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Jeremy Betts Aug 15
More times than not,
The hero in me
Trips over the zero in me
I get caught,
Tangled up in the calamity
Of this often-overlooked emergency
A played-out plot,
So there's no urgency
I already know the worst in me
I don't pick my spot,
Never holding back what I let people see
Keeping me under wraps was getting especially tricky
I don't know what I wanted, or what I thought
But this is what I got,
Me,
My own worst enemy

©2024
Jeremy Betts Jan 2021
The only role I ever land is "outcast tortured by the cruelty and pain of his past" I sure didn't choose this path, feels more as though I've been typecast, or maybe I am a *******, holding out for every last ounce of pain before I blast this trader living in my head for the last 30 years off my shoulders, through a window pane, then, just as fast, turn to the vast hole in my chest that once held my heart and press the cold steel to it with the mass of my dread firmly in my grasp, gun fire drowned out by echoing laughs, fulfilling a prophecy of my future while neglecting lessons from my past, the game of life feels less like a game of chance and more like a test that's harder to advance than all the rest and wouldn't you know it, I fell asleep in class and didn't pass, apparently I even tuned out the emergency broadcast. Went and amassed a losing record that'd be impressive if not for the direct contrast the win column presents and the enormous shadow my downfall casts. Harassed by the devil on each shoulder, I thought that maybe once I got older, if I could just stay on task and remain steadfast, I would be able to open a can of whoop a$$ and trespass the evil within this house of glass but alas I must telegraph my every move or they've seen a future telecast because they lambast each strike and I'm not sure I'll outlast these issues, I'm gassed, plus, problems have started showing up in mass from a much higher weight class, they must have bypassed the weigh in process but I've always known who the deck was stacked against, hence why I never win, I only survive and my methods would flabbergast most, the truth finds it's way to the surface and I find myself aghast, crying like I've been teargassed with no gas mask but I've surpassed the point where waterworks will bring forth empathy, gotta own my involvement in the crash, volunteer to take out my own trash and this time I'll throw my pain out with the bath water and be free at last...free at last, free at last, no thanks to god almighty I'll be free at last

©2021
Jeremy Betts Nov 2023
I'm not the only me I see when I see me looking back at me
Bewildered by the impossibility of a blind visionary with the foresight to look past me to find me
I got caught staring so intently I lost sight of the true me completely
You see such savagery and think it must have been nurtured from infancy
While true, I had it in check, hidden away in the captivity of a long forgotten memory
But it still remembered me, waited patiently, predicting my return with a whimsical accuracy
It heard me frantically trying to find the glass to break in case of emergency
Not to set it free but to once again embrace what was scary, what might be the reality of the actual me
Instantly I handed over the key, didn't even keep a copy for me
Knowing exactly what I was doing and what it'd do to me mentally
It was always going to happen this way eventually
Finding solace in it's monotony, no more uncertainty
Both wake up and go to bed with the same angry energy
Done with the pleasantry and all the pageantry projected outwardly to seem more neighborly
Just so the world could be more comfortable with me when I pass through their snooty, gated community
While it pays no mind to what's being done to my psyche
This self destructive entity wasn't only the part of my reality I was told to bury
It is the entirety of my history, sad and happy, comedy and tragedy
I was it and it was me, the merger went so smoothly I believed it was absolutely meant to be, probably
Fighting myself got messy and wasn't necessarily a necessity
In the end there was no surprise who's hand was raised in victory
I already knew the part of me that held superiority but everyone else said it'd turn out differently
Like they got some kind of decoder key
Of course it didn't and they don't, thankfully I was welcomed back too once again become my own worst enemy
It ain't good company but I personally accept that personality and it's starting to warm up to me finally
It's been a strange journey, be thankful I didn't ask you to join me

©2023
Alienpoet Dec 2021
The feel of the pen
on the paper
the poet grabs a verse.

the dripping of morphine
the flow of endorphins
flow of electronic lines
across the monitor
let’s hope we don’t flatline

this mere mortal
needs a portal to the stars
this mere mortal needs
defibrillation to the heart
the way the poetry forms
in the lungs and the mind
the way life needs beauty
is sometimes unkind

I am the blood transfusion
the illusion
of poems
bells chime
Electrons flow
Radioactive  X-rays know
Poetry opens doors

I am the emergency poet
I will take flight
in flames
never shall I be tamed
But I will make that heart beat
and get you out of your seat
And on the road to recovery
and discovery

Because poetry heals
and steals back our songs
what could go wrong?
Deep Jan 2021
Come to me surreptitiously like fog comes in December night
I will hide you by the news of discontent and discomfort-
Engulf and surround you with fear of loom,
The country is going to dust now,
Master has become maniac puffing the ***** of 'Power'
deeming good into bad and bad into good,
The books affirming violence his students seek,
The guardians and protectors stand and watch
the clashes like sadists forbidden to inflict pain;

I lament the plight and plunder of my sacred home,
Hoping a dawn of summer amid chilly winter.
Freddy Escamilla Sep 2020
I sit beside you,
two sets of eyes glued to a splotched canvas before us.
I in the driver’s seat,
you in your captain’s chair.
I’m asking all these questions, but,
are you really there? I worry
when I look at you, and the
shock is painted on my face.
Others pass me under the moonlight and
tell me to leave this place.
They say, “you better get outta here, and get
while the getting is good.
This job will turn you inside out
and make you misunderstood.”

