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The night sky had a cup
  full of moonlight
and the shadows played
  in the fields
   and danced in the streets
the few sparce stars in the sky
  gently sang a lullaby
and the mad mad world below
  paused for a moment
    for only a moment
and though worn and weary
  I smiled
sleep would come
   soon enough
and trouble would have
  to wait for tomorrow
    to begin its brew again...
Months ago I awoke
to an almighty hypnopompic brain-zap
provoked by dreams of lisdexamphetamine-laced cereal.
Forceful, shocking, agonizing; strange to have felt this
when I lack any acquaintance with Vyvanse, and
when I am clean of residuals. That a dream
should cause real pain, such reaction
in my being, I wonder how
my brain contoured
the experience.

Weeks ago I grappled
with a prolonged tension headache
so I administered paracetamol, ibuprofen/codeine,
And buprenorphine/naloxone. Those opioids
provoked strange daydreams, to countenance the many idioms
I've grokked over.

I used to think my superpower was depression,
I'd go around seeking pain
because nothing else would sooth me; and with each pang
I came a little closer, chasing it
like a true addict, savoring my damage,

Exalting in my lonely conscience.

When I awoke the opiates were leaving my body
so I lay in their dark waves of intemperate sensation
among what thoughts etch onto the inside of my skull
and found myself driving with a concussion
towards a home for misanthropes.
 Jul 2022 Michael Angelo
Slur pee
My cavernous heart will devour you whole,
Only for you to quickly decompose.
Hello? Hello.. Hell, where did you go?
Lost in the darkness that overflows.
Drowning in the depths of its thalassic hold;
Ebb and flow, this pain I know wanes only to grow.
I’m a slave, like the tide to the seraphic face of the moon.
Guided by life to find the perfect place for my tomb,
The cratered space I desire to bury myself into.

-SLuR
"He started writing," she
said, talking
about her
father.
"He's an old man now. Had
me when
he was in his
late forties. You'd think
late forties would
be enough to realize
that a man is crazy, but
well, not my mother
I guess. Or perhaps it was
the craziness that
attracted her to him. I'll never
know.
He says that writing is
something you can
do until you drop
dead, unlike
sports where you can only be
truly good when you're
young, in your prime.
Also, he's
one of those artists who
believe that
one must suffer for art. I tried
telling him that's just
plain stupid,
but despite all my efforts he
still sprinkles
razor blades on his bed
when he goes to sleep. He moves
at night
or course
and of course he gets plenty
of cuts. All over his body.
And every time he gets a cut
he stands up,
turns on the light,
and sprays rubbing alcohol on
the cut.
He says it works 100% of
the time.
Instantly he gets inspired,
grabs the muse by
the throat, as he puts it.
There's a laptop on his nightstand,
ever turned on,
and he immediately starts
writing as the
blood seeps out of
the wound. When the inspiration
wains he grabs the bottle
of rubbing alcohol and
sprays some more. There's no
writing without pain, he says. And
of course
all his stories are
about pain and suffering.
He's even got one in which
this old guy
who never did anything worthwhile
in his life
finds himself paralyzed in
his armchair
from the waist down.
How he can't do ****
and just cries
and begs death to take him
already. But he doesn't really
want to go. He knows that all
his life has been lived in vain.
He never made one
soul happy as long
as he lived.
So he gets this idea that if only he can
make one soul happy
before departing forever
he had not lived in vain.
In part two of
the story he
starts cutting pieces of his own
flesh, from the legs
in which he's got no
feeling, and throws them
out the window for
the mongrel dogs and
street cats to feast on. Then he
dies in peace,
knowing that he'd made at least
a few souls happy."

"Did he really write that,"
I asked

"Sure did," she said. "And many
more. He doesn't care
about publishing
though. He just knows that
the world will discover his
art after he'll be gone. I guess
he made his
peace with this."

"****," I said, "listen, could I
read that story myself?
Or any other
of his?"

"Like I said, he won't
share his
writings with an audience. Only
postmortem, he says."

Well, after that evening
every time I met her
I kept asking
about her father.

He was still
alive and
writing

He also got diabetes
from all the
glasses of coca-cola
mixed with
six or seven spoonfuls
of sugar he drank
to replenish his blood,
but that was
all right, apparently it only
made him write better
now that he had more
suffering in his life

he also refuses to see
or be seen
by any doctors
or psychiatrists

Well, I don't want much
from him, only
to know that
he's got a big fan
in this world
INSTAGRAM:
https://www.instagram.com/bogdan_1_dragos/
By the Spanish Arch
a few kind crusty folks
talk in the March sunlight.

Soft incantations of sweet trad
spill from a concertina, tin whistle
and fiddle, sloshing out an ambiance.

An old fella' makes a poor man's black velvet,
The ladies drink Estrella Galicia and San Miguel.
Another lad jokes: my grief counselor died last week

but he was so **** good I didn't care.

A motley crew, good-natured and friendly,
Drawn to session like moths to a flame;
Always I wonder whether I belong.

"I think in his heart Frodo is still in love with the Shire:
The woods, the fields…little rivers. I'm old Gandalf.
I know I don't look it, but I'm beginning to feel it"
Lines Fourteen to Sixteen from The Lord of The Rings.
The plateaux and caverns which map
my cognitive landscape correspond
by virtue of something; something
determines the salience of beliefs
and their ability to traverse this
intractable surface.
May your word be supple with optimism
and may their cognitions follow suit.
I took a little 2C-D tonight
and prayed to move
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