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E Townsend  Jan 2016
On Lying
E Townsend Jan 2016
Lying makes a placeholder for the inevitable truth. The lie will become the truth, as a rectangle can be squeezed back into a square.
Kurtis Emken Aug 2012
A friend invite from a former lover is the common cold.
It’s irritating, hard to get rid of.  Try to ignore it.  Don’t.
Hover over her main page.  Bathe in the sick blue light
of LCD.  Cursors open portals to the past, their present.
Approach every aspect of the page like a ghost.  Read
through her interests.  Browse her wall posts.  See how
they change, don’t change, won’t.  Surf aimlessly through
frozen moments.  Find one frame you lurk around in, just
out of focus.  Probably just your right arm or forgotten shoes
that have left a tiny footprint on her digital identity.  Attach
needless significance to it anyway.  Check out the page
of the new person in her life.  Compare said person to self.
(Promise to) never go on the page again.  Respond to request.
She’s a number, placeholder, a ones and zeroes memory.
2ndBest  Aug 2015
placeholder
2ndBest Aug 2015
I don't feel like reading words
I'd rather stitch an iceberg
You want a voice underwater

Let's keep going on empty
Breaking in style
The means justify an ending

Blues whites and lit skys
The summer was on fire
We felt it inside

Things fell aside
Cracks give way to more then more
It wasn't deep just murky
And I'm not reading anymore ******* words
Ann Beaver Sep 2013
Take secrets
Sprint out the door
Burglar alarm malfunction
Wrong turn at a junction

Machetes cut a new path
Do the math
It isn't that hard
To draw the right card
I throw in rhymes
So maybe you'll listen sometimes.

All these things happened
I try to piece them together
To answer: why can't I find a single feather?
Arihant Verma Feb 2016
It was already awkward, taking you
up the dubious muddy mountain, with
thoughts, unbeknownst of their occurrences.
All the more cliffhanging at the edges,
of the next moment, like a word expected
or not but not spoken, left alone in the mind.

But the lake and the wind, provided the lure,
to stay calm and composed and intermittently,
shut up and stare at the nothingness that the wind,
the reflections and the darkness offered. In the gaps,
between those nothingnesses, words place-held
the thoughts and bouts of past, present and future.

When you slipped, I pulled you by your hand,
harder than the pain stilling threshold.
My other hand carefully place-holding,
in the shape of your lower back, so that
just in case my pull became insufficient,
I wouldn't hesitate to prevent you from dipping
your clothes and slippers in the little mountain mud.
goner  May 2016
Placeholder
goner May 2016
what would it take
to fill perfectly
a page with line
after t i g h t r o p e line
of the way your cheeks puff
when you've had enough, or
the way your breath bounds
from your body when
i say 'we were made for love'?

what it would take
i do not have. for
i do not have you,
and without you,
my pen will not move.
Instructions: use as bookmark until the one you're waiting for arrives.
bobby burns Jan 2015
():
you've taken up too many characters,
a placeholder, 0, is all i attribute to you.

(I):
i lack recall enough
to call back when
we first reacted--
science fair, maybe,
mâche volcanoes
from wet bits--
(too little base,
a surplus of vinegar)
the only magma
with measurable
pH

(II):
made cattle to caffeine,
the pastures we frequented
have gone out of business
by now

(III):
spoke and wrote
with silly string,
messy, childish,
hard to clean up--
impossible to pick
every adhesive trace
from tweed coat fibers--
i draped it around you
and left quietly without
apologizing

(IV):
number four, morphine drip,
corruption (with a caramel center),
you took me to a courtyard where
you had scrawled your number
with a gold safety pin stuck
in the grain--
didn't matter as long as they
brought you plain grain beverages--
i can't say how long i must have
been unconscious for you to
have been able to fully affix
trusses, crossbars and artificial joints
between prostheses--
you made a marionette of me
in a grubby alley operating room,
with an empty bottle
across the occipital for anesthesia,
and a patchwork of phone numbers
staring down from the scratched
portrait in the wood walls
of office buildings surrounding--
keep your cloths on a little longer
keep yourself closed from now on
keep yourself close from now on


[V]:
think of whichever oath you hold
gravely, and think of me, promising
i felt just as illusory as you before--
saved a letter from you i read sometimes
to remind myself how first real loves
can be, so as not to lose faith to cynicism,
and cynicism/stomach lining to coffee grounds.
thank you

