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Atlas Jul 2017
Our relationship was like the part in a movie when two people run towards each other and the main character looks so unbelievably happy and they close their eyes and just as they are about to embrace the other veers right and jumps into the arms of another.
Breeze-Mist Jul 2017
When I listen to a story
Be it in a theater or on a phone
I don't feel weird about how I feel
I know I'm not alone
Because at every other time
I'm not sure how to be
Because if I let it all out as-is
I'm certain I'd look crazy
But when I read a book or listen to a song
I know that all my bizzare thoughts belong
Because in the end, I'm a sucker for a story
Whether it's on pages or a silver screen
Sam Anthony Jul 2017
Welcome to the stage on which
Life is lived as a performance
Welcome to the office in which
Every day is a job interview, where
Work is nothing more than being looked at
And admired
And despised
And envied

Welcome to a new bank account, with
More money than anyone needs, and
More pressure than anyone deserves, to
Spend it as tabloids demand

Welcome to criticism, for clothing choices –
Too last-year
Too slutty
Too creative
Too similar to someone else
Not flattering enough
Not slutty enough
Not daring enough

Welcome to scrutiny, over
Every romantic detail
Every baby’s name
Welcome to mockery

Welcome to an opportunity to
Use your voice
Take a stand
Make a change
Welcome to pressure to
Toe the line
Stay mainstream
Take no risks

Welcome to a new form of slavery, offering
Wealth and adoration
Freedom for some and shackles for others
Welcome to a ruined, wasted life lived short of its potential –
Relationships missed
Role in the home passing by, and
A tempting, all-you-can-eat buffet of mental health issues

Welcome to a new status, to be
Cool
The centre of attention
Off trend
Forgotten

Welcome to the celebrity contradiction
Attention-grabbers, with
Demands for privacy

Welcome to someone just like
Me –
And
You
Xander Jul 2017
Saw Wonder Woman.
I am really gay for my
love, Diana Prince.
Joshua Haines Jun 2017
It's emergence so brief and shattering,
you'd have to question it's existence.
****** from the swamp by the sky,
it is devoid of morality; it is the terror
that does not forgive what it hasn't
given permission to.

Abrupt hum of an Indian motorcycle,
streaking across the starving freeway,
leaving ribbons of red, in the long,
uncomfortably volcanic-black night.

The body on the machine is wrapped
in cheap, crimson leather, and topped
by a navy helmet, stamped by a
visor reflecting rushed stars.

Migraine-inducing headlights hit
it's prop-store-green body, as it
drips and steps towards a vintage
orange van. Through the videotape
windshield, it can see two still figures;
two figures with aviators and bandannas.

Road signs swing by; the air zipping
in and out of the helmet. The body,
effortlessly, weaves through and
past the few vehicles lost in the dark.

Decelerating, the Indian penetrates
an exit stained: 567-TX-155.

Inside the carpet lined cave,
the figures stare at the monster,
indifferent to it's existence -- well,
not entirely one reminds the other.
It's arms dance in front of it's eyes,
blinded by the freshly clicked
high-beams; unaware that they
are, slowly, stepping closer.

Approaching a skeletal forearm,
emulating a tree, the Indian gradually
becomes silent. The body walks it
behind the rooted elbow, laying it
on a web of wooded earth; pulling
up a sleeve, removing and resting
a watch on the hot, metallic carcass.

It removes it's scattering fingers,
green and twitching, from it's
shrub framed eyes. Looking
forward, two bottles of blackness
grow near. It is a miracle only
surpassed by the instability of
life, that I look upon you, one
bellows. Consider this not
personal, but a preemptive
admonishment. Simply: I
cannot allow you to live,
for I have heard what I
cannot understand. Please
know that I admire,
thus I destroy.

The leather-clad foot-claps
eat and spit the sleeping gravel.
Pace becomes quicker; frenzied,
even. Like a comet, exact in its
imprecision, the navy helmet
falls to the ground, capturing
a night-sky goodbye; casting
the moon, briefly, into her eye.
So brief you'd have to
question its existence.

