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 Jan 1
Nat Lipstadt
flipping channels,
odd conjunction of random itinerants,
mix and mismatched, blend and burr, and the
combination of irritants, annoyingly raucous
pester the barely warmed brain,
by informing me to solve for X,
combine and contrast,
throw all into the blender,
add Fage yogurt, and some chill
ice with interracial combo of
black, blue & red berries
and pour it on you head…

and a breakfast poem is served up…

the utter urgency for civility
rings alarm bells, for it is so threadbare a quality these days, and it is worn by so
very few, and I ponder,
how the quality of
civility
could be so lost,
when I diagram said word,
see it
so clear
April 13 2024
 Dec 2024
BipolarBear
'I think we should stay friends.'
I knew this was coming.
And yet these words sting like
shards of ice to tired eyes.

My heart freezes over,
but my legs slowly melt.
Now knee-deep in defeat,  
I curse the day I fell.
 Dec 2024
Emma
I learned my body in the cold forge of silence,
where love was a weapon, and the wound was mine to carry.
You taught me how to hold my breath
while your absence pressed itself into my bones—
a relentless tattoo,
a map of what I would never become.

Your voice was a fist—
your quiet, a sharper blade.
Every word was a verdict,
every glance, a guillotine,
and I learned to die in pieces,
small enough to fit inside your shadow.

At night, I swallowed your name like glass,
shards lining my throat,
cutting open all the lies I could not afford to believe.
I ran until my feet forgot the ground,
until the screams in my chest became a rhythm,
a hymn to the emptiness you left behind.

Who am I, but the daughter of droughts?
The child of cracked earth and barren prayers?
You taught me hunger—
the kind that devours its own mouth.
You taught me thirst—
an unending ache,
parched for a tenderness that never came.

But I am not your ruin.
Not your silence.
Not the bruise of your forgetting.
These hands, scarred and blistered,
are mine—
their strength shaped in the absence of your love.

You will not rise in me,
you will not bloom.
I carry your name like a wound I refuse to close,
like a truth too sharp to heal.
But still, I stand.
Still, I breathe.

I am the fire you could not extinguish,
the flood you could not drown.
I am the hunger that consumes its own shadow,
the storm that grows louder in the stillness.
No chains, no roots, no shame—
just the echo of my own voice,
a voice you tried to bury
but could not silence.

No mother, no tether, no guilt—
only this scar shaped like freedom,
and I wear it like armor.
 Dec 2024
bulletcookie
Approaching low these frothy ancient walls
this wooden haul goes groan in hesitation
plays sunken sounds abaft of sodden planks
against wet, wind whipped sheets, slippery rope

Pilot eyes a narrow channel to this coffin's drift
a wheel in fate's hand, spun for all hands deck
one cold sea surge, after another, vaults over
sailor's gritting teeth with sea tears on pale cheeks

Fathoms drowned, as currents swell in rhythmic dance
Davy Jones awaits for those to decompose by chance
a gold doblón, a flipped up sueño, when maelstrom ends
drifting in lines of seaweed lime, or port of heart's content


-cec
 Dec 2024
Cné
Grief's canvas stretches wide and bare
A blank slate waiting, with no one to share
The brushstrokes of memories, once vibrant and bright
Now muted and faded, in the dark of night

The paint of pain, a deepening hue
A color that clings, to all I once knew
The strokes of sorrow, bold and free
A portrait of longing, for what used to be

The process of healing, a slow reveal
A layering of emotions, a complex feel
The colors of love, still shining through
A radiant glow, in all I once knew

The subject of my heart, a beloved face
A masterpiece of memories, in a sacred space
Though faded and worn, the love remains
A portrait of devotion, through joy and pains

The final brushstroke, a gentle touch
A whisper of acceptance, a heart that's too much
The portrait complete, a story told
A testament to love, that never grows old

In this masterpiece of grief and love
I find solace, sent from above
A reminder of what was, and what will be
A portrait of devotion, for all eternity.
Collaboration's implicit excitations explicate expectations
Unity's myriad augurs geomancy's indications
Demagoguery's ostensibly intuitive impetus coordinations
Extravagantly exorbitant panaceas appreciate exaggerations

Prolifically profuse profundity's autonomous gestations
Empirically emulate epistemology's exogamous creations
Intrigue's imperative promulgation's quantum fecundations  
Fealty's ephemeral enunciation's explicit complications

Hypercritically exponential prophylaxis protocol's interpretations
Sacrosanct unary's preternatural predilection's extrications
Eventuation's evocative illuminism avant garde's ostentations
Corrupt costume counselor's indicative explications

Assimilation's synthetic synthesis' ascensional implications
Ominous phenomenon portrayal detinue's integrations
Umbral ultraism's penumbral platitude's objectifications
Futurity's spontaneous flamboyance's apotropaic expiations
Annex annul, implicite implement implicate!!!
 Dec 2024
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How  fleeting the sandy grains that drop
through narrow remembering of yesterday
ephemeral flowers that graced a table vase
now dehydrated still life, garden scattered

How the vaporous past presumes the future
lensed by present reflection’s myopic trust
further receding into hammered glass icons
erected edifices to a longing life portrait

Unpredictable, unstable, a butterfly vortex
arising from a bottle of smokey possibility
constant in ever capricious choice and predictability
a mutual mutability of then and now’s  protean toss

-cec
4/29 - NaPoWriMo -  Taylor Swift has released a new double album titled “The Tortured Poets Department.” In recognition of this occasion, Merriam-Webster put together a list of ten words from Taylor Swift songs. We hope you don’t find this too torturous yourself, but we’d like to challenge you to select one these words, and write a poem that uses the word as its title.
 Dec 2024
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Jupiter is star-like tonight
lumbering in the darkness
throwing its gravity about
picking on moons and asteroids
while brewing storms and lightning

From afar it seems crystal
sharp, isosceles rays of light
an ornament in the cosmos
fingers point, faces uplifted amazement
in cold clear black silences

Io, knows its tyranny
stretched and pulled for millennia
calderas of lava rage and flow
blood blasts of internal strife
turning in unknown tranquility of space

-cec
 Dec 2024
bulletcookie
You sent me a photo of your legs
resting on beach white sand
as though this was enough of you

In the distance was the Gulf expanse
womb to hurricanes and lost ships
beckoning soulful sailors to their fate

In salty heart and mind, fortunes for love
waterspout hours of landed musing
those appendages of family and anchorage

Longing for the rest of you, sun burns
bottled hopes float endlessly adrft
each lap and wave in an ocean of desire

-cec
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