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M Jul 10
I sent a sad face,
he sent nothing.
Eight hours of silence
and a filtered selfie
as if my feelings
were too inconvenient
to be acknowledged.

He didn’t ask what was wrong.
He never really did.
He liked the softness,
but never the substance.

He liked being wanted,
but never wanted to show up.
Not when I was vulnerable,
not when I was hurting,
not when I needed more
than a snap of his bed
or a half laugh in my face.

I gave chances in silence,
forgiveness without apology.
I held space where he gave absence.
And still, I stayed.
Until staying
started to hurt more
than the leaving ever could.

So I didn’t block him.
I didn’t scream.
I didn’t write a final message.
I just disappeared
the way he always did
when it was my turn to speak.

Let him wonder
why the snaps stopped.
Let him feel the stillness
he used to ignore.

Let him stare at the pending
and realize I’m not.
Not waiting.
Not hoping.
Not folding back into someone
who forgot how to hold me.

I may not have closure,
but I have clarity.

And if silence is the only language
he ever taught me,
then let him hear it
loud and clear.
For AA.

Finally choosing myself, had to let him go this time. No going back even though it’s not easy and it hurts.
Nat Lipstadt Jul 16
Stumbling into ancient scripts, authored a decades plus ago,
ago being a modifier of time quantities, minute or large, unspecific
without an objective adjective additive, that faucets a stream of an interlocutory elocution of a batter of rooted emotional histories,
but not histrionics

fanciful words for dredged up memories, acute, but tarnished,
powered yet worn by a cousin of ago, a/k/a,
age
and yet
renews as of,

at this very second, as if it were a first, a tumult of visions, swelling of remembrances, embodied scars, and I weep anew but not
for me, as much for the resonating simpatico souls with whom
they even  now vibrate with resonance of the immediacy of
If not now, When?

Aside: The exterior environment is noisy wet pelting of thunderstorms and ****** sheets of bulleting rain, piercing projectiles, but I am safe in the sunroom, sadly happy my dog is no longer here to shiver and tremble, cuddle and be soothed by steady stroking

But I am here, wrestling with this dredging operation, digging up
tons of sand that require dumping, and I ask, inquire, beg:

Who will take this detritus off my hands, once more, now uncovered,
now recovered, the soil is already soaked and can absorb no more,
the soul is already soaked and can absorb no more, the weakened
heart, damaged and occluded, suffer cannot bare twice the

outrageous misfortune

of unbared recollections, twice, or thrice, and I feel myself drowning in revisiting pain, **** **** ****, these old poems, not nuggets, but boulders dropping from night skies, shot from a pitching machine, without letup, piercing of agonies that once ago  
freshly desecrated and decorated my basic training in humanity.

Enough whining:
I wrote those poems to
eject out those pains,
and I write this now, once more,
to realize that so so many still face
uncertain and unrelenting similarities,
doing their own sums,
and I wish them easing,
strength to compose and
thereby dispose of
the ineloquent
and eloquent
words of staining suffering


3:30am
Thur
July 10
2025
The Romantic Jul 8
A *** never stirred, overheating
shows me
it’s okay to die with desires
they usually
are things we don’t need
similar to those who
carry their secrets to the grave
slowly cooking them alive as the days pass
only the heat under the ***
can relate to what your heart feels
it burns nonstop
not knowing when it is going to
stop
invoking angels
one by one?
You crafted a shrine for me,

adorned me with wings,

elevated and sacred, untouched by your secrets.

Your last chance at redemption,

a sanctuary where you hid from yourself.

Your perfect lie—

an illusion of salvation.

Once shattered, your adoration

twisted into disdain.

The hand that shaped my wings,

became the force that broke them.

And now, you watch me fall

from the heights you once placed me upon.


Yet I release you, I forgive you,

Love, a quiet thread that ties us still,

A spark woven into the fabric of time,

Never truly gone, but transformed,

gently fading

into the glow of what we were.

I return sometimes to those moments,

not with longing, but with reverence—

like that stolen kiss—

unexpected, breathless,

the words "I love you" spilling from me,

uncontainable, truthful,

your arms, holding me,

an electric hum between us.



This is how I'll hold us—

in the warmth of what we were,

not in the sorrow that followed.

When you remember me,

let it be the quiet depth of my love that remains,

the warmth of my hand resting softly on your

cheek,

the steady, unwavering gaze that held you,

unchanged by time.