It's body, pulpy and beet red,
lodges itself between their
pale, freckled fingers. They
consume, pause, then continue
to gnash on the foreign meat.

Yellow, like an ancient bone,
the moon curves and bends
with ever chomp. It can feel
it all. The insides, pulled and
wrapped around wrists; soon
yanking; soon gritty removal.
The light begins to blend
with the surrounding dark.
Last breath, ruined by the
brief choking it's flesh caused.
So brief you'd have to
question it's existence.  

Sweat rips down from her
hair, onto her eyelids. A
dead sprint is broken into,
before she throws herself
into woods, avoiding the
approaching beams of a
vehicle. Forty-three
seconds imitate the
vehicle and go by. She
lifts her eyes to the brim
of a bush; pupils sliding
side-to-side.

Van tires make the transition
from gravel to asphalt, as the
two figures are now, indifferently,
drenched in a red-bronze, becoming
crust around their lips. The driver
says, My father told me about him --
that. He said, if given life, it would
learn to take it. You cannot change
the nature of a monster. If we
remove it, we remove death.
We control the consent.

Her heels transform her sprint
into a statue's posture. The rocks
hurt her knees, as her hands soon
follow, crashing to the ground.
Scattering fingers reach towards
her, soon met by her petite grasp.
The same fingers grow still.

She reaches towards her side,
cradling the nickle handle of
The Last Killer
looking behind her, anger and
a plan, running down her face.
Robert Ronnow Apr 2017
In last night's movie, a young writer
and an older, married with children French woman
fall in love. They did not meet during a village massacre
and money is no object, Manhattan
the place I was priced out of. But after everything has happened
she cannot leave her children, not even for love, because of love,
the love that brooks no serendipity.

Here, in my family, love is taken for granted
except when it's withdrawn and then even the trees lose all meaning,
familiarity. Now it is almost dawn:
this and that must get done in committee or alone.
Don't reach, go slow as the day will allow.
But that's not what I came to say.
Perfect rest v. having a destiny.

A complete breakdown in self-discipline.
It begins by saying nothing I do matters under the eye of eternity.
Hamlet x 5 centuries.
Add to that all the science--chemistry, physics--calculus and music
I don't know. I have sat next to, at weddings,
brain surgeons and robot engineers. I hit the street
choosing a church on Fifth Ave. or Trinity Cemetery, walking the
      heartless city.

In the subsequent late night movie, a wealthy
altruistic doctor arranges for the ******
of his neurotic concubine. His guilt provides us
with an opportunity to consider
the concepts of faith and forgiveness, that all will be well in the end
after a period of meaningless suffering.
In this way the seasons have been circulating for eons via convexity.

I don't know what I'm doing but I'm doing it anyway.
You trust in genetics, God, prosthetics or prayer, whatever
gets you to the morning. That's when the sun,
a billion trillion nuclear detonations per second
warms your bones.
You may remember an old lover who's gone before
or continues to exist on another plane, in another ecstasy.

Having installed a new toilet seat
and made a few philanthropic donations
I can kick back tonight and watch movies, right?
Not. I'm ridding myself of another addiction
like illegal drugs via caloric restrictions
getting enough sleep for two people or more
and reading none of the dry words in books from the library.

When there's nothing to do, when I'm bored or dreary
I'll sit still and watch from the window, I'll wait
for the weather to change, which it will.
"The relation between fragility, convexity, and sensitivity to disorder is mathematical."  --Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder, Random House, 2012.

www.ronnowpoetry.com
Colm Mar 2017
The steel inside my forearm
Has bent beneath the tremendous heat
Of the forest fire burning in me

How it roars and screams a passionate plea
Not of agony but of fury
Both in might and out of sight

With hands outstretched
Over top the sea of burning trees
And temperatures boiling over uproariously

You’ll hear the howl of this wolverine
As it drowns out the earthly screams
Of a forest fire

Insurmountable and unquenchable by any stream
This is how I viewed the scene Mr. Logan
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