[VI]:
i met you only once,
it was enough.
i didn't make out your
last name as you introduced
yourself between zipping up
your fly and cinching your belt,
and even while you walked
inside, between dry heaves,
i could think only of
your Texan-tinsel-town namesake--
good luck streaming the past like
mother's ashes from the back of
your lake boat so many miles from home,
it's all anyone could ask

(VII):
i took that polaroid of you;
you had your hand over
a candle flame and the
shadows dancing between
your fingers illuminated
the spare patches of snow
remaining on the playground.
there was no mistaking
the draining of my swimming
pool of ego as i witnessed
you staring out from each
ice crystal reflection in awe:
your smile tumbled down
the slide and spilled into laughter
while
your voice lilted up the rock wall
and sang in triumph at the top --
i miss you, ganges girl

[VIII]/[IX]:
first time i knew,
second time i suspected,
finally broke me down,
now we laugh about it,
or preferably, don't bring
it up anymore

[X]:
i might still be in love with you
first and foremost, if that's how
things worked, but virginity
isn't a collateral asset, you did
me no favors,
but share in sunshine shoves
and pushes-- a beer down,
3g 'til the bottom of the bag,
alice and wonderland--
i can't watch that movie
without thinking of long hair,
self-destruction, self-deceit,
and naïveté--
you made me grow up with you,
and while you've been in college
i've been rotting.

[XI]:
i've whiled away a year of slacking words
in favor of those spouting from you torrentially.
a placeholder, for people i've written too much about already:
11.

[XII]:
unnerved me in the best of ways,
but you were always ****** up
and emptied of scruples--
had me once at your favorite album,
fooled me twice when you came back,
but you won't get another chance to
touch me

[XIII]:
snow-flakey,
corn comfort,
corn snake.
solid, supple,
untrustworthy.

[moscow]:
you spent a year abroad
so i had only one thing to call you,
and even though I brought my black
camo S&W; pocketknife,
when you told me ******
was cheaper than marijuana
in the motherland,
i knew i shouldn't
have soothed myself
into confident
complacency,
and instead
leapt from
the subaru
piled high,
tobacco-strewn,
littered by cremations
of victims before me.

[XV]:
i yawn and jaws part,
droop down lids,
the realist rendering
of a singularity in film
can't even keep me awake--
but when we get home,
and crawl into the satin
cascade of your mother's
sheets, god, i can't
even think of sleeping.
the moon was also full--
it wanes for awhile now
f  Jul 2018
placeholder
f Jul 2018
you are decidedly not the boy i love
no matter how closely you resemble him
and how sweetly you tell me he doesn't love me
i can't mould my fingertips so they fit your skin
i’m sorry
he’s all i think about
and all my fingertips crave

when his smile can be a lifeline
and break me all the same
i can not fool myself, or you,
into believing i love you
when your name is a placeholder that has never fit right
because his is sweet as it leaves my lips
and yours is dry and bland

that is not to say that you are dry and bland
but your smile pales in comparison to his
i’m sorry to tell you i have more love for that boy
than you have words to describe how beautiful i am
even when we both know you don’t find me that pretty

it is entirely possible he doesn’t find me pretty either
but i find him so beautiful i could spend days looking at him
and fall in love with him in a new way each day
even in my head
the thought of him
and how cruel his absence has been to me
makes me love him so much more

and i can safely say
you are decidedly not the boy i love
because i am a little glad every time there is distance between us
and there is always a cloak of insecurities and sadness draped upon my skin
that grows a little heavier when i touch you, and i fumble as i walk
but he manages to pull it off gracefully
tucking it away with care
because i think even my ugliness can be soft to his magical touch

i love him
so much more than i ever believed i could
in a way that is safe and caring
because cold and love spiked with thrill is something i no longer crave
now that i know how warm he is
please don’t touch me
when you know my heart and body belong to him
because i would not want to taint the love i have for him with your fingerprints;
Angie Acuña Feb 2013
You asked me how I was doing.
Immediately my throat caught and my eyes watered.

I felt lonely.
I felt as if you weren't my friend anymore; that I had been traded for someone else.
You asked if I had replaced you and I said "Never."
Maybe you had replaced me.
But I never dared to say it.
Because I knew that you would also say "Never."

I felt lost.
I felt scared and once again like that little girl sitting in her room with nothing but stuffed animals as her friends.
I had lost my best friend.
But I didn't dare steal your happiness.
Because that's what I thought you were; happy without me.

I felt weak.
I felt strange without anyone to talk to, so I talked to myself and bottled up my feelings.
You didn't listen anymore.
But I didn't dare to try to attract your attention.
Because I knew that you wouldn't notice.

