Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
 Mar 2016 AJ
Ronald Jones
She lived in one country
I in another, hanging on each
word of "love" she'd utter--
words wrapped in a money request
to be sent at her dire behest!

I gave and gave till I felt like a slave
yet kept on going,
a blind man
ignorant in his towing.

Days turned into years
and years into more years
but I stood hopeful
they were merely stairs
leading to our betrothal.

Oh, how her photos teased and pleased
with a future bride's ecstatic smile
while all along
she was marching down
a different aisle!

Now I'm left with just a sackful of letters and photos
her whereabouts unknown
and my big dream of love
another bittersweet memory for me to own.

There is no hope and
she escaped without shame
Still I ask myself

Who is to blame?
 Mar 2016 AJ
kfaye
the best
 Mar 2016 AJ
kfaye
the best
is that which imagines to be seeping out of a cave.from some
deep. secret.
undisturbed
place. where things go on for eons that no one knows about.
like a green light that makes its way up but barely.
sick but
beautiful

like a picture of AIDS.
like morgoths and morlocks dissolving into fossil fuels down where you'll never get it. 
like quartz.
 Mar 2016 AJ
Rebecca Gismondi
if I could be any one of your body parts I’d

be your fingertips.
when you break my gaze on screen, I yearn for it like

a lost child.
keep pushing others out of the way at aquariums so I can
touch the stingrays

and nudge my calves with your nose when you
want to be brushed

I promise to always remember where your car is parked,

if you let me keep that photo of you as a young pilot
in my pocket

in public spaces, we fill the

air between us with supernovas.
you are Sirius
you are the lobster
you are the look across the room at a party;

feel my phantom hands on your shoulders
I’ll crawl into the nape of your neck and make a home

plaster myself across your skin so you can find me

in the grooves of your hands
I’ll sew my words into your sheets so you will never be without them

promise me you’ll comb out your tangled hair if it gets too much

and wait for me by the Whitney
as I walk 341 miles for you.
 Mar 2016 AJ
Tahirih Manoo
change?
 Mar 2016 AJ
Tahirih Manoo
New year,

Old habits.

New lessons,

Old responses.

New steps,

Old path.

New rules,

Old rebellion.

New change is needed,

Old methods to be aborted.
12:43 am Wednesday 9th March, 2016
 Mar 2016 AJ
Will
Untitled
 Mar 2016 AJ
Will
I don't blame you for thinking about leaving
because I'm still trying to figure out who I am
and who I want to be
It could be us
but then again it might just be me
 Mar 2016 AJ
James M Vines
I stood in an open space and saw many lines. I saw directions that curved and twisted. In my mind, I felt unhinged, all of the voices confused me. Then I touched a line and I saw many things, war and famine, death and sorrow. I drew back and began to shake at the horrible things I had seen. Then I stumbled and touched another line, in a moment I saw great towering cities glistening like diamonds in the sun. I looked at children playing and heart the sound of music. I saw great vast spaces between the cities, filled with flowers and trees. I pulled back and began to touch another line then another. One by one each showed a different future. Some were wonderful and some were horrible. While still others were both. In one we learned our lesson and forgot war for peace. In all of these I understood that these were lines of what the future could be, but we must be willing to create it.
 Mar 2016 AJ
kfaye
you _ me
 Mar 2016 AJ
kfaye
_                    trash.
like the   compost.   bin in the cafeteria of a school i don't go to
               recycling.
 Mar 2016 AJ
kfaye
jar me
 Mar 2016 AJ
kfaye
i wonder where it is your ****** metaphors come from
when you say things like    "she tastes like strawberries."
i am disenchanted         miscarried
by what you are trying
to say, if anything.
this
social significance of a tangy fruit ripe for harvest- tiny for your convenience.   connotations of innocence   to sensuality, ***, lips

if it is literal. evoking a certain tube of tacky lipbalm that finds itself applied tastelessly and often-

a certain perplexing exclusivity of diet.
or at least a strong penchant for the thing, that.

or if virginal.
recalling imagery of children's clothing- characters and franchises similarly swimming in the same shared canon of bad symbolism.
if you try to push us
into displeasure. violence. or grunge.
to challenge the peacefulness or comfort of normalcy.
shock us.
bring me somewhere

that would be better poetry.

i've read you like: all of you-
a thousand times from anywhere. any time
some might say the universality is its highest honor-
sign of its perfection and
truth.
it is not.
lazy.never real
long bereft of impulse
it makes you feel good because you are told it makes you feel good,
brought up with it.
watered down by it
like many other things.

devoid of specificity or idiosyncrasy
and the imagery of the DD/lg goes wayside.

though fetishist art, at its norm, becomes insular and self pleasuring
(just as fresh strawberries)
it can still be used as a tool when used to break away from expectation
as long as you don't let it become itself.
for it is just as average as anything else:
falling into a bad creepy pasta.
reading the news on a phone app.
unjustly scolding a cashier.
telling a girl that her skirt is too short at her bestfriend's father's funeral.
parents driving offspring to suicide through religion and therapy.

they belong to you.
Next page