i envy the stars,
the way you would stare at them and smile
how you looked so longingly toward them
you wanted to join them
and then you tried.
in your trying, you did not reach them.
you stayed here, on this rotting rock, stuck with me.
your smile has gone away forever. you dont laugh anymore.

i wish i had never let you envy me.
like i envy you
and envy the great shining lights that surround us.

Oh God, how long until my woes
Transfigure into peace?
Until the violent storms inside my skull
Will finally cease?
Until the gaping emptiness
I feel beneath my ribs
Is filled with warmth and joyousness?
That's all I plead You give!

Around me I see people full
With water, meat and wine.
I see them eat together --
Oh, how carefree they all dine!
When hunger hasn't gripped my gut,
I've gorged on rotten meat.
And when my throat has not been dry,
Vinegar's been my treat.

Please give me, Lord, a future hope
That isn't a mirage.
I look for peace, but pain attacks
In relentless barrage.
My spirit grumbles -- do take ear
And help my soul to thrive.
Mend this broke heart and give me strength
To want to be alive.

The moon kissed the forehead of the pond,
as trembling stars embraced its calm,
as if the heavens, vast and deep,
had found their home within its arms.

The marsh watched on with murky eyes,
laden with a heavy gloom,
no star had ever called its name,
no light had graced its silent tomb.

It whispered low, a voice of silt:
"Why must I drown in shade and hush?
Why does the sky refuse to rest
upon my waters, still and lush?"

The wind, a sage of wandering fate,
brushed softly past and dared to say:
"The less you swallow, the more you see,
for clarity holds eternity."

Yet envy wrapped the marsh in dark,
it clutched its depths, it pulled them tight,
it drank itself into the void,
and severed all from warmth and light.

The pond, so quiet, asked for none,
yet bore the stars within its chest—
and in its stillness, silver-clear,
it cradled time. It cradled rest.

even the quality of living is unstable
new zealanders are flooding into thousand oaks like
similar valleys for the corruption entrees
soo many spill outs from the economic offerings
please bring the handsome warrior of *** with!
amazing
the spending habituals of teenage frolicking
60-80 and 90 year old rotted vaginal death ven diagram
oasis retreat me never gossip gotherians
and the make a move already boys with holsters attache me now

He preferred unwashed and touched skins
I was ripe and fresh, with my green leaf
Shiny as if someone polished me against their polo shirt.

He loved texture, bruises, and discoloration
while I was smooth, absolutely bump free.

No patience left in him, he needed to gorge his hunger,
biting down and ripping it's other half trailed with a string of dripping saliva.

It wasn't a want, but a must.

Worms were wriggling out from the rotten core begging to escape from his monstrous pointed teeth.

He preferred them just the way they were, abandoned, unsure, insecure.

He however never preferred me; smothering myself of perfection to be picked from all hands who only ever picked the others...

Perfect apples can't always be picked up.

If I can’t love like you
Won’t you love me too?
I don’t really know
how to show

That I care

That I want
To be
That person in your life

That makes you smile

That makes you laugh

That makes you feel

Better

But I can’t do much
But burn your
pretty skin

And break your
pretty heart

And wish I was
like you.

“I used to be disgusted,
Now I just have to refuse
The allure of money and status.
Before, I could be happy just being me,
Saying “No” to anything that I didn’t need.
But now, she’s told me I’ve got to choose,
Between her and the life I want,
Must either be a corporate shill
A shallow, capitalist dilettante,
Or be myself, and lose her good will.
I am so close to saying “’goodbye’”
And testing her just to see,
If she really means what she says,
Or if she has fooled herself
As I did for so long.
Trying to be like big brother,
Upright, moral and honored (by some),
But something in him was lacking
“And as I saw through it,
I knew I did not have the nature
To pretend I was that grand
Or could sink that low
in hidden plots to undo those he envied.

I watched her in the dim light
Of a place where the punished toil
And I was consumed with hatred,
And a wish to set her free.
How can I save her from this charade,
This bourgeois masquerade?

When she notices my clumsy efforts,
she asks me what it is I want and I reply,
‘All I ask is to practice in my own style,
Colorful but honest, riding the edge”;
Her response is inscrutable but
She likes it when I con the corporate ******,
And joins in with a new name and a sly smile,
We drink tequila and don’t pay,
Leave some loudmouth with the bill and
hedge our bets as we kiss in the evening breeze.

“Apparently, a kiss was more powerful
than me acting as an imitation drudge!
And a night in bed together satisfying enough
to draw her into my world.

I would show her little ways of breaking rules,
the cheat with no one noticing,
building up our own little universe,
rebelling against the system in subtle ways.
Oh! Those were golden days and I was happy.

Yet now, years later, she has gone far away,
perhaps for good, though I don’t see why.
When I call and ask, she will never say
what I can do to bring her back.

Granted, my life has turned around,
perhaps to something she dislikes,
but she leaves it for me to guess
whether it’s too flamboyant or just a mess.
Yet I refuse not to try so hard, hanging on the sound
of her cherished voice on the phone,
its flat, restrained notes telling me:
“You are alone”.
And still I love and hope.

Sharon Talbot
February 28, 2025

Thinspo isn’t supposed to enter real life
A girl in my classes made my appetite drop
Every time I saw her, though I never said
Those were my problems, not hers
But maybe they were hers, but I never knew
How to talk to someone like that
Unless it was necessary, but it never was

Shape the way your fingers trace constellations on my skin,
Or the way your laughter lingers in my ribs,
A melody too human for its cold, calculated hands.

It could never script the way our eyes meet,
That silent understanding,
That unspoken language,
Too intricate for fate to weave into its fragile threads.

It tries—oh, how it tries—
To intervene, to twist, to break,
To reclaim us as its own.
Yet we slip through its grasp,
Like sand through clenched fists,
Like stardust escaping gravity.

Destiny waits in the shadows,
Silent, seething,
Cursing the love it did not create.
It watches as we carve our own fate,
As we step outside its lines,
As we make something greater
Than anything it ever dared to dream.

Destiny could never…