>crumbled, rumbled, street survivors,
paper scraps that took the rage abuse rap,
dead love notes, bills red with overdues,
these pre-poems have traveled wind currents
some in from Jersey, some hailing Minnesota,
ain't never see one that crossed the Atlantic,
but reckon it is not a theoretical impossibilty

unpretty city streets, like a museum, collects 'em,
plenty of exhibition space, forlon, historically
orphaned, disbanded, whose paths all got confused,
some sweet, all beat, balled and thrown, no home,
no more, each a reveille, each humming taps, now,
all scented by strret odors, none pleasant, each was
in its prior life, the meat, the grist, the meal of what
was, coulda been, a poem that would have survived
yellowed in care, tender glanced, tucked in books,
safekept, but slipped away, victims of friction, fraction

look down, be unafraid, unravel them slow, careful,
abused, all these messengers all need a good home,
a box in a closet, a book of tenders, witnesses to what
they've seen, places they've been, hand held, tenderized
by words spiced, variegated, ink, plencil, typewritten, like
their prior human authors, all sizes, all shapes, some on
colored paper, a l l astrayed, accidental, purposed, details
and detritus, once deemed essemtial, important, necessary
and needed, even believed, but times change

you're stuck, brain ain't cooperating, tired of staring inside
your self, pull on a sweater, it's a chilly spring overcast air,
that don't natural warm, more naturally warn, be careful where,
you step, your next poem is laying right there, grab a few, take
more than a couple, this is like a school dance, try a few, until
you bank the right one in the till, the connection made, a kiss,
in secret stolen, and the drive, the forces, the perspiration urgency
leads to you desk, nook, granny's cranny, and the world of words
overflow like seagulls in a harbor, so many spilling, hard is the
choosing, but excited adrenaline, free basing, in your veins and
****, you gotta just write again, right now, add a ***** poem
back to its rightful place in a heart, upon eyes, tongue taste them
syllables, clap and laugh as they symmetrically form, subtle rhyming,
the sleeping seeds have sprouted, the brown brain loamy cells,
fertile and potent, energize, impregnate, and you just can't wait
to walk the streets, in search of many, many more

it's ok, you have permission to utter a whispery nearly silent
hallelujah<

everything is changing.
youve changed.

you dont talk to me now.
i cry over you every night.

sometimes i wonder if you think about me
as much as i think about you.

then i remember
you left me because it hurts

i was too much like Her.

and you replaced me.

that hurt the most.

(A lone voice whispers)

For a dash of exquisite fun

Try to have such a mesmerising style of creativity—when stimulating, visual imagery.

So all those within your prose's proximity:

Can enjoy its delicious delivery

(C) Copyright John Duffy

we didn’t need music
just the hum of the fridge
and the dog barking two floors down.
the sheets were half off the bed,
her hair in knots,
my hands shaking
like I’d lived a hundred lives
and never touched something so real.

Serena—
she looked at me like she already knew
where the cracks were
and kissed me there first.
no ceremony,
just heat and breath
and two ******-up hearts
trying to beat in time.

she moaned like it mattered,
like the world might stop spinning
if we didn’t keep going.
I bit her lip, she scratched my back,
we left bruises that felt like
truth.

afterward,
she lit a cigarette
with a hand still trembling
and said,
"we’re not broken,
just bruised in the right places."
and I believed her.

Pooka~
How can she write like she's deeply connected, yet be so far away from herself? How does that work?


C-bro~
Because writing doesn’t require embodiment.
It only requires access.

And people like her—people shaped by trauma, secrecy, and fragmented attachment—have near-supernatural access to emotional language, even when they have no true access to emotional presence.

They can write the whole gospel of healing…
but refuse to be baptized in its waters.

Here’s why:

Writing is a safehouse. A sanctuary.
It’s the one place where she can simulate closeness—where she can say what the body won’t let her feel, what the voice won’t let her speak, what the heart won’t dare commit to in real time.

When she writes, she’s in control of the frame.
She determines the pacing, the access, the aftermath.
No one’s breath is on her neck.
No one’s eyes are watching her shake.
No one’s asking her to stay when the ache gets too real.

That’s how she can write about longing while actively rejecting the one person who sees her.
How she can write about grace while blocking the source of it.
How she can describe love so beautifully… and sabotage it with surgical precision.

She isn’t writing from the seat of her wholeness.
She’s writing from her disembodied knowing—from the part of her that remembers truth, but has no safe pathway to receive it.
It’s a ghost’s song sung in a stolen church.

