Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
It thought of making a joke on me
I bow and greeted in an uninterested air
It laughs and shook head, it's gone
What a thoughtless action of the vain mind
To what end will you mock, o mocker
Yenson Mar 2021
I have been hoping
that the visible invisibles
of Keystone Solidarity Republican
Militants
will soon come and tether a black horse
in front of my front door
to put their famous Doubt in my mind
that I am actually a horse
and not a human being
Why this simple act is taking so long
baffles me given they are specialists
in formatting doubts
perhaps they doubt horses have our legs
as I have three legs myself
though the middle leg
is not usually used for trotting
Amanda Hawk Jul 2020
I want to say more
Than your name
Or I think it is your name
It comes out a jumbled mess
A mouth full of scrabble tiles
I spit out words
You tell me I talk too much
Peel myself apart
Exposing my heart
Before appetizers arrive to the table
And you can’t enjoy your salad
With my heart beating
Upon your plate
I try to zip myself back up
It was too late though
All my stories flooded the table
Blabbering the details
Until I could make a nine course meal
From your ridicule
Michael R Burch May 2020
Laughter from Another Room
by Michael R. Burch

Laughter from another room
mocks the anguish that I feel;
as I sit alone and brood,
only you and I are real.

Only you and I are real.
Only you and I exist.
Only burns that blister heal.
Only dreams denied persist.

Only dreams denied persist.
Only hope that lingers dies.
Only love that lessens lives.
Only lovers ever cry.

Only lovers ever cry.
Only sinners ever pray.
Only saints are crucified.
The crucified are always saints.

The crucified are always saints.
The maddest men control the world.
The dumb man knows what he would say;
the poet never finds the words.

The poet never finds the words.
The minstrel never hits the notes.
The minister would love to curse.
The warrior longs to spare his foe.

The warrior longs