So I blinked back the tears.
"I'm fine."
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2018
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Hope  May 2021
Placeholder
Hope May 2021
I was just another name to be added to your bed frame
Just a body meant to warm yours
But your racing heart told a different story
Or at least I thought, I hoped
My sheets have turned cold
While you wrap your body with someone I’ll never know
Leah Feb 2015
late at night
when the dextromethorphan
turns on me
I can't get your name out of my head
12/1/14
From under the magnolia’s dark green leaves,
I saw Her. For the first time I recognized a face
Of someone who wasn’t familiar; I was
Comforted by a stranger. She showed me
A vision that would one day become mine.
I was 5; She was ageless.
We danced and told secrets and
I walked along her roots
Until the street lights came on.
Then I’d be gone, only to return to her
Branches’ embrace, coming to know her divine face
Day after day. Like it was my own. She told me that I
Was a warrior; She told me that I
Would never be alone; that my own roots would always
Guide me home; that my mind contained
Knowledge that I didn’t yet know; that through me
Healing love and creation could flow, in and out.
I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew She meant well.
I didn’t see her for many years. Until:
After 17 rotations of the sun, after thinking
All I was was said and done, She returned to me
In a dream. I was
Down and out, seeping self-doubt.
I looked upon Her face but saw my own:
She said to me
     “Come in through the leaves. Sit at my roots.
      Look at me: look at my blooming flowers that will soon wither;
      Look at my deep, entangling roots, that have held on for many storms;
      Look at my leaves, evergreen, but always growing.
      I am proof things remain but there is no way that
      You will stay the same. You will yield to change.
      To feel joy amid all the strange
      Is a feeling you cannot feign,
      A feeling foreign to your brain
      There is no way it will sustain. But, find peace
      Knowing that your soul’s moonlight won’t cease
      As the same light was never extinguished in
      All those who came before you:
      Your magic is ancient. Your roots are deeper than
      Any pain you may be feeling now. You carry within you
      A potent medicine, passed down to your in your life’s blood,
      From mothers, midwives, magicians, mighty warriors
      Who bore you, who birthed the essence of who you are,
      And are becoming yet.
      Like you, I, too, was once a sapling, just beginning to feel
      Our great mother’s earth, not yet knowing what it could offer.
      She ensured my growth was not stunted; that I was not lost in the forest.
      For every snap of a branch, there have been ten more that grew;
      For every season I went without, my blooms doubled the next.
      It is not in your mind’s eye now, but it will be:
      The day when you come to know Her as you know me,
      The day you fuse your old and current selves, to meet
      Who you will become:
      The past, present, and future selves as one
      Fluid transition to your newfound position
      Giving recognition to all parts: those without and within
      To strive, to seek, to dream
      May you never lose steam
      To achieve, to fight for what you believe
      To pursue all things with hope, all things
      With love, in service to below and above.
      Illuminating dark spaces, to seek familiar faces
      In unlikely places and cherish the embraces
      That you may never feel again.”
And She is gone. The coolness of the air, not Her branches,
Wraps around my shoulders
Much of what surrounds me serves only as a placeholder
For the connection that yields direction.
The signs and prayers could all just be deception
But is believing in something not better than despair?
It’s a game of Lotería, but it keeps matters fair
But magic and all is coming, with no shortage in sight
And I can change the course of fate if I will it.
Still, for now, the Fool’s fortune is greater than my own
What power can I possible conjure when I’m all alone?
I am left with only my intuition and sheer volition
That’s wearing thin, but I’ll search for more within
Even if nothing is revealed, even to examine my scope of field
It may yet yield all which is past and now healed.
I remember the pact we made when I was five,
But, oh, how much harder it is now to keep hope alive.
I’ll continue to dream
even when I’ve lost all steam,
even when the light narrows to a single beam.
I’ll continue to hope
even when the Universe says nope,
even when I’m seeing only a limited scope.
I’ll continue to pray
even if I don’t know if I’ll see another day,
even when the response is after much delay.
I’ll continue to dance
even if I’m not granted a deserved chance,
even if my moment’s magic fails to entrance.
I’ll continue to create
even if I share my art too late,
even if my efforts are met with hate.
Magnolia’s gaze reminds me of my earth’s view
This vantage point above it all
But keeping close to those I’ll care for
Nurturing with compassion and intuition,
Healing by soft light,
Providing others with gentle protection,
Remembering my ancestors’ loving lesson
Of rooting, and growing, from deeper within.
This poem was guided by my Mexican ancestors and by the magnolia-scented memories of my childhood. Root in make room for growth.

— The End —