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 Sep 2024 Pen Lux
dread
I stand up strong, look in the mirror
Say grandma will be wrong soon,

Drive and work, keep a smile
try to not be the reason a frown ensues,

Supplicate to myself,
wonder and dream about what can be,

Call to not get an answer,
but she will is what I hope,

Tell my mother what's wrong and hopefully right
ask she will see decades more of nights,

Sit down and write, because it feels right
feel cold but indifferent of what's left,

Dreary thinking of the prospect that nothing changes
even with my best,

See my father hasn't opened years of messages,
I lament

Be strong because that's all that's left,
Smile because people deserve the best,

All for you, and them, dancing in my chest.
 Sep 2024 Pen Lux
Jill
My eyes are clear
Opening my lash-eyelet curtain
A near-perceptible glacier-clean,
--thud-crack of thick ice
Forming two, perfect, transparent, oval shards
Convex bevel edges
Satisfying symmetry.

My brain is quiet
Waiting for the roaring, train engine, kettle-boiling,
punctuated by slight, syncopated,
tap-taps that,
-- so kindly, remind me, my mind be, relying
-- on pulsing blood
Still roarless
Still, roarless
Spline-smoothed
Blood journeys gently, cloud-style
Not muddling, befuddling, nimbostratus
Just happy little cumulus
Soft. Nice.

My shoulders are low
Cage only soundtrack here
Absence of intended sounds
Only the astral smooth void
Flawless, measured, even space
My ears can kiss my shoulders if I feel like it
--but I don’t feel like it
Comfortable.

My breath is even
Jaws are open pliers
Thoughts are photos in ice and midnight blue
-- no rue umber or regret beige
Muscles are liquid-warm wax
Palms are oasis-free deserts
Pupils are obsidian-shined globes
Skin made of moonlight
Heart matching the beat of the universe

I have returned
Back inside myself
I am here.
©2024

Music reference – John Cage, 4’33” (1952).

BLT Webster’s Word of the Day challenge (rue) date 23rd September 2024.
To rue something is to feel penitence, remorse, or regret for it. Rue is often used in the phrase "rue the day."
 Sep 2024 Pen Lux
Edgar Allan Poe
It was many and many a year ago,
  In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
  By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
  Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
  In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
  I and my ANNABEL LEE;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
  Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
  In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
  My beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
  And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
  In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
  Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
  In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
  Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
  Of those who were older than we—
  Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in heaven above,
  Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
  Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
  Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes
  Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
  In her sepulchre there by the sea—
  In her tomb by the side of the sea.
 Sep 2024 Pen Lux
Antonia
empathy
 Sep 2024 Pen Lux
Antonia
if I were you
and you were me
together maybe we could be
the people that we dreamt to be
I’d feel your feet inside my shoes
you’d feel my pain inside your head
we’d see the world
through our eyes
we’d feel the wind
on our skin

if I were you
and you were me
we’d understand each other’s world
for free
sometimes I just wish I could switch bodies with people so I could understand them better and have them understand me better
 Sep 2024 Pen Lux
David P Carroll
I'm thinking about you
Every day and I love you
More than words can
Ever say and your in
My heart beating away and
I love you more than the
Stars in the sky and
I am grateful for you every day
And forever and always
In every way
You're my everything in life and
Our love won't fade away
Your my heart's desire and
With you my love will never tire.
True Love 💕💕💕
 Sep 2024 Pen Lux
dread
Okay
 Sep 2024 Pen Lux
dread
Okay, let me begin for the sake of clouding the din, with smoke of my own demise, dispersing into a thick black night, sounds funny huh, chasing the thrill in the little moments, I suppose anything to avoid the torments...sounds cheap huh, well packaged and attached, haha, it keeps going for the sake of flowing...next thing you know it's not so funny, and the ground is where you're hiding, your best kept secrets, like the sounds of trees that fall all alone, not wondering or caring if anybody heard them...screaming for an audience unknown...because of nothing, not because you lied or they lied, not because the truth ever existed, not because you looked like the truth, not because their leaving means anything. The growth is real for them.

Telling spells, to what? the night?? Okay, tell me then, let's make some use of these stars...let's have them be birds, flowers of the sky, starlings making songs in lieu of the basic chirp...go ahead, let's make beauty of the humble ugly...go ahead, let's keep spilling until the ground stops bugging. Until we can look at it, until it's just as unmoving as we, were ever gonna be.

I suppose I've been a ghost all along, you've done nothing wrong,
best to know that I was unstable from the start, I was just trying to be steady, I was just trying to actually be trying. So i say what I say so you can protect the future, of some other pair of lonely eyes, of other actually honest minds.
 Sep 2024 Pen Lux
Manx Pragna
How unrealistic the idealistic can be
And yet, there is still our commitment
To something far realer than any war-
When you realize it's what it's fought for.
 Jul 2024 Pen Lux
Ryan Bowdish
Crystal clarity at a cacophanous volume
Like decibel demons devouring depression,
Deep sobs drowned by Cranberries...
Yes, I have to let it linger...
Just a little longer.

The rug really tied the room together, did it not?
Its wool surface flays my face
As the smears of tears clear my cheeks
And vault from my visage,
The only human touch I feel now flying,
Cascading carelessly, silent and apathetic,
To smash in this rug, breaking a house broken home...

All lost,
"Like tears in rain,"
Blown away by the cymbal crash
The strumming of strings,
Screaming of someone's sandcastles
Swept away by shoreline showers,
Scraped from the shivers of my spine
Sloped like a summer puddle of slime,
Contorted like circus freaks...
You made a snail of me
No.
A slug (a happy home was my shell)

And now
If I were to curdle my blood
And destroy my lungs
There would be no shockwave
No sudden surrender of shame
Only stories scratched out
Severing slumber from my soul

And in the end,
The stereo is my lover.
Low ends learning my loneliness
Mids melting away my murdered marriage
Highs heaving with my heartbreak

It's good to be here.
No one can hear me shriek.
Not even me.
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