#plurality poems on Hello Poetry

PhantomDreamer Feb 21

They told us we're insane
We were under attack
Helpless
Afraid
But we triumphed
Alii Semper Vincemus!

We triumphed
And everything is going to be ok
But we couldn't have done it alone
Without each other
we would have failed

One to be friendly
and social and innocent
To be adored and underestimated

One to stand firm
and protect and defend
To keep on fighting till there's nothing left

One to charm
and be unbothered by everything
To be confident and relaxed and fearless

One to strategize
and organize and lead
to know just how to get what we want

One to prove that we are correct
and whose purpose is not yet known
To make mistakes but make up for them

One to keep us all together
and appear as though we are solid and one
To be a mix and mediate and rejoice in our triumph

We are the Others, all of us united
Though difficult to understand

I have been taught that faith is about not needing to understand
to believe it is real
And this has been a true test of faith
But the Others are as real as anyone else
And I will never stop fighting for them
and for me

Alii Semper Vincemus!

One day, everything will work itself out. No one said Metamorphosis would be easy.
And with the Others to help and guide me, I'll be ok. We all will.

This is the first poem I wrote actually using the name the Others. They have been referenced in lots of other poems and even co-wrote a lot of them, but this is the first time I've been brave enough to truly share them.
Inspired to share by another young, misunderstood plural, Thanks for being yourselves!

#theothers #aliisempervincemus #triumph #plurality

famishing fae Feb 2019

out of one, many

I remember a time when we were one, when we were what they called "whole,"
a budding self wandering the forest of childhood in quiet awe

and I remember the hunters.

the words, locked doors in the cold, and worse;
how they struck her through the heart, how her legs gave way,

how she crumpled to the ground and bled
and bled
as the forest withered around her.

And now we are here, tired children of the dried-up husk,
stumbling through a world that sees us as deluded, dangerous,
or perhaps, at best, a child's game.

We are weary. We are wounded, we are sharp and jagged edges,
but we are also so much more.
We have become so much more. No simple collection of fragments,

but the family we never had -
the family we deserved.

Together, I know we'll find our place in the sun,
unbreakable as many as we never were as one.

to broken branches who became trees, who became a forest all their own.

(part of "love letters to selves")

#plurality

famishing fae Feb 2019

an ode to a beast

At first, I feared you. You were a monster,
and here I was, trapped in my body with you.

You were fangs, claws, hissed words and glowing, scornful eyes. A shadow, lurking always at the back of my mind.

I wished you would go away.
I tried so hard to make you go away.

But then, we both learned to listen.

I listened to you, and saw how badly I was allowing people to treat me - treat us.
You listened to me, and saw how you had driven people away from you - from us.

I saw the chances I had not taken,
and you saw the chances that had been lost,
thanks to fear, to pride, to shame.

And so we made our peace, and walked into the future, together.

And now I see you today: kneeling to speak to children, holding porcelain and hands with the utmost care -

frail, small, lovely things in a world of coldness, of cruelty, that you rise to meet with iron in your eyes and sincerity in your soul -

and I wonder how I could have ever wanted you gone.

to an inner demon; to a darker self; to someone who became so much more.

(part of "love letters to selves")

#plurality

Matthew Harlovic Feb 2018

state of affairs

Close. Welcoming. My
name. David. Absurdly—I mean, out of
tune. Ordinary language permits
the paraphrase:

Things could have been. But
actually are. Countless ways,
certain descriptions. To consider,
“ways things could have been.”

Things might be. The possibilities,
the propositions, the structures.

© Matthew Harlovic

Inspired by David Lewis, Keith Waldrop.

#love #life #thoughts #worlds #plurality #waldrop #metaphysics #philosophy

Francie Lynch Jul 2015

It's a Crayola Life

With the box lid closed
It's dark inside,
There are no colours
We can't abide.
But a golden sliver of light seeps in,
To expose the colours there within.
We see red when enraged,
And scarlet dancers crowd our stage;
A red-blooded male brags virility
Through rose-coloured glasses of masculinity.
Some grow green with envy,
Reveal they're yellow in enmity,
Are blue when feeling empathy,
Turn blue holding out for sympathy,
Are tickled pink with comedy,
And white as a sheet with tragedy,
Or brown-nosed with syncophany.
If your yellow-bellied you may run,
And green-gilled after Jamaican ***,
Write purple prose when versifying,
Ashen coloured when you're dying.
True colours show outside the box,
Use grey cells to colour unorthodox.
Our true colours are harlequin,
That fade to black at our end.

#race #colours #crayons #ethnicity #plurality

— The End —