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Karan May 19
To look upon oneself
And find a citadel of half-wrought
Miseries and wounded passions
Where the birds all wore masks
Of hide and gleaming fixtures

Birds that enter upon a pile
Of stiff and tangled limbs
With heads, mouth open
Groaning cries of
Pain, as their teeth are torn
Collected to create nests
In which those enamel buds
Burst into seamless streams
Of bloodied skin

Curving together, crossing to form
A twisted leather medusa
That blooms rusted buckles
Which glisten in the sky above that citadel
In the place of stars for those citizens
To pray between a leviathan chorus of agony.
Cadmus May 21
🥃

I must’ve been drunk,
under a spell,
or half-asleep
with my soul on mute

because some of the people
I let into my life
were the kind
I wouldn’t let near
if I’d been even
half
conscious.

Not in daylight.
Not with clarity.
Not with my guard up
and my self-respect awake.

like a fool
hosting thieves
in the middle of a dream.

🥃
This piece captures the bewilderment and regret of past emotional decisions, highlighting how vulnerability, distraction, or denial can invite people into our lives who never deserved the invitation. It’s a bitter laugh at our own temporary blindness.
Cadmus May 23
🖤

Just pray
you don’t push me far enough
to show you
how heartless I can be.

I’ve buried mercy
for those who went too deep.

I’ve smiled
while walking away from flames
I used to feed.

There’s a silence in me
darker than rage,
a calm
that doesn’t beg,
warn,
or explain.

🖤
This poem is a quiet warning cloaked in composure. It speaks to the stillness that comes not from indifference, but from practiced restraint, the kind that’s capable of cruelty, but chooses silence. Until silence becomes the sharpest answer of all.
Quincy May 19
A silent god, both mute and deaf. You only speak to me with your hands, with the soft trailing pads of your fingertips.
burning, scorching, tearing the flesh from my skin. You split me open, Moses and his ****** red sea.

You dissect, examine. You sew up. You do not put back together. Or maybe you do but wrong. All my organs out of place. Dirt swimming in my intestines. So wrong I rip myself back open to make it right. Rip until I can't taste the lavender on my tongue.

You don't wear gloves. You don't Because you don't care, or maybe because you do. Because it won't matter, or because it matters too much. Because this isn't dissection this is ****. Because this is your hands inside me. Because this is the satisfaction of stealing the last thing that was mine, the last pure part of me. This is you staring desperately into the murk hoping to see something, this is the horror of seeing nothing but tar.
Hey, so this is pretty dark. I've been having a PTSD episode and writing has helped tremendously. It's hard to express how it feels to someone else, how afraid and sick I get. But this is as close as I can get.
Cadmus May 26
The worst isn’t death.
Death is honest.
It arrives, it ends.
Clean.

The worst is staying.
Breathing.
Functioning.
While everything that made you you
quietly rots beneath the skin.

When you watch your passions
starve to death
and can’t even bother
to grieve them.

When the people you loved
become background noise,
and you answer with nods
because words cost too much.

When nothing is worth arguing for,
and silence feels
like mercy.

This isn’t a fall.
It’s slow erasure
each day
another fingerprint gone
from the glass.

Until one morning,
you look in the mirror
and meet
a very polite stranger.
This poem explores emotional erosion - not dramatic collapse, but the quiet, daily loss of passion, purpose, and self. It reflects the darker side of psychological burnout, where apathy masquerades as peace, and survival becomes indistinguishable from surrender.
Cadmus May 20
They laughed when he showed up
with a résumé in hand.
Tail tucked, horns sanded down,
wore a tie, shook hands.

“I used to tempt kings,
whispered wars into ears.
Now I scroll headlines
and choke back tears.”

He tried marketing
but humans were better
at selling lies with smiling teeth
and discount codes for sin.

He applied for politics
but found the position filled
by those who make devils
blush in admiration.

Tried tech
but algorithms already knew
how to addict, divide,
and hollow out souls
with precision.

Even in war,
they no longer need whispers.
They bomb hospitals
and call it strategy.
He offered corruption.
They offered quarterly targets.

“They don’t need me anymore,”
he sighed to the clerk.
“They’ve mastered the craft.
I was just a spark
They made it an industry.”

