Confessional Poetry - Hello Poetry

Sep 2021

Graff1980

I tightened the circle
let the lines loosen,
then in my state of confusion
pulled them tightly.

I subtracted loved ones nightly,
despite my social media
connections
my real-life affections
became whispers in
the distance from
previous family members
and friends I’ve loved.

With a noose I constricted
till it was too perfect.
Then I ****** it.
It was like when
I was biting
my tongue
just hard enough to hurt
but not enough to cut
that slippery tool off.

I choked and cough
felt the loss
as I tried to break
my own neck.
I signed my own check,
by happily self-secluding,
and the excuse I was using
was the best scape goat.

As grief scraped my throat,
I tried to cleanse my palate
stirred my mind like a salad
all vegies and greens mixing,
lying and saying it was healthy
but really just tricking
myself into doing what
I was always going to do.

Death by a thousand losses,
each cut cost me
a fraction of my identity
and hopeful personality.

Until my corpse
swung from the rafters
and tears sprung from
melancholic laughter.

Then nothing came
happily, ever after.

Sep 2021

Graff1980

Untitled 805

I had patience but
I lost it cuz
I've been accosted
by a boss that was
both **** and big
stinking *******.

Felt the terror
of time’s
terminal
ticking away,
chasing each day
as a parade
that works towards
my end.

Now,
it's do or die
write to live
not right to life.

So, short stalks
get lost
as I buzz by
on my
summer day drive
thinking about
what it means
to be alive.

Sep 2021

Graff1980

Untitled 802

I cannot be an apathetic
version who is free
to float carelessly
through life,

I am more like a specter,
an abstract human inspector
who sits and observes this sector
of our shared humanity.

Not bullet proof because
the pain of those I love
breaks all the barriers
I placed to save myself.

No super strength like Atlas
cause my stamina will not last
as I bare the whole world
on these small shoulders.

I cannot fly by high in the sky.
I cannot speed through this life
because each tragedy draws me
deeper into dark caverns of
human suffering.

I do not have any superpowers,
just lots of empathy and hours
to reflect and write a speck
of some gloriously poetic
lines that many may find pathetic.

Sep 2021

Graff1980

Untitled 800

Its two thirty a.m.
or maybe later,
as she lays there
on the outer limits
of the small town
gas station parking lot
just off the highway exit,
trying to sleep as safely
as she is able.

Couldn’t be
more than
twenty-three
with a fully loaded bike,
and body tightly curled
under the cover
of her safety vest
of bright colors.

She smothers herself
under bright streetlights
cause at this time of night
or morning the lights
offer some limited sense
of security.

A concerned security guard
tries to wake her,
mistaking a mam for sir
drops a bottle of Gatorade
for her to drink later that day
and a sandwich.

He tells her
the gas station attendant
called the police.
Then to ease
his concerns
passes a couple loose ones,
leaving when he is done
getting a short explanation
of where she is coming from
and where she is going.

This is where the narrator’s
lines end but leaves him
wondering miles down the highway
if the police hassled her
or left her undisturbed,
so she could get
a few more hours of rest
before the hot day
forced this girl
back on the frontage roads.

#real #traveler #poetry #human

Sep 2021

Graff1980

Untitled 799

When we were young
we’d set our guns to stun,
play war game,
and make fairytales
to tell ourselves
that everything
would be ok.

But in modern days
machine gun ways
keep blowing us away.

Lies get harder to accept
and our innocence
gets harder to protect,
so ignorance becomes
the preferred state.

Halloween horror monsters
become less chilling than
those modern killing men,
and evading destruction
becomes an impossible feat.

While those who try
to fight the guys who lie
end up napping in
the dirt beneath our feet.

I am stumped,
shoulders slumped
as I stumble off in defeat,

and all that remains
to mark the pains
of our passing race
of humanity
is the poetry we leave.

Sep 2021

Graff1980

Untitled 798

I want to be swollen
with sweet word growing,
impregnated with that which
is made for taking darkness
and transmuting it into
a light of love for all to
fall comfortably into.

I want to take this language,
work and refine those fine
lyrical lines that make minds
turn towards acting kind.

But I have lost the eloquence
that was once my treasured gift,
and all that falls from my lips,
is red and brown drips of ****.
I’ve gone from child optimist
to exhausted adult cynic.

I have lost the fairies and dragons,
unicorns, and gentle care bears
and now dim dreams live there.

