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Laugh.
Smile.
Don't pay attention to the pain of depression.
Don't brood on the things that force emotional concession.
Try to act average, don't draw attention.
Remember, seeing a loved one suffer can be harder on others.
Like thick smoke in a house, it brings tears and it smothers.
So when you feel empty, put on a smile.
It won't help yourself, but it might spare some pain for your sisters and brothers.
Just because you feel it, you don't have to show it.
The pain can be non-contiguous if no one else knows it.
Just make no important decisions while you're feeling below low.
You can't take that route, that's not how I'll go.
Just fight the good fight, and try not to cry.
That just makes things worse, I don't know why.
You have Hope, just keep the Word in your heart, and your eyes to the sky.
Things will be painful but this too shall pass.
Life is good, even though I feel low.
Keep this in your head:
Feeling low and alive, is better then getting high and then dead.
Yes, it seems obvious, but it had to be said.
If you keep these notes stored up in your head,
Then you'll seem less abnormal, more average instead.
Depression. (Just because I feel it, I don't have to show it)... mostly. Reading this made me laugh. It's just sappy. Hope you don't mind some sap. Rubbing alcohol is good for getting it off... ✌️
Jill Oct 1
I never knew about
The inert filler that
Improves the qualities
Of the concrete anchor

I hardly thought about
The thick filaments that
Increase the tensile strength
Of the synthetic rope

I didn’t care about
The galvanising that
Protects the mild steel
Of the Eye Bolt Head

   Fabricated weighted-strong,
   For time of tribulation
   Steady, ready, learning-long
   For heavy education

   Vital use in stormy flash
   For fear of wave-washed going
   Murky lessons foamy crash
   Tough-moored for gale-smash knowing
  
   Solid, loaded, hefty force
   Surge-squall saviour, tempest keep
   Any storm will blow its course
   Even so, still draws us deep

   In calmer times the sinker line
   Anchor-bound and concrete-lagged
   Will tether us in place and time
   Hinder-hitched and progress-dragged

I no longer need it
My concrete anchor that
Saved the young child
Who weathered the storm
©2024

BLT Webster’s Word of the Day challenge (tribulation) date 30th September 2024. An experience that causes someone to suffer.
Demons Sep 30
sometimes i wonder if i’m doing this right
or if everyone else is just pretending that i am.
trapped words that I cannot  
scrape from my mouth  
spread like poison.  
radiating tendrils  
running under skin.  

I stab the pen into my arm,  
draw out the black bile  
coursing my veins  

and use it for ink.  
pouring my pollution onto the page,  
scribbling the bleak and vicious  
cogitations  
the nefarious abstractions  
that dig into the hushed  
corners of my soul.  

I hope to drain myself-  
enough to return colour  
to my veins,  
bleed red once more;  
taste joy and love  
on my palette  
in place of ash,  
and the ruthless regret  
that clings to my tongue.  

I am fading,  
withering like a husk.  
I fear I will run out of ink
and find nothing red left
There's an emotion,
It's deep inside;
I think it's buried
Somewhere I can hide.

For plenty of action,
There's no satisfaction;
No want, nor a prayer
Has brought me inaction;

Still I fill my cup,
And I drink from it deeply,
For nothing but sleep
And a fragile peace keep me,

From doing the things that
I see in my dreams;
Acknowledging that
I'm the monster I seem;

With a shrug of a shoulder,
I'll say that it's over,
I'll tell myself I can lament
In a dream,

Yet something so violent,
As real as it seems,
Leaves me with a silence
As I intervene...
I am not a good man.  Let's start with that.  I also have a lot of prophetic dreams. It apparently runs in my family; my great- uncle,  my grandma's younger brother, is an actual Buddha. My great-grandfather apparently was beaten with a broom by his wife for telling her that my grandmother was going to be the first of our family to leave Vietnam during the war.  I've written about these kinda of dreams before; but now I'm just gonna say ***** it and go personal. This is what I do to deal with mine.
The hammer is falling, my fists are clenching, my teeth are gnashing while my bones are crunching. Waves of pain are crashing, smashing against me, finally breaking. This level of pain can't be good to be taking, bad for my health. The voices are calling but no one is there, not even myself. My blood is pumping, sped by adrenaline dumping. The lack of the drug is inducing my mind to start seizing, both my legs are freezing, involuntarily quaking. The sensation of claws are slashing my back. As my heart keeps thumping, jumping around - heart attack? Now my blood is pooling. So the attack dogs keep drooling. They smell the blood and begin to whip into a frenzy, so I jump up, and run like McKenzie. Moving fast, as if I had wheels, one dog was faster and now nips at my heels. The dog bit my foot so I tripped and then fell. Now it’s gnawing on my leg, and I don’t feel very well. So I patted the dog’s head and then laid down for a spell…will I wake up? Only time will tell. When I come to my senses I won't feel at all well. Life hurts at times, unbearably so. If not for Divine intervention, I'd much rather go.
(Alright. So I took an older, rather cruddy poem, reworked and reworded it, retitled it and now it's a new rather cruddy poem, that's a whole lot less cruddy, and may even be alright in someone's opinion...my fingers aren't crossed though. But, it's much better [again, in my opinion], more specific than the original poem was and titled more accurately. I hope you find something of some value in there. It's satisfying to improve something that was previously much less than mediocre... 😄) Neat, I just looked at this after fixing typos and noticed it'd been "seen" 23 times (probably all from myself, checking the text again & again for errors).. that's just my favorite number, is all. 23. Neat. Oh! Music playing while writing, was Morphine's album, "a cure for pain". Excellent saxophone & slide bass!
I am doing the dishes.
I see the mess but don’t feel motivated and add it to the mental list of things that need to get done, even though I feel heavy.
I have Friends on autoplay but I’m getting up every 20 minutes to finish a task that I had already started but became exhausted a partial way through.
The dishes are never ending and the trash is piling up but I’m not being lazy.
This isn’t lazy.
I’m doing these tasks in small increments because I become tired a quarter of the way through and just want to lie in bed and cut out my problems and mess of a brain.
And then you tell me that I don’t do anything either so it’s my fault too but what I’m begging you to see is that I’m trying. I’m trying to do the dishes but my body has been asleep for 3 months and I’m constantly trying to fight to wake up and be a person.
But it needs to get done.
So I will do it in increments.
I will get it done.
I’m doing the dishes.
Press it down against the skin,
just enough to make a crease;
sharp side down.

Pull it back
smooth and perfect,
exchange this pain
for one that's eloquent,
warm, and sharp around the edges.

Tracing the blood inside my veins-
with red lines
carved across my wrist.
Another scar,
flowing red and honest.

With each stroke
I etch this strange relief,
Admiring the red and silver swirls
that make the masterpiece,
and drown the sorrow
that brought steel and flesh together
into this unholy union.

The sweet taste of torture,
sharp side down.
Jax Sep 6
I find myself offering to the death of cold.
Your love is inhospitable.
Prolonged exposure to your love
has caused numbness in my body.
I’ve learned to handle the bitterness,
But each layer that kept me warm has been stripped.

Inside of me,
the same stinging chill is found
that your heart was frosted in.
And now I understand when the sorrow became frozen.
The icy heart hardens into a glacier
when the agony remains in a fixed spot,
forced to recrystallize.

I’ll burrow myself in the comfort of snow,
stabbing myself with ice spikes I've sharpened,
knowing the only amenity
is my death tonight.
That everything I could’ve endured,
was the frost mounting against my flesh.
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