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Jeremy Betts Jan 3
Like a drug taken for a quarter century, this writing doesn't help like it use to...
See,
I'm starting to feel like it's working against me
Holding me here in pain and misery
Cleverly disguised as creativity
I use to lie and say it was a way to get rid of all this negativity
But I've spilled so much blood and tears onto stationary
...and not even purely metaphorically...
I should be completely empty
Hell, I think I might be
I think it's moved onto draining my energy
Can I still call this writing therapy?
Is it healthy or does it keep me from a new me?
Holding tightly but in spite of me
Hiding a different side of a complex personality
A new level of maturity
Is it actually helping any?
Today it's hard to say, but maybe
Unfortunately, it's something I'm good at, a skill I enjoy and I don't have many
So I've begun to notice I look at it differently
It was suppose to help me let go of the painful unpleasantry held in many a memory
But it woke a part of my ego that I didn't know would grip so tightly
It might have been a mistake to rely on it so heavily
It's no longer moving along the story
No cautionary tales to learn from because they never become history
It becomes a bookmark that I don't use properly
I never move it to the page I left off on and now, I must admit openly, I'm doing it purposely
I keep the worst of me right next to me, close as a frienemy
All because I notice I DON'T write when I'm happy
And I like to write so I dance around emotions strategically
I don't know if it's anything worth saying but writing is calling and drawing me in closely
A ghostly presence that when I look closely I see my identity
It hasn't always been but is now a big part of me
But does it want all of me?
Can't say either way with any certainty
No AH-HA moment, no clarity, only a death grip on disparity
So I recklessly walk the line of happy and tragedy
Like a DUI test on the side of the freeway, drunken pageantry
Eyes closed usually
No thought of mine or anyone else's safety
Dangerously close to calamity
And I just worry

©2024
Mark Wanless Dec 2023
i am absent just
not empty not gone
when empty not gone
Jeremy Betts Dec 2023
I've shut down so completely it's profound and I've now lost touch with reality
What I want to be and what I'll never be eventually co-mingle and become one entity
The blasphemy, the phony sanctimony and hypocrisy blast from me
I try awkwardly to juggle all three, run 'em up the flag pole, wait and see
Hear ye, hear ye...another blunder here for your amusement, come see
Woe is me! An empty plea for pity ******* by a request to be put out of my misery
It's plane to see, at least by me, that I'm my own worst enemy, I'm no friend to me
Bad karma stacks rapidly atop the early onset of senility
Losing my mind was an inevitability but that was my only company
...now it's only me...
The notion that behind every smile you'll find your happy is, in it's self, a fallacy

©2023
Noura Nov 2023
when day breaks and brazen stands the sun
as if to say, it is day, the storm has passed
once more
you lay in a pool of soft sand, a whisper of what once was
fists clenching and unclenching
silence so deafening you ache
it feels so unpleasant, this ease
comfort was not meant for you, where do you even place yourself in a scene meant for someone else?
you make suffering your home
the cold tiles a cornerstone
but the suffering has ended in spite of you
of all your pleas to stay in a race for survival
trotting on battered rubble-bound roads
and despite it all
you are safe and free
the sun lapses in providing warmth
but never stills
and neither have you
before now

and yet
happiness does not creep in, nor does it knock
nor barges or in wanders
you are left empty in a filled space
almost to the point of combustion
and this is how you shall stay
shivering, the rays hurling themselves at any surface besides you
fruitless, the suffering meant so very little besides all that you knew
empty, just as the space next to you
Malia Oct 2023
I am surprised
That I
Don’t make whirring sounds
Like a computer come to life
Because I
Didn’t see my life
Flash before my eyes
When we crashed and
I haven’t cried
At all and I know
That I should’ve that I should’ve that I should’ve
Been scared but I just can’t feel
Anything and that scares me
Most of all.

𝘐’𝘮 𝘤𝘭𝘢𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘮𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴
𝘓𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘢 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘮𝘢𝘯
𝘊𝘭𝘢𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘵 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘦𝘺𝘦𝘴
𝘈𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘴
𝘈𝘵 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘥
𝙎𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘪𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘴.
Nicole Oct 2023
Emptiness rings heavy in my chest
Echoing demands are overwhelming
I thought I figured this out already
Settled the storm that rages inside me
I guess it's just one of those things
A problem without a clear ending
A lifelong battle I have with myself
Winning or losing, it's all the same thing

This dark hole is a part of my soul
Not just a stain that washes away
The Void lives and breathes and beckons
It's more than a place that I can escape
I've ran and fought and conceded
Fed it everything it's craved
Nothing could ever be enough for it
It's made of more than empty space

Constucted from trauma and pain
By social lies of what happiness means
It's deeply fueled by insecurity
The Void is built on broken dreams
It won't ever let me feel whole again
So it say I'm just a broken thing
Even though I know that it's lying
I'm still tempted to give it everything
skyyy Sep 2023
What world do you speak of
That fetishizes the mother
And turns it’s back on the infant
Pursing
Suckling
Like a bee on a Carmellia in
July

What is inside of me that hasn’t
Already been emptied?
Do you every wonder,
Why, we mothers
Bake our children cookies
Only to wrap our heads in cloth?

And our husbands,
God rest their souls,
Will burn down the walls
To put out the fire
Rafael Melendez Sep 2023
MT
Old poems.
Old me.

Lonely nights like these I wonder if I really still exist if I'm not so full of youth. I'm still young, but it feels like there's something missing in my heart everyday.
I miss who I once was.

That boy who was always trying to impress.
I feel I've given up in a sense. On being me, like an empty slate was the best form of self preservation. It's sad.

Like a character born from trauma, that's so colorless.

It's hard to differentiate sometimes, if I've missed you, or myself more. Or what we had, the innocence disappeared so quickly. Too quickly.
is Sep 2023
The rusted mailbox
creaks as it’s pried open,
dented door dislodging.
Two yellow balloons
tethered to its post
and bobbing in the wind,
stark color against a slate sky.
The bomp bomp of the balloons barely
heard over the wind’s whistles.

Empty inside.
It’s Sunday
after all. Too easy for you to forget
the day when days
amalgamate into one
long moment. Stuck in an
everlasting condition,
waiting for the day
when your mind
at last
is quiet.

A quiet
that comes when your hands
are busy. Too
distracted by tasks to
dwell on thoughts.
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