Let that be what stays with you—

not the deafening silence that followed,

not the weight of what we lost,

but the light that we held, even just for a moment,

so close to perfect but fragile.

Not perfect enough.
Oh how we love the ones who can teach us both heaven and hell…
CE Uptain Jul 2
I’ve got plenty of ink, it’s my paper that’s shot
I can only write a few words, that’s all I got
Quick to write, slow to understand
I’ve got a fast mind and a slow hand

I had to scratch out some lines
I was trying to find some rhymes
But now it’s over, I think I’m done
Looks like I penned another one
I've been working on my Poet Lament volumes. This is out of #4. Hope you like it.
Mac Thom Jul 1
All the good sports
         go out for a run
                       into the ice storm.

They grimace and squint
           in the headlights of cars
                       on Riverside Drive.

And they run as if for their lives
            in this freezing rain
                        that sheathes and has broken

the leafless branches
            along snow-plowed bike paths;
                          ice-pellets ping off
        
their pricy goggles, their fluorescent shells,
              as they struggle north
                           to the pole where

they always turn back
              for the Christmas lights strung
                       over the porches
              
welcoming home
               those who might have been
                        men.
The more I read this, the less I like it. Simply put, it's boring. I guess there's some utterly unpersuasive argument for the alignment of form and content (play-acting serious endeavours, whether polar exploration or poetry) - but it's not working for me. Close to erasing it, but hanging in there for the sake of continuity.
Norbert Tasev Jun 30
As if aiming, huddling ever closer to the wall; he draws his superstitious eyelashes into a slit, thus peering at the deceived, continuously manipulated world. Forced to constantly measure the shortest distance between sincerity and lies, he measures, like some eccentric arbiter, the weight of the stake, which is a nest of betrayals and lies. Backwards in the stream of eternal moments, thinking himself over once more, he decides to look away after all. Inside, in the secret depths of his soul, he still keeps his seeing eye open; he still faithfully preserves the ability to see truly, which is not polluted by materialism or superficial exhibitionism.

He knows and suspects: only in the depths of the soul can the romantic dance of the one flame take place, which he has perhaps dreamed of his entire life, - he would immediately regain it if he could have that second of memory that was still liberated and free from everything, because inside there is an irresistible power over instincts and emotions, even the silent, mute human words, which do not need to be spoken at all.

- Like a desolate cauldron, the creative silence surrounds him, which - nowadays - is increasingly difficult to gain in a dignified manner. Like interstellar frontiers, humility and will would lie under a giant dome for days; melancholy, meaningless, petty worries and troubles swim in a large carnival crowd, like so many fish embryos in a crowd. He will slowly and subtly consume his spirit, every drop at a time, if he is not careful, because truer human stars are patiently waiting in the garden of golden hearts for them to be admitted.
star Jun 30
deleting poems 6.29.25 (6:32 pm / 18:32)
there were happy poems i wrote
apparently three thousand happy words
that i deleted

i couldn't look at them anymore
yea idk they just made me sadder *** is wrong with me
Norbert Tasev Jun 29
Halfway between my two hands, perhaps, that certain bottomless, lasting disgust will still splash out, like when the diligent, eager patience picks beetles from the emerald leaves of pleasingly grown potato beds, so that there will - hopefully - be no more problems with the crop. As if they were slippery, exposed slug bodies, as if they did not want to understand that they too have their place in the cyclical order of nature, as in the ranking of ecosystems.

These heatwave days greet us now in idle, sparkling whiteness; black cannibal laughter is heard surprisingly close, as if it were the howling of greedily starving wolves, who are not afraid of the cheap anger of hunters, nor the terror of lightning rods.

- A universal age of unbridled debauchery, like a test of floods, as if it wanted to inject itself into the smallest, almost micro-millimeter poles of man, from which there is no escape, but - true - hardly any salvation. Because between pores there is still inevitably hiding, and secretly and cautiously fleeing some inner misguided memory, refuge: the hanging of eyes without perspectives towards the uncertain future.

Man would almost constantly try the nerve endings of sluggish indifference, beneficial infarct-shadows nestle richly in his heart, while he receives a small pension for the time being. Nothing will come of Mak's captivity, because something is preventing him from doing so and will no longer allow him to exercise even the simplest of actions, which wouldn't hurt if it could continue for another twenty or so years!
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