Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Ryan Jan 30
When did children lose their love of learning?

When they were told to conform,
To forget their being,
To discard interests, agency, creativity

My own complicity
In the stifling of identity

Authenticity, a digression of the self,
A dissolution of swarming
Complexities

When did I gain my love of learning?

The burning crucible
Of curiosity

Set aflame by rejection of conformity

Constraints, curriculum, crushing expectations
and a world disintegrating
fires of digressions

When is conformity an expression of authenticity?

When is authenticity just another form of conformity?
Adrift in between—the breath and the break.
Muffled by silence. The real feels fake.
Visible ghosts pay invisible costs—
In search of myself, I found myself lost.

A stranger arrives. Identity wanes.
We share the same pulses that surge through my veins.
Observe my duality—tell me, who's true?
The body you saw, or the energy you knew?

Without the observer, I'm held out of phase.
I fill empty space—with more empty space.
You glanced in my direction, collapsed me to light.
I fell into being, from quantum-bound heights.

Euphoria sleeps. I dread my own wake.
Time ticks while I shake and my thoughts dissipate.
Here I am again—my lowest of highs.
Collapsed, but still standing, still living these lies.

I flicker between a phantom and soul.
Wholeheartedly hollow. I burn without glow.
The past still hums beneath thinning skin—
A whispering echo that calls out my sin.

Step in too close, or just take a look—
I quietly fold, closed up like a book.
The script rewrites its endings to shift,
As I drift, unwilling, through reality’s slit.

One path offers clean, another brings filth.
I exist just as is—your perception brings guilt.
Not welcome to be—medicate me to align.
Would you believe it’s your doubt fracturing my mind?

These moments go slow—I cope to feel new.
But each time I stitch, my seams just undo.
I’m a fracture. A wreck. Pathetically alive.
Until the next time I hide—from the gaze of your eye.
Kian 5d
I wear a body.
It wears me back.
A contract etched in joint and impulse.
Some mornings, we move in tandem.
Others, it reminds me
who arrived first.

I don’t trust flesh,
but it’s a clever disguise.
It bruises well.
It sweats at the right moments.
People see their own fear
reflected in the soft parts
and call it honesty.

I’ve studied the rituals:
the nod,
the price of small talk,
the right distance to stand from grief.
I say, “Looks like rain,”
when the atmosphere tightens—
when the world feels
too aware of me.

I was not made for this planet,
but I’ve adapted.
Found a pace.
Filed down the angles.

The stars no longer speak.
Not directly.
But something folds in me at dusk—
a pressure
low and marine.
Old instructions,
half-eaten by time.

I send them fragments:
a child curling inward at the word no,
a man sobbing behind tinted glass,
a woman staring into her palm
as if it once held a weapon.

I don’t know what they make of it.
Only that sometimes,
I wake with dirt beneath my nails,
and no memory
of digging.
Mirage of lives,
Ever tell me current lies.
Mirage of time,
Sever bells that cries.
I live today,
But I died tomorrow.
I live today,
To see the old of me present.
Dead memories,
Unknown reality,
What shall wake me,
treacherous why.
I know who you are,
          but I don’t exactly know
          who you are to me, so
do I really know who you are?

I know who I am,
but I don’t exactly know
          who I am to you,
          nor even may I know
          who I am to myself, so
do I really know who I am?

I know what I feel,
           but I don’t really know
           what I know about what I feel, so
do I feel what I feel?

I know what I see,
          but I don’t really see
          what I know, so
do I see?

I hear what the world says,
          but I can’t hear
          what I say, so
do I hear anything at all?

I walk my own steps,
          but I don’t know
          where the road ends, so
am I really going anywhere?

I know why the sun sets
and why falls the night,
          but I don't know
          why there isn't another

rosy return      rosy return      rosy return 
                     
          for the mere man, so
is he all about the night
and his life but a dream?

What do I know of the things I know?
What do I see in the world I see?
What do I know of the things I feel?
Where do I walk to if it’s just a dream?

          And if it’s a dream,
          whose dream may it better be?

05/05/2025
Hirondelle
I marvel at how differently each of us may see certain things in life and accordingly have different feelings about it. I marvel a lot more at how people spend hours engaged in some petty talk whose script is quite predictable. It is bizarre that this could be happening in a world where uncertainty is the only certainty and change is the only constant in life.

