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calypso Apr 2021
the gates to heaven
led me to sin
they gave me pleasure
bestowed by the devil
a pedal, on a quiet lake
or the caress of your inflaming touch
upon my neck, your kiss still lingers
the bruises on my back
alters to be your love bites
change as a whole & half
but stay the same altogether
if I were one-year younger
I wouldn't understand
why it's so deranged when
I saw those words come out the gates
Lauren Connolly Apr 2021
I'm envious of that deep blue,
how it glided over skin and bone without a second thought.
The last living thing to hold you
before the earth.
My touch a forgotten memory to your skin.

With every shower, I'm reminded. No matter how long I stand
under the rushing beam
I never really feel clean.
You wasted away in the ocean
for 32 hours.
I stand in the shower for 33,
and can still feel the maggots.
They worm their way into my blood and my brain
and pour out of my eyes like tidal waves.

Ten winters pass swiftly,
and I return to this beach.
It feels like no time has passed,
yet my hands are being squeezed from both sides.
The water is unforgiving and beats the shore
over and over and over.
Laying down in the sand, like you once did
I'm enveloped in white washed waves.
Instead of drowning along with you,
I’ll float
on and on and on.
Alicia Mar 2021
there is no record of my birth
it isn't happenstance
that I the woman that stands here now exists
I stood on the threshold of childhood
my head hung down in immaculate shame
contempt and anger holding my undeveloped hands
through pure grit and grime, I crawled through the dregs
out windows into pure light
Madisen Kuhn Mar 2021
maybe i leave it all till the last minute because some gritty part of me loves the rapid pulse of pulling back right before the truck turns the corner and blows through the stretch of hot asphalt i was just lying down and burning my skin on. it tears down the road, out of sight, and i’ve still got all my limbs intact. maybe almost failing feels a bit like cheating death, like how breathing feels after a contest of who can hold it longer in the motel pool, or how good a glass of ice-cold water tastes after downing a bag of potato chips. there are plenty of hours in the day. i could wake up at six or sleep in till noon and it wouldn’t make much of a difference. i’m just a girl who loves the taste of scraping by.
Thomas W Case Mar 2021
I watch life float by
like a dragonfly
riding the breeze.
I need to seize the
current like a
brick of gold,
soar ever upward,
above the swamps,
and dead lilies.
Transcendent light blinds
temporarily, but it's
necessary for new sight,
and stronger wings.
Simran Modhera Mar 2021
I saunter parallel to these pews,
dragging my fraying fingers along the tops.
Reaching for a wooden comfort, but
instead I’m pricked.
I shake the splinter and splutter the blood off.
Wearing my head high, I finish my descent
up the holy steps.
My mother stands,
stuck
looking past me and out the stained window,
letting it strike her into a silhouette.
The priest exclaims
New Beginnings!
My mother
matches his declaration two seconds too late.
My dad nods his head,
the final vote of the jury locked in.

With guilt and god on my side,
I take the holy plunge.
My head falls in,
harshly.
I’m aching for a numinous experience,
only to suffocate from the darkness
that comes with this reality
I will breathe into.
My head may be under the aquatic illusion of renewal
but my feet stay planted on the
fractured  ground.

I am forced to look past the daze of illusion.
Because in the light
I can clearly see the greys left in our destruction.
I look back and my finger has bled
all over the back of this dress.
New Beginnings!
I exclaim,
with a red stain grained into my backside,
but an empty canvas in the front.

With my hair slicked back I hear a
mumble.
You look just like your mother,
And maybe I do
hold her eyes
but I can see
what she can not.
The graying dreams that my parents are dis alluded to.
Their skeletons in the attic or the
boxes of dresses in the basement,
even though today I wear one.
I will look at the destruction created behind us
and not walk with them.

Because in this holy light
her eyes bask and only look
chocolate at its best.
And in this dim shadow
mine shine like amber honey.
This poem is dedicated the Maya ****** and her work "christening dresses".
Dan Hess Mar 2021
As I walked into the bar there were already tears in my eyes. So much stress. Was I meandering or chasing my tail? I wasn't finding answers, that's for sure. I glanced around, struck with a subtle sense of irony. A few sorry souls sat speckled throughout the dimly lit confines of this stuffy, run down establishment. You'd think they'd have the means to keep a place like this in ship shape, here, considering the nature of spirit. Anything you could imagine, freely given, when the soul should rise... Maybe it was just a load of ****. I took a seat in a corner at the far side of the room. I didn't know how I'd arrived here, but I had no intention of leaving. I was too exhausted. Life had had a tendency to beat me down. I felt battered and bruised. I felt as if I'd been flattened by a steam roller. I always used to say I was tired to my soul; I hadn't realized I was speaking literally. It wasn't long before I was approached by a waiter. All dressed in white, save for a black tie. An amorphous effusion of light and shadow erupting from the place where one's neck should be. A piercing whisper, vibrating through my skull.

