My confession
I'm a wretch
A miserable
Broken soul
Stained black in sin
I am shattered

But I am reborn
Scarred, yes
But reborn
Cleansed in fire
Washed
Clean
Pure crimson

I will dive
Deeper
Swallowed whole by the sea
The purifying surf
I will never surface
Yet I will never drown

I The Wicked Son
Drenched in Saving Scarlet

waking
newly human
strange and soft;
pinpricks, feelings -
the crawlings around inside you
shiver as your skin becomes real

a nightlight for daytime sleeplessness
carry the seas inside yourself
like people:
walking barefoot
drinking sunstreams
and braving the dark red nights

hark, choir voices, still
slurring miss you discrepancies
howls in empty skies
wolves die

a misunderstanding of your insides
bones
more sand than rock
crumble at a press too hard

on this,
last day of your first life
hung on a boy’s fingers
the edge of a cliff
taste the water in your nerve endings dragging you home
you splinter,
and you rise -

when the bruise blooms, you shine

Beware.
For a day will come when the raindrops will be outnumbered.
A day when all that is mighty will be prevailed.
When all that is a tear will shed more pain than the markings on the walls of her vessel.
When all that would matter is the little life in her hands.
Beware.
When she will give birth to herself.
Beware.
For a day will come when her cages will rattle.
Beware.
A day when the barbed wires won't matter.
Beware.
when she will be more than just defiant.
Beware of the day she will not remain silent.
**- Aks

I am
Nothing more
Than a bag of bones.
My rib cage
Is a prison you rend
In twain, tear the mesh,
And sift fruitlessly through.
I am
An empty shell
You discarded;
All unraveled ends
And frayed edges.
I am
Orange peels
Carrying the essence
Of something sweet
As an echo of scent
And color-
-I will
Return to the earth
And start again.

By: Nabs

Inhaling the musky air, in the attic that we began
Exhaling, when we realize we are still stuck there
Like two birds with one of their wings clipped to each other
Trying to fly and reach for the sky, desperately believing that they wouldn't end up right where it started

So we row and row in the endless stream of regret
With a boat made of our mangled wishes and hope for a better future
Dragonfly wings accompanied with our scream
Of the unfairness of this all

Soon we whispered, "Maybe unfairness is a form of fairness"
As we delude our self to thinking that our boat aren't as battered as they are
Aren't as littered with holes
There are more holes that we cannot plug with our fingers now

The ash tree back home are laughing

So we tangle our hands together, again and again, like we were at the beginning of the end
Hoping that our effort to found a way to fly would not be for naught
Choking back sobs and replacing it with laughter
"We're both doing fine", we said
Though, we still haven't perfected the laughter

It still rings hollow

There are boxes filling the attic
It reeked of happiness and fondness
Something that we lacked ever since we shed our individuality
Stained glass are littering the floor, making a mosaic of colors, rainbow reflected by the lights

We are crying and our hands are shaking

We gripped each other tight, breaking bones and binding us more and more
A jagged mash of flaws trying to not break down
Forgetting how to be individuals, how to not be an unit
Forgetting the most important part

We are left to our sinews now, stripped bare for all to see

We whispered our promises, about our tale, about our plans, about our dreams
We looked at each other, battered and bruised and so so broken, just like the day when we become us
We had thought we were invincible, no one will beat us down
Yet the our blood littered the earth, a sacrifice the earth asked from the beaten

The old dream catcher we made for each other still hung on the attic
It was made from ash wood with blue feathers
The webs are frayed, feathers turned gray, the woods are chipped, looking so frail and delicate, as if one touch can turn them into dust
We coughed blood from laughing at how that reflect us now

We lay down on the floor, counting up relation and ships, counting the wave that smoother the corals, counting up on how many times we regret our decision
It is a curse and we have no one to blame but us
Hate came mercilessly, like a tsunami crashing to the shore

Frayed edges of torn up ribbons
Of half forgotten day dreams and the smell of birthdays
Of the bitter taste of rebirth and death
We are tied with more than one ties and they want to see us squirm

We are exhausted
Like the carnation wallpaper peeling in the attic, the murals of the life, that we used to have are, lulling us to sleep
Each color and shape painstakingly painted with blood and imagination
They are telling us tales of shades, drowning us pleasantly in the river of sweet sweet sanctuary
To a place where differences were what we are

So we pretend we can close our eyes, dozing off, while betrayal perfume the air
Heady, intoxicating, repulsive
How it made life course through the dry channel
And how we both hate it

We each try our hardest to forget the sword that we held that is drenched in misery and ******, pretending that what we have in our pockets are candy, not poison
We tried and we tried and we tried
Here we lay down on the grave of our individuals

A place where I and you were buried, and we come to life

In light of this life
My shadow tastes no dawn
These lashes cast no ray
Upon my rolling cheek