Now he wanders,
CV in flames,
hoping someone will want
a washed-up fallen angel
who simply can’t compete
with modern man.
This poem uses satire to explore the depths of human moral decay, flipping the traditional narrative of evil. Once feared, Satan is now obsolete, as humanity’s capacity for cruelty, manipulation, and greed has far surpassed mythic malevolence.
Damocles May 19
Famished languished fingers reach skyward
As parched sea-salt-dried mouths open
Barely even a whimper escapes into the distance
Bemoaning in unison like gulls calling.

We wished for a future,
Devoid of reality
Avoidant of the derelict
Consumed with digital consumption —
While soiling the very veins of tree roots.

We make gods out of flawed humans
Who sings siren songs or plays the part in plays
Collecting praise and earthy riches,
Gold coin amnesia to sell their bodies for a hit of applause.

Meanwhile, our churches are empty,
The pews collect dust,
No one remembers his name
No one praises in fear or love
It’s pedestrian, mundane, a common act
Meaningless like Valentine’s Day
We took the magic and turned it into paper collage art.

It happened with a crack of the world,
A thunderous voice anguished across black clouds
And strikes of lightning showing enraged veins
And birds, like angels, fell from the heavens,
Crashing upon the rain-stained and wetted soil.

We should have heeded the warning.

As the fires are burning,
Scorching skin to cement
Melding bone to iron rod,
California is lost, gone to the water
Drunk from the ocean,
Sand storms from the Valley of Death
Filling their orifices
Swath away the faithless in a single blow.
And behold the rising of the deep below.

Ashes befoul the air like a rainstorm
Choking oxygen from the lungs,
We bathed in the currents of poisoned waters
And bore children in chimeric horrors,
Cosmic old ones stir under their beds uncomforted
As the earth stirs, and breaks her silence.

Death would be a simple act of grace and mercy
If only to watch along purgatorial veils of fog
As we sing like beached sirens.

A hymn to the skyward palisades
Where no one is there to listen.
The world is in such dire straits and I feel that as a species we are lost. We have abused Mother Earth, and forsaken god or our spiritual deities. This is a thought of what could be an outcome. A concept.
Cadmus May 19
Apart from your mother…

Only insurance companies
pray you live forever
no crashes, no coughs,
no inconvenient surprises.

They pray for your safety
with more sincerity
than your friends ever did.

No backhanded compliments,
no masked resentment.

They’ll cheer for your success
as long as it’s mild.
Celebrate your fitness
but not too wild.
This poem exposes the transactional nature of modern relationships, using insurance companies as a metaphor for the rare, conditional loyalty found in a world where even love is often veiled in competition, envy, or quiet sabotage.
EJ Crowe May 18
A Marionette In The Dark
By: E.J. Crowe

I drip puke and spit blood.
Bags under my eyes—
heavy with contemplation,
under the toxic spell of drugs.

The alluring call…
the pills whisper to me from behind the walls:
“Come home.
You belong to me.”

I stumble to my closet, slow—
covered in glistening sweat and dried *****.
I muster the strength to find my pills—
my beautiful percs,
so pretty,
so good—
a potion to forget
the awful, decaying wound
of this festering world.

I SEE THE LIGHT.

I trip—
fall
into the darkest corner of my room.
Huddled,
knelt,
dumping out my faded RX bottle.
Counting them.
Smelling them.

The demons finally have their hold.

I look around—
my musty, dry room,
a sliver of light peeking
through a busted makeshift curtain.
Dust particles dance
in the sunray like Ashes

I haven’t left the house in a week.
Haven’t showered.
Haven’t changed.
The floor’s a graveyard—
scattered crushed pills,
broken beer cans,
whiskey bottles,
dried blood.

What have I become?

The addiction became possessive—
controlling.
I was its marionette.
It weaved the strings of my bane existence.

Hopeless.
Lost.
Beautifully scared.

I hear the faint laughs
of my friends walking by the house.

***** them.
They don’t care.
My family doesn’t care.

****,
my dad gave me the pills.

Only the pills love me.

My beautiful white powder.

I use my knife to crush them.
Sweating heavy,
smelling like a living zombie.
As I drift to sleep,
my only company
is the warm embrace of my
euphoric state,
and dilated pupils.

God…

when can I be normal?
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