AsPoet

The Sophist

2014-08-28 12:00 am

Ban people from the internet like Lorne Michaels banned Milton Berle

Gord

2014-08-21 12:00 am

I can understand why your parents abused you but i still dont understand the molestation bit

Drunk on Stage and Punching other Girls

I innocently sat sidelined,
While sidewinder missiles,
Blackened and filled the sky.
They saw no oversight.

Then calamity, personnel,
Call out and rome fell,
The claim don't prose well.
Well, I suppose they don't.
But I never was no poet.

0

The Sophist

2014-07-24 12:00 am

Gord

2014-07-22 12:00 am

The Sophist

2014-07-07 12:00 am

The Sophist

2014-05-26 12:00 am

The Sophist

2014-05-20 12:00 am

Kodyboi

2014-05-07 12:00 am

The Sophist

2014-04-22 12:00 am

Gord

2014-04-11 12:00 am

Gord

2014-04-09 12:00 am

Dusti Rodes

2014-03-05 12:00 am

Reflections (On the demise of a Neighbour)

Dusti Rodes

2014-03-05 12:00 am

" This next piece of writing, contains strong sexual content material and graphic language. Many people find it both harrowing and disturbing. It depicts and catalogues a series of true-life events. The names have been changed to protect the innocent, of which there is one; the laws of libel prevent my naming and shaming the guilty; of which there are many."

* Reader discretion is MOST STRONGLY advised - As it may easily offend. For this I make no apologies. Events like these are happening HOURLY all over the world at this moment in time, and society as a whole SHOULD be doing more to prevent such misery "

........................................

" IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE, .....CAN IT?..."

It's Sunday,
She's staying at dad's flat tonight.
She adores him;
With the trust that is naturally instilled
In a child.

Dave, her father,
Plays cards with his friends;
While she watches, smiling.
The pot is short;
It's his call.
He must make amends.
Forty pounds is the bid.

With a knowing nod,
Colin folds his hand;
And taking hers,
Leads through the door
To she knows where.
The now empty bedroom
That she sometimes has to share.

Shush - don't make a noise;
Your stifled cries,
Will frighten the toys.
Who sitting in silence,
Can only watch.
As Colin slowly unzips his trousers,
And loosens his belt another notch.
Her favourite doll, alone in the corner,
Draped across the wooden chair;
Can but bear silent witness
To the saddening pain
She experiences there.

Next day,
She is driven to school;
By her dad.
In a tatty Volvo.
Be-spotted with rust coloured
Splodges of primer paint.
A stark anachronism
Of Swedish sexual liberalism
The grubbiness of the grey,
Mirroring the semen-soiled nightdress;
Of the night before.
The paint spots,
Ghostly echoes
Of dried blood stains
Splattered on the white fabric.
Heralding her lost innocence;
That she would need to wash out
Later in the day.
When she finally returned
To the living hell
That served as home.

He pulls in at the pavement
Saying yesterday was fun
And that they should do it more often.
He tells her to take care of herself.
Sick joke, what?
But no-body's laughing anyway.
Deprived of decency
By her father
In that he doesn't even open the door.
She rises from the well-worn seat
And gets herself out
Just like countless
Whores before.

In some final bizarre sexual gesture
As he slowly drives away
He also discards the now empty
Crumpled, finished cigarette packet
Aimlessly through the window
Into the uncaring street.
It in its turn, would be picked up
By some scavenger hard up
On his or her luck
Anxious to discover
If it held any small delight.

And on discovering not, it would
Be consigned as worthless rubbish
And be discarded yet again
To a life on the streets.
Until eventually, battered and crushed
By countless uncompromising souls
It would cease to be recognisable
For what it once was.
Circles within circles.
Such is the life we lead.

Four friends, sit
Sharing girlish giggles.
Talking tampons and towels.
Discovering the inward
Functioning of females
For the first time.
Smiles, over sharing
Secrets of sexuality
With their mothers.
But she's not laughing.

