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Francis Nov 2023
To simplify,
To complicate,
These questions, on repeat,
In my questioning, confused head.

What do I want from this world,
Beyond simplification,
Yet a fraction of complication?
I’ll never know.

All I know, is that incarcerated birds,
still cheerfully chirp,
And nothing is ever what it seems,
Not even people.

I learned the hard way,
Achieving desires means,
Losing drive,
A sense of purpose,
And all fulfillment subsides.

Success is a state of mind,
Placement is what brings you peace,
So much to experience,
Yet so little focus.

At a certain point,
When getting old,
This contemplation follows,
And leaves me with nothing to show,
For all that I’ve experimented with—
Because staying put is too hard to bear.
Yesterday I wanted a normal lifestyle, with a 9-5 work schedule and weekends off. Today, I’m looking at career paths that require me to leave home and travel A LOT. I achieve everything I set out for, yet none of it scratches that itch after doing so. I can never just make a decision.
Carlo C Gomez Nov 2023
~
Or migrated pod
       Or fleeing refugee
            Or corban
                  Or carbon dioxide
                       Or yubitsume
                            Or van Gogh's ear
                                 Or black Friday
                                      Or lazy evening at the carnival

                    (Tomorrow has already started)

Or free range
     Or gated community
          Or breast exam
               Or storage crisis
                    Or fallen leaves
                         Or germ warfare
                              Or temporary file
                                   Or permanent wave
                                        Or thigh gap
                                             Or physiognomy
                                                  Or soap made of heroes
                                                       Or multiplanetary living
                                                    
(There's a floating graveyard between this world and the next)

Or logical fallacy
     Or irrational number
          Or elementary analysis
               Or college guess
                    Or cardiopulmonary resuscitation
                         Or extrasensory perception
                              Or ten fingers and toes
                                   Or a dozen eggs

                  (They say there's strength in numbers)

Or fifth floor, corner room
     Or high as a kite
          Or bellwether
               Or mingled with bells
                    Or police sirens
                         Or loitering around in silent films
                              Or rule of thirds
                                   Or tombs of second-hand kings
                                        Or face in the rain
                                             Or pareidolia

(Otherwise, at first light you might be smiling...)

~
Khadijat Bello Nov 2023
JANUARY ,I was ignorant and oblivious.
FEBRUARY came, and I sighed a breath of relief. Too confused, I made a wish. MARCH-ed with mixed feelings. I started seeing light in APRIL. I've finally found a resolution, I MAY just catwalk my way into JUNE and end my love lust. Then rekindle in JULY, a lust cost. I was not ready for what AUGUST had to say, for I staggered my way and landed facedown in SEPTEMBER hoping to feel brand new when the brisk rain fell in OCTOBER and I knew I exhausted all tears in Autumn and couldn't cry again. Yet I walk in the morning dew and light morning sun that says Winter is here and I'm sitting in NOVEMBER asking myself how 11 months has passed by. Yet, I remembered. DECEMBER is round the corner.
Reminiscing in time
Nat Lipstadt Nov 2023
At What Cost?
This Purchase of Our Future

a thousand answers + variegated shadings, a summation:


of millions layers of our owned chosen complexities,
so many possible outcomes, it makes infinite randomness
seemingly simpler than our googolplex crazy preposterous
notational choosings, our owned decisions which though false,
cause nothing is tandomn random except for love at first sight

it’s all  just *******, we conditioned from pre-birth,
the expectations subtly subsumed into the woman’s womb,
overlaid by the ***** donors whisperings that you will be a
great third baseman, or a great bass player, or both, but
“your” fate, ha!
is anything but yours…
to purchase!

if you were born to live in a home with no heat, and water was
obtainable by walking 100 yards away, you would still be a
pianist, writing notes of plaintive need, grand desires, musical
words of agonizing delight just as when
you first blushed when the brain
connected yellow rays with a word,
sunrise,
and an experience was synapticaly imprinted,
that real things could be defined by an ordering of letters and sounds
and you were tongue burnt by a need so great
to collect these pleasurable things and put them in a right order
of your
peculiar
particular
personal
inherited inputted
design

