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badwords Jan 2024
There is a space for lease.
Unreciprocated pain, ceased.
Unreceived 'why's.
Now, 'goodbye's.
Betterment, sweet release.

If she is what you find.
I beg you to be kind.
She knows not what to do.
Too many identities, askew.
In her, a unique mind.

There is a place to rent.
Her heart not yet spent.
I take my leave.
Nothing to grieve.
Ships at night, sent.

I hope that there is something there.
Something left for one to care.
My fantasies, adrift.
A weight I could not lift.
Still some love to pair.

Be well.
badwords Feb 2021
Hey, it's seen...
Now it's scene!
Autocorrect grip  
Fat, oily fingertips
Slip across the screen

Avant garde stream
Somewhere in between
Blank white slate
Senses abate
Rancorous dream

Voices scream,
"What does this mean?"
"It means nothing"
A hollow ring
Some conscious clean
badwords Nov 2024
No storm will part for you.
No sky will split to lend its hand.
The world does not pause for prayers,
nor shift its weight to ease your burden.
You walk, or you don’t.

Power sits silent—
not in clouds or distant thrones,
but in the rhythm of your blood,
the grit of your teeth,
the steadiness of your tread.

The stars may hang as guides,
but they will not steer.
Their light is yours to chart,
their meaning yours to claim,
or ignore.

No force bends the wind to your need.
It moves as it always has,
carrying whispers, not answers,
and leaves the echo
for you to shape.

Your hands are the mapmakers.
Your feet know the ground.
The weight on your shoulders is yours
to shed or carry.
The climb begins and ends with you.

Do not wait for fire
to burn a path.
Do not ask the storm to clear.
The path is only yours
when you forge it.
Don't wait, do!
badwords Jul 2023
The sun sets
Into bed
The darkness creeps
Let us sleep

Secrets untold
Unconscious unfold
The hand of Fate
A dream awaits

The curtain rises
All sorts of surprises
For harm done
The cache of a setting sun

The blood, it flows
As violence goes
Viscera, shows
Subconscious woes

Am I alive?
Am I dead?
The shame arrives
My wake-less head

The past screams
To know what it means
Memories stark
Afraid of the dark

Do I wake?
Or am I not at all?
Just a mistake
Freedom to fall

The hole... is mine
An insipid rhyme
An architect, by design
To seek and never find...

The solace of a monster
badwords Nov 2024
Mother.
Refrigerator.
Sustenance.
Traitor.

Father.
Power.
Insole­nce.
Dominance.

Weak.
Lost.
Confused.
Abused.

Circles.
Lost.
Pa­rents.
Choose.

Deaf.
Blind.
and.
Subdued.

A profane arrogance, entitled attitude.
Weep is an effort to be a stark and evocative piece that delves into the generational disconnects and familial dynamics that perpetuate cycles of division and misunderstanding. Through its attempt at concise and rhythmic structure, the poem hopes to highlights the failings and contradictions of parental figures (the "Boomers" and "Gen X") and the resulting confusion and disillusionment of younger generations ("Millennials" and "Gen Z"). The imagery of sustenance, power, and dominance serves to critique the inherited attitudes and systems that reinforce alienation and entitlement.

The artist's intent is to shine a light on the perpetuation of inherited "like-think"—a pattern of beliefs and behaviors passed down uncritically across generations. By acknowledging these entrenched dynamics, Weep becomes a call to action for reconciliation and understanding, encouraging a collective effort to break free from destructive cycles and foster unity. It challenges readers to lay down their preconceptions and examine the behaviors that divide us, offering a sobering yet hopeful perspective on the potential for change.
badwords Apr 15
You arrived
like breath drawn
before the world had lungs.

Not loud.
Not sudden.
Just known.

Like hands that fit
before fingers are taught
what touching means.

We’ve been this before.
I don’t know when.
But my bones do.

My mouth
does not remember
your name—
only the taste
of syllables
I’ve missed
since the last time
we let go.

You looked at me
like you’d seen me
fall before.
I looked at you
like I knew
how you break
when no one is watching.

There’s no story here,
just a pull—
not magnetic,
but cellular.

And a quiet
that builds a room
for both of us
to tremble in.

You,
telling the night
it doesn’t need
to be brave.
Me,
learning the sound
of not flinching.

Time and time again,
we find each other.

In every life
our paths cross—
two souls entwined,
learning more to return.

To grow each other.
To know this feeling
and better express it.
badwords Jan 2024
Love? Is senseless abandon.
Love, is bicycles, tandem.
One person, climbing a *****.
The other owns the rope.

Love is compromise.
The unwelcome surprise.
A construct of lies.
For purpose, we try.