As I taste morning dew
Upon my blush
I am reborn again

In a game of one
It’s nice to think that someday
There’ll be a two
In the game called life
Happy endings are the ones
That are created from
Those moments when
The whole world falls apart
And the only way to contain it all
Is by lying under the wooden slats of a bed frame
And feeling the press
Of those sturdy wooden bars
Dig into your head
Because you can’t contain the outcome
You can’t make it just appear out of thin air
Like a filthy magic trick or sleight of hand
Life just doesn’t work that way
It brings heartaches and sickness
Moments where you cannot get out of bed
Mornings where you lie awake
Questioning the just and quick of reality
And the mysteries that lay within it
Embedding themselves wrapped around a system
Of congruent vines that are almost touching
The pole to which to climb
But it all takes time
Moments where your brain is a tyrant
And your dreams are so realistic
That you dare to put forth and live in this
Minutes to minute frame
Ticking by slow or fast or slow or fast or slow
And those dreams speak of fear and wonder
Of grand libraries and future lovers
Of doubts and claims on meetings
That haven’t even happened yet
That is when you have to reach inside
And pull those doubts out
Like the removal of painful wisdom teeth
Crowding your mind
Crowning at the edges
The white poking through pink gums
When you finally realize
That you can’t control
Everything that occurs
No matter how hard you try
And each boundary gets bigger
As the freedom dares to taunt and swallow you whole
In one big gulp
You are Jonah inside that whale
Searching for an answer
You can’t see through the thick wall of baleen
Because the thickness is murky
You sit stubborn waiting
For a miracle to happen
But that miracle is you
And you realize this now
Typing out a poem at three am
When people start to go to sleep
You have just woken up
To reap the benefits of night
And all its flippant grasp
And pull of darkness
But being Jonah
You know that in the belly of the whale
Is not a dangerous place to be in
In fact it’s quite comfortable
Also humbling by making you sit tight
And think to the maximum capacity
About who you are
And where you are going
In this great speck of universe dust
You call home
So much like Jonah after
He escaped the game and emerged
Stronger than ever
Free of childish notions
A fully formed adult
Or at least a resemblance of one
That stepped into the light
After years of dingy darkness
A lift off out of the cavernous hull
Of bright pink flesh that was once his humble abode
For so long he knew of nothing else
And then like you his hands parted the baleen
Like parting thick coarse hair with a hot comb
Head emerging like a second birth into the open blue

Ages pass
and
shells of resistance
shrivel up and die
leaving a fresh new chrysalis
resting in their place.
Like a shiny newborn baby
wiping the crust from its eyes
with tiny curled hands
fingernails as small as sand
and
love of life
has wedged its way
beyond all hints of
**** negativity
and
the only way forward
is found
before the sun even rises.

Light shined through the broken cracks in the sky, illuminating the bitter concrete. It stretched itself across the scattered buildings—some stood while others crumpled under the pressure of having to stand tall, or that's what the light thought, at least. After it had reached every inch of the stained windows, it begged for something nostalgic. It needed to touch skin. The light craved the feeling of life. It had been so long since it had felt some sort of animation, so many times it swept the charred lands—exploring, asking for some sort of companionship, but never a response.

By this time of the afternoon, the sun had gained even more strength and it fully penetrated the thick mist of the clouds. This revitalized the light. It gave it some sort of immaculate purpose—some reason to produce beauty for its visitors. What visitors? Where had they gone? Where had they been all the years that the light spent mourning for them? Exhausting his energy time and time again to hound across the streets for that moment of aggrandizing glory—finding what it had searched ever so longly for.

Was this all in vain? Were the constant endeavors of the light only a mere distraction from the one reality it tried so hard to escape? No. No, it couldn't be. Years and years it had put the effort of fighting through the clouds and the storms and the rain and the mist and the fog and the towers and the trees and bushes and yet, it has nothing to show for its deeds. The cruel reality of life or rather the cruel reality of the lack there of life?

“Give up,” the buildings whispered morning after morning. The words, traveling though the air at super sonic speed, caught the light as it reflected through the city. The light—usually unaffected by the words—took notice to them now. It slowed for the first time in years to the point that it stopped halfway through the city. Thoughts creeped out from the air around it; particles floating whispered mockingly to the light.

It had accepted failure. There was no living tissue that it could grace, no child that it could brush its warm fingertips upon. It ascended back to the sky and ignored the rest of the comments that the buildings and storms left it with. For years it hid away in space. The earth was dark. Revolving in endless circle with no clear purpose, no real reason to be afloat.

Time continued to pass. The Light lost track of it and drifted further and further from the sun and earth until it was becoming consumed by the darkness. It made no attempt to rid itself of the evil latching to it; rather, it embraced it. This continued on for eternity until the light could no longer see its own glow. Its only companionship was found in the silence of the deep space.

A cry. A cry from Earth rang out loud. The light could hear it. It struggled desperately to escape the hands of the night—ripping away feverishly. Chained by the fingers of solidarity, it would only move a little until it was brought back to its prison. The cry became louder. It demanded help. The light could do nothing but listen. The cry stopped.

Death. And with that the light followed.