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Paul Idiaghe Oct 2020
show me how to wear diamond
dreams without trembling
beneath their weight.

I am a pebble, peeled off
from a peak, fraying and falling,
faltering at its feet. end up

locked between the lips of
married mountains; eyes
hinged to the sky, feet sinking

into earth, chest caving into
a coffin where my heart hides
its head. as despair crawls
in to devour the decay, I linger

between the decomposition, dead
to dust to soil—waiting
to bloom again.
Amanda Kay Burke Jun 2020
They say at the end of your rope to tie a knot and hold on

There is light touching the horizon

But what do you do when your grip slowly slips loose?

When insides of your palms are lubricated with sweat

And the crevasse below darker than a black hole

So much that it threatens to rise up and with one tug take you spiralling downwards to swallow you whole

So instead of making a knot at the bottom of your fraying rope you may as well tie a noose instead
The whole poem was really just written as buildup to the last line
annh Jul 2019
You build your nest of pretty words,
Sly threads of verbiage,
Plucked from outworn phrases,
Secondhand sentiments and frayed metaphors.

A thorny simile, a faded pink ribbon,
Of rhetoric woven with silky streamers;
A warp and weft of fond and found,
Borrowed references and stolen verses.

You recycle the shining heart,
Of another’s penmanship,
Modelling it into a tarnished,
Uninspired and untitled composition
...OF YOUR OWN...

‘I get a lot of big ideas, and occasionally I actually come up with one myself.’
- Bauvard, Some Inspiration for the Overenthusiastic
have you ever rubbed a piece of chalk on the asphalt

shading some beautiful image

only to be washed away in next tuesday’s rain?

have you noticed how the chalk disappears under your fingers?

imagine the ends of your dna

(it’s a leap, but picture it)

a protective coating

like the aglets of your shoelaces

guarding the fragile building blocks of you

and once those telomeres break down

your dna frays

like so much loose cloth

and your fragile little human copy machine

makes bad copies

that is how we age

beautifully

gracefully

like chalk being rubbed smooth on the sidewalk

only to be washed away

in tuesday’s rain
Amanda Kay Burke Sep 2018
Swinging from a fraying rope
Clasping on to lies you think I'm desperate enough to believe
Pathetically gripping words though I can clearly see fibers stretch and break from tension of reality
The weight of awareness too heavy for your false promises to bear
The thing about knowing is that you cant unknow. Its a one-way street.
Nick Moser Feb 2016
She is beautiful.
Her smile can light up a room.
Her drive is unmatched by any other.
Her laugh is precious.
Her voice is as sweet as sugar.
Everything she does is magical.

I am battle-tested.
My smile can light up my paper.
My drive is unmatched by any other.
My laugh is required.
My voice is used to write these words.
Everything I do is poetic.

But, alas, we can never be together.

Because the poison she emits from her soul to touch me,
Mixed with the blood I bleed on this paper for my art,

Will never be a good combination.
A fraying, fraying leash.

— The End —