Love is commerce.
Watching a hearse.
Everything you lost.
The total of the cost.

Love is blindness.
Brief notions of kindness.
Tragedy, behind us.
An obligatory must.

Love is slavery.
Elected misery.
A contract to not be free.
We submit, voluntarily.

This is the last time.
She walked out that door.
My reasons, mine.
She asks for more.

I wish her well.
The desired hell.
A flippant subscription.
Greener-grass perscription.

An insipid dance rhythm ignites.
Contrasting all our fights.
I turn and I speak,
The words come weak;

"Baby, don't hurt me"
"No more"
And everyone loses their collective ***** all at once!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEXWRTEbj1I
badwords Jun 10
I wandered in where winds grew tame,
My boots half-mud, my throat all flame.
A village small, but sky so wide—
And there she was, with hands in rye.

She did not ask my name or song,
Just passed me tea, both steep and strong.
And though I came from lands unkept,
Her gaze was calm. The earth had slept.


She taught me how to grind the root,
To draw the balm from bark and fruit.
In her, the silence sang of rain—
A pulse beneath the orchard’s vein.

I tuned her father's fiddle bones,
Brought voice to what had once been stone.
She wept not once—just breathed and played,
And grew in light the dusk had made.


She grew the field. I grew the flame.
She called each beast, I carved each name.
Where she gave bread, I gave belief.
Where she gave balm, I offered grief.

And joy, and awe, and all between—
The dreams of places never seen.
She fed the belly. I fed the fire.
One kept the hearth. One climbed it higher.


“Stay,” she said, “and plant with me.
Let song take root beneath this tree.”

“Come,” I said, “and walk the wind.
Let fields be tales we never penned.”


But roots, like roads, cannot be one.
And dusk will bow to either sun.
She kissed my hand. I kissed her brow.
We loved in full. That was enough.


I go where roads forget their ends.
She stays where earth renews and mends.
Yet in the hush between two strings,
Her name is what my silence sings.

And in her fields, if wind is kind,
My stories echo through the rind.
Some loves don’t need a common ground—
They bloom where motion turns around.
badwords Nov 2024
The fence posts stand, bleached and brittle,
a tidy graveyard for dreams not their own.
Each board a promise of security,
painted white by hands that never bled,
guarding a silence that screams privilege.

A lawn mowed to uniformity,
as if clipping blades could trim truth.
Beneath, the roots tangle in soil tilled
by those unseen in the storybooks,
their spines curved by centuries of labor
to raise a house that barely held them.

Inside, the air is stale with whispers
of manifest destinies and invisible hands.
Windows frame a world distorted,
a lens of 'normal' that filters out color,
washing the streets in sepia nostalgia.
The picket fence becomes a cage
for those who see the bars.

But who built this town?
Not the architects of ignorance
who claimed the blueprint as birthright.
No, it was those in shadow,
their brilliance stolen to light the chandeliers
of men who never thanked them.
It was the voices erased
to make way for the monotonous hum
of a narrative too pale to reflect reality.

Progress wears brown hands,
scarred from the heat of engines
that drove the country forward.
It sings in languages
that don’t fit neatly into syllabaries,
its rhythm syncopated, refusing the march
of conformity.
Progress carves its name
into the very foundations of a nation
too proud to look down.

And now, the town crumbles,
its picket fences splintered
by the weight of unacknowledged history.
The 'white normality' that painted
its walls in monochrome
is revealed as smoke—
a ghost-town haunted by the very people
who gave it life,
only to be exorcised.

Yet those ghosts do not wail.
They speak, steady and firm,
their presence undeniable.
They are the architects now,
designing futures that will not crumble,
drawing plans that see the beauty
in every hue.

And the white-picket fences
are repurposed for something new,
their shards forged into tools
to till a soil fertile with truth,
where a garden of multitudes can finally bloom.
badwords Jul 2023
Alarm! Alarm!
A call to arms!
Think more intrinsic
Tequila until we are sick

Abate and wait
For goodness sake
Reality: a plate
Hunger: No can take

And the food comes
It is reactionary, arbitrary, mind-waste
We toil our sums
Effort boiled down to a modicum

Idiot #1 to Idiot #2:
"I like your name"
"We are the same"
"I am sad because my name means 'nothing'
Idiot #2: my name also means nothing--we are the same let us hive-mind for grout pleesurare"
badwords Feb 17
He knew he wasn't perfect
But he always did his best to get under the surface
Not a saint, not a serpent
He just wanted everyone to be impressed with him as a person
So when she came along with the sunbeam
Self-esteem stopped making nothing outta somethings
Leaving the scene was unseen, I mean
It was the first time he ever felt the need to keep the gun clean

