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lisagrace Jul 17
My hands, smaller then, holding a ball of wet, smooth clay. Shaping it into what I thought were animals - but they all looked the same. Egg-shaped heads, dumpy legs, and fat bodies. Skewered out eyes and noses. But I loved creating these strange creatures. Once complete, they sat atop the cupboard, waiting, hoping to evolve. To solidify. To become. But they never made it to the kiln. The creatures stayed there, alone. Forgotten. Abandoned. A ghost of my childhood, one of the few joyous sparks.

I am grown now, still haunted. Still longing. But I have reclaimed the spark. There it is again. Malleable and messy. These hands, belonging to a woman now, caked with that familiar, wet slip.  My thumb presses into the ball - a pinch ***. Another. And another. And yet, another. My heart sings.

The shapes are wobbly. Tumbler cups, too small for coffee...I didn't realise they would shrink this much! There are no two alike, fingernail marks and uneven lips. But I love them - just the right size for honey wine. Dinosaur stamps — a T-rex and a Brachiosaurus. A quiet rebellion in clay, honoring the girl who shaped beasts and walked away. They stack beside the kiln now, waiting again. But this time, they are not forgotten. I see them. I made them. The fire awaits.

The girl, a phantom
I reshape her. I mold her
Coalescing, whole
The woman is set aflame
Imperfect and beautiful
A piece about returning to old joys, reclaiming creativity, and shaping something gentle from the past.
Norbert Tasev Jul 17
You have decided: you cannot forgive anyone, because it is hardly possible to change anything anymore. You can *****, blindly, hesitantly count on one or two of your old friends and acquaintances, hoping to help you on the path of your pathetic, shipwrecked life, which – it seems – you must walk alone for good. Often you yourself are more like that, held back by conscious fear, a petty spasm of no-man's-land terror, wondering what might still await you among the wolf traps of calculating, compromising everyday life, in the company of people who are no longer even remotely interested in your fate, life, or dreams.

Soul-guts crawl out of the depths of your soul at night; your organs increasingly obey your instincts and your common sense is responsible for them alone. It would be better to escape, perhaps to the sandy, palm-tree beach of another world, where joy, harmony, and carefreeness could welcome you instead of the robot-yoke worries of everyday life. – Now you often feel deep in your soul that you have bet everything on a single well-calculated ***** deck of cards, hoping that the blind luck of the cards would favor you.

All the worries and crosses of forty years of vileness that have deliberately persisted and accumulated in you evaporate, infecting its victims like some envious poison-elixir. You could not accept the slaps of life, the somersault rules that you believed were unbreakable, it would have been good to fit keys into a thousand anonymous, rusting locks, to make the redemptive liberation openable. From your confused nightmares – it would be good to trust – that you will find your way home safely through the One-Someone!
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Farin Ruwa falls with power and grace,  
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Where Niger and Benue rivers lie.  

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NGWonders show Nigeria’s best.
About NGWonders
lisagrace Jul 16
Orange flowers blanket my knees
My coffee is betrayal -
not sweet enough. Bland
Daylight again,
but I am a vampire
Decomposed lettuce juice in the fridge

Other people exist - I decline
Where is the cacao bean delight?
The ocean can wait
I have my shell. It has pockets
A poem for the days you stay in your shell.
Written in my oodie, dodging the world (and the lettuce juice).
Nosy Jul 16
I read it twice, I still didn’t get it
I did not receive the message
I couldn’t understand the meaning

You poured in your heart
And I left it, torn apart
Because some things don’t resonate
Until it’s once again too late

And you made up your mind
While I stayed behind

Always too slow to make up my mind
Staring at the lines once more,
They look back like a locked door,
I tried knocking, but not sure what for.

Poems are like puzzles in crypts
You write in metaphors
And I respond too literally

And interstellar that didn’t align
A story written that wasn’t mine

And now there’s just silence,
Where insight should have been.
I held something breakable And didn’t feel it within.
In English, they say I love you.
But in poetry
I say:

I tried to imagine a life without you,
and my heart didn’t break at the thought
it simply refused
to build a world
where you and I do not exist.

I could walk the lush skin of greenery,
barefoot on the breath of flower filled garden
knowing you are somewhere
safe,
loved,
smiling
at the sound of your name
called out by a stranger
who isn’t me.

I would still smile.
Because you are breathing,
because you are held
perhaps under arms more suited
to your rhythm,
your values,
your laughter that hides in dry jokes,
your silliness
that someone else will call adorable.

Loving you?
means giving you away
to the life you were meant to have,
even if mine is not written in your pages.

We were almost,
could-have-beens
stitched by longing
but unraveled by trust
because the Almighty is the best of planners,
and I, only human
learning to love
without holding.


Bellah.
in a universe where we could be anything, I'll choose loving you. maybe just differently.
Maya Jul 16
feast upon my brain,
where memories of you lie,
take my skin that longs for your touch,
**** on my bones that ache for you.
Devour my heart which beats your name,
eat me whole.
Take my eyes,
**** on my tongue,
devour my lips,
inhale me,
i give it up to you.
tear me apart and rip open my flesh
and there you will see,
every part of me,
that is made up of you.
Eat me.
just something a came up with. needs improvement but im happy with it for my first poem <3
Norbert Tasev Jul 16
We crowd, crowd, and even interfere with each other in ever-narrowing, gradual spaces; an eternally swirling roller coaster-calvary, like a kind of peculiar homesick Odyssey, which can be realized less and less with dignity. Our joy is only rarely, if at all, and the momentary intention of liberation is lost from everything else. The Lack, which is saturated hourly and then emptied in an infinite amount, swells and swells more and more - if necessary, if not - and from age - perhaps - it can endure less and less.

Because the return journey - if necessary, if not - can increasingly often come in one's way involuntarily, and there is no way to solve it, like a secret worldly riddle: where should one go?! - In many cases, one would rather remain a rabbit than a poacher. Many times, a cunning hand still nudges him on the back of the head, always coming up with the latest reason to outwit this present life with dignity.

Everyone is just waiting for applause, appreciation, fame; meetings with friends, acquaintances, birthdays, major disgraced, profit-oriented big holidays, celebratory parties are gradually being postponed. The holy helpless one of joys remains like this a little until the end of time, since birth is also a kind of intermediate countdown to the final passing away. Even if a person tries to break away in the end, in vain; the wild, clinging blood circulation jungle of the eternally greedy big cities grinds him down. Every heartbeat, every trembling sigh of the underworld has been marked with invisible wounds that will last a lifetime!
Emmanuel Jul 16
Quizá es que hice un trato con esta vida
para encontrar a la mujer de mis sueños,
la única que me despierta emociones reales
y parece tan irreal por su tono de perfección,
con el que se pintó en mi corazón.

Lo lamentable es que lo mejor tiene un precio.
Encontré a quien llegó a salvarme de la tristeza,
aquella mujer que es la única rosa en mi jardín.
Y como me hace sentir tan enamorado,
me hace sentir tan especial
cuando me sentía lo más insuficiente en este universo…
aunque mi nuevo universo tiene nombre,
y me quiere.

Me ama tanto
que la vida tuvo que ponerle un límite.
Tanto que pudo ser
si me viera con los mismos ojos de amor
con los que yo le lloro cada noche,
ansiando el día en el que me elija como su amor
y no solo como su gran persona.

Debí preguntar sobre los términos del contrato…
aunque, aún así,
habría aceptado.
Solo por ella.
Only for you.
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