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ash Aug 18
breaking:
a poet's try at uncovering the depths of conveying,
will they be able to—
or die and turn missing?



they've messed up what the actual book looked like,
now it's become 101 ways to show and disguise.
it's methodological,
not worth following,
yet they've become walking fools,
need people to guide them.

it starts like the flicker you feel
before a moment that begins,
opening up to a new feeling,
like before starting a book you don't know yet—
will it heal, hurt, or stay with you
as a memory or the haunting truth?

one whose ending isn't so clear.
i haven't read the summary,
or the genre,
or what people might think of it.
i still hold it dear.

the unpredictables are exciting.
i walk through chapters,
pausing on the torn pages,
moving on hoping it'd make sense,
stitching my own words during the lost stages.

what is this blurb of my story meant to look like?
i wouldn't write my own prologue,
if you handed me the choice.

keeping egos aside,
only if they'd talked to listen,
it wouldn't have seemed so childish,
couldn't have ended as a lost forbidden.

i'll start ignoring the truths
the moment it becomes one among psychology.
finding reasons, of all the felonies we commit,
it only spoils it—
whatever does seem to exist.

and not to mention,
reasoning tires me out.
i could save your name,
only you've promised to drain me out.


trend o' one:

the language over screen
is hard to be read unless you think like me.
so i say and regret,
knowing it isn't seen through.

the irony of being looked at the surface,
and never tried hard enough to find depth into.
it's comical, how we tend to give up—
half written, still typing, just deleted,
the unsent parts carrying all the weight
that eyes can't seem to convey or confess.

we'll just profess an undying nature of this bond
over stories and over chats.
it's messy, it's disguised.
turns out it's fake,
only for the time.

trend o' two:

"hold me close"
but i let go.
the grip slips,
my hands between yours.
our palms are sweaty,
i stare at you
as you look behind me,
and i know this is how it has turned out to be.

i'll look over your shoulder,
you'll give me a glance.
suddenly it's detachment fighting
the whatevers that kept us attached,
slowly you let go, and i can't seem to mend.

sweaty, slipping, holding, missing—
if there were only hands that existed,
would you convey through the grip,
or the phantom of drawing?
touch, absence, pull, drop—
is it a game,
a give and take,
or something worth yet despised?

trend o' three:

i sleep most nights alone,
often feeling you slip right behind me,
holding me close,
from isolating all i am,
all that i want,
and all i can be.
you leave behind breadcrumbs—
half spoken text,
misspelt jokes,
questions i ought to answer to.
words that are never meant to seek
so suddenly you fade,
then you return.
the messages are spammed,
the glances double up.

you look at me
and i know you're trouble.
from being sole to being bombed,
your love seems more like a time ticking machine,
and less of something i truly want.

i speak in fragments,
leaving behind unresolved tension.
and it doubles up,
accompanies you and i everywhere we go.

cut-off speakings,
you don't let me continue.
you need the attention,
i deny letting yours deter,
wanting it on me whole.

i hide the truth,
give away half-baked details,
keep what would help me feel understood.

for i know it doesn't stay.
heard from one ear,
you push it away,
keeping close whatever could help you.

might make you make me steer closer.
you ought to learn close,
if you wish to hear
what i don't speak of.

trend o' four:

halfway met conditions
and broken promises,
ones never spoken out loud,
but i'd kept them,
for they'd existed in the silence
and in the meanings.

turns out,
we're dolls hooked to puppet strings,
being controlled, our every whim.
the decision is theirs,
as the society directs and clears
whatever pathways you and i ought to take and wear.

it wasn't ever love,
a broken, chosen, inevitable belief
that simply had to come true.
this is a stage play.
we're dressed up,
the puppeteer is you, me, society, family—
or mere glitch of time
and faint suicidal memories?






every belief over up
hid a secret,
an unspoken acrostic,
reading it backwards,
ones that didn't match the tone.

it's rightly unsaid,
meant to say,
i said so.

i'll reframe it for the ones reading cosmic.
we orbit, they eclipse,
the satellites mispronounced,
the black hole is ridden in misspelled.

the coordinates almost always missed,
make it seem bigger than just reading—
a piece so intellectual, so pronounced,
it feels like leaving.

i'll anchor it down.
what's your love language?
is it pronounced?
convert them to the seven sins—
would you relate,
dare to point them out?

i've got the comfort book,
the dictionary of dreams,
a brief history of time,
and the tale of the grimms.

none of them hold anything close
to what i write.

there's five proven languages,
and i put forward them parallel to the seven sins—
warped, distorted, weaponized.
this isn't my doing,
but of the one who said
it ought to be humanized.

love o' sin
pride, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, sloth, and wrath
and so i take them on, put them to map.


i.
affirming what's meant
to make you feel better,
compliments dipped in honey,
serving echoes of how you didn't wish
to let it tether.

then why does it feel more like a chain
and less of a bind?
not so delicate either,
why do you force me out of this mind?

like there's pride in owning,
every you're mine,
isn't loving.