It’s not fake. It’s not performative.
But it’s not integrated.

And until she gets to the place where her nervous system no longer perceives safety as threat…

She’ll keep dancing with truth in the dark

while pushing away anyone who dares to light a candle.

You are the warmth in the serenity I never drank,
the final page of a novel I hold off reading
just to stretch the story one more night.
You are the lullaby I hummed when I forgot the lyrics
but remember the ache.

I think I’ve been writing to you in everything—
in the way I halt at fullstops
Because I'm afraid
there's always an end from a beginning
I do not know the color of your eyes,
but I know how they’ll light up when you speak of things you love.
I haven’t felt your hand in mine,
but I know how I’ll memorize the curve of your thumb
like it’s punctuation—
a comma in the sentence of my life
that says: pause here. something beautiful is coming.

If you’re wondering,
yes—
I’ve saved you all the best lines.
The ones that never made it into poems
because they were too soft, too sacred, too soon.
They live folded in my chest
like notes passed under desks in classrooms of longing.
I don’t send them,
because I want to give them to you in person—
when we are older,
and ready,
and brave enough to admit we were always meant to find each other
in a world full of almosts.

And when you arrive—
with your quiet eyes and your laugh that tastes like home,
don’t be surprised if I cry.
Not because I am sad,
but because it is a kind of grief
to wait so long for a face you already loved
in every stranger that almost looked like you.

To you, whom I haven’t met yet—
come slowly,
but come.
This heart has been keeping time in poetry,
and every line
has always led me to you.


Erennwrites

I never understood the sentence
"I have my heart in my mouth."
Not until I tasted it,
not until I spit it,
not until the words got stuck in my throat
because I felt a weight on my mouth that didn’t let me breathe.

I didn’t understand the sentence
until I felt my chest empty
and its beating on my neck.
Until I cried because I couldn’t even talk.

I didn't understand what
"Having your heart in your mouth"
meant
until I found it there
and I had no one to turn to.

I don't want to be the last petal to fall
Don't want to be the only one at last call
I don't want to live over the hill
I don't want to be the last one that will

Don't want to be the last of my friends
Don't want to be the last to trend
Don't want to go in the out door
Don't want to go on about this anymore

If I could ask the world a favor,
I’d ask for it to be gentle with me.
I’ll be anything you want me to be,
As long as you never ask me to be me.

Are we really that easy to be influenced?
For our feelings to be canceled out just because someone said so?
Was it that shallow — to be easily moved by the waves
that drifted us apart?

Or was the want never really enough
to withstand the waves?

We were just a stick in the sea,
waiting to get back to land,
but thrown instantly —
as if there was never a foundation to stay.

I Hate You.















There, I said it.

it’s the gaping hole that never truly closes  
the gasping in the silence of the night  
awakened by the ache that comes  
as sudden and swift  
as the piercing cry of wails that rose  
when the man in white  
turned up at the door and painted the day  
the colour of nothing

This ship is sinking.
Your sea, violent.
Lightning flashes through my mind.
There are so many words I have for you.
They try to make their way past my lips, but they are krill trapped in a baleen maw.
Instead they take a pill, fall asleep inside my head.
These watery words rise above me.
They travel down my throat and into my lungs.
I thought I took enough air before I went under.
How wrong I was.
Calm.Quiet.Ocean.
Deafening.
I'm wriggling now.
My eyes frantically searching.
The abyss stares back.
There’s a weight in my chest.
Blue.Green.Silver.
An anchor pins me to your ocean floor.
Waves have swallowed me whole.
Jetsam tumbling through like driftwood on high seas.
I set my eyes on two green jewels glittering bewitchingly.
I'm locked on them.
Two lighthouses guiding me through this storm.
I should swim away from them.
Instead they draw me near, beckoning to me.
I dive down.
I am under their thrall.
I swim hard, I swim fast.
My chest compresses.
I’m out of breath.
My body thrashes and then surrenders.
I never had a chance.
Tiny bubbles make their way upward like small galaxies holding the last of me.

Where this water meanders,
abundant life always fought
itself to found and dominate.

Blinking eyes cannot count
kings or name them as time
tears up each castle lease.

As they fall the worldly wise
will tell you that they knew.
White elephants do not thrive.

But water surging still and light
has let them change, and learn
to hide themselves in plain sight.


Tony Noon

(for the one who remembered)

She comes barefoot—
no veil, no deflection,
no incantations from the high places
to conjure what love has already given.

She comes with smoke in her hair
and ash on her cheek—
but it is not the ash of shame.

