Oh Captcha Squares
Oh captcha squares, oh captcha squares
What are these objects in your frames?
Oh captcha squares, oh captcha squares
Why must they gotta be the same?
Cars and busses, traffic lights
Bicycles and motor bikes
Crosswalks, signs, and steps and stairs
Fire hydrants everywhere
Boats, planes and parking meters
Tickets, fines, misdemeanors
Why are you so fond of these?
Why are palms the only trees?
Oh captcha squares, oh captcha squares
The pictures that you trap in there
Oh captcha squares, oh captcha squares
Depict a world so bleak and bare
Arid, bland, unaesthetic
Barren, drab, unpoetic
Sterile, cold, antiseptic
Unconcerned, apathetic
Somber, sad, and desolate
Woeful, bland, pedestrian
Weary, grim, dreary, hopeless
Grainy, gray, out of focus
It doesn’t need to be this way…
Many things could fill your squares.
Why not fill these things in there?
Tambourines and castanets
Bass trombones and clarinets
English horns and piccolos
Harpsichords and xylophones
Fiddles and Irish whistles
Jingle bells and finger cymbals
5-string banjos, mandolins
Saxophones, accordions
Desmond Tutu and Mandela
Cassius Clay and Cinderella
Charlemagne and Genghis Kahn
George and Ringo, Paul, and John
Twain and Edgar Allan Poe
Wayne and Brando and Monroe
Ida Wells, Frida Kahlo
Steinem, Parks, and Ferraro
River Thames and stormy seas
Winter wrens and bumble bees
Cyprus, ash, oak, fir, and pine
Sassafras, willow, and lime
Daffodils and magnolias
Marigolds and begonias
Cabbage, beets, and potatoes
Carrots, beans, and tomatoes
Oh Captcha Squares, Oh Captcha Squares
If your pictures must remain
Oh Captcha Squares, Oh Captcha Squares
How aboutcha change the frames...
Captcha circles, captcha suns
All the captcha olygons
Wiggly captcha twiggly lines
Twisty captcha twiny vines
Captcha diamonds, captcha hearts
Captcha clovers, moons, and stars
Captcha ribbons, Captcha lace
Captcha colored string bouquets
Oh Captcha Squares, Oh Captcha Squares
We understand you're here to stay
Oh Captcha Squares, Oh Captcha Squares
Just be more creative, OK?
Jinxed jesting jejune junior jobber...
just jabbering gibberish (A - J)
Again, another awkward ambitious
arduous attempt at alphabetically
arranging atrociously ambiguously
absolutely asinine avoidable alliteration.
Because...? Basically bonafide belching,
bobbing, bumbling, bohemian beastie boy,
bereft bummer, bleeds blasé blues, begetting
bloviated boilerplate bildungsroman,
boasting bougainvillea background.
Civil, clever clover chomping, cheap
chipper cool cutthroat clueless clodhopper,
chafed centenary, codifies communication
cryptically, challenging capable, certifiably
cheerful college coed.
Divine dapper daredevil, deft, destitute,
doddering, dorky dude, dummkopf Dagwood
descendent, dagnabbit, demands daring
dedicated doodling, dubious, dynamite,
deaf dwarf, diehard doppelganger, Doctor
Demento double, declaring depraved
daffy dis(pense)able dufus Donald Duck
derailed democracy devastatingly defunct.
Eccentric, edified English exile,
effervescent, elementary, echinoderm
eating egghead, Earthling, excretes,
etches, ejaculates, effortless exceptional
emphatic effluvium enraging eminent,
eschatologically entranced, elongated
elasmobranchii, emerald eyed Ebenezer,
effectively experiments, emulates epochal
eczema epidemic, elevating, escalating,
exaggerating enmity, enduring exhausting
emphysema.
Freed fentanyl fueled, fickle figurative
flippant fiddler, fiendishly filmy, fishy,
fluke, flamboyantly frivolous, fictitious,
felonious, fallacious, fabulously fatalistic,
flabbergasted, fettered, flustered, facile,
faceless, feckless, financially forked,
foregone, forlorn futile fulsome, freckled
feverish, foo fighting, faulty, freezing,
fleeting famously failing forecaster, flubs
"FAKE" fundamental fibber fiat, fabricating
fiery fissile fractured fios faculties.
Gamesomeness goads gawky, gingerly,
goofily graceful, grandiloquent gent, gallant,
genteel, geico, guppy gecko, gabbling gaffes,
gagging, gamboling, gestating, gesticulating,
garlic, gnashing, gobbling, gyrating,
gruesomely grinning, grappling, gnomadic
giggly, grubby, gastrointestinally grumpy
gewgaw gazing gesticulating guy,
geographically generically germane,
gungho, grave gremlin, grumbling, guiding,
guaranteeing, guerilla gripped gatling guns
ginning gumpshun.
Hello! Herewith halfway harmless hazmat,
haphazard haggard, hectored, hastily,
hurriedly, harriedly hammered, handsomely
hackneyed, heathen, hellbent hillbilly, hirsute,
hidden hippie, huffy humanoid, hexed, heady,
Hellenistic, holistic, hermetic, hedonistic
heterosexual Homo sapiens historical heirloom,
homeless, hopeful, holy, hee haw heretical hobo.
Indefatigable, iconographic, iconic, idealistic,
idyllic, inimitable, idiosyncratic, ineffable,
irreverently issuing idiotic, indifferent, inert,
ineffectual, ingeniously iniquitous, immaterial,
insignificant, indubitable, inexplicable, ignoble
itches, ineffectually illustriously illuminating
immovable infused ichthyosaurus implanted
inside igneous intrusions immensely
imperturbable improbable.