It is no wonder, you will find some other people drawn to a solitary corner enjoying the 'skepticism party' in their heads. They are more often devoid of human company at this wild party, popping their own champagne and spilling taste and color on the ever-changing reality. What is party to the skeptic is discomfort and trouble for the nonchalant. The latter will prefer some small talk under a superscript.

For me life is beautiful, for it offers us plenty of riddles and a clever mind will relish this plethora of choices. Prescriptive texts, however, ruin the party transforming the thinker into a believer, converting the traveler into a waiter. With all the questions answered, there is no party for the believer. With all the treat put on the tray, they will suddenly find themselves holding the snack tray to others enjoying the party thinking that they are still a guest.

So, whose party, whose dream?
Santiago May 2
yo gasto
tanta plata
en ir a entrevistas
en las que me preguntan donde vivo
y ponen cara de sorpresa
cuando estaba en mi currículum
cuando se lo dije en la primera entrevista
y ahora me escriben:
lamentamos la molestia
Pienso en el campo
y en un hombre fallido
escrito mientras escuchaba Ein Sof (gran banda argentina), luego de recibir por whatsapp notificación de que no quedé para el trabajo al que me entrevistaron
The world is quiet now; the fading light
lies soft upon the hills, a gentle glow.
The sea extends beneath the coming night,
each wave a pulse of time in ceaseless flow.

Come stand with me, and hear the waters speak—
No voice of comfort, but a hollow song
of yearning deep, cruel, and forever bleak,
where hope and reason drown in tides too strong.

The clash is clear—our hearts, aflame with dreams,
cry out for meaning on the endless main,
yet nature answers not, and all that seems
secure is lost, like fire in the rain.

But let us not falter at the cold shore,
nor flee to gods or myths to dull the ache,
for though no meaning waits beyond the score,
this life we hold is ours alone to make.

And still the waves press on without regret,
indifferent to the cries that fill the air.
So we must stand unshaken, though beset
by stillness vast and burdens hard to bear.

Though life is fleeting, dark, and void of plan,
there’s beauty still—in love, in thought, in man.
You see what lies before,
Yet chase what could be more.
The simple stands concrete,
But ease eludes your feet.
No space to find complete.
Dreams shape what might unfold,
Yet quake where thoughts take hold.
You see, you know, you stall
A foe that builds a wall.
No fight can break its call.
Time bends, it carves, it breaks,
A paradox that takes.
In shadows, thoughts conceal
The paths you long to feel.
You row through waves unreal.
Infinity’s a trap,
A boundless, woeful map.
It twists what minds can know,
And kills where thoughts still grow.
Let ignorance bestow.
To stop, you must let go,
Release the undertow.
The void’s last kiss will miss
If will can break this bliss.
Step back from thought’s abyss.
Beyond the self, it lies
A truth no mind defines.
To name it is to bind,
To seek it is to grind.
The mystery’s unconfined.
How we never relent believing
     even in the clutches of doubt!
    
How we withold living
     -without the hues of dreaming  
     -and the nurturing arms of loving,
      both nursing suffering into healing!

How we move the quill to see more,
     and more to love what is essential in things,
     -even the things that fall and crumble
     amidst the ravenous roar and the rampant rumble!

How we defy the Frantic Fret of a hollering sky
     with a hued cry hovering over this raucous choir!

19/04/2025
Hirondelle
A dutiful reaction to Patty m on her 'Frantic', whose vibrant voice has ever been well carried above all tumult and thunder cajoling many fellow poets.

Inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's Amor Fati: "I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor Fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly.”

The more we write, the more we learn about the hodgepodge ensemble and discover a voice within; then, the less we start despairing and the more we begin to love. Thus, we raise our voices above the cacophony.

How our ink strikes to and fro;
Above dark skies wielding light,
no one is alone!
ab ja na Apr 17
i want food
i want to eat and sleep and be pampered
like a brat cat that gets so much love
enough of being a dog, it is tiring
and i think i am living in dog years
wait i was about to say cat years,
i want to live in tortoise years
as a tortoise
The child in me wants to grow up to become a tree.
The adult wants to die into it.
Next page