The Joe Van

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Category: Poetry

  • Organic

    Organic

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    Arranged soliloquies offered up deranged estranged pedantic pleas, So please don’t beam across the scene like I’m some means to mean what it gleans. I don’t know how to flow, Like two stones without a home. Crack my back for harder prose. I’ll get back to your stack of bones, But until then strap those…

  • Waters

    Waters

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    The open waters pull you in to a land yet known in space and time. It yearns, the land. The pull we feel comes from eons of yearning. All it wants is to be found by you. Just you and only you. We all feel it but ne’er seek it. The question is not who,…

  • Carapace

    Carapace

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    I was born into a opened, burning world. Its wrath is old, tenable, and ceaseless. My fingers coil and brow furrows. I struggle to rise. The air weighs heavy on me. I pain to see through muddied light, but it seems, sadly, only the same sits staring on the horizon. Yet something stirs. Now change…

  • Détente

    Détente

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    Searing combustions bombard my insides in a fit from two things that don’t mix having to share the same space. I hold them inside me in an unstable alliance that neither wish to hold. One part of me wishes to rip my skin off and be free, smoke, drink, fuck, and spew out any words…

  • Cessation

    Cessation

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    Hostilities come and go, competitions rein for a time. People fall in love, a criminal causes crime. Children grow up, and mothers grow old. The air ever blows, yet our lives eventually unfold. Cessation.

  • Album Covers of our Cosmos

    Album Covers of our Cosmos

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in ,

    This is visual poetry, not brought to you by myself but by NASA. I just thought I’d share it on my website. These images have been rendered in all their beauty for free to the general public; the ones below are my favourites of the bunch. You can find all of the posters by searching…

  • EEEAAA!

    EEEAAA!

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    Jumping stretches my aching body! Here now I have some. I can’t dance but I’d love to try. The trees call me to climb them, who am I to deny? Eeeaaa do I love a good run from sun rise to sun done. Crackle like a fire when it’s time and sing like a choir…

  • Factions

    Factions

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    by

    Joe Van
    in

    Friends and functions make us proud. Work can lull but the nights are loud. We band together for hype and ooh rah’s. Then factions break by un-greased hoopla. Piece it back, we do it together. Make others wonder if they can have forever. What we are is special, under one’s boots and teeth. Be the…

  • Careless

    Careless

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    Streaks of something yesteryear born still may sit unattended on one’s cheek. Made were things to use yet now no light casts down for dust’s sake. We pass the garbage in search for new only to leave a slimy trail of destruction. Making hair twisting screams curdled by the few who care. Where do we…

  • Teem

    Teem

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    Power moves through muscles, priming them to flex. We teem with energy, waiting for the right time to pounce. People prop up and spring, growing taller to jump higher. Such whims want nothing more, but to teem with excitement at the chance to pour.

  • Little Seats

    Little Seats

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    We perch ourselves, as little people in little heads. We operate little bodies, made up of little cells. We roam between little sheets, covering a little planet. We soar on a little planet, chasing a brilliant star. Little seats make for grand sights, if so we choose. The brilliant stars dance, and we are alive.…

  • Periphery

    Periphery

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    The walls of my vision split like an atom, bursting a billion stars like plastered plastic barbies reduced to pellets. Gaseous particles bomb the dark for their friends to see, in the cold of an endless night for a tiny fleeting light. My hearing shatters at the point of heart break, falling deaf on the…

  • Life In

    Life In

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    Leaves rustle with the wind, and we are blown. Nature breathes in, we are exhaled. Oceans churn, and we are born. Life out is life in. One side of a coin does not exist without the other.

  • Ghosts Go

    Ghosts Go

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    Feeling a fleeting, fringe, fraction of fire ignite your soul is reason enough to chase a ghost for the rest of your life. Freeing frantic midnight fights from your soul is reason enough… enough to let a ghost go.

  • Vistas

    Vistas

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    Seeing the sky with new eyes means shedding the old, the pain is searing but what comes post revealing, are vistas oh bold.

