucked

    Go

    Tighten your laces

    And kohl your eyes the darkest black

    I never knew that such an “artiste”

    Could be such a hack.

  • S.Stolon

    I’m not upset that you checked out

    I want to as well

    But you didn’t take me with you

    And missing you is hell.

    I’ll come to love another

    Because loving is my life

    But you are the only man

    To whom I would have been wife.

  • Siren Song

    When I hear the mermaids singing

    Each to each

    To write like Eliot I burn

    When I hear screams of Zion

    And shells upon the beach

    Then to write like Weiss I yearn.

    Still

    What I love to hear the very most

    Is the beat of quiet that sounds

    When my words become the lettered ghosts

    Of everything I am: realized and unbound.

  • The Truth I See

    I will feel unsure and question my decision

    But love you without end and without condition

    I do not love you because you are flawless

    I do not want for you to change

    I love you because you are you

    And I see that you find that strange

    I do not persist because you are perfect

    I do no persist because you are not

    I persist because you are both

    As we have loved and as we have fought

    I don’t pretend to know what will be

    If you and I will always be “we”

    You are the song I sing, even off key

    The very dark and light of you

    Is the truth that I see.

  • Sean

    Do you know that you’re my undercurrent

    The humming charge by which I thrive

    Though you flickered out long ago,

    I love you like when you were alive.

    I think the best loves steal up

    When one is preoccupied and unaware

    To not be searching, yet be missing,

    The other who is not there.

  • What I Deserve

    Terry Pajuk

    The town works department had damaged our sidewalk,

    I don’t recall what it was that they had been doing.

    But the sidewalk was crashed and smashed

    Into shapeless shards; in short, it was ruined.

    My mother, Terry was her name,

    Called the town to have them repair it

    A man from the town came

    He blanched and began to swear that

    He couldn’t do the job that day,

    He’d have to return another time,

    And that the damage wasn’t that bad, anyway,

    For now, the sidewalk was fine.

    My mother set her jaw

    And the two of them went back and forth.

    She pointed to the damage she saw,

    And spoke louder and with more force.

    Eventually, the man gave up or gave in,

    He would do the job, starting anew,

    He recognized that he would not win

    As he started to turn, he committed his final sin:

    He snidely said: “Are you happy, lady?

    You’re getting what you want!”

    My mother, correctly pinning him as lazy,

    Boiled over, like lava from a font.

    She held his gaze but was silent all the same.

    Then, with pointed finger, she said with steely reserve,

    “No. I gave you my name.

    And I’m not getting what I want. I’m getting what I deserve.”

    Then she spun like a top

    And slammed the door in the man’s face.

    It was her coup de grace

    The sound that door made.

    My mother died too young,

    She was only thirty four,

    But she’s my hero

    For deciding to slam that door.

  • Just Your Friendly Neighborhood Goth Girl

    Just Your Friendly Neighborhood Goth Girl

    I am an English major with a minor in Creative Writing: Poetry Track at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. I was an early talker and language came easily to me, making me consistently the most advanced reader in my class. As a young girl, I preferred reading books over any other activity and I would usually be found in a corner of the playground with Laura Ingle Wilder’s Little House in the Big Woods in hand while the other children ran around. I would even read on my walk to school, having memorized the cracks in the sidewalk so that I never once stumbled or fell.

    I was placed in the advanced track during my elementary school years and took AP courses in high school. I attended Douglass, Rutgers New Brunswick but left because my undiagnosed ADD made completing my course work impossible. I bounced around a number of retail jobs when, at about age thirty, it dawned on me that I love English and always have and that I wanted to work in publishing as a proofreader/ editor. I have applied for summer internships with the Big Five publishing companies in Manhattan; let’s hope I land one!

    This blog is meant to be a portfolio of a diverse cross section of my work: mainly poetry, a few short stories, and academic compositions. It goes without saying that I hold the rights to anything and everything published within.

    If you wish to contact me, I may be reached at:

    sgibney@scarletmail.rutgers.edu or

    sarahjanegibney@gmail.com

    The black rose fave icon is property of Richard Hefny from vecteezy.com