Sitting in the classroom
She is longing to tell, someone,
About the happenings
Of the previous night.
To be able to unload
All that crushing fear;
That is building up
Within her frightened frame.
Afraid to go home,
She hangs around after class
Anxious to explain her reasons.
But no-one is listening.
Nor can they read
The pleading in her scared eyes.
So she goes home alone, again.

Sitting watching television,
A break from the drudgery
Of endless days
Doing household chores.
Fear strikes her heart
As she hears the key
Entering the outside door.

Because the washing has taken so long
And about it, she cannot tell;
The dust she hasn't cleaned
From the TV
Only causes her mother again to yell.
Her anger quickly turns to rage;
Followed closely by a beating,
And another verbal tirade.
Then follows the shouting
And the slapping.
The angry name calling
Infers that someone is a whore.
Leading to her being pushed downstairs
And landing on the hall floor.

She pushes Amy into the cellar cupboard,
Then callously locks the door.
Leaving Amy, cowering in huddled fear,
Upon the dark, coldest floor.
Later, in her room,
Curled up, tearful,
Trying desperately to block out the pain.
Lies listening to her sad sobbing.
She closes her eyes.
Escaping sleep is not easy in coming;
But further along the hallway,
Someone else is.
Urgently calling for Amy
Beckons her to her mother's bed.
There, between thrashing thighs,
And deep moaning sighs,
Amy is forced to give her mother
Sexual 'head'.

Coming home,
To the usually empty house,
She cannot help but notice
The smart car
Parked outside.
Putting her key
In the door,
As she has done
So many, many times before;
She is met by Geoff,
The new man, in her mother's life.
On the surface
He seems very nice.
Picnics of strawberries, wine
And chocolate ice.
And even washing up,
Afterwards.

School sports day comes,
Giving her the chance
To exercise her rights
As a child;
To youthful fun.
Sack race successes,
Loud accolades.
Hiding the depths of depravity,
That lies dormant.
Buried deep within.

It starts with a present,
At bedtime.
" Put it on, and come and show us how it looks."
Simple games,
Amongst the adult friends.
Pictures are taken.
Childish at first,
It soon turns nasty;
Leading to lewdness and lechery.
Removing Geoff's trousers and pants,
While her mother looks on;
And laughs.
Then starts the painful ordeal
Of nightly rape.
And the utterances of the threatening lie
That if she ever dares to tell someone
It would surely cause her to die,

After a time,
She can bear no more
Of Geoff's disgusting behaviour.
Goes to her father's workplace
Hoping on hope
That he'll prove to be her saviour.
She tells him all
That's been going on;
And could she come to live with him,
Please?
Fraught with anger,
Fired by fear;
He goes and gives Geoff
A beating with a garden spade.
In his frustration at failing
To protect his daughter
From this pair of human animals
With their filthy habits so degrade.
Then he storms out,
Leaving Amy to receive
Yet another beating
From her mother.
That leads her to being locked
In the cupboard
Once again.
The broken shard
Salvaged from the shattered
Kitchen window
By which her father had entered
Proves to be the key
To successful self mutilation
To which Amy administers
Readily.

When the time comes
To leave her old school
The teacher's reports proclaim
That Amy is both clever and wise.
But they all still
Just sit and listen
While her mother
Continues to tell
The same pack of lies.
How Amy sits reading
Quietly, in her room,
For much of the time.
And how she's always
Out playing with her friend;
But that is untrue
From beginning to end.
The teacher says Amy could do
With really coming out of her shell.
Hopes that she'll enjoy her new school;
And with that, she wishes her well.

Sitting with her new found friends,
Thinking that this place,
Could indeed be really cool.
Then one says,
Someone is trying to greet her,
From a van.
Parked outside the school.
She peers across the open courtyard.
At her father, who's come to meet her.

Full of reasons,
Why he hasn't been more often.
Excuses that money has been
So short lately;
Sometimes he hasn't eaten.
Now he's come to take her out,
About the true reason for his motives,
There still exists more
Than a little doubt.

Having bribed her,
With a Big Mac meal,
With Coke and a Cadbury's
Curly Whirly,
He apologises that he has no more sweets;
But if only he had more money,
He could afford to buy her
Lots of treats.
Then the unsubtle suggestion,
That she could really help Daddy,
Just by working the nearby streets.

