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Time unfurled
a single yarn from the hem of a sweater
pulling apart the fabric of it.
Light consumed all darkness
until even the word shadow
held no weight.
The heavy weights of fear,
depression, and the impenetrable bruises
of lifelong aches,
melted,
like winter snow being touched,
at last,
by the spring sun.
A room awaits, made for me:
a coffee ***,
always full and warm with welcome.
A leather bound journal,
with ever-ready pages,
and a pen with ink made from my own veins
that always knows what to say.
An old fashioned is served up promptly,
at 7pm,
when my mother greets me at my door
and curls up next to me on the couch
we talk and laugh,
for hours inside a minute.
Candles glow with ambered remembrance.
Music plays the odes to journeys taken.
My grandfather fishes by a river nearby,
teeming with bass,
and I glimpse the child he never was
smile at me.
Every morning the ocean of my backyard
kisses my feet as she waves hello,
her salt no longer bitter.
I greet the blood of my blood
and bone of my bone upon the shore.
They wear faces that, through centuries
still resemble my own.
We tell stories around bonfires
of the legends that we were in our time.
My soul is made tangible.
I touch the fringes of my warrior spirit,
caress the edges of my creativity.
I dance with the stars before dawn
upon a floor made of crystalline moonbeams,
and marvel at how green,
how delicate,
how infinitesimal,
is the Earth below.
ash 4d
dearly beloved,
we are gathered here today
to celebrate the memorial
of those who we were
at one point in time,
those we became
as the world continued to chime,
and those we shall be
when the clocks stop ticking—
like the tune of that one track
in your head
that just doesn't seem to stop hitting.

we are settled here today
to welcome the peace we've desired,
the love we've forgotten,
and the happy akin to the sunshine
on flowers surrounding our graves.

we will succumb to the fire and air
as we're provided with,
based on our actions and tribulations,
we're pardoned with.

tangle of bones in the dust,
holding engravings
of those who marked each other—
the soulmates and the friends alike.
none can ever witness it,
but in the pale moonlight.

"and i shall stay with you,
holding hands, keeping close,
when the angels in front of us
sing a rhyme
that presents before us
the days we barely awaited
all this time.

since we met,
knowing we were to separate,
i shall hold you every time,
in each moment,
even if it is to berate.

no matter if it's the end—
if that's what it means
to live by, 'till death do us part'.
i shall do it again and again,
this destiny or the afterlife,
reckoning in all its might,
will do it again,
with all my heart,
even if you were to leave me & depart."
Mateah Apr 25
I believe in heaven
Because I watch people die
Death isn't what they told you
There's no light that fades from their eyes

No last words are spoken
From a heart that is at peace
The silence goes unbroken
No final breath perceived

Yet even in that quiet
As heart and lungs collapse
There is something clearly spoken
A resounding epitaph

The emptiness of body
Makes a claim of something more
What is now a mix of bonded cells
Was not just that before...

There was more to them than a beating heart
More than a chest's rise and fall
And if some part of them still lives
I know it's not stuck inside these walls

A soul has left the room.
A spirit took its flight.
The person that you knew escaped
While the body lost its fight.

So while I can only see a body
I believe there is something beyond
And as the optimist I am
I pray that heaven is where they've gone
As an ICU nurse, I see people die a lot. It's an odd experience that leaves you with a lot to ponder.
The life of a poet lives on
through all their poems,
but the day I do depart,
I want to be cremated.

I will entrust family
and some fellow poets
to let my ashes sink
into some deep black ink.
And I'd want them to write
the stanzas I secretly saved
just for the occasion.

That way
they can say
that I put
all my heart
and my body
into poetry.
Literally.

My soul,
on the other hand,
would live on happily
as an eternal poet
having fun rhyming
while everyone's crying.
(and I'd wish they'd stop.)
I wouldn't want my loved ones to be saddened.  I'd want them to rejoice, knowing that my dream of becoming an eternal poet finally came true.
I want to hold the sun, as a flame.
As a shroud that no longer needs his name.
Devalues his origin, and the costs incurred.
I'll dissolve in the furnace, my body deferred.

It is not the burning that I truly seek,
But a quiet surrender, at a radiant peak.
The kind that evaporates matter aligned,
In myths of forever, leaving time behind.

I want to watch as light rays become dust.
As suns burn hollow, saturate and then rust.
Not where I'm dying, but morphing sublime.
A process dissolving emotions and mind.

To hold the sun is to grasp at gold.
Abandon the flesh, that's grown tired and cold.
To slip through the cracks where mortality turns.
And breathe in the silence as lungs start to burn.

For there is a place where the ashes belong.
Where shadows are living and scream with a song.
Where the afterlife is not just a realm I'll behold,
But a quiet ascension to a gnosis untold.

With stars I share a secret. "The Divine are forgiving".
Their quantum doorways are their gift to the living.
I want to walk through, with that luminous flow.
My transmogrification into the unknown.

To hold the sun is to become its light,
To no longer struggle in the dark cosmic fight.
To emerge as the stardust that I know is pure.
Lay the illness of a life in defeat by Deaths Cure.

♦ Đerek Λbraxas ♦
jewel Mar 31
it’s been a long day
so i’ll just turn in early for the night;
mint toothpaste & detergent & lotion
mix in with the smell of my blankets
as the afterlife waits for me

and i like the way my sheets
wrap & cradle my beat body
like a mummy, tender heart in a jar
basket of eyes & bowl of liver.
the afterlife waits for me.

but i do not rest easy
as i spend the minutes turning
over in my grave,
vision spinning in the darkness
unbound & chaotic

& i can’t help feel the hours
seep into my flesh & bones;
the energy that i want to lack
changes into radio static,
unbound & chaotic

& as i watch the light
out my window change
from black to blue to purple & pink
i wonder if lavender oils
will really help me fall asleep

or the maybe it’ll be the sound of tapping rain,
or maybe if i change my pillow cover
or what if i tried to reset my time
or what if i tried to close my eyes
if i really tried to fall asleep

i can’t help but think
my room is a beast in itself;
electrical hum & emerald blood;
& when everyone sleeps, i am
alive & awake & breathing

the quiet i so desperately lack in the sun
i hate so desperately in the dark
because when i sit here
the world is asleep
and i speak with the moon,
awake & alive & breathing
copyrighted, poemsbyjewel (2025).
Love is gazing
Not at someone
But into them
Marveling at
The colors
Of their soul.

Love is patient
It understands
Why it waits
Or rather,
Who it is
Waiting for.

Love is heaven
It conquers all
Even mortality
Meaning that
The truest lovers
Shall never part.

They will find each other.
In a heaven so picturesque
It might as well be made
With the ethereal colors
That each one knows
Within the other's eyes.
I've always hated the line, "Till Death do us part."
My lover and I will say a different line when we get married.
JohnDuffyASY Feb 11
(A lone voice whispers)

As a lost soul-searching for their loved one,
As I still grieve

After ten years

Who crossed the Silver Pond
My question always is

Do people still believe,
there is life beyond

God's
Great Beyond?

(C)
Copyright John Duffy
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (July 8, 1926 – August 24, 2004) was a Swiss-American psychiatrist, a pioneer in near-death studies, and author of the internationally best-selling book, On Death and Dying (1969), where she first discussed her theory of the five stages of grief, also known as the "Kübler-Ross model".[1]
Mica Wood Feb 9
Evanescent ghosts
share sad, glass secrets…
Beauty is transient
and eternity is dark.

Born and broken;
yet we laugh—
Celebrating these
sacred, porcelain selves.
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