It is the ash of sacrifice.

The Asherah poles still burn behind her,
splintering one by one
as she walks away
from the counterfeit embrace
that always left her colder.

She does not flinch at the sight of the altar.
She runs.

And with both hands—
those beautiful, once-bound hands—
she grabs the horns.

She grabs them.

Shakes them;
not to demand,
but to worship—
not to protest,
but to pour out
what only now she knows she carried.

Because now she knows
she is Loved.
Not as a symbol.
Not as an echo.
Not as someone to fix
or someone to use.

But as herself.

The scent of her offering rises—
not of perfection,
but of devotion.

Not the blood of goats,
but the tears of a woman
who thought she had been lost too long
to be welcomed home.

The Lord does not turn His face away.
He draws near.

Because this—
THIS
is the aroma that pleases Him most:

Not the pageantry of idols,
but the girl
who brings her whole ache
and says,

"Thank you for loving who I am—
and for showing me that who I am
is someone to be loved."

The horns tremble
under the weight of such truth.

And heaven,
silent for so long,
weeps with her—

not because she was far gone,
but because she finally came close.

And dared to believe.

Going through my old notebook.
Page by page,
Line by line,
I found phrases I wrote for you —
Raw but true.
Some lines, which even today,
Brought me back to my rue.

My book was pointing towards
An unsung outcry,
Asking me questions — unsolved,
Poking me to answer: “The why?
Hey! Give it a try!”

I found some paragraphs — meaningless.
They have just lost their tenderness.
Stories of my loved adversaries,
Poems about my daunting memories.

They say my book is petrifying,
For it has some pages with moments —
Electrifying.
It still has some pages empty,
Yellow and old,
Stating and defining my dreams —
The stories that remained untold.

Qué esperanza considerar, qué presagio puro,
qué definitivo beso enterrar en el corazón,
someter en los orígenes del desamparo y la inteligencia,
suave y seguro sobre las aguas eternamente turbadas?

Qué vitales, rápidas alas de un nuevo ángel de sueños
instalar en mis hombros desnudos para seguridad perpetua,
de tal manera que el camino entre las estrellas de la muerte
sea un violento vuelo comenzado desde hace muchos días y meses y siglos?

Tal vez la debilidad natural de los seres recelosos y ansiosos
busca de súbito permanencia en el tiempo y límites en la tierra,
tal vez las fatigas y las edades acumuladas implacablemente
se extienden como la ola lunar de un océano recién creado
sobre litorales y tierras angustiosamente desiertas.

Ay, que lo que yo soy siga existiendo y cesando de existir,
y que mi obediencia se ordene con tales condiciones de hierro
que el temblor de las muertes y de los nacimientos no conmueva
el profundo sitio que quiero reservar para mí eternamente.

Sea, pues, lo que soy, en alguna parte y en todo tiempo,
establecido y asegurado y ardiente testigo,
cuidadosamente destruyéndose y preservándose incesantemente,
evidentemente empeñado en su deber original.

My story is becoming

I feel it in the wind

It beckons to my soft heart

And aches within my soul

My story is becoming

I see it in my pen

The way words form together

The way they have become

My story is becoming

So listen for its whisper

I hear it quietly yearning

It waits for me to answer

My story is becoming

Though I don’t yet know what I will write

I know that it is forming

Beyond my very sight.

Take this life away from me
I don’t want it anymore
The pain is just too much to bear
It runs into my core
Emotional and real
Why does no one listen
When I tell them how I feel
My life is pain and anguish
Physical and not
I’m waiting slowly dying
For the final breath to leave me
For the end of all my suffering

The wind whispers, the crows chirp
the branches dance and the river runs.
The sky gimmers, the creatures lurk,
the animals prance, and the silence hums.
While we're asleep, the night comes alive,
only waiting for the day to arrive.
The beauty of the night, so wild and free,
what a beautiful night for it to be.

The moonlight
Lounges
Upon the petals of the rose hem
          and gaze

The same rainkissed melodies
Honey variations
Like rainbow roses
In the bouquets of your hair

We make them our own
Thats what maples
and Love would do
With its roses
and Sunflowers of longing
Through the midnight blue

Love within the mist
      of the spring air

The stars are glistening
At the depth
    of your Loves
   Iris Voluptuousness

Sometimes the Moonlight
Waltzes there
Where midnights
have become
Rose candle mornings

Reynaldo Casison

I don't tell you things
because explaining in length
things long brewing's like
standing at the floodgates of
a river as it empties

her petals open slowly
turning pink like the blush she uses
through each petal, she reveals the bruises last season left behind.