Standing on a dim
Lamp-lit street;
In her denim jacket,
And her flowery
Short length skirt;
Wearing virginal white gym socks,
with matching plimsolls.
Her long hair , shining,
Looking very much her age.
Having only turned thirteen,
But for a little while.
People, from which she
Should get only love;
Blatantly exploiting her sexual genes.
Although she cannot spell Paedophile;
She is painfully aware of what it means.
" For a wank, charge'em twenty five quid,
If they want a blow-job, charge them thirty"
Practising that will corrupt her mind;
Into believing love and sex,
Is always something
That is sordid and dirty.

A sexperienced competitor,
In these matters,
Gives her, and her dad;
What amounts to a friendly warning.
This particular spot,
Is her pitch.
And her pimp
Will not be so tame;
So her father,
Just moves on with her,
To somewhere else.
In his dubious quest
It would seem he has no shame;
With his repeated attempts,
To get ' on the game'.

The local lorry park,
Proves a likely playground;
For the sort of games,
He has in mind.
Providing a service,
For all kinds
Of men.
The young, the old, and the lonely.
Not the actual full sex, though:
But just your blow and hand-jobs only.
Making sure that the clients,
Come in style;
Being very sure to use a condom,
All the while.

He does a deal,
Just for a full blow-job;
" You know how, don't you,
just go and suck his prick;
It'll be all be over in a minute!"
But it doesn't just take that quick.

Squatting,
She gives a blow-job
To an unknown,
Standing man.
While her poncing pimp
Of a dad,
Sits smiling,
In his grubby little van.

Suck, suck, sucking,
On a dirty, crusted,
Foul-smelling prick,
That's making her feel
So, so sick.
Wondering why it is
That when you
Want them to,
they can never come
Really quick.

And when it's finally finished;
She finds the smell of sweat and semen,
Has left her feeling
Really sick.
Dave, buys her silence,
With a fiver.
Then he takes her back home;
Double quick.

Dusti Rodes (2009)

POSTSRIPT TO ' IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE. .....CAN IT? *

" Children have the right to be listened to. The messages that they give us are often painful and disturbing, and challenge our capabilities to actually hear what they are in fact saying and take them seriously.
Our conditioned instinct is to recoil from what we are hearing and deny the reality of what is being said.
The act of sexual abuse of a child involves a fundamental betrayal of trust, and an abuse of power, which has devastating consequences for the child. Undermining the basic requirements of a child for relationships built on trust, that are both dependable and loving.
This gives rise to the premise that children not only have to be heard but also need to be healed from the trauma of such experiences.
The child's right to be respected as an individual person should be unquestionable; but it is a long way from being generally accepted within our society."

0

Dusti Rodes

2014-03-04 12:00 am

In fields of Barley

Whittlin Wood

In fields of Barley 

 If I tried to tell you truthfully
 You probably wouldn't understand
 Just how good it feels right now
 To be trespassing in the fields
 Of the Farmer's fertile land.

 Watchin' the Hawk huntin'
 Field mice, voles and the odd rabbit or two,
 Who in turn are out in the morning sun.
 Foraging for food to keep their families fed.
 Feeding on the filling green ears of barley
 Growing gracefully in a swaying breeze.

 Maybe she'll end up catching
 A dozing dormouse
 Taking forty well-earned winks
 From the furore and frantic frenzy
 Of activity that fills the field.

 Walkin' with my four-legged friend,
 Teachin' him of fetch and catch.
 While all the time, the real lesson is
 Learnin' to like the lead.

Dusti Rodes (2013)

0

Dusti Rodes

2014-03-04 12:00 am

The Lady in Red

Living with Lepers

The Lady in Red

 Inspired by John Ogden's painting ' Be she a Falcon or a Dove ' ( 2009)

 Puddles of pigment
 Of red and white,
 Bloom like flowers in the artist's palette
 Likened to a small, wild garden.

