Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
You examine everywhere for reasons to fight
Goal you achieve almost every night
Perfection and purpose put out of reach
Are there other methods to help than preach?
You make known exactly the ways I've done wrong
Can't tell drive to satisfy you is strong
And success a maybe despite trying my best
Do you understand what it's like to be depressed?
Instead of pressure provide pearls of praise
Small portion of patience will go a long ways
What will you trip over next?
Disagreements leave me perplexed
Staring at me as if you're scrutinizing a stranger
Alarm blaring loudly though there is no danger
This life we live occupying to get old
Sighing when shoulder turns away from me cold
I climb expectations but can't quite reach the top
Longing for lighter limbs so I wouldn't tire and stop
Your unfulfilled wishes are all engraved in stone
Won't be pleased until words are carved into each bone
When experiences are good they are beyond great
Light a room with brightness you radiate
Sparks fly from skin's surface moment we touch
Stomach starts rolling the second hands clutch
Stuck to potential so vast at the start
Before bogging under the heaviness of my heart
It seems I can't ever just get something right
Steve Page Mar 3
Night Portraits
And Night Landscapes
Leave shadows for us to fill
Or to leave full
of nocturnal potential
Viewing paintings at a local art space.
Jeff Bresee Feb 27
It’s a feeling that has no words to describe,
when the late autumn leaves fade color.
Quietly waving a final goodbye
in the chill as morning mist hovers.
 
It’s something between a pure feeling of peace
and a loneliness down to the bone.
Perfect tranquility rests on the air,
but the sadness won’t leave you alone.
 
Life has a way of drifting in waves,
up and down through the moments we live.
Yet lurking below in the dim and the cold
are so many things buried that give
 
hidden purpose to cry. Is there some reason why
we go on always holding it in?
We should learn from the trees who let go, so in Spring…
they can always start over again.
Graeme Feb 5
I feel like I live in an infinite void of nothingness. Between the vast worlds that I remain The Observer to. I’ve been in so many things, but never fully committed, be it by my own volition or external circumstances. Perhaps no one has and the continuity and consistency I seek is all an illusion generated by my limited presence in the spaces I transiently call home in a desperate attempt to belong to things that I feel deep down I simply can’t. Do I know it to be certain, or is it merely faulty—unhealthy—subconscious programming? I wish I knew.
I have so much potential—I sincerely know it; I see it every day. Yet, despite this, I remain a car in fifth gear, wheels spinning in winter’s freezing, putrid slush, and remain stationary as I drain all my energy, rocking back and forth across the slippery driveway.
Like my body and brain—like me—my devices’ batteries seem to drain too quickly; where’d all that time and energy go? Yet, Time seems to firmly drag me along through an eternity, moment to moment, when pain strikes me with its sour, sharp, and nearly all-penetrating hand.
The evening sunlight sure does look pretty out the window and coming in onto the walls, though. That’s something.
A group walks by. By no means a popular group–not that popularity matters much–but they, despite the game of Society stacking most odds against them, have found their people: each other. These geeks that pass by the window are happy despite this, and though I may have traits that set me apart from them, I remain set apart from near everyone else.
I fear, from the deeply-rooted subconscious program from a childhood of my depth and passions never being understood, much cared for, or even acknowledged, that those who are near to me cannot fully see it. I know they love me; no question there despite the doubts creeping in. The programming renders both nearly impossible to feel. Spectacular.
Written on 2025-02-05.

This was written while sitting in an empty conference room on my university’s campus, watching the world go by out the windows and the pretty evening sunlight hit the wall to my right that lifted my spirits after a hard few days of physical pain from chronic illness and the havoc it and attempting to recover from it wreaked on my life as of the few days prior to writing this.
This could very well have been only a diary entry, but I chose not to make it so. I suppose I did so because the part of me that felt compelled to shout my suffering to the world won out slightly over in mental diplomatic strife than the side that preferred it stay private.
Bekah Halle Dec 2024
Awkward and lanky,

not a boy and not yet a man.

Youth, litheness; potential

and yet, still teachable.
Kian Dec 2024
Somewhere, in a field of static snow,
a violin lies unplayed,
its strings breathing the hushed tension
of storms caught between clouds.
The bow, discarded, angles like a broken wing
bent under a sky so gravid with noise
it forgets to weep.

Each string hums an unspoken question:
Why does silence gather such gravity?
The wood remembers a hand
that carved hymns from the void,
its grain bearing witness
to the weight of creation.

I watch from afar,
a shadow swallowed by dusk,
where soundless specters rise
from the soil's yawning absence.
Their mouths are mirrors,
reflecting only the things
we dare not say aloud.

Once, I held the bow myself,
my breath the metronome of eternity.
Each note spilled from my trembling hands
like the lifeblood of gods
we did not mean to summon.
Their voices still echo,
fragile filigrees caught
in the harp of my ribs.

Now, even my shadow refuses me.
The light fractures around it,
falling into the fissures
between longing and despair.
Still, the violin waits,
its patience the only hymn
worth singing.

I bend to pick it up—
the silence shatters.
Each shard catches the light,
spinning a constellation
of unplayed songs.

And in the final note,
a blade of sound cuts through me,
splitting marrow from bone,
memory from dream.
The echo hangs like a question
only the dead might answer,
and I am left to wonder
if it was ever meant to be played at all.
Forever Yours Nov 2024
You’re swimming in so much potential
You’re always one crashing wave
Away from drowning in it
You’ve been treading water
Fully aware
You’re on borrowed time
How much stamina
Do you think you have left
Before your muscles will start to shake?
How many life jackets
Have been thrown at you
That you pushed away
Just to preserve a facade
Of the man you think you should be?
If you aren’t careful
You’re going to find yourself
In the deepest parts of the sea
With no one around
Your muscles will give out
Your pride will drag you down
Your lungs will be flooded
With everything you could have been
You will drown
Under all the best parts of yourself
All the parts
You were never brave enough to embrace
showyoulove Nov 2024
It's okay, you don't have to pay. It's covered
By (assurance) of Grace

On Judgement of Value

Food for the world on a gold plate
Something so small has so much weight
For who can weigh eternal life
And who can say that life has a price
This world will rate and measure
Criticize and place you at its leisure
But the Lord uses a different system
Jesus took our place as spotless victim
He looks into the heart of hearts
Where the human soul resides
He moves past even the locked parts
To find where the treasure lies
He sees beneath the surface. Hidden,
Lies untapped potential; something more
And from the depths it has risen
Like waves to crash upon the shore
Who can know the mind of God
Or understand God's actions?
If beauty is in the eye of the beholder
How beautiful we must truly be
For God made us in His image
And so dearly loves you and me
Next page