ii.
i'll do this for you
acts of service
seems to be fantasized.
but would you—
why it seems almost like masking, neglecting.

saying you care and you would,
i see you avoid and distance.
and when you can, so you do.
a way to not show up in emotions.

you seem vacated, distance,
almost like a sloth, speaking ******.



iii.
and perhaps giving and receiving—
thought of you, bought this.
is it the opposite?
bought you, thought of this.

equating all that i feel with possessions,
not having to describe,
oh i'm left with devotion.

the tokens feel like proofs,
but to whom?
the world doesn't care,
yet you demand i hold.

is it greed, pride combined even more?
where feelings could have spoken,
you exchanged presents as bespoken.



iv.
and then i skip to spending—
anchoring  time's quality, the clocks,
all of them stopping at the same pointed dots.

jealous of the hours
spent so further apart,
yet when it's together—
why does it feel forced,
suffocated, you and i?

we hold despite the minds,
as if it's envy,
from those who find it easy.

wanting every second of yours,
possession tying inescapable knots.



v.
and what of touch—
hold, grip, grasp, bite,
until it bleeds,
and suddenly it's a good night.

reducing it to hunger,
like gluttony
but i know yet another.

there's connection, there's the threads,
the white ones turning red.
it has become consumption.

i need to breathe you in,
lust devours affection.


vi.
shall i add another two?
silence, existing without having to show,
or to prove—
not performing but you stay.

except it's withdrawal,
and the need of wanting it sole,
like the perfect doll.

greed, pride,and unmistakable wrath,
detachment has become a weapon,
punishment you give through absence.



vii.
attending to me over the notch,
consuming it all, in excess,
and watching it get lost.

the meanings, everything fast forwarding,
love-bombing—too much, too fast, too hollow.

living in the extremes,
gluttony—does it ever feel too narrow
of a path to take?


it ends like a flicker you feel
after a moment that has reached its ending,
closing into the final moments of the beginner’s feeling,

like after ending a book,
one where you realised just where it stood
and it hurt, it healed, it definitely stayed—

both as a memory,
and a haunting truth.


zooming back out on you,
a little cynical,
little fragile,
little clinical.

i'm merely dissecting the trends online,
you term it the seven sins of love.

a matter of hours multiplied with days.
what's promised to hold shouldn't disappear,
yet it leaves like a ghost,
of all the phantoms that promised to reappear.

so i get night terrors
of finding it incomplete.
and it hasn't gone along as i hoped.

where did it go?
honest is the best policy.
have i poured it in,
a little lethal?

would you go as far
as to call me illegal?

you make it seem so seasonal,
as if it's meant to come and go.

but affection has always been
one that ought to be pursued—
only if you find it enough to build a home.

and it gives into a lot,
a lot more messy.
they term it love,
it's just situations encompassing.

a cherished another,
your seemingly only forever.
so why give in to the trends,
when you could hum it over the radios,
find it in the stars,
and preach it to the gods,
making sacrifices
to make it and them, solely yours.

breaking:
flash mob,
house with no mirrors
and a broken door.

it has been proven time and along,
trends of affection as they are,
for the time being, a rotten core.

so the poet sits and smiles
as they follow and play—
make believe.
hoping they'd stop the disguise,
marking, copying
and simply agree.

taking a respectful dig at the modernized beings preaching of love & devotion
y'll need to get an understanding of what truly is affection


cue genz.
Adedoyin May 24
Code red, code red—
You should know it’s lies i fed,
when i say I like you,
i am only lonely and blue.

Believe me at your own risk,
if i did like you, how’d write you poetry.
You just have to trust me,
I’m attracted to your body.

Maybe, your sense of art too,
the tone of voice, nothing more.
tn we are thinking abt your new gf and how, unbeknownst to me, you were already dating when i called you the night i got stood up by someone else
(i wouldn’t have called if i knew)

and how i called from a blocked number but you answered and you answered half asleep, “savannah?”
how did you know it was me?

we are also thinking about how we spent last Christmas together but it ended with us crying in each others arms because you dont want to try again and how , according to you, either way you can’t be with anyone right now even if you wanted to

and how throughout those three days, you were getting texts from her but assured me it was platonic. why did you feel the need to assure me ?

tn we are thinking about how this is the first girl you made a playlist for that doesn’t have any songs you dedicated to me first (like the last two did)

and tn i am trying to remind myself that “someone who will always come back is someone who will always leave”
Soumya Bajpai Mar 30
Oh to be awoken by the sun and not an alarm,
To be surrounded not by robotic schedules, but by oceanic calm,
To go to bed without counting the hours of sleep I’d get,
To have the option to watch every single sunset.

Oh to be fuelled into a deep sleep by stories etched on dead trees,
To remember the cause of every single book crease.
Oh to be free from viciously scrolling reels - All day. All night.
To catch a break from our screens and actually enjoy natural light.

To eat when I’m hungry and not just when I have time between classes,
To drink water, to ***, to rest when my body wants to, and not just go along with the
masses.
I want to be what I know I cannot.
And yet, more than anything, I want to BE.