Do the math
He knew he had to choose a path
Gotta get that girl, gotta make her laugh
Gotta shake the past and move forwards
Gotta make this last, it feels gorgeous
But she had a lover in the mid-west
Never figured out how to get him off her thick chest
Just like that everything is gone
He didn't wanna but he had to learn the words so he could sing along

Everything is all I have to give you
And I'm afraid it ain't enough
And you're not so young that you believe me
Just because I say it's love
And even if they come to steal you tomorrow
I'll know my smile was yours
Go ahead and chase your dreams and your freedom
Run, run wild wild horses

You can't tame these horses
You can't tame these horses, no
You can't tame these horses
You can't tame these horses

Sometimes it can be so nice, right?
Sometimes she feel herself turn into the wife-type
And when it's dark, sometimes is the nightlife
But most of the time she doesn't even feel lifelike
She got a man but he thinks he's a star
And it feels like she has to compete with the bar
She keeps up her guard but it seems so hard
Momma never told her she would see those scars

Every night he's out doin' who knows whom
While she cries along like a new show tune
Last call past, is he comin' home soon?
Or is he gonna run away with the dish and the spoon?
She'll realize she don't want that clown
Leave those shoes at the lost and found
He wont catch on until she's not around
After somebody else already locked that down

We sing...
Everything is all I have to give you
And I'm afraid it ain't enough
And you're not so young that you believe me
Just because I say 'it's love'
And even if they come to steal you tomorrow
I'll know my smile was yours
Go ahead and chase your dreams and your freedom
Run, run wild wild horses

You can't tame these horses
You can't tame these horses, no
You can't tame these horses
You can't tame these horses

He didn't want her to see him leave
And he couldn't keep sittin' there watchin' her sleep
Cause he knows if he hangs out for a few hours
He'll dig another hole tryin' to plant some new flowers
But the sun don't shine under the table
He's tryin' to hold his life together with staples
No investment cause he's incapable
And he's on the outro of being labeled available

The word on the street is his girls comin' back home
No more alone, no more sad poems
No after-bar calls to the cell phone
Its time to walk a new path and grow a backbone

Shoved into the big book of just friends
Wondering how he would look as a husband
And everyone of 'em he ever allowed to love him
Now watching from the crowd tryin' to be proud of him

They say...
Everything is all I have to give you
And I'm afraid it ain't enough
And you're not so young that you believe me
Just because I say it's love
And even if they come to steal you tomorrow
I'll know my smile was yours
Go ahead and chase your dreams and your freedom
Run, run wild wild horses

You can't tame these horses
You can't tame these horses, no
You can't tame these horses
You can't tame these horses
Wild Wild Horses by Atmosphere

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXa0HxMzRHE

Check Out My HePo Mix-Tape:
https://hellopoetry.com/collection/135545/badwords-music-lyrics/

You can't tame these horses
badwords May 31
. Canto I: The Movement .

Sing, O depths, of the sundered and stitched
of lovers who fled the lattice of men.
They bore no dowry but discord and blaze,
cast off from the courts of the land-born kin.

She rose from a brine-locked temple,
crowned in eelbones and saltglass,
her voice a harpoon through silence.
He came from a pyre of failed gods,
drunk on the ash of forgotten cities,
carrying a heart wrapped in nettle and wire.

They met in the undertow—
not with grace, but with rupture.
He called her flame in the throat of the sea,
she named him the reef that bleeds stars.

They kissed in the eye of a cyclone,
fed each other names never spoken twice,
and shackled themselves in sinew and storm.

Let it be known: they did not set sail.
They were flung—howling—from the world’s wound.


. Canto II: The Recognition .

Seven moons passed through their lungs
before they saw.

Not eyes—not bodies—
but the myths coiled inside each other’s ribs.

She bore a temple in her stomach
where drowned saints wept for the living.
He kept a cemetery behind his tongue
for all the truths he’d butchered with silence.

They laid bare their reliquaries,
cracked open their chests
like oysters of ruin—
and still, they reached.

No mercy. No disguise.
Only pulse and plague.
She screamed her mother’s curses into his jaw.
He fed her the names of storms he never wept for.

Still—
they danced.
Still—
they sank.
Not from weight,
but from knowing.

And the sea, jealous of such raw mirror,
split its throat open,
so even Poseidon would forget peace.


. Canto III: The Resolution .

They did not break.
They were not mended.
They blurred,
like blood in tide,
like prayer in fog.

The sea claimed their names,
then forgot them—
but the bones remembered.

Now coral grows from their vows.
Now whales dream their sighs.