 She poses provocatively,
 Dignified but still self-conscious,
 Against the wide blue screen
 That forms the night.

 Robed in ravishing red,
 She stands bathed
 In Lady Luna's soothing light.
 While the evening star
 Plays shimmering consort.

 She did not fail to see
 The symbolism held
 Within the artist's eye.
 The meanings of her life,
 Captured there before
 The paint could ever dry.

 The Venetian mask
 Behind which she hides,
 Masquerades the pain of her past,
 Blood-red.
 And the golden promise of things to come.
 Are reflected by the candle's gentle glow.
 Lighting the way to her future.

 Marley said we all create
 Our chains of pain.
 Forged one link at a time,
 By our misery.

 Hers was a string of Pearl.
 Individual incidences,
 Joined by circumstance;
 Seeking to keep her,
 Forever fettered to the past.

 But the key lies in the roses.
 Poetic echoes reverberating .
 Be she a Falcon or a Dove ?
 A raven-haired temptress,
 Or an angel of love?
 A scarlet woman or a painted Lady?

 Hence from now onwards,
 She will be known only,
 As the Rose.


Dusti Rodes (2009)

0

Dusti Rodes

2014-03-04 12:00 am

Blowin the Blues

From ‘Blowin’ the Blues'

#When a woman gets the blues, she hangs her head and cries, when a man gets the blues, he boards a train and rides ... # (traditional blues song, author unknown)

Down in the Deep South, it can take three days to even SEE a train going through a station. Let alone have one stop there.

I guess his story started on that fateful night back in sixty-three. Someone had just killed Kennedy. John F, that is. He was shot while driving in a motor cavalcade down in Dallas. It sparked off a whole lot of conspiracy theories for decades to come. Even after the death of J.Edgar. Maybe he took the truth to the grave with him! Who knows?
I never really knew him then; I was but a little picca ninny on my momma’s knee, down on the plantation. Barely finished suckling on her teaties. Papa said he was ‘nothing but a no-good nigre,’ and wouldn’t mount to a pile of beans. Just goes to show how wrong some people can be.

Sometimes Life can deal people a low card.
With him it had thrown away the rest of the pack and was only using a deck of deuces and threes with an occasional four. And it wasn't shuffling them, too well or too often.

He was what the white folk call 'coloured' not 'Black'. A mulatto and an albino one to boot. It was probably down to the unfortunate circumstances of his conception. His mother was 'Red' from Rhode Island. An 'easy lay' or so they say. But that was no good reason for her being gang-raped on the streets of Harlem now, was it?
His startling appearance often provoked a strange reaction in most people. Raised eyebrows, spinal shudder and shoulder shrug of revulsion, or a sharp intake of breath on initial sighting were common.

Standing a shade under seven feet, even with the stooping shoulders and strange way of holding his head slightly forward and lent to the left. Developed from years of attempting to listen with his good ear to what lesser sized folk were trying to tell him. His two hundred and sixty pound plus of bone and sinew barely covered by his leathery weather-wizened skin that had been exposed to the extremes of the elements for far too long.
Long days of toiling at whatever work he could get. Bitterly cold nights spent in any shelter he could find. There wasn't any fat on that frame. Thirty-seven years of constant shortage of food had seen to that.
Cody Jarrel, cut a vision once seen, that few would forget easily. If ever....

Cody sat slowly drinking the dregs from the bottom of the empty bottles left by paying patrons of the bar.
He shuddered so violently, it wracked his frame to it's very core.
Sheltering on the back-stoop of the Shanty Shack, from the rain that had been incessant in its task of soaking him while he tried to seek some sleep to rest his weary body throughout last night.
It had succeeded, so he let out another shiver that clinked his spine.
Down in the doldrums, yet again, the future was looking real bad for him. And little did he realise it then, but it was going to get even worse before it could get better. Much worse.

