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When is a selfie not a great selfie?
When I’m not recognised.
When proportions are all out of balance.
When I look dead round the eyes.

When is a selfie not a real selfie?
When I look more like my father.
When family traits take a front seat.
When my lost hair is a disaster.

When is a selfie not a true selfie?
When my features just aren’t right.
When my chins are lost in shadow.
When I look like I just lost a fight.

When is a selfie a much better selfie?
Only when I’m unprepared.
When I can’t worry about how it turns out
When I’m fully caught unawares.

I have a great selfie, a much better selfie,
One that was made by my daughter.
You see a great selfie is made a great selfie
When family can make it with laughter.
true
Amir Murtaza Mar 14
I feel sadness,
A quiet grief within me.
Not because someone has gone,
Not because life has ended.

We come into this world only to leave,
So why this sorrow?
Why this ache?
It’s not his departure that burdens my heart—
It’s the unhappiness he carried,
A life with so little joy,
So much pain.

Yet, through the window of my memories,
Whenever I saw him,
He was always smiling.
That smile—
Bright, enduring—
It lingers in my mind.

And now, I search for his picture
Amid a pile of photographs,
But I can’t find it.
Picture frame of ugliness – but not what the world sees,
when your paint yourself under your insecurities.
Does that make you a coward; or are their eyes
the cowards, too afraid to see the real picture of
themselves?

societal expectations, and passive judgments –
behold their critical gaze; yet so are the eyes that can’t
stare themselves in the face. so too, blinded by their
own fears, and personal insecurities.

But as you start to peel away at the metaphoric picture
frame, retracing their hidden layers of drawn over
strokes of new paint - embracing vulnerability;

I'm between finding myself in my inner self-criticism,
and external judgments – I could be the picture of the
prettiest flowers, and hoping one day I learn to paint
myself under the brushstrokes of security, and
vulnerability!

my picture is finally complete!
Man Feb 13
I like to sprinkle my likeness within my work,
Sometimes it's elusive or hidden.
Sometimes it is plainly written out
If you just read it from the right perspective.
A bird's eye view,
The lense of the cartographer,
The fun of the stenographer:
A wider & broader picture.
Artistry, the mirror of my inner soul,
Revealing my true self, once untold.

Unending an enchantment to impart,
Heavy breath entwined around my heart.

Majestic beauty, a powerful harmony,
Do I love thee or only the idea of thee?

Patience in love, take your time,
Reveals the real and true sublime.

Rising gentle dawns and morning dripping dew,
Uninhibited intentions, conveys love renewed.

Building upon ice castles, whispering it's secrets,
Deep long sleep, crisp breezes among seagrass.

Painter on sandy shores with imaginations,
Essence of sea air and oil hues elations.

Journey among colors, fairweather and storm,
Oh, how lovely you and me, together and warm.

Truth in every canvas, guiding my journey,
Teaching me wonder, exploring more to see.

A moonlight flight among winking stars,
Bringing me back from wandering too far.

Even the burdens of life's play made beautiful,
Stand in awe, let joy unspeakable be unmovable.
Word count 149.  Poem of artistry and love.
and so began my mind diving; being
too sea deep – conscious thoughts
trying to swim underneath them; to see deep

and at its surface I had found…

us all being so beautiful – art in reflection
but we gaze at the bigger picture with ugly eyes,
an ugly gaze, with an ugly frame of mind

a tragic drowning picture, I could not see!
Norbert Tasev Jan 23
When the restlessness is also difficult to calm down inside, one day it may even happen that you will finally be able to make peace with yourself; when you will be soothed and comforted by the truer, more angelic being of your Beloved, who first gently bends over you like a sleeping birch branch, then hugs you, cradles you, like an orphaned child, maybe then you yourself can understand the complexity of the choice, it was always in you alone.

When Being weaves new ulterior motives and nefarious plans against you, you will easily find out that in this great, infinitely fattened, manipulable game of chance, which is now being played for the pleasure of the Galad World, you will feel that you can find your own lesson-witnesses even in your fall.