Jovial jabbering jinxed January jokester
just jimmying jabberwocky
justifying jangling jarring juvenile jibberish
jubilantly jousting jittering
jazzy jawbreaking jumble
justifying, jostling, Jesus;
junior jowly janissary joyful Jekyll
joined jumbo Jewess jolly Jane;
jammed jello junket jiggled
jeopardized jingled jugs.
The Trolley Man
Have you met the trolley man?
His daughter's been selected.
Her hair is black and eyes are cyan,
Such beauty is expected.
The trolley man's been here before.
It's nothing more than work.
But this cult he cannot ignore,
It's worth going beserk.
Many bodies line the track,
But trolley man will drive.
It mattered not who he attacked,
As long as May's alive.
The missing members won't be found,
But at least May is safe and sound.
Oops
I thought it was a support group.
They seemed SUPER cool
about the whole virgin thing.
Not like my friends at school.
Everyone wearing monochromatic
loungewear reminded me of
Kim, Khloe and Kourtney.
I felt immediately at ease.
I'd trust those three with my life!
When I told Katie I was still a virgin
she laughed and told the whole school.
When I told Cloud I was still a virgin,
I was given a throne and cake!
It wasn't until the throne reclined
to become an altar
that I became a bit suspicious
My attempt to rise from the altar
was stopped by Cloud and her sister wife,
Asthma.
I grabbed a piece of cake from my pocket
(which I had been saving for later)
and whirled it at the cultists heads.
Fleeing the campsite, I found my phone
and furiously downloaded Tinder.
I would not let this happen again.
(To me at least)
some kid
the last time i stood in that hallway and stared at the locker it felt naked. it was years ago, now, at least three. but it was scrubbed clean. the sharpie that my class spent three years endlessly replacing as custodians scrubbed it off and we fought to keep you, to keep the only symbol we had left of you, alive. pink hair and guitars and matchmaking and roller skates and bubblegum contests and skateboards and gym class and singing in the car were only memories.
that locker was real. the sharpie was real. that plaque with the numbers that you boasted about being in order, '678' when it was assigned to you was real. endless notes filling it up and up and up were real and if i had been the janitor i think i would have cried throwing them away knowing they contained the grief and heartbreak of a large chunk of 368 fourteen year olds. but you're still 14, nearly a decade later now. you always will be because of stupid mistakes, like driving with a permit at 2 am to hang out with your girlfriend and speeding away from the cops with no headlights on because you had weed in the glove compartment and you were young and puerto rican and scared of becoming just another number in the system but in doing so you became a statistic of a different kind. metal screeched and headlights shattered and your car
exploded. you died on impact.
"hey, some kid from your school died last night in a car crash."
heart racing, beating out of my chest, no breath.
did i know him? yeah, I knew him. he was my friend. "Not well."
and all i could think was making sure that my other friend, the girl who was even closer to you, knew too. she didn't. i had to be the one to tell her. and i sat in driver's ed in that class without you, the 14 of us and our teacher and he cried. and we all did. and i left the room and i sat in the hallway and sobbed and some senior sat with me, a stranger i don't even remember, i just remember that she asked me "were you Wil's friend?" and i only cried harder and she held me.
three months later, I heard that sentence again. so casual. so nonchalant. "some kid from your school died. killed himself." as if it were no big deal. my heart stopped, once again, and this time with even more dread because this time i knew. i knew it in my soul it was one of yours, Wil.
every time i visit home, which is almost never but just often enough to be noteworthy of mentioning, i stop by the playground. the same invisible struggle we fought for years against the maintenance crew to keep that date inked in sharpie on that yellow swing set. we didn't want anyone to forget. but they have. no one knows, now. they don't know their children play where boy in a suit chose his end to be. and maybe they shouldn't.
and two months after that when we came to school and halfway through the day the word got around that there was someone on the water-tower across the street, that someone climbed up and up and up and we didn't know who, we did inventory, we texted near half of our grade trying to make sure we were all safe and accounted for and 'was she sick today?' 'has anyone seen him this morning?'. we all ditched class and we sat in the workshop and we held each other and we cried and we said it out loud like a mantra, 'not again, not again, not again' as if saying it together out loud would make it come true. somehow, it did. they got to him in time.
this isn't some beautiful piece of writing. this is ugly. it's 1:34 am and i am awake thinking about the events of a decade ago and i haven't thought about that year in awhile but i don't think it will ever go away. i'm friends with our driver's ed teacher on facebook now. he blamed himself for your death. but he's married, now, and he has a toddler. life moves on. we moved on.
but i want you to know that we didn't forget. sometimes it feels like it was all a dream, like maybe i'll wake up in someone else's life. my roommate gets annoyed when i check on him. he didn't come home last night but i just wanted to know if he was still alive. i don't think that will ever go away either. and i will always yell at my friends when they text & drive and i will always tell them 'be safe' and i will always make sure they've got where they're going, and i will always check in to see how they're doing and i will never in a million years make them feel like they can't come to me. no good could possibly come from what happened to my friends. but as long as i live i swear that i will not let others repeat your mistakes.
Has Anyone Seen
my innocence? Kept
in this old gray box;
a fistful of dry leaves
turned up to receive
rain.
It must have died
planted deep
in the ground
I forgot I‘d buried
it in, now a decayed
and long
disintegrated memory.
or did I lose it long ago
in my 77‘ Nova
with you in my lap
shifting gears, pulling
the hill in low gear?
hands on my shoulders,
hips swaying to the 80s
lost in the rhythm
of your thighs.