Dusti Rodes (2007)

0

Dusti Rodes

2014-03-04 12:00 am

In the Wind

Fixing Fences & Painting Pickets

In the Wind

The lonely nights. They were the worst part. The long hours spent building the bike. Burning the midnight oil until the cold light of dawn took over the illuminations.
He sat, oil-stained mug in his grease-decked ham of a fist. Java's best, steaming, burning his throat raw with every lug. Was this his thirteenth or fourteenth today? He couldn't remember now. The massive doses of caffeine failing in their allotted task of feigning off fatigue; the accumulated grounds covering the mug bottom in a remnant of Mississippi mud, deep, from down in the Deltas. The first finger and thumb of his free hand were deftly putting the finishing touches to the joint he was rolling. It was a little art he'd picked up during his frequent stays at Her Majesty's Pleasure at various establishments around the country. His makings lay strewn over the old table that served as totem-factotum to his needs. Diner, workbench, even pillow on multiple occasions over recent months. He raised the cigarette to his lips, and with a single action that comes with years of practise, sealed it with his saliva. With it now ensconced in his mouth, he reached for the lighter, lit it, and took a deep toke. The sweet smell permeated his flaring nostrils, while he drew down the smoke deep into his lungs. As he exhaled, his heavy eyelids closed momentarily. The necessary effort required to open them again proving too much in his tired state, he allowed his mind to wander.
Where had it all started? When was it now? Pour quoi? The combination of drugs and fatigue was fast inducing sleep, which only served to confuse the thought processes he was desperately trying to assimilate to no avail it seemed.
The auto-jumble sale in Birmingham, that was it!
That's where he'd first seen the bike, and realised its potential. An ex-WD combo. A 1948 six hundred cc, single cylindered side valve, from the Birmingham Small Arms company. With a camouflage green paint job. 'Distinctive', the vendor had called it. Hardly Milwaukee Iron, but beggars can't be choosers, can they? He'd only paid two hundred quid for the lot. And the seller had thrown in set of front suspension springer forks from a 1949, M20. The 500cc model that the dispatch riders normally used in the wartime. They were standard equipment on both the combination and solo set-ups. And they were chromed already! Save him a fortune that would. He'd altered the rake on the steering to an inch and three quarters over stock. That'll give him that low-rider effect he wanted. Just like Peter Fonda's in the film.

Dusti Rodes (2007)

0

Dusti Rodes

2014-03-04 12:00 am

Strange Times

Fixing Fences & Painting Pickets

Strange Times

Yesterday, while painting the south-facing picket fence in the searing heat of the afternoon sun, my back was burnt to blisters. My hair took on the texture of dry matted straw and was bleached a further two shades of blonde through the holes in my faithful ol' hat.
Today, I'm waiting for the water in the kettle to come to the boil in order to make myself a cup of skinny latte and the heat from the two bars of the toaster doing the bread seems to be warming the whole scullery. The rain, driven by a whistling wind, continues to batter itself against the panes that yesterday shone with the reflections of rippling sunlight.
We are indeed living in strange times!

Dusti Rodes (2007)

0

The Sophist

2014-08-28 12:00 am

No comments yet.

Gord

2014-08-21 12:00 am

No comments yet.

The Sophist

2014-07-24 12:00 am

No comments yet.

Gord

2014-07-22 12:00 am

No comments yet.

The Sophist

2014-07-07 12:00 am

No comments yet.

The Sophist

2014-05-26 12:00 am

No comments yet.

The Sophist

2014-05-20 12:00 am

No comments yet.

Kodyboi

2014-05-07 12:00 am

No comments yet.

The Sophist

2014-04-22 12:00 am

No comments yet.

Gord

2014-04-11 12:00 am

No comments yet.

Gord

2014-04-09 12:00 am

No comments yet.

Dusti Rodes

2014-03-05 12:00 am

No comments yet.

Dusti Rodes

2014-03-05 12:00 am

No comments yet.

Dusti Rodes

2014-03-04 12:00 am

No comments yet.

Dusti Rodes

2014-03-04 12:00 am

No comments yet.

Dusti Rodes

2014-03-04 12:00 am

No comments yet.

Dusti Rodes

2014-03-04 12:00 am

No comments yet.

Dusti Rodes

2014-03-04 12:00 am

No comments yet.

Format Manuscript