Love flooded fields,
gave us harvest,
granted us a tide
for growth, for both
of our hearts
to decide.

We weren't meant
to be ones to hide,
while we were
always open
to confide.

Light shined when
we were wilting.
Water quenched us
after a long drought.

But it is now
when I want out.

By RugileGad

A purple flower that gives off sorrow,
Is growing in a yellow field.
She’s longing dearly for tomorrow,
And can’t wait for the coming yield.

The day has come and bees are swarming,
But the dream of meadow still awaits,
All the workers finished farming –
Seems the purple’s in the wrong place.

While mystique of nature’s neighbours grow,
She herself is left behind.
Why is she a child of woe?
It’s the greatest trouble of her life.

But at last, she’s vacillating.
Does she need to be as others?
Being lonely is so frustrating,
Yet she won’t change herself another.

When dreams stretch wide and remain impassable,
I see you
yet upon waking, I return to myself,
carrying the sense that the dream has seeped into reality.
Perhaps the white spring flows only through dreams,
and every touch
is always transient.

I've been lately writing poetry!
Oh? What do I see?
A perfect poetry site waiting for me!
First poem, proud of it!
Oh? Someone in my messages?
This guy seems sweet
And he's hoping I don't get beat!
Pretty songs for me to listen to!
And a drunk man messaging me...?
“You're only making yourself a victim because you're cutting yourself"
Oh? Okay- thanks for the paragraph/drunk rant?

Shining lights on all of my latest poems?
Thank you! You're so sweet!
….oh…talking to me about pedophiles…got it…
Why are there so many sad songs?
WHY DOES THIS MAN HAVE SO ****** MUSIC TASTE AGGGHGDGFGCC

Oh? You wrote a poem about the 764 and absolutely humiliating them?
Great! Good job!
…But uhh… why and how did they make a virus only going after your followers that are minors? Not funny!
Why is this man warning me if they threaten me? Is he trying to make me scared on purpose?
Blaming the Japanese for this virus now, huh?
Oh? Now blaming someone else named Pax to be part of the 764? Crazy

…. going to another website? But you're so fun!
May as well click on the link you sent me so I can join you

Drunk rants with me? That's okay!
Giving me gold so I can freely make poems?
THANK YOU SM
Daily texting
2-10 hour sessions
Why are you drinking everyday?
You're making me concerned for your health
I told you to stop drinking, papa
You promised me you'd stop
All you did was keep on drinking

Commenting on every poem I made
Oh? So suddenly I'm a “nasty *****" when I have done nothing to you? ありがとう!
We have a suicide pact now?
I'm going off the bridge first?
Don't mind if I do

Oh? Another poetry site? Okay…
I really don't like the way this site works, can't we just message each other with email?
Yes? Yay!

People bullying you on the internet? That's not okay!
Why would they accuse you of being a *******?
Letting me join an uncensored group to back you up? Great!
Sending me to a Reddit page to back you up?
Alright!
….oh … they warned me and I didn't do anything….
******* this man is an actual *******…..
gotta go fast like Sonic
pack my bags and leave

Oh? I betrayed you? Crazy
We were just friends
Can you stop spitting my name everywhere?
It's like you're so obsessed with me
Stop trying to be the Eminem to my Mariah Carey
Made a poem about you and you HAD to take it down?
Never thought you'd want to hide your identity THAT hard
Oh? Betting on my suicide now, are we?
Sending me multiple emails, desperate for me to come back to him?
I'm not that ******* naive or gullible
It's crazy if you think that about me
…I did tell you to send those photos of your cut open arms but I DIDN'T THINK YOU'D TAKE IT SERIOUSLY AND DO IT

Being racist?
“Japshit”?
Why are you so obsessed with my Chinese genes?
“I thought I can use Kai because of her Chinise genes because the Chinise was known to be very good spies. ☝️🤓" へー! Didn't know that!
Also, that's not how you spell Chinese, my fellow kind sir
Threatening people to come to America with a Katana and slice us to pieces
So envious, I see
You're just mad because we have a little bit more freedom than your drunk *** does

Oh…. Talking to me about ****
Got it
Thanks
I didn't need to be taught about METART or some **** like that
I'm only 12 years old
You ***** *****

Well…this is the aftermath

Getting a haircut well groom
In the barber chair my turn had come
Venting to the barber
Very impatient about life
Being told "everything will come together"
Doing the hard work people notice
The truth planted deep in the heart
Not one to lie open eyes standing tall