Vague impression of once vibrant
brush strokes, and dancing limbs
have giving in to warring men’s
disturbing intentions.
Nightmare too horrible to mention
have become my waking certainty.

But what is really bothering me,
is that it has become much easier
to accept this sick distorted reality.

The canvass of life has become
the splatter art of a billion broken hearts,
and I have mastered the skill
of numbing what I used to feel
in favor of current forms of
self-amusement.

#language #art #creativity #hope #fantasy

Sep 2021

Graff1980

Untitled 797

It matters not
if in the end
all that I got
are a handful
of tender friends.

If my compatriots
do not forget
the goodness
that lives yet
in my poetry.

If only liars
and fools
speak ill of me,
but kindhearted
wise people
still feel
that I was
a man of
goodwill.

I know
nothing
waits for me
and eventually
I won’t even be
a fraction of
a lingering
memory.

But if
in these
minor instances
I insisted
on being kind
and that was
the worst trait
my detractors
could truly find.

Then I would be okay
to go out that way.

Sep 2021

Graff1980

Untitled 794

You will be diminished
as others finish
life’s strange race,
as living leaves you
in last place,
and you face
a world without them.

You will pull
faded photos from your mind.
Slightly distorted mental movies
that have been rewritten by time
will become bittersweet reruns.
Lies will soften or harden
previous facts
as you try to look back
to the past.

You will lose loved ones
over and over until
you no longer feel
an inkling of their essence.

Sep 2021

Graff1980

Untitled 793

I haven’t been
working on finding
all the answers.

I’ve been questing
for the best questions,
pursuing strange obsessions,
seeking the sparks
that will start
different parts
of poetical proclamations,
teasing out
certain doubts
to understand clearly
that I am not nearly
smart enough to know,
but I am bright
enough to grow.

When my heart
lights up and glows
it’s one hell of a show.

All splendid sparkles
and black holes,
all gray dusty roads
and sharp rocks
that pierce flesh.

Inside, I hold more
than just myself.
I am an infinitude
of lies and truths,
of words I use
to gift all of you
brand new and pre-used
perspectives that amuse
and inform.

I am the fractional form
of past identities
and future possibilities,
a projection part
hopeful and cynical,
a self-created symbol
that you will
eventually interpret
through the lens
of how you feel.

Sep 2021

Graff1980

Untitled 792

Sunday morning is a spiral
of dimmed lights
and despairing shadows,
of stairways to nothing
that dance in the distance
and turn around to find
time no longer binds
this strange and tired mind.

It is a body of fatigue,
so tired that it turns blind,
unable fathom
what was once
wondrously divine.

Windows no longer open to
a whole wide world
that I want to view,
but are closed,
painted black
with spider web
thin cracks
that let less than
infinitesimal light in.

Hope is made for forgetting,
until a long sleep
restores my stores
of optimism and inspiration
allowing poetic explorations,
as the windows open
to finally let more light in
and the stairways shift
restructuring themselves
to new realities
of delightfully
exciting possibilities.

Sep 2021

Graff1980

Untitled

The flame of madness
cracked and expanded,
holds hearts unplanted,
soil sick with slick
mind worms that take
turns gnawing through
the muck and the goop,
and the rotting wood to,
seeing moods shift from
angry, sad, then numb
to become all spent up
without any passions left.

Sep 2021

Graff1980

Untitled 790

Do not let me
be vexed by
exemplary
poetry.

Cause I am
lyrically
fantastic,
like other
lexical lovers,
and word writing
art brothers.

I love the
sweet
syllabic
ecstasy
of channeling
language
for my own
enjoyment.

It is pure
play
and self-pleasuring,
as I go one
measuring
my verbal dexterity
in combination
with clarity.

There is
a sad disparity
in what I write
and what gets through
to the masses who
find my art
hard to digest.

It is a self-serving mess
in which I express
an observance
of the madness
of merely writing
and not expecting
others to grasp
half of it.

#writing #poetry #poem

Sep 2021

Graff1980

Untitled 789

The sun
no longer
streaks the sky
but seeks to die
as I try not to cry.

I am too tired
to create
anything I deem
great.

Over dependent
on stimulants
to wake up to
a creative vision.

Brain fogged
to the point of
being a rotting log
wasting space,
just waiting
to decay.

In my
fatigued state
there is a fear
I may never make
decent art again.

But I rest
and get up
to type out
something
beyond my doubts.

One poem,
the first of
the week,
a stumbling piece,
not my best
but a relief.