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You never really know how strong you are until you're alone,
crying and forced to pick yourself up off the floor.
That is when you can truly see how big your emotional muscles are
and I promise
they are bigger than you ever thought possible.
Flex them.
Within the centre of your being
May you find peace
Every act of unconditional love
Echoes in eternity
Spread your wings and dance
Dreams into reality
If your situation  won't change
Then change yourself
The optimist is often as wrong
As the pessimist
But he is far far happier
Choose happiness
Paint my heart as empty
all blue and black and grey

Around it perforate a circle
from beginning back to start

Paint it very gently
then quickly pull away

Tearing it out
without ripping it apart

Someday they'll surely place it
in the Gallery of Fools

Inside the Wailing Walls
out past the Hall of Shame

And when the people face it
they'll cherish their own hearts

As if anatomy has
anything to do with pain

©Jason Cole
 Jun 2016 Orion Schwalm
niamh
For tears that fall
On hollow cheeks
When the weeks feel like years
And the years feel like weeks.

And you sit by a grave
Where the roses grow
But the rose that you seek
Is buried below.

You have my heart
Heavy with sorrow
For the velvet rose
With no tomorrow.
Absolutely over the moon (if a little shocked) to see that this piece made the daily.  Thank you all so much for your comments - I promise to reply to you all individually at some point soon.  It was an extremely emotional, difficult, but ultimately cathartic write. Dedicated to our wee Shane, who we will never forget ***
this poem
is not about you

even though
your spirit is in every word
your voice sounds strong
in the halls of my mind
telling me things
I am now sure
I want to know

this poem is
about me

trying to understand
you
If you're ever on the riverside
where the sun beats your head
you would see the old man
selling hats of palm leaf
but you care not to notice him
having already smelled the sea
and too keen to cross the river
travel southward on the island
till the saline wind scalds your eyes
your skins itch to jump into the waves
yet the man with the palm leaf hats
would not cease to tell you
how burning would be the sun on the sands
and so badly you need to protect the head
by parting bucks that mean nothing to you
but a world to the mouths he feeds
and before you stamp on him a final no
she has one atop her hair
beneath which her eyes flutter like butterflies
her sun rouged cheeks untimely blush
and two born anew lovers
merrily head for the sea
having bought romance
for forty bucks.
 Jun 2016 Orion Schwalm
Sjr1000
I don't know what I'm doing
I don't know what I'm feeling
I don't know where I'm going
I don't know who I'm being
I'm overwhelmed,
frustrated,
I can't cope

These are the slogans
I repeat to myself
Over and over again

Oh yeah

I'm a failure too
I've lived this life
What did I do?
What do I have to
show for it?

These facts about myself
are the one thing
I'm very positive about.

I repeat these slogans
day in and day out
always wondering
what I'm so
depressed about

I bury my head in these sands

Suffocating
Smothering
choking on anxiety
in my own
advertising slogans
on my private airwaves

To complicate
matters
worse
just because we think something
doesn't make it true
that goes for
self worth too.

But

Mindfulness
stands
watching the passing cars
from a freeway overpass
like our racing thoughts
not holding on
not making them go away,
in peace
simply
letting them
be.
States of mind are transitory, come and go.
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