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Willow Dec 9
How deep does adoration run?

When is something fully selfless?

If the blade had pierced an inch to the side,

If the metal had torn through blood as much as fat,

Would the deed have been done?

If the precious life had spilled like ichor,

If the slitting had ended in death,

Would she have gone through,

The way the blade went through her flesh?

How selfless is selfless, really,

When it comes at little cost,

To anyone other than the others?



When is such harm justified?

What else to we see, and let slip?

How often to we twist and turn the words in our mouths,

Spin them around in our minds until they make sense to us?

How often to we change the core of a phrase,

Puff ourselves up with false knowledge and say that no,

I was in the right all along?

How often are we ourselves Orual,

Shunning the Gods for mistakes we’ve made ourselves?

How often to we like to think we’re Psyche,

Calm and fearless in the face of prosecution?

How often are we, ourselves, the prosecutors?

And when do we let it end?

How many times have we been no more than the Fox,

Scorning those who believe in what we call fairy tales,

Modern magic to which we love to turn up our noses?

How long does an act last, I wonder,

Before it becomes as real as the skin we wear on our bones?

How much of our reality becomes shrivelled,

Hiding in our veins the way Orual hid behind the Queen?

How many times, I ask,

Is that truly safer than the alternative?

How many of us hide behind shallow veils,

Dig the old selves barren graves?

How much of our life is no longer real?

How long will it last?



And think, for a moment,

Of the truth you may believe in?

How often does it shine like the oil lamp,

How often are we revealed and punish?

How often to we destroy when seen?

How many times, do you think,

We spend setting up impassable trials,

To keep ourselves hidden?

How many people, do you think,

Have truly past those courses?

Who do you actually know?

And who, reader, truly knows you?

How much of ourselves is a veil?

Do we even know who we are?
A poem based off of the novel "Till We Have Faces - A Myth Retold" By C.S. Lewis
Flowerhead Nov 7
You've exhausted your flame,
And now you're burning out.
Like an onion whose layers have lifted
The Self with sharp vision and gifted
Is shedding its skin
To expose what’s within
It’s consciousness pure and unscripted
Jeremy Betts Jul 8
From my view, while side eyeing beyond the periphery
I basically see a place that's not a place anybody would actually choose to be
But when it's the landscape of your own psyche
It's hard to see any way out of the intensity that will always accompany insanity
And no one can hear your inner voice plea for much needed mercy
Begging yourself to set yourself free
But this inescapable captivity is your eternity
But it just occurred to me,
I can't tell if this is free will or destiny...
Did I choose to fall slowly?
Maybe I decided to come undone gradually
Or did some higher power think this was best for me?
Either way's bad news for my trajectory  
Zero possibly of a redemption story
No guts
No glory
Just constantly repeating "sorry"

©2024
Jeremy Betts Jun 21
An abusive psyche
No might be
Cradle to the grave most likely
The lengthy reminder's set for nightly
However not by me
I have no say apparently

©2024
Jeremy Betts Apr 1
Does a poem write itself?
Do they exist before created?
In essence, existing all around us
Absorbed into the psyche
Processed through the brain
Sent to a hand
Finished through the tip of a pen
Too then again
Be consumed by another human person
Producing a new translation
A different interpretation
But there's limits to randomization
Will we ever get to the point where every thought has been expressed?
Every possible sentence arrangement has been recorded and sent to the press?
Is there still the possibility that an original thought can be had?
It's a silly concept but maybe
One day writers block will be victorious
There's only so many different ways that these words can be organized into
Though, I can't imagine what that'll look like
When every thought has been thought through
When nothing's new
Will it still continue?

©2024
irinia Feb 5
a soul history is like the caligraphy of dunes
the psyche toiling its dark materials
sketching shadows from imagination
the cabaret of desire contemplating all the wonderful trivial terrible beings you can be. a wave in my mind you are
between the visible and invisible man the wisdom of the shamans

I walk on streets, I see things, I touch hands suffering from imagination deficit disorder. sometimes I have thoughts in reverse
but I cage my heart in this shrine of memory while
I am looking for you dawn by dawn, bird by bird
Ritz Writes Oct 2023
Sweet and supple golden nectar
Caress my lips, gentle as a kiss.
There is no step that I would not venture;
Nor no succulent sip that I would miss.
A touch of lips
In a state of bliss,
Unable to resist.
Closely rhymed with a kiss; and the tongue in between makes a hiss.
The world around is set ablaze
Stuck together in this sweltering maze.
To wish upon the stars to stay a little longer
And hope for the moon to hold in a little more fonder.
~RitzWrites 🍁
"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." ~Anaïs Nin
Ken Pepiton Oct 2023
Hast thou found honey?
Eat so much as is good for thee,
thinking moderation then, success.

Ah, the analyst's probe, is it satisfying?

Child mind alerts, perks up its ear,
single minds have single ears, child mind
focus state, un monitored you, recall, child
minding your own business walking in the road.

Accepting having RSVP'd, we'ld wonder at first,
did we actually ask for this, or is this all made up?

Child mind cocked sure, I know.
We are all an alien probe learning the questions.

Each letter holds an American English phonic response…
and we… the elite sharers of knowns gleaned from scripture.
--selah, also means let it rest

The precedent for a post temple social order arose,
and the minds required for that task arose as well, but
as you know, knowledge was closely held, sacred codes,

cost of being called and chosen, male alone, bred to the bull.

Bred to the king of beasts, wed to the dragon whose bones
we have found in the gullet of beached Leviathans…

tribe of Bill Levy, sudden psy-psi dead guy makes a suggestion,
remember the yen to yank reality aright, and think it funny?

Jes' yankin' y'chaim, only be having like
a child's mind, ****-meter counting steps away, flee

the birthing trauma, do the dying well.
Earnest Becker, take a chair, I think I felt you linger there,
death divined most fine state, just wait, settling, you feel.
Here and now, gestaltic and all that... via Audible, I have Elon Musk bio'd by an Isaacson who also bio'd B. Franklin and S. Jobs... how long before the biography becomes the muse we use to channel the same ideas, to rethink...
as Goethe happened to say, everything has been thought, the purpose of us is to think it over. Paraphrazically speaking, he meant, I mean.
Zywa Jul 2023
Not all dark places

with demons and old shadows --


are longing for light.
Novel "Oranges are not the only fruit" (1985, Jeanette Winterson), chapter "Ruth"

For Maria Godschalk

Collection "No wonder"
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