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Set not thy foot on graves;
Hear what wine and roses say;
The mountain chase, the summer waves,
The crowded town, thy feet may well delay.

Set not thy foot on graves;
Nor seek to unwind the shroud
Which charitable time
And nature have allowed
To wrap the errors of a sage sublime.

Set not thy foot on graves;
Care not to strip the dead
Of his sad ornament;
His myrrh, and wine, and rings,
His sheet of lead,
And trophies buried;
Go get them where he earned them when alive,
As resolutely dig or dive.

Life is too short to waste
The critic bite or cynic bark,
Quarrel, or reprimand;
'Twill soon be dark;
Up! mind thine own aim, and
God speed the mark.
 Jan 2015 Abigail
aa
certain pieces of me
still want you by my side
still want to hear the sound of your voice
but they're like fallen leaves in autumn
while the wind that blows and scatters them
are the pieces of me
that never want to see you
and never want to talk to you
ever again
took me a while to realize that you're a really big piece of an ungrateful little ****
 Nov 2014 Abigail
Louise Glück
In our family, there were two saints,
my aunt and my grandmother.
But their lives were different.

My grandmother's was tranquil, even at the end.
She was like a person walking in calm water;
for some reason
the sea couldn't bring itself to hurt her.
When my aunt took the same path,
the waves broke over her, they attacked her,
which is how the Fates respond
to a true spiritual nature.

My grandmother was cautious, conservative:
that's why she escaped suffering.
My aunt's escaped nothing;
each time the sea retreats, someone she loves is taken away.

Still she won't experience
the sea as evil. To her, it is what it is:
where it touches land, it must turn to violence.
It's in his shadow we plead
Under his wrath we bleed
His destruction leaks hate into the weak
Leaving the unsubstantial reaping his critique
His actions scorned through years of neglect
It's in his perception only, that we become wrecked
Why do we follow knowing wrong from right
Pushing those we love away from the light
His power is without doubt equal to the greats
Although derived from stray minded it opens the gates
The gates into the souls of those who are tattered
Turning old memories to ones now shattered
Although through it all, we have nothing to fear
For he is nothing more than a broken mirror
It just takes practice to realize his weakness
All his power is nothing to the strong but bleakness
It's in his own prison he will rot
Although it's up to us to become the Juggernaut

-Joseph B Schneider
© Joseph B Schneider. All rights reserved
 Jan 2014 Abigail
Gabby O
Valuable
 Jan 2014 Abigail
Gabby O
What of the broken
the dull
the old

What of the useless
the few
the dim

Do we call them gems?
For their vintage is value
or are they garbage
their rust is their death

but it's only ever
one or the other
and I wonder if we
are the same as the broken
the same as the dull
the same as the old

Perhaps we grow useless
and few
and dim

and we someday become
one or the other
 Jan 2014 Abigail
Gabby O
Shallow
 Jan 2014 Abigail
Gabby O
One
Have you taken your meds today?
You're drinking your anxiety like an alcoholic swallows gin
And I can see the panic in your shaking hands
but the only healing is filled with anti-depressants and sleeping pills
and numbness makes you feel like a corpse

Two
You've gotten a new scar
you show me with wet eyes
And I pretend I don't notice
Because I might just end up shouting
Because I hate that you can't stop
Because I hate that I can't understand
And you think that I didn't care

Three
You look so alone
and I try to come closer
but you've torn a gap so wide between us
that my screams sound like echoes of yours
and I couldn't find a way to reach you
so I stopped trying

Four
You called me heartless
not with your voice but you screamed it in your movement
I felt it in every corner of my mind when I stopped spinning
and all I could think about was you
and I couldn't hate you for your cruelty
because you don't understand what you've done to me

Five
I felt you crashing
not right beside me but a million miles away
and you fought so hard
but couldn't keep up
you said you'd handle it
I should've known you were lying
and now I can't hug you like I used to
and you no longer show me your scars
Not quite towards any one person, nor about any one thing.
 Aug 2013 Abigail
MorganP
I don’t know you
What you liked,
What you hated,
What you wished for
I only know the surface of the vast ocean that made you, you

I never wondered what made you this way
Only that you where
I hated you,
Loved you,
Admired you

I never thought to take the time
To stop and really try to understand all the many layers that made up the person who I most resembled

You are quick to anger, easy to please, and a terrible, terrible mother
But you are my best friend, the one who I could run to,
Even when I knew you couldn't help

I told you
What I hated, what I liked, what I wished for
I told you what I wanted you to know

I don’t know you
Now I never will
 Aug 2013 Abigail
just me
The girls that look like me talk like me they walk like me we hate each other but cant let go because we all need someone that wont let go. We stand together and fall together. They pull me down just to watch me fall how could we be so close and so far apart at the same time we have the same first name people call us Cailean. Angry Cailean, Happy Cailean , Sad Cailean, Mad Cailean, Lost girl, confused her poor her sad her she feel bad for herself but doesn't want to she wants to set free let me be happy. Them + the others makes me mad. Them + them+ me +them all the time = the way I am cant leave these girls because they are me. Faliing. We fall together but I always go first. This might not make sense to you but its the way i feel.
 Aug 2013 Abigail
Jago Lantz
We walk the day through concrete forests
Our heads held high in earnest unrest
Our hands are shaking, happiness restrained
Ah, in this world we feel so pained

Smile, boy, smile
Come, sing with us for a while
We'll dance when it rains
We'll sneak onto trains

Your story is the one being played
Don't struggle, it's how we are made
Our existence is everything
But a single pain is nothing

Laugh, girl, laugh
We'll help you run half
Life is a long road
We'll carry some of your load

You trip and you fall
Yet, you cry for none at all
You're strong, you're brave
But there's no one left to save

We walk the day across scarred dirt
Our feet that drag always hurt
But come, and please feel relieved
In this twisted world of make-believe
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