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Jeremy Betts Nov 2024
Self destruction
With no red button
Internal spontaneous combustion

A flipped switch
Quick curve ball pitch
Veered straight for the ditch

No countdown timer
No red, no blue wire
Just a smoldering dumpster fire

Struggle with each next breath
Welcoming a last breath
A timeless back and forth with death

©2024
Nat Lipstadt Nov 2024
~ inspired by, & for Sally~

the modern internal combustion engine
is a series of controlled explosions, a spark
ignites the flammable gasoline, the pistons
moving, dispensing energy to turn our
wheels so we may voyage as a pair, to
there, and to here:

our very hearts, the original model of
this energetic blood disbursement of
oxygen ignited by electric pulsations,

one contemplates
at this late hour, at this late date, when the
moving parts, obedient servants,
collectively concur
that the use-by-date has nearly arrived and
we must soon take a sabbatical to the whereafter

what two, surely not three, digits will complete the right side of our hyphen,
our from~ to, as if that were an achievement,
more than merely, an identifying bracelet

think upon it, thousand of explosions,
millions of sparkings electric, we have been
engineering our reactors to go to over 100%,
until we cry out
how long you gonna run that body down,
and when the answer is ascertained,
we now done and undone,

we
no longer care, that last datum,
we are, of it, unconscious,
the date prior inscribed in flesh,
its mate, its uncomplimentary
complement,
can be only scribed in
Vermont granite,
as a warning
to any passerby
that yet harbors
the illusory that
the future can
be foretold
Nov 19~ Nov
TheKatIsDead Nov 2023
on the first day,
silence exists
to none; it awaits
the spark to turn
its light into sound
from singularity
to polarity
fastens and worsen

its glaze turns to screams;
the kaleidoscopic cacophony
turns nothingness
to an array of beauty

god looked at
the neverending pyre
and said
"that is all good"

he rest well the next day
neth jones May 2023
watching for air                              a mad thing of static to do
unwashed  i hold it all foreign   my perspectives clothed as the enemy
an agreed muscle of tension       with pockets fracked into my hands 
i look out the window   wide agape guidance                                                     invasive drills of heat   the giving sunlight ; punishing,
a tree,   the grieving buildings
the whinging of cicadas
and here i am     watching for air

one point for the weather                                                      
one­ point for the view                                                            
­one big point for my ****** condition                                
one point for the passers by and their galling dramedies

and there it is ; the wiry plan that's built                        
from one small tickle of wild thought              
                                 formed long ago
trickling to the current day
some whipped wit of poisoned psychology          
     fed to the inbreed   (welcome   you panting imp)
decades of saved up fatty layers
a deed   of habitual sediment
retching until the tide laps become still
   a cured and congealed gladness
marbled, a butcher would say
i am full and hearted and heated and padded senseless
        turned under a heel   with my wastrel history
  i’ve accomplished this     a stifled condition
                               of poisoned obscenity

seated deep        almost fully incapacitated  
in my armchair   on this chummy day
my leisure clothes greasy     sluck against my blemished hide
a packet of cigarettes   to my side
rounded upon  by sounds of the neighbours affairs
with a gasp of energy   i 'skin one off' vigorously
my system trembling   with years of hard liquor
borderline   to a state of unconscious whelm
retained final       prime for ignition
i could manage a spectacle
a blinding flare
                                  a glorious incineration
and the release
                      of my true oder

i light a match for my cigarette
a glass bottle                                                                                  
formed-to-conform-to-be                                                
         and not simply shatter       with  '*******' explosion    
(though it is an option)


imagining the worst sinnings in the rooms surround
Safana Nov 2020
In a place
where no one
but we, between
sun set and rise
a cut of bamboo
is fused and the
coffee cup brimful
to the lip, the
label uplifted to the
next level and
sloshed on a lovely
sharing hours,
slowly we muted
and respiring like
a new combustion
engine of a new
2020 Mercedes Benz
car racing on pure
coal tar high road
Read it, you can!
Because, I am in love
with
2020 Mercedes Benz Cars
San-Pei Lee Jul 2019
a raging hollow in the chest
breathing air
still no combustion
darling just a spark
then perhaps
the heart's embers
crackle and burn
into fires in the sky
wishes in the night
Em MacKenzie Nov 2018
The stack of stones in my throat
lodged firm since my youth,
The ship sunk but I missed the boat
my lies are soaked in truth.
Every remaining image has been erased,
I miss it more than I admit,
maybe it’s just been misplaced,
in an area left forgotten to sit.
Scribbling an echo down
my notebook’s incomplete,
lacking adjective to a noun,
description’s too discreet.

The road evolves into an ice rink,
snow piles now a wood board.
A crack comes and down I’ll sink,
time lost I can not afford.
The cold embraces that replaced heat,
radiation poisoning from the sun,
but still the rays felt so sweet,
I thought I was it’s only one.
Translating from a heart,
the message is unclear,
a sentence that could never start,
and one we could never hear.

Now I see all the fires lit,
playing chance with a flame,
this round I don’t wish to forfeit,
but I’m not ontop of my game.
The breadcrumbs I left as a trail,
are far and few inbetween,
and so far they’ve gotten stale,
blue mold blends in with the green.
Reciting a favourite memory,
one I wish I could forget,
replace the plot points cleverly,
and rearrange the character set.

Praying for a dedication
from any soul to stop,
but I’ll take my medication
until my eyes drop.

Heart fire,
all admire.
Heart fire,
it will never tire.

Scribbling an echo down
my notebook’s incomplete,
lacking adjective to a noun,
description’s too discreet.
Scribbling an echo down,
my notebook’s incomplete,
to the words forever bound,
feelings wedged in concrete.
CautiousRain Oct 2018
We can never love again
without combustion,
a self-destruction,
if our lips were to meet
again;
we were never meant to be.
Ye'up.
Em MacKenzie Sep 2018
My mind’s checking in to checking out,
I’ve decided I don’t want to know what the ending’s about.
I’m tired of gaining wrinkles under my sunken eyes,
and I’m sick of grey hairs and done with grey skies.

The skeletons are stacked and toppling out from my closet,
the space is barely enough for the ones born in the past ten years.
They tap and they rap and even try to claw it
but I’ve soundproofed the walls and even plugged my ears.
The gasoline has been splashed on the ground,
and I’m buying matches by the pound.

I’ve got a war campaign between my heart and my head,
bleach doesn’t clean the stain from the mass of bloodshed.
I’m tired of holding my tongue and hiding a quivering lip,
and I’m ignoring all those who tell me to “just get a grip.”

The demons are pushing their way out from under my floorboards,
They’ve always cracked but now they also screech.
I search in hope for some rope but only find extensions cords,
and even then they’re fully used or slightly out of reach.
The gasoline has been splashed on the ground,
and I’m buying matches by the pound.

I guess this would be my goodbye
but absolutely nothing about it is good.
Let us not pretend to cry,
but admit I made it further than I should.
There’s a certain strength in keeping your eyes open;
a certain strength that I just lack,
skip all the words, they don’t need to be spoken
just please let me sleep in a place that’s forever pitch black.
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