  • Lyrics

    Lyrics

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    Yeah I’m here and we’re here and we’re seemin’ okay but we don’t know what we’re doin. No we don’t know what we’re doin. No we don’t no we don’t no we don’t no we don’t. And we find ourselves in our town in our time and we’re workin with what we’ve got. And we…

  • Turning and Churning

    Turning and Churning

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    Folding and pelting, greasing and gassing, holding and passing. Letting up a tad to see it spin out, grabbing on tight and trying not to shout. Bingeing on the hard stuff, dying just to last. Crying with cuffed hands now, hell has come and passed.

  • Clock

    Clock

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    Tick-tock goes the clock for all but the dead. It goes up and down, fast and slow but never stops. Craters fill, mountains fall and I feel so small. Could causality be the only thing to cause anxiety? If ever the clock went back, only for a day or two, how neat would it be…

  • Strange

    Strange

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    Strange it always comes in the night, where all my mind that eyes can’t hide reveal the side thought sterilized; a doctor and a mister. Two sides to a coin, once believed one eloign, but nevermore, lest delusion be reborn. They live inside me, fazed to a non-existent centre, inside which I might find peace…

  • Life

    Life

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    Love, liberty, longevity, peace, play, pursuit of happiness, ponder, pretend, crease, create, craft, craze, cause, dig, drive, desire, daze, dim, somber, soft, sensible, shared, swell, sweet, savour, reflect, remiss. Live.

  • Silencio

    Silencio

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    Screeching peeling arrest! Putang ina the sounds roar. Thumping and rustling, and scratching and rumbling, and clatter and pounding, and searing and hissing, and whining and BOOM! Silencio.

  • To Tides

    To Tides

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    Like mirrors in every way, they hold up ourselves. Crashing or calm, to low or high. We are life, so they. Be.

  • Open

    Open

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    She opens me up like the warmth of spring to a tulip. It had taken a long time to start crying again; since almost dying in the snow. I melt. It feels so good when it happens, and we make love. We sweat and squeeze. Taste each other. Feel the other’s curves with our hands…

  • Up

    Up

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    I race this high, and I don’t know why. It feels good, anonymity of a hood. My loved ones shan’t know, like discovery of a cove. Darkness shrouds it, as the feeling clouds it. Peace will not hide, what the high surly finds. It must have an end, to this high I defend. One day…

  • Melancholy Flower Infinite

    Melancholy Flower Infinite

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    Paradox. Abstraction. Imperceivable. Impossible. Grandiosity. The raw beyond. These concepts that will never be answered. They lay on those that seek. Is there intention in existence? If there was, how did such to intend come to be? It was intentioned as well, well, what about that which gave it? If not, then why it in…

  • Soothing Edges

    Soothing Edges

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    When did the sun leave me? The dark is so sudden. It shocks by contrast of a stark blue glow. The glow clicks and rattles quietly so as not to disturb those sleeping. Global communities soothe away the edges. It feels nice to hurt a little, be it a sting behind the eyes or a…

  • Budding Romance

    Budding Romance

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    I spend nights alone. I spend days with friends, only sometimes. Days pass. Nights crawl. My hobbies lie, and parents spy. Who’s that? A face. A name. A friend. She’s cute, but no way, taken. Her name is Hope, Forsaken. I see trouble, no, prosperity from lonely. We develop, like film. Feel the screen. Hear…

  • Grandeur

    Grandeur

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    A small child watches the sun set. They feel amazing, alive; filled with a visceral sense of awe. In that moment, everything is beautiful. The outline of the sun becomes visible in its dying descent. It is a waving sphere of burning glory, stretching across the universe and back. The child looks on for as…

  • Fine! I Don’t Know

    Fine! I Don’t Know

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    I can’t sleep! In my mind I have no distractions, and I feel everything. Since I was born I could feel everything. The whole world opened up to me and it was too much to bear. Growing up I imagined myself fearless, but I’m grown now, and I know so much more. How can any…

  • The Deer Peace

    The Deer Peace

    —

    by

    Joe Van
    in

    Sparks let out light in the dark. Dear the coming summer, please bring me peace. Shine on me joy; something of my childhood, when everything was so big, and new, and endless. I can remember the feeling, but I can’t FEEL it anymore. Winters have made me bitter and lame: a cruel indignation; a three…