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Ylzm Aug 2024
When you know it's not you
Then you’ve known another

But is it friend or foe
For you or against you

Your saviour or jailer
Your master or helper

It may oppose but it's not enemy
It rather flatters for pride leads to fall

Perhaps it's neither for you nor your foes
But for itself as it befits its own

If asked it will say it is what it is
And what another may say I don't know
Ylzm Jul 2024
Unless you see your chains you're not free
Unless you see your flesh you're not spirit
And unless spirit and soul mutually see
You cannot know there's Another in your midst

Unless you are silent and still
You cannot feel the gentle wind
Nor hear its whispering song
Nor discern it's voice in the harmony, or dissonance
MsAmendable Jun 2024
When dinner becomes a dance,
Standing in the kitchen as the clock strikes 12,
Tomato juice dripping to my elbows
Spices spilled over vegetables raw in my hands,
The carving knife wet with sauce
Eating fistfuls of my own hunger and joy
Until I reach the end of that deep and driving primal hole
The meat pads my bones
And fills my aching soul
.
And standing for midnight mass
In the holiest place in my home
I catch my glance in the window's gleam
And am introduced to a woman I've only met
In my deepest and sweetest of dreams
Mark Wanless May 2024
tearing of paper
tearing of flesh difference
such sad thing to know
Coleen Mzarriz Jan 2024
You hit me like a wave. I drifted away, coming into the shore, and lied there with nothing but my naked eyes; the sun covered my cold, barren body. Radiating sunshine and weakness as the sea called over me, you traipsed and towered over my sight, blinding me with your ivory skin lit as the match fired the sky.
 
The waves in the sea squished me in like a soft linen blanket, wrapping me all over like the comfort of a mother. My hands were trembling as you stood there unmoving, and the melodies and blasphemous beats almost dug me out of my ears; I couldn’t even do anything. You were there like an angel lost in his epiphany. It was as if a goddess were in front of you; your eyes spoke as you became a slave to your own wrath, worshipping what was in front of you. You laid your eyes on me like I was some kind of song you could not decipher.
 
You stood there, solving the creeps and mysteries and finishing the last verse of a poem you will never read again. You hit me like a wave, and I drifted away, hoarding memories left astray. You were there, godlike and lost, and even the sun loathed your fire. You burn like a match, your skin a stain of crimson—of sunshine and weakness. You called me, but I did not answer.
 
It was cold, and I loathed it. Perhaps it was the month of October where the enigmas of night lay open, and achingly, my flesh was found in humiliation. I continued to bleed, on and on.
What is love, if not impeccable grief?
What is love, if not that one dreary night of October?
What is love, if not broken bones and bruises?

Grief is sweet and heavy. Abundant and empty. I remember grieving and feeling everything all at once. Without shedding tears, my heart continued to know the heaviness of my silent pleas. I remember writing pieces that do not make sense, and by the end of the day, somehow, they do. I’m glad it's over.

Song: Where’s My Love - SYML
i have scars all over my body.
ones that you see,
and ones that you cannot see—
engraved deeper in my flesh;
down the bones,
penetrating my whole soul.
in this flesh,
at its rawness,
inside these skins
and bones, all that I seek
and ever thirst for,
is peace.
Sarah Aug 2023
Love spills out from me in the form of words and tears and laughter.

I want to touch you and hold you and kiss you and love you so tenderly and with such softness that one wrong step could crush me.

Put me in your mouth and chew me up.
Take a bite out of my ripe, tender skin.
All you’ll find in this flesh, is love love love. Sweet and soft and juicy the way a peach bleeds.
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2023
“and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”  

Walt Whitman

<>

having recently been on standby for a permanent-entry residency visa
to over & just beyond death’s door, Walt’s prescient prescription strikes my broken breastbone even harder much, than the persistent
periodic pains confirming the breaking and the healing
of this man’s mending of the human centric poetic *****

for this warped heart mine, now rejoicingly rejiggered with some threads and wires to deliver a new but fresh bloodied wisdom,
begs me, eggs me to torrent word streams, but Whitman’s wisdom cautions a new slowness, the wisdom of mortality’s hot breath urges careful consideration of every letter that my second chance, consignment shop flesh, eagerly embraces, to both prescribe and proscribe inside-insights tween the deafening sounds of eyelashes beating synchronized to the revived heart rates rapid renewal and
last second-chances….

torn tween minute torso sensations and the running silence of
a new battery’s internal rapid intervals, the silent timing gaps tween beats leaves-just-enough-space to ask over and over again,
from whence will come my richest fluency? (1)

at 300am, I lay carefully caressing and chewing well each transitory
thought, absent the former energetic ability to just spill,
though highly desired,
now requires, like me,
steady re-piecing together

the steady drumbeat of now-nearer-my-god-than-thee Titanic reflections
demands a slowing rapidity

this I thought before and now ken, even and ever better, that our primary endeavor shall always be the giving, the disbursement of the act of love…for therein lies the healing of each, and wet eyes,
make necessarily concluding this poem about nothing and everything
and I comprehend Walt’s dictum:

my very flesh is a poem,
every sensation a lyric,
every breath taken and returned to the atmosphere
so unconsciously
are my oldest
and newest
3:00 AM poetry companions
(1) I lift up my eyes to the mountains— where does my help come from?
Psalms 121:1-4
leeaaun Jun 2023
the goodness in you
will make you feel like
a true goddess

only if you will try to look it
inside your flesh
instead of other's

because your skin isn't rotten
it's going through a process
that will take time

as being a goddess
is not an easy task
she's good yet carries all flaws

who believes in herself
who stands up for herself
who take breaks when things get hard

she accepts the goodness
with all fears
she learns to face her problems

that's how you become
a goddess
who do good for you
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