Riz Mack: Favorites

Spinster

Sep 7 Riz Mack

Sylvia Plath

Spinster

Now this particular girl
During a ceremonious april walk
With her latest suitor
Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck
By the birds' irregular babel
And the leaves' litter.

By this tumult afflicted, she
Observed her lover's gestures unbalance the air,
His gait stray uneven
Through a rank wilderness of fern and flower;
She judged petals in disarray,
The whole season, sloven.

How she longed for winter then! --
Scrupulously austere in its order
Of white and black
Ice and rock; each sentiment within border,
And heart's frosty discipline
Exact as a snowflake.

But here -- a burgeoning
Unruly enough to pitch her five queenly wits
Into ****** motley --
A treason not to be borne; let idiots
Reel giddy in bedlam spring:
She withdrew neatly.

And round her house she set
Such a barricade of barb and check
Against mutinous weather
As no mere insurgent man could hope to break
With curse, fist, threat
Or love, either.

Sep 7 Riz Mack

Dust Of Snow

Sep 7 Riz Mack

Robert Frost

Dust Of Snow

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

Sep 7 Riz Mack

In A Disused Graveyard

Sep 7 Riz Mack

Robert Frost

In A Disused Graveyard

The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never anymore the dead.
The verses in it say and say:
“The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay.”
So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
Yet can’t help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come.
What is it men are shrinking from?
It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die
And have stopped dying now forever.
I think they would believe the lie.

Sep 7 Riz Mack

Spoils Of The Dead

Sep 7 Riz Mack

Robert Frost

Spoils Of The Dead

Two fairies it was
  On a still summer day
Came forth in the woods
  With the flowers to play.

The flowers they plucked
  They cast on the ground
For others, and those
  For still others they found.

Flower-guided it was
  That they came as they ran
On something that lay
  In the shape of a man.

The snow must have made
  The feathery bed
When this one fell
  On the sleep of the dead.

But the snow was gone
  A long time ago,
And the body he wore
  Nigh gone with the snow.

The fairies drew near
  And keenly espied
A ring on his hand
  And a chain at his side.

They knelt in the leaves
  And eerily played
With the glittering things,
  And were not afraid.

And when they went home
  To hide in their burrow,
They took them along
  To play with to-morrow.

When you came on death,
  Did you not come flower-guided
Like the elves in the wood?
  I remember that I did.

But I recognised death
  With sorrow and dread,
And I hated and hate
  The spoils of the dead.

Sep 7 Riz Mack

Tears

Sep 7 Riz Mack

Sarita Aditya Verma

Tears

Tears flow
Tricky tears they know
They know, they have it their way
They know how to trickle down
They flow

They flow ceaselessly,
Unsightly, unexplained,
at the slightest of pain
Discomfort their name

They lie hidden in the depths
In times of despair
To your rescue, unperturbed
They surface Unrushed

They can be trained
To Master the art of deceit
Shrouded in lies
A weapon, honed with might
Held in disguise
In their master’s eyes

They stand as warriors
For emotions left unsaid
A paradoxical deluge
No ocean can hold
An unstoppable wave
Tears of joy

Tricky tears they know
They know, they have it their way
They know how to trickle down
They flow

Aug 3 Riz Mack

my daddy

Aug 3 Riz Mack

WILLIAM WORTHLESS

my daddy

i wont forget my daddy on the day he died
daddy was a miner he got trapped inside
mine began to crumble he couldnt get away
i just cried and cried when he died that day

he was everything that a dad should be
gave all his love to my ma and me
working in a mine to support his family
best dad in the world there could ever be

i will make him proud do the best i can
now all grown up ive become a man
give my love to mama like daddy used to do
do the best i can now theres just us two

Aug 3 Riz Mack

PRESS SEND

Aug 3 Riz Mack

B L Costello

PRESS SEND

She went to be bed with her makeup on
Feeling like *****…..
Reflecting in her bathrobe…about the night before,
Hell you know she asked for it!
What will the neighbors think?
Still half asleep and hung over,
Her cheeks are still pink,
And he… was never there,
And never was before,
She turns off the monitor….just one hit more,
She washes her face,
Still smiling,
Nothing said…
Wipes off with a towel,
And then goes back to bed.
BLCostello©2025

Aug 3 Riz Mack

Dissociation Days

Aug 3 Riz Mack

Kalliope

Dissociation Days

If I exist, then I must be real-
That's how it works,
But it's not how I feel.

I look in the mirror,
Glimpse at the reflection,
But I walk right through her-
We have no connection.

And how many words
Can I say, rambling on,
Before someone realizes
They carry no weight?

Wasting the air
From my tired lungs-
Words are just words
When no action comes.

But action proves nothing
If my words aren’t right;
I could move mountains
And still lose the fight.

I could fill every hole
That’s carved in the ground,
But none of it matters
If I do so without sound.

If I’m not weeping,
Or begging, or screaming,
I make them uneasy-
My silence unredeeming.

I speak so much
It makes my throat hurt.
Sick of myself,
Sick of this work.

And if I begged
This sickness to take me,
She’d just laugh-
And keep on berating.

I know I’ll get up,
I’ll just walk away.
It never lasts long.
It’s only a phase.

But when your villain
Is the girl in the mirror,
It’s hard to ignore
A fear drawn so clear.

Words lead to words that turn into thoughts, but when they're ideas? Pursue them I do not.

#dissociation #mentalhealth #spiraling #numb #real #notreal #stuck