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How is it possible to love that  which I hate so much.
What sort of mind-warp enables me
To seethe one moment and smile the next.
What eraser clears the blackboard of my anger
So an hour from now it’s empty and
All ready to be scrawled across again.

I don’t understand why I settle for moments
When what I really want is a  lifetime.
To be the yang to an extraordinary yin
Instead of mama chicken shepherding her brood of one.

Why am I above the ground when who I am
Was murdered years ago.
Aren’t the dead supposed to be interred?
Am I a zombie of neglect and co-dependence
Hulking, blind of eye and blank of soul,
Across an aching painscape.
ljm
A marital rough patch in purple prose
Alexis Lewis Jun 2016
Life, as it presents itself, is pretty straightforward.
School-work-family-grandkids-retirement.
It's all laid out for us like clothes on the bed when we are kids:
"This is how your life is going to be."
And we watch Disney and see all these people that have adventures And lives that aren't normal by any stretch of the word
And somehow we're expected to still have normal expectations of how
Our lives are going to play out.
Well, I'm sorry, world, but I have a longing to be better.
It's a cookie dough mix made out of both 1. Longing for recognition,
2. Wanting genuine friends,
And 3. Wanting to be valuable to someone.
Its a want to be wanted,
Like the characters in TV shows that get kidnapped and told
"You have a specific skillset that we need"
By a man in a black suit with a grave expression.
Wouldn't that just feel great? Like FINALLY
Someone thinks that I'm important, necessary, talented, special,
DIFFERENT.
It's my greatest fear, the fear of living
9-to-5
Going to work, day after day,
Sliding the project in the inbox, leaving to grab a drink and watch some Netflix alone before bed, then
Doing it all again.
Even if I wasn't alone, if I had family
Wouldn't that get dreary? Like,
Take the kids to school, go to work, pick them up, go home.
Day after day until they grow up and are gone and I retire and then What?
What was the whole point?
I need something bigger//something transcendent
I need a purpose or a goal or a mission
I need someone to tell me, okay, we need you because ___
And then I need to feel the thrill of the moment, the thrill of doing Something I'm inherently good at.
Is it just me or
Am I the only one dissatisfied with life as it presents itself?
Peter Roads Dec 2015
What is this?
What arrogance
to be dissatisfied with bliss
What am I?
That I find myself like a Danish price
contemplating molecular physics
If there could be but one thing through which I could reach
from the tips of my toes to the ends of my ariels
let it speak to me now or remain forever ephemeral
Tempt me not with silence nor sentient reflection
let me sit idle
while a host of doubts with carousing inflections
rend peace from the oath used to praise your perfection
the redoubt of certainty a false satisfaction
but I will seek it no less, lest my own moral code
on the floor lie here prone

Be still

Who are you to challenge me?
My own self?
HA! You are nothing
less than a vaporous belch,
repudiation of the shelf
from which this retched book of life was wrenched
No the end for you can come not too soon
unless it be for that which you are
A cankerous man ***** feeding on the life that was not given
but taken from others AND from yourself
I know not you

Unless I do

Unless I do

For all that was, is and was, was mirage
Smoke to the mirrors, dust in the sunshine
caught by the exhaled breath of nothingness
Cancer in the heart or lung make no difference to the boatman

BEGONE

Waste not my time with salutations
nor grave maunderings on that which could have been
nor with pleasantries and optimism
I have no use for these baubles of ego

BEGONE I SAID

What would you be without meat to shrine that temple of mind?
A magician?
A sorcerer?
Some glorified seamstress of witty offal
set to ram fill mouths of the bantering rabble
NO! I shall not cowtow to the nicetities of your excess, nor of mine
Our colours are grey NOT black and white
we shall drown beneath stone until resurrection day
and even then we shall rot in our graves for there IS NO GOAD
not to man, beast or rock NO GOAD that science shall not uncover, no lack
that in wondrous doubt we shall **** to deny the self-evident fact
that we are nothing and everything combined in one shell
decomposing rapidly, a death knell for the self
is the salutary cry for the immobile stone laid on my brow
for the rustling tree
for the wild fox and the mutated accessories to our loneliness
they shall be freed and they shall feast upon our corpses
and not a day too soon
and not a day too soon
so sayeth the bard from his everlasting gloom.
Jellyfish Dec 2015
Extreme dissatisfaction; your real life was covered in utter distress.
Word Therapy Apr 2015
Bright-eyed and bold
With dreams that unfold
Artless, naïve and hopeful
A certain unease, that shifts with the breeze
Afflicts you
You think that bliss
Doesn’t come with just a kiss
But to other lands you fly
In your mind, unsatisfied
Such discontentment inside
Wishing….

Wishing for walks, for long midnight talks
The hearth of a snowbound cabin
Mysterious scenes from a cinema screen
Fill your mind
If I could make all your dreams come true
And take you to Heaven – I would
You’d still be wishing for more
Always unsettled, unsure
Wishing… wishing…

Wishing for grace, a moonlit embrace
Tears bathing hands at parting
A silk-curtained room, and the finest perfumes
Are your due
When you survey your reality
It makes you turn away, away
You grow detached day by day
Wishing for what - you can’t say
These are lyrics to a song I composed and recorded last year. Obviously completely inspired by the novel.

It's available to listen or download at: http://geoffmather.co.uk/track/madame-bovary
Danny Price Jan 2015
O woe this tragedy
Where hast thou brought me!

The environment is hostile,
The colors are so pale.

Take me somewhere special,
Some place to regale.

I'll follow thee
'til I fall weak in the knee,
In thine grace I trust.


O heavens behold!
The devil's own betrothed!

Thou burnest mine eyes,
On thine judgement my gayness relies,

So take me, oh trusted bird,
To a place nor burned, nor churned.

I'll follow thee
'til I lose ability to see,
In thine grace I trust.


In all my heart I dread,
Here is so wide spread

That many may see me.
A heinous curse! I can no longer flee.

Find me one more homely
So I might not feel so lowly.

I'll follow thee
'til I lose all sense in me,
In thine grace I trust.
Alena Jun 2014
today I had my tea
with no sugar
strange
no difference

everyone must realize
how quickly it
can all disappear

the woman, the man, the job, the cat,
the boy with leukemia in Hong Kong,
your chinaware
crushed against the hardwood floor,
the blizzard, the aged wine in your cellar,
your beauty, your wit, 3 birds on
the telephone wire

and all your left with
is
desperation
dissatisfaction &
disillusion

and the waitress with kind eyes shaking you
you awake in the middle of the night
asking what is wrong
what could possibly be wrong

and you reply
I don't know I don't know I don't know...

— The End —