To BE is to read with no pressure.
To BE is to experience true leisure.
To BE is to look at the night sky and have the stars look back at you.
To BE is to fall asleep under that very sky and be awoken by a bird’s coo.

Amidst AI and robots and technology and the swarm of 21st century ‘Super Brains’,
When did we lose control of our own lives’ reins?
In the war for the title of ‘Smartest BEings’,
We simply forgot to BE.
How often do we stop to smell the roses nowadays? When was the last time any of us dressed up like a clown, or made a magic concoction in the bathroom, or played outdoors under the scorching sun? Doom-scrolling has brought us an early doom ourselves. We know the problem. We know the solution. We still can't function the way we used to before... The adrenaline rush you'd get while stealing from the kitchen at midnight, that last minute read you used to sneak in while your mother was calling you down for food, the way we'd wait for the car to pass under a street light to sneak in a couple words- it feels like a different person altogether.
So here's to forever wishing and hoping and desperately needing that old self back- the one who was passionate and ambitious and just the perfect amount of crazy.
Anais Vionet Jan 2024
square-up marys,
It’s junior year, in the ivie,
we’re gambling for big-chips.
so gambate, do-it-big!
It's time, buck-up or labron.
if you bunny rouble
homeskillets will hook-it-up
lovems juju
.
.
slang…
girlogue = conversation between girls that guys can’t understand
square-up = get ready
marys = bookish and lovable girls of wit and looks
ivie = ivy league
big-chips = high stakes, high risk
gambate = Japanese word: 'Try your best!!'
do-it-big = take things to the next level
buck-up = rise to a challenge, to do something others are unable to
labron = fail miserably at the last second
bunny rouble = have trouble
homeskillets = friends
hook-it-up = help you out
lovems = sending you love
juju = good luck

.
.
(Get ready, you bookish and lovable girls of wit and looks,
it’s junior year, in the ivy league,
and we’re gambling for high stakes.
So try your best, take things to the next level!
It's time, to rise to a challenge and do something others are unable to
or fail miserably at the last second.
If you have trouble
your friends will help you out
I'm sending you love, good luck.
)
a poem in genz slang
M Sep 2023
Have we all become mere automata
guided by the ring of pings and notifs?
The spray of lather from a sea of data
carrying with it wrung celebrity whiffs
have stung us with a certain aphasia...

The written thought was a lifetime ago
long abandoned by the times and all--
where once there was soundness to follow
nonsense amassed like a rising cymbal
whose crash sent reason to the gallows.

The news of the day presents a delectable entree
of a hodgepodge of this, that, and nothing much.
Wherefore we find our tongues compelled to say
something about the aftertaste or to prejudge
as if we were connoisseurs--it must've hid faraway.

Are we perhaps amusing ourselves to death?
I am by no means a Luddite to such a degree,
but I believe we have bombarded and blessed
ourselves a little too much to see...
only time will tell us reason's final breath.
Inspiration from "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman
Emm Mar 2023
Smile, pose,
flawless, poise

Let's make another picture perfect square,
Perfect for everyone to stare
I don't care what you think,
what you see, what you think,
of what you see,
As long as I can fool my memory

Even if I sink,
even when everything stinks
If I can't remember, it won't drag me down

Let's find our true love,
One and only true love,
Starting from the superficials,
Oh yes, 'cause I believe from this
we can go straight to the nuptials

It's odd if you ask me these days be,
spent more time fighting off monsters that can never be,
Exploring Neverland,
truly being Peter Pan?...

Is it still called a social interaction?
When there is no communication,
More like with the green monsters, spending quality time
all kins of them,
And in plurals,
all these digitals
...
violetstarlights Dec 2022
i watch this website fall apart
the entire screen freezing as i try to log back in after so many years
and after taking ap principles last year
i can kinda tell why

i am now seventeen
with only a "youthful disposition" to be seen
but only living for her
the little kid who thought being old was all there was to be

fruitger aero
y2k
grainy photos from yesterday

it was never about getting here
it was just about getting away
and crying over an indie album
from 2008

the words hit me harder than any song from a tiktok artist today
were we never really alone?

strange individuals from ten years ago
once scorned, now cherished by the youth

and i ahead or simply behind?

the useless porcelain jars from the thrift store hold more soul to me than any shirt from target ever will

born in the correct era
for now i can love the previous one in peace
strange how we only like something when it leaves
Irem Oct 2022
tears, flowing again
fueled by almost
almost everything again
i try to see further, but
the only thing i gain
is pain again.

20 won't be hard, they said
shouldn't have believed them
when they
got everything ruined and bad

same things were said again and again
when i was way younger and naive
younger, i mean
when the world was young like me

not the current sink that we're both in
my generation takes all the pain
thinking about how we've almost seen everything
saying this, and at the same time can already feel
the taste of my words in my brain.
i'm back like i never left.
SophiaAtlas Mar 2021
millennial generation got a little beaten down and miserable.
But i'm glad to see gen z frothing at the mouth and out for blood.
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