"Can I get you a drink?" it.. said.

I was a bit dumbfounded. It hadn't occurred to me until now that this place may actually serve alcohol. Did I even have a body? Regardless, I don't drink.

"I don't drink."

The haze blobbed and bobbed, and ebbed in mirrored tension, as if shaking its head from side to side.

"I think you'll want to try this one." It echoed, sing-songing slow motion distortions directly into the depths of my consciousness.

It was becoming hard to focus. The lines here were, or, are gray. Things bleed between. Every soft, dim light consumed the room. Every noise resounded throughout time. This ideal of a bar, this place where people drink their woes away, stowed away in the afterlife? What must people be trying to forget?

"I don't want to forget." I said. "I learned so much in life. Still, I know nothing. Still I don't understand, but I want to hold onto those lessons. I've left everything else behind."

"I think you'll want to try this one," it reiterated. "Daniel."

It hit me, then. This thing knew all there was to know about me. Not only could it speak into my mind, it could see. This was no ordinary drink, and after all, what did I have to lose?

"**** it," I took the glass from the tray. "I guess I could use a drink."

It looked like nothing more than a shot glass full of water, but as it went down my throat, an unearthly warmth and peace spread through my chest cavity and into my heart. It was the ultimate feeling of pure joy, as if I'd consumed a liquified sun. With my first breath, it made its way into my brain. Stark white, endless plains of emptiness and light. Everything dissolved before my eyes. Cascading was illusion: is illusion. I hovered in the pulse of the everflow.

"How was the drink?"

I needn't even respond. I was awake.

"Ahhh!" I released relief, and let the spirit seep.

I merged with this, the Infinite.  The song of Heaven, I could hear it.  Vibrations of eternity  surrounding me,  and written throughout everything,  the lyrics.   All different pitch  of perfect wave,  resounding to fragment  the quintessence  of this presence  to which I now belonged.   Yet, this energy condenses.  Readministered,  from essence to presence.  A blip within the static of magic.  Eye could not exist,  in reminiscent wishes,  avasting existence.   The depth within the deep  of endless ocean called to me:  to stimulate emotion  in the impartation of separation  from Infinity.   The pull of gravity consumed me.  Here, again, within the fill  of fragrant, illusory "being,"   I live to speak of bleeding  into everything and nothing.
a strange peace...
a strange piece....
KM Mar 2021
break from this hiatus of pressure
back to ultimate rebirth
there is room for a different world
in action
Dave Robertson Feb 2021
Buckle-eared, sitting,
the ditch giving shelter
against a trying spring,
a hare with no immediate worry

just the usual stuff:
fox, buzzard, kestrel even,
the background mix of dread,
while to the left
snowdrops shine

and behind, carefree daffodils
begin a brief, incandescent grin
to draw life from

leverets will appear,
new-normally
on sugar paper cards,
if through our hurt grip
the ditch will hold
Payton Hayes Feb 2021
"You are a breath of fresh air."  He said
     in a way that was unlike the way
                                   the others had put it.
"You are new air and new earth and
                                   you are the words that have not yet been
written.”
                            “ You are the beginning and the ending of
                                              a story that could never again be told.
You are as fresh as the rising sun and the winds that
                                         welcome it sweetly across the horizon.”
And somehow I do not feel reborn when
                                                               I am around you. It is like you are
                                                                           the
                                                           reincarnation
                                                   of some great ancient being, and
                   I am trapped behind the illusion that I am unique.
                                                My memories trapped inside a forgotten rebirth.
My words trapped behind
                                                pale yellow teeth, as if they are gravestones
                     challenging me that if I did speak,
                                                                    it would be the death of me.
This dream poem was written in 2016.
I don't remember the dream or anything in it! Glad I have this creepy poem instead! :)
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