=
and
you yet debate
what is my instrument,
knowing that the multiples of your fingers
are the engine of your existence,
and on any particular day they, your well connected perma-crew,
will pick which is the chosen one,
and
no matter which,
for you had nothing or little purchase,
it was coded in your pre-history
just as you prepare a transmission list
of your own,
when you daily first touch your face,
closing the sensory sensual connection tween
the ephemeral and the physical
and
the new combinations
that you will imprint upon
someone’s flesh,
that is your right,
that is you write,
that is what you were
predestined,
to
create

but,
(what the heck)
you get
to-pick the instrument of the day…


(
that,
is your purchase, your only cost,
everything else has been
pre-paid
)
Thu Nov. 9 2023
8:51am
ny
Dani Just Dani Nov 2023
Sometimes
I give a hard look
At myself in the mirror,
My eyes gleaming with
Sadness that has followed
Me from down the road
And my hair all *******
So it doesn’t show how
Much it has grown

I tell myself
I want to be a poet,
Someone that writes
And moves and
Yell’s at you how gritty
Life has been lately.

But it hasn’t been all that gritty,
Or *****, or painful or-
Maybe it has.

Somewhere I read,
That a dead man
Loves the hardest,
That what only matters
Is how good you walk
Through the fire,
That let life not separate us,
And who cares about death?

I’ve come to hate and detest,
Those who hate,
But when will it be,
That I take upon
My shoulders to love.

And love is not
Like a gas stove,
But more of
A bonfire
That turns night
Into day.

So warm to the touch,
But so beautiful
To have when
It’s 1:00 am
On a cold front,
And god,
I just need
Another
cigarette.

Please,
Let me love
Again.

I’m begging.

Be it in death,
Or alive.

Be it awake
Or dreaming.

Be it through
the extinguished
Fire,
Which means
My walk hasn’t
been that great.

To the one,
That lights it
Again.

I am between
Dying and not dying.

I’m probably not
what you want.

Neither am I,
What you need.

But I will love,
The type of love
To move states,
To be alone
If it meant you
Would be coming
Through the door
Any minute now.

it will
Also be rumbling
And the ground will
Shake and
I won’t know how
To tell you how
Much I really love you.

But I will try,
I will try so hard.

To be all I am,
And all I am not.
Jeremy Betts Feb 2018
All I know is monsters
All I see is a cold world that gets darker as the *** stir's
The future blurs to a point its so obscure it's not yours
Can't seem to stop words from causing me to go backwards
Maybe I need to go back and relearn like toddlers in diapers
There's no cures
All the fibers of my being are withering away like dead flowers
Retreating like cowards
The more I try the worse I fail, a living hell, crunch the numbers
I've done the math, a chalk board full of blunders
Nightmares occurring with my eyes wide shut
It's more then a rut
A candidate to win? Nope, I have a losing ballot
No safety blanket and no bright colors on my pallet
Hollow and cryptic
Revisit the past like I'm stuck to it with a rivet
This isn't just unfortunate it's inadequate
Chew off my arm to be free or just cannibalistic
Can I even resist it?
This dark army that I have enlisted
For to long happy never even existed
And you wonder why I tend go ballistic...
Man, fu¢k this $hit!

©2018
Meandering Words Oct 2023
the planets will align
every once in awhile
to arraign all who need
or are deserving of it
those who find themselves
treading the wrong path
those who can no longer
see what lies ahead
despite all those
gazing upwards
     silently questioning
these immaterial messages
will be overlooked
unheeded by the majority
only recognised by the few
comprehended by even fewer

this singular occurrence
rare and rarefied
may be explainable
in its most basic sense
logistically
     empirically
to even the layman
it is but a simple matter
of timings and orbits
calculations of gravity
versus mass and inertia
but that which truly matters
the universal push and pull
will leave even
the most discerning of minds
in the dark
George Krokos Oct 2023
Looking back at what's happened is hindsight
looking into the present moment is insight
looking ahead into the future is foresight
but looking in all three ways at once
is all-seeing; OMNISCIENT and
the way that God would see.
------------------
Glory and praise to You
Oh Lord. Please bless,
guide and protect
us all now and
forever more
Amen.
__
Written early October '23.
The last seven lines in the form of acknowledgement and prayer added while posting.
NoctOwl Oct 2023
Too much emotion
Too much time
For uninterested people
Too much feelings
Too much love
For an ungrateful person
The past will not come back
And you cannot force one's love
Is it about time,
To let go of the past?
How about this time,
We choose a different path?
Zywa Oct 2023
The future eats me,


which I don't mind, as long as --



I feel the chewing.
Novel "De eeuwige jachtvelden" (1995, "The happy hunting grounds", 1999 Nanne Tepper), Fourth book

Collection "Within the walls"
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