Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2023
The Nighttime Skies have altered, altering us…

The nightly showing of twinkling heavens, fulsome,
brimming, as can now be seen but only in a planetarium
program, always was a delight to our ******* citified  
visitors, who received this free reminder of Earth’s  
non-centric role in the universe, happily, for it jived
senses with common sensibility, confirming an assumptive
reality with yes! my-eyes-can-see-it proofs, that many city
folk only hope & assume are yet true someplace  else
‘out there.’

Night light pollution, a life feature just assumed as
a costless cost of doing business of our modern
population distribution, has horrendous mental
consequences for a generation of me-me-me
young ones, who lack the lessons in real awe,
not by way of a video game, but by never having seen a
Milky Way,
constellations and planets
that were so necessary to
critical cortical thinking p,
human beliefs,
re the totality of
existence a mere
two hundred or
so years ago.

The star’s disappearance for so much of our population,
reenforces the notion of our own centricity, get it?

A world centered on the city.

The truer star studded sky knows not
of gender neutrality,
racial disharmony,
through a
“I am not the universe “ perspective,
for in this large than life realer than real
exterior externality,
which why, by the by,
is mega black and white duopoly,
makes who is bigger no better than smaller,
for all but magnified speckles
all now more of a minor
irrelevant relativity.

When all the worlds are watching, not just the world, but
a Universe of unknown worlds are judging, studying us,
and maybe our lives are mighty picayune,
but amore humbled and yet precious, do we not need to be
always on our best behavior?

the fact is that we who are but 80 miles from nyc’s borderline can no longer sky-testify, be reminded of our planetary’s liveliness- uniqueness and our proper place on the largest tapestry
of the always, of the forever, of the
majesty and harmonious coexistence.

I am naive and a proper fool, and I do not know if it is the new smoking of the planet, spread of the seemingly innocuous
city boundaries encroaching on our rural existence, or a new physicality condition that makes our nights a pungent blackened cloud, and that so many can not say of the awesomeness
mystery above us, and think
with humility
our destiny,
our alignment
                         “is in the star’s.”

Alas poor Yorick, even your creator, the poet William Shakespeare, who understood human frailties too well, conceded that,

”it is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves.”

But the again,
he could nightly gaze
upon them,
and we cannot!

He also conceded, to attempt to balance
the imbalances of our
visual scales,
and magnetic moral compasses,
writing,

indeed!

”there are more things in heaven and earth*”
Hannah Apr 2022
I did not believe,
standing on the bank of a river
which was wide and swift,
that I would cross
that bridge plaited from thin,
fragile reeds fastened with bast.
I walked delicately,
as a butterfly
and heavily
as an elephant,
I walked surely
as a dancer
and wavered like a blind man.
I did not believe that I would cross that bridge,
and now that I am standing
on the other side,
I do not believe I crossed it.
Unpolished Ink Dec 2020
An altered state
an increasing rate of change
developing a personal beauty range
Butterflies are always changing
Xant Sep 2019
As the lights went dim
I found myself adrift
into an altered reality

And that's about
the furthest I can get,
away from this harsh
substantiality
How I feel when the stores are closing for the day
Amanda Kay Burke Mar 2019
I have nothing to live for now
Life feels pointless and has no meaning since we parted
And I have to wonder...
Did the sun stop shining for you as well?

Colors do not appear as bright as usual
Food I used to love doesn't taste the same
Every single song I listen to has transformed into the saddest ballad ever composed
Even the tight ball of worry has shifted position in my stomach
The hoodie you got me for Christmas burns my lonely skin with longing...
I wear it anyway

Without you the world just isn't quite right
Like the whole planet has tilted a few degrees on it's axis
To compensate for the gravity of our separation

Every hour looks the same as before
They really aren't
Their steady pace remains the same and they take the same route they always do but they are anything but unchanged
Because they feel so much heavier now
So wrong

I stumble from one interaction to the next
Saying my words
Smiling my smile
Directing my limbs
Being the person I was

Yet, I am not her anymore
My life is still my life
My friends are still my friends
My heart is still mine in my chest
My teardrops still fall from my eyes
My feelings are still the mess they've been for years
Yet, it isn't my life anymore

I wake up and apply mascara to a stranger's face
Put socks on a strangers feet
Brush a stranger's teeth
Answer to a stranger's name
Because the girl everyone knows is gone and all that's left is this routine perfected by the walking corpse she left behind

Maybe it isn't the world that is irrevocably altered
Maybe what has broken isn't the shade of the morning sky or the smell of cedar shavings or the sound of pouring rain splashing against puddles
Maybe nothing is actually different at all

Except me
Part of this is an excerpt from my five-page letter to Paul but then inspiration struck and it took on a life of it's own. I do like it though. Do you think I should have ended it at "I wear it anyway" or does the rest of it add to the overall quality of the poem? Tell me what you think! :)
Paul C Dec 2017
focus—
artificial, just like the pill bottle.

the world condenses, collapses into a pin-point right in front of my eyes
and into my paper or computer screen

thoughts racing at light speed
my mind trying to digest its own thoughts--
confusion,
state of hyper-realism (Who am I again?)
an alternate dimension of higher thought
whirling,
running,
spinning,
racing,
crash into an hour (or two) from now
and fall down
hard, into the present.
K Balachandran Apr 2017
lightening doodles
night and city lights dissolve,
more or less than than real?
Next page