Even now, still sleepily, a little comatose, the small Odyssey-like readiness of homesickness hums and hums in your heart; you want to go, set off on a journey as if it were a continuous eternity, because you are unable to lose the weight of your precious, tiny life, thought to be shipwrecked, in one place, and you can feel as if the no-man's-day sin of everyday life would immediately crush the seeds of your as-yet-undiscovered creativity.

Take good care of yourself, because you yourself can face it every day and you can see it: the average person is regularly cheated and deceived by the harlots, bloodthirsty sensationalists, celebratory, pitiful scumbags, and greedy, unquenchable longing for a more luxuriously arranged lifestyle, which you have nothing to do with, since you always wanted to be yourself.

When you feel that others can pull you around as they please, you will need a gentle nickname and some truer words of friendship cut from honesty.
Norbert Tasev Jan 22
How many more wasted, pitiful, nightmare-filled, futile vigils are needed for a moment that was said to be eternal, to let not only the lack that is said to be permanent, but also the emptiness to leak out once and for all?! Despite the deliberately diverted parts, it seems as if the pitifully structured scenario could have always remained the same.

Sooner or later, someone will really get to know someone, and what's more, on an instinctive, visceral level, they will unexpectedly throw them away, saying; he delved too much into the other's more personal, more modest, lyrical self, which is like a thick, unbreakable walnut gut, and it's a tough job to even break it open, especially when someone tries to protect and protect his soul with doubled spiral walls.

Then comes another love that flirts with the Universe, but is still trite, which may seem to totally replace, change, and convert the person in question, until finally, one fine day, it ends in a painful breakup simply because the secret gigantic weight, the outbursts of honest, lying emotions are no longer they can be enough to make everything right, or just make up for it.

Questions, new illusions, and insecurities surround the individual day by day, and when the registrar's finale comes, instead of the obligatory yeses, nos are heard, because material well-being is still worth more than a paltry, life-smelling petty emotion. But the long-awaited solid and eternal snail-house happiness just can't come, since both parties made a petty, calculated deal in their own way, so they bargained at the same time. It's a shame to put the apparent oiliness in yet another set of question marks.

The current social conventions, which can be chosen on purpose, are still deliberately imposed on each individual and try to regulate the life of the traditional average, while, condensed into a single minute, the given life will soon fly away, and there will not be a single witness left who knows who was, or could have been, the another?!
Norbert Tasev Jan 21
Everyone knows by now: Mouse nibbling pulverizes the brain, reason, and culture, and every shrill, shrill sneaking around becomes unfathomable in the cauldron of souls. Everyone gets a vigilant donkey's head, and more and more often the simple court fool can only be absolutely right.

Stuttering in the soothing sheep choir is now becoming more and more popular. Minutes's field of vision is getting narrower and narrower, the superficial success of minute-man blue. Discounted autographs and superficial gestures are handed out by the privileged and the deserving. Even sweet mistakes lose themselves on purpose. More and more people are claiming that they have the right to be successful or to earn a lot of money as an influencer. In a black-and-white world, simplified things can easily become complicated.

Now, foolish brutes and wild animals enjoy themselves and parade in abundance. The embittered odious words that once spiced up the cozy night with an idyllic, sweet romance - now, in bitter, stripped-down habit, they are deepening further and further in their own, selfish underworld. That a real lady could so easily succumb to the sight of a macho testosterone Titan after a single candlelit dinner. He can't give a compliment yet, but he drives a Porsche or even a Ferrari if he feels like it; and the soul-seeing willow poet may fall on his face sooner.

Now fewer and fewer people can climb to the heights of the Heaven of emerging Being; fewer and fewer soul-seeers could remain on their feet, just like the truer, more immortal believers in Allness, who could still feel the vulnerable joys of Being in the midst of the materialized world!
I can't paint a pretty picture
when destruction looks me
right in the face
but
I can't paint a black picture
when I see hope shining
through the human face.
©2024 Daniel Irwin Tucker

Thought I would end the last day of 2024 with these thoughts for now and the future. Here's to life!!!
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