She became the thrum beneath shipwrecks,
the voice in a sailor’s last breath.
He became the itch in the compass,
the pull toward madness at dusk.

If you listen—
truly listen
you may still hear it:
a hymn of wire, salt, and marrow,
carried on a wave older than time.

Not warning.
Not lament.
But tribute.

To the wire-bound lovers—
to the myth that dared to bleed
and called it sacred.
A salt-etched epic in the tongues of leviathans

⚔ ACT I: THE MOVEMENT

("Of Departure, of Fire, of Teeth")

This is the voyage—the hunger, the pact, the leap into chaos. The lovers are not yet divine, not yet doomed—but becoming. They tear from their origins, riding the edge of creation, mouths full of storm and yearning.

🜂 ACT II: THE RECOGNITION

("Of Mirror, of Maw, of Memory")

Here is the gnosis. The mirror. The ache of reflection. The sea begins to whisper, not just with gods, but with ghosts. They see each other fully—and cannot look away. Love becomes blade, becomes psalm, becomes revelation.

☠ ACT III: THE RESOLUTION

("Of Ash, of Drift, of Song")

Not death. Not salvation. Something more cursed and blessed. They do not win. They do not fail. They become—the myth, the wreck, the hymn in the kelp. This is love as legend, not because it endured, but because it transformed.

Bonus Round::

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/5074338/ballad-of-the-wire-bound-lovers/

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/5074340/silk-ash/
badwords Nov 2024
How do you write?
You scarcely know—
A tide of self,
A shallow flow.

Humility’s mask,
Yet smugness blooms.
Words claiming depth
But filling rooms—

With echoes of "me,"
And truths self-proclaimed,
While privilege sings
Unrecognized, untamed.

"Stay out of trouble,"
The simplest creed,
From hands unsoiled,
Unaware of need.

To hold the heart,
To "worship" deep,
Yet gaze from towers
Where suffering sleeps.

You name life’s woes,
Its "beauty and pain,"
Yet ache for applause,
Not the broken chain.

Truths wrapped in ribbons,
So neatly spun.
Words dance for mirrors,
Blind to the sun.

A masterpiece, you say,
Not life—but "you"?
Oh, human spirit,
What hubris ensues!

For art is not
A throne to ascend;
It breathes for others,
Not self to defend.

The day is yours,
But whose lives are waste?
Speak not for all—
Your truth is misplaced.

In Shakespeare’s shadow,
Your pen takes flight,
But art is no pedestal;
It is the fight.

So, hold your words,
And hold them true:
Not just for self,
But for all who view.

Let privilege fade,
Let self be small—
And only then,
Your art stands tall.
Just what the 'Doctor' ordered.
badwords Jan 2023
The words are all read
Children tucked into bed

Placation without heart

Those rats breed
On incestuous feed
No parent or decree
Feral dogs, free

The pups come amiss
Identities adrift
No attempt to uplift
Another brokerage stiffed

And they roar
And they howl
For the ever-late 'now'

And they feast
And they dine
That semblance of 'how'

They devour one-another
A cannibalistic cover
Reward for an absent mother
Station for no other

Bark.
Bay.
Cry.
You've devoured your reasons why
badwords Apr 2024
It opens up
Tabs for days...
And for what?
Placating malaise?

Dumb is dumb
Make it two!
You already won
Foot fits the shoe

Music Plays

I try to keep calm
But, the music plays
Alone, with no one
We dance and sway

And we move
Aliens on vacation
The 'native' groove
Outcast - Validation

And we dance!
'Oh, what a dance!'
Definition, extraterrestrial
On Earth: 'Nothing Special'

An Ad ploys itself
Across the Mega Feed™
Those who have
Those in need

Those who want
Sycophantic addiction
Goods & services taunt
A misdirection

A definition without meaning
Slave to a leaning
Knowledge not gleaning
Parts and their machining
badwords Jul 2023
Your struggle is yours
And yours, alone
A cacophony of chores
Relationships, atone?

A cycle to the brink
A played sum, a conundrum
Infinite noise to think and think
The dull beats of a dumb-drum

And you wish it
As hard as you can
And you miss it
With every falling stand

And you see now
At the beginning
And understand how
There is no 'winning'

Just losing ground

I rest now, far away from 'home'
Incredible distance  from the human 'race'
A final shelter of solace, to be alone
The void of the negative space
badwords Feb 2021
She said
No more
You're dead
On the floor
Help me
if you can
Let's see
Where you stand
Elysium reach
A bartered sum
Contract breach
No kingdom come
A contract askew
Payments are due
A tithing relents
So we lament
The absence of you

— The End —