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pcb Jul 2021
When we walked hand in hand somewhere in October,
I felt like the pulse was elapsing.
But when it's just you and me—
voice stolen, head empty,
my heart started to beat as it had always been
just as the first time you sunk deep right in.

I tried.
I try, at least—
to keep us abide.
But again, just as we fell so hard in May,
now the flicker is fading away along a distant noise
As you let me 
slip away from your arms.
Jason Feb 2021
🍄🍄🍄
🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄
Sometimes I say things,
which make me look like a ****.
I contend that I am merely mushroom-shaped.
Which isn't surprising considering that I was kept in the
dark and fed nothing but ******* for twenty five years.
Maybe it's time I step out into that sunlight.
Shake off all
the shadows
of lies given
to me as gold.
Incinerate the
vampires fangs
out of my arteries.
Turn this mushroom
into a mushroom-cloud.
💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥
💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥
© 02/23/21 Jason R. Michie All Rights Reserved
Janna B Jan 2021
My (ex) mother in law says
She loves me,
she won’t say any more but
worries I’ll miss her boy
one day in the future.
I was his pride and joy.

My mother says
maybe the women of the past
tried harder.
Is there anything to rescue,
women must try harder than men.

I haven’t worried about missing him;
until now.
The relief has felt so liberating.
Relief from that pressure
to carry it all, do it all,
with a smile, without love.
A smile, a gesture, care my way
would have been fuel for a year,
but the silence felt suffocating.

I’d rather love myself
than smile and pretend that I’m loved
by the husband in my bed.
For our kids, for me, I’m better alone.

Now, though,
that worm in my ear.
Will I regret this more next year?
More than the grief of this family broken?

I cannot see that I will.
Joy is breaking through;
but —
What do I do with this worm?
My mothers. Make me worry about my choices; but oh my goodness I’m finally making progress and I feel so much lighter and able to heal.
andTilly Jan 2021
nettle once brittle
kneels on burning snow
dandelion grove
breathing ashes bitter

an elephant-like hole in the ground
don’t look in on the strangers
eyes wide from the danger
disappeared with all the sound

a doll holding a hand
hands sleeping in, tight
in their hold, no fight
just dance with the twirling sand

nettle once brittle
kneels on empty plane
once nest’s now a grave
full of ashes bitter
This poem got to be a song in the end. Describing a post-war ambience, it is influenced by Middle Ages, LOTR & similar movies, Fallout game series... not to forget this almost after-war-ish covid situation, deaths & lockdowns... Its feeling also corresponds to the moment, when Disney's Mulan enters a burned-out village.


You can listen to it on https://youtu.be/vtfJclYFcIc

©2020 andtilly.com
Red Dec 2020
Someone else’s immortality is the heaviest thing to carry
When you left, I realized I would take you with me forever
A weight on my shoulders and a hand in my own
Barely there but never fading

I carry you in the way I see your silly habits
Chewed up nails, toe tapping, off key whistling
When I hear 90s rock on my messed up car radio
I hold you close when I see women with bruises
Wishing, forever begging
that I could have saved you
I reach for you when it’s three am and I dream about our sleepovers
I miss your tired eyes, the coffee you kept in your cup

I carry you in three little rings, along with everyone else
A shirt you gave me and jeans I stole
A necklace you handed me, always on display
I miss you in the static of the phone call when I told you I loved you
I miss you when I smell the ink of the letter you gave me years before you left
The only proof I have that you loved me too

The weight of your immortality is the heaviest thing I’ve carried

Knowing every day you are lost, as I am without you
Begging and wishing with all my heart that you are safe
Your immortality, will be my burden to bear.
Knowing every day you are no longer the person I grew up with.

I will carry the memory of you forever.  

I will grow older,
I will marry and have children and accomplish my life’s goals
And you will forever be stuck 18
Cheap hair dye, battered sneakers, and your dads old car
You are immortal in me, never changing even as you do
And it kills me to think how wrong I might be

Your immortality is the heaviest task I’ve had.
Yet I carry on;
Committing you to memory
What an honor it is to carry you
Recently lost my best friend of six years, I miss her so much.
Carlo C Gomez Aug 2020
St. George, Utah, 1953
Look out your window
What do you see?

***** Harry
And winds that mean no harm

Nice big mushroom cloud
Gonna dust your farm

ee-I-ee-I-o
During the early 1950s, St. George, Utah received a majority of the fallout that occurred at the Yucca Flats northwest of Las Vegas during the nuclear testing period of weapons development. The winds routinely carried the radiation to this area, resulting in a significant increase of cancer in the general population.
Dominique Jul 2020
you ask me what I do
when the acid rain comes
to leave ulcers on my cheeks
roughens my skin like eczema,  
teases blood from pockmarked flesh

it's simple and pure, like snow
i feel my best stood at the window
tongue melting with ashen flakes
hailing the nuclear fallout

the orange sky is a cigarette from god
we drag on it like starving lions on antelope
there is spice, sunlight in the dust
it'll clot up the throat, but it's worth it for

the guilty pleasure of knowing
everything else is crumbling, more
"2020 is the last year, anyway"
Michael R Burch Apr 2020
Milestones Toward Oblivion
by Michael R. Burch

A milestone here leans heavily
against a gaunt, golemic tree.
These words are chiseled thereupon:
"One mile and then Oblivion."

Swift larks that once swooped down to feed
on groping slugs, such insects breed
within their radiant flesh and bones ...
they did not heed the milestones.

Another marker lies ahead,
the only tombstone to the dead
whose eyeless sockets read thereon:
"Alas, behold Oblivion."

Once here the sun shone fierce and fair;
now night eternal shrouds the air
while winter, never-ending, moans
and drifts among the milestones.

This road is neither long nor wide . . .
men gleam in death on either side.
Not long ago, they pondered on
milestones toward Oblivion.

Keywords/Tags: oblivion, milestones, markers, tombstones, radiation, fallout, nukes, winter, path, destruction, Armageddon, Apocalypse, nuclear, a-bomb, atomic bomb, hydrogen bomb, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Bikini Atoll, Manhattan Project, Trump, planet, earth, war, violence, America, environment, holocaust
Carlo C Gomez Aug 2020
April showers
bring with them atomic flowers,
strewn about Elena’s hair,
her forest painted
the colors of Red Square.
Children play in the fun zone
where radiation particles
are active and windblown,
forming flakes on rosy cheeks,
floating down toxic creeks.
The smell of graphite burning in a kiln
makes the nostrils flare,
what’s this metallic taste in the air?

Clouds drift over weddings
and Ferris wheels,
rain falls black and surreal.
Mother goes about her routine
humming dirges like a godless fiend.
36 hours to figure the science,
past time to evacuate
a city in brisk silence.
Brides scream and children cry,
from the fall-out they mummify.
Pripyat’s dying metropolis
they euthanize and lay to rest
in a sarcophagus.

And atop her shallow grave,
deep within the exclusion zone,
sit the sickened stems
and decaying fragrance
of nuclear flora over bone.
Here in the jackal's sanctum,
a capsule car on the lifeless
pleasure wheel
swings like a pendulum,
over a wooded lot with not a soul in sight,
only fresh morbid blooms
that glow in the night.
Karliah Sep 2019
The steel will always be a reminder of our past,
As will the buildings broken burned,
Radiation penetrates even the thickest of walls,
So society moves on.
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