I sit beside you,
two sets of eyes glued to the canvas, as if it will restore us.
A cassette tape is forced through my brain,
the night’s events replayed.
My finger tap upon the glass,
and your hair is frayed.
Your figure in the captain’s chair,
with skin as cold as tin.
Which one of these got to your bones,
which one did you in?
Do you remember sights and sounds,
you wish you could forget?
Is that look upon your eye,
one of anger or regret?
Trauma is etched into your skin
like cracks on a weary canyon rock.
I need to know how you turned to you
if only you could talk.

I sit beside you.
Our eyes are glued to the splotched canvas, that which holds nothing
for us.
I work in an emergency ambulance. I was green, enthusiastic and filled with a sense of altruistic fulfillment. This attitude later became confusion and concern that I made a mistake as I continuously met people who seemed to have stared into that proverbial abyss for too long and became emotionally corrupted by it.
Amber K Sep 2020
Every time I here sirens,
I think of you.
I think of the lights I saw.
The reds and the blues.
I had no idea it was you.
And to this day,
I still flinch at the thought,
that it could be someone else I care about.
Shared from my drafts. About the day I lost a friend to suicide.
Anais Vionet Jun 2020
We're at a hospital emergency room - no emergency for us, my mom's a doctor and she's consulting about something. It's 4 pm on a Wednesday - after school. I'm in the waiting room - playing chess on my iPhone. I hate standing around in hospital areas with my parents (both doctors) listening to endless medical-trade jargon.

The ER room is almost empty. A wino-******-looking guy comes in and sits across from me about two seats down to the left. I'm ignoring him, for the most part, but he's all shaky and his fidgeting draws my eye now and then.

After a couple of minutes, I think he's watching me.
Yep, he's pretty much staring at me, shaking, tapping his right heal like he’s sending Morris code to the aliens and wiping his mouth with a ball of toilet paper.

And NOW we've made eye contact - he smiles - two or three of his front teeth are missing. I return my eyes to my phone and try to concentrate on my game.

But he's staring at me, I can feel it.
I put my phone in my lap and look at him for a moment. What sad humanity.
His head is sort of nodding - like "I see you seeing me" with a slight grin.

"Why do you do it?" I ask, in a quiet voice, sitting up a little straighter.
His head bobs backwards in surprise - "Do what?" he slurs innocently.
I roll my eyes, to say, ok, never mind and start to bring up my phone.
"I just like it", he says, with a little wheeze and a touch of attitude. "Better than anything else"
I nod, to say "OK" Then after a second I go back to my game.

My mom comes out a couple of minutes later and naturally, I get up to leave with her. I pause and look back at the.. ***??
"Good luck", I say,
He sort of half waves
My mom holds up her hand a little to encourage me to come on with her.
As we go through the automatic glass doors she gives me the side-eye.
"He IS a person", I say defensively.
Three beats later, we both say, at the exact same time, "A ******* UP person!"
"Jinx!!" I say a millisecond before her. I give a savage fist-pump-of-victory.
"I want Ice cream" I say.
We both grin as the car unlocks.
a story about an Emergency room wait
Ken Pepiton Feb 2020
Imagine good enough for once
and all we do may do good.

Corny, Provencial, San Juaquin,

come waltz with me,
my tilde, leave us oll rrroling rrs

all ye all ye outs in free, we are only one century

out of tune.

And we found a rready wrrited rreason to say

a used key is always bright.

Freedom of the press, is an abstraction frrom
freedom, per se, being in need of rights,
authoritatively apprrius osity curio

those be noise, not functing scipots, bags of wind.

we are the words that fit the pattern to the card,
for Mon Jacquard, once a soldier,
trained in close order drill,
a thread from there,

gives us software. The fruit of the sci sent to
Mon Jacquard,

words taught his fingers to fight.
There is a right fight.

It is nobody's war. Nobody fights it for you.

Come, let us imagine making peace in a cup,
until it spills,

and coats the world like Sherrwinn Williams.
Joy in musing may be shared or some such moral is in the whole story, I'm told.
Arkapravo Aug 2019
Then one day, the old man had enough,
... and, it wasn't the mushroom,
... neither the naplam,
... nor any other WMD,
.
.
.
... two degrees more, and that was all it took
Written on 12 October 2018. Also published at my blog, https://gaffingaround.wordpress.com/2018/10/12/gaffe-75/
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