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Cigarette smoke curls upwards,
spiralling into the ether and downwards into my lungs.
I sit looking at the cigarette packet
reading the warning:
Smoking seriously harms you and others around you
How true.
Except, it isn't the cigarettes that have harmed me, it's your lies.
Did you think you'd be able to keep me in the dark?
Did you think me that stupid?
Tut tut, lending me your car, not emptying the ashtray,
didn't think you wore lipstick whilst driving, just sunglasses.
The colour wasn't mine, too brash.
I take the last drag, watch the tip flame orange, and feel the nicotine calm
I pick the Marlboro's up flip the box over, and smile at the irony,
there in bold reads Choose freedom, we'll help you
if I rang the free phone number will they help me dispose of your body?
Your staining my kitchen floor, the nicotine is staining my fingers.
© JLB
25/06/2014
 Jun 2014 aphrodite
Anonymous
The thing about writers is that they’ll win you over with words
It’s enthralling when somebody writes about how your lips are the collision of soft pastels coming together
And how your hair is a waterfall cascading down a masterpiece
Or how your freckles are as beautiful as constellations in the sky
Or how your eyes demand truth in the slivers of honey
caught in a whirlwind of the ocean in your eyes
Isn’t it intriguing the way a writer captures you in words?
Everybody wishes to be scribbled into journals and etched into the back of somebodies mind
After all “If a writer falls in love with you, you’ll never die”
But nobody likes being in the forced silence a writer presses upon a room
Nobody likes waking up at 3am wondering why their lover is scribbling into a journal with furrowed brows
Most of all nobody wants to be loved by somebody whose pen can speak more clearly than their own lips
Being loved by a writer is endearing, yes…
But nobody actually wants to live forever in some tattered old notebook that just collects dust as years go by
Everyone wants a lover who shows as much passion through actions
As they show in their words-
Most writers can’t offer that,
and I’m afraid that’s why everyone and no one would like to be loved by a writer
 Jun 2014 aphrodite
Joshua Haines
College is a cancer clinic.
At this university, you either live long enough to die,
or die until you want to live.
Kids drag backpacks like bags of morphine,
and are attached to their planners like they are their heart monitors.
You do your own chemotherapy,
as you poison yourself with debt,
and Friday night nickel shots.
A glass breaks
They're mad again
Dad stayed out last night
with his best friend

She's crying
Heart broken on the floor
Her boyfriends fist crashed through the wall
her face, and then the door

He's drinking
Tipping the bottle back to erase the pain
She broke his heart again
he feels insane

He's barely alive
She's threatening to let go
Her beating heart
Is all that he knows

She's a single mother
Her children are her life
She seen their father
Out with his new wife

They can't get away
From the war in their hearts
The guns the bombs...
Are tearing them apart
Just a small poem on love, and that's not to say that it's all bad. I think there are ups and downs in everything we do, and each is just as important. We can't let the bad things break us, but use the lessons in them to make us stronger.
 Jun 2014 aphrodite
Edward Coles
I hear the town sing
beneath their fatal groans.
They have loans, embankments of debt,
and light fittings to figure out.
I hear the child-bride sing
amongst the echoing pool.
She sings out for oceans, and static moons
to deliver her from
the television roar.

I remember you left
in a panic attack.
You lacked what you felt two winters ago,
when bells chimed at your bedside.
I remember the mist
over Cawston fields.
The yields of wheat, in my bicycle freedom;
you left when I kept slipping
out of the door.
 Jun 2014 aphrodite
circus clown
last night, i was forcing the last couple drops
out of the bottle and into my sinful mouth
sitting on the floor of a kitchen that had
Christ hanging on the walls like he
******* died there or something.
in the morning, you arrived back in
your home state where you and your
morphine eyes will haunt my
ambien bedroom.
the bruises you left me were a going-away-present that turned me into a colorful summer sunset.
 Jun 2014 aphrodite
M
Hospital
 Jun 2014 aphrodite
M
"I went to the hospital"
        I remember
"I wanted to stop breathing so you'd come back"
        Don't say that
"I whispered your name when I was asleep"
        You did?
"That's what I was told when I woke up"
       You always have talked in your sleep
"I wanted you to come back"
        *I never wanted to leave
Based on a real conversation
 Jun 2014 aphrodite
Kate
do you remember the first time they called you pretty?
no?
what about when they called you ugly
and you went home and cut off your bangs,
threw out that shirt,
and cried all night,
remember that?

when that boy told you there was something wrong
with the hair on your body
you told your mom you needed to shave
to make him feel comfortable,
to make him like you.

do you remember the first time you thought you were worthless?
and what you saw staring back at you
wasn't quite right
there was always one little thing, right?
almost there, right?
just take a little bit of this away,
lose a little bit of you,
and maybe then,
they will think you are good enough.

"am i there yet?"
no, not yet.
 Jun 2014 aphrodite
Jeremy Duff
Two weeks drug free.
I did it for myself,
I did it for my sister
for you
and for her.

Cravings don't wake me up at night anymore.
I can hold a cigarette without my hands shaking
and I can look my mother in the eye.

Where are you to share in my sobriety?
Where are you to help me through it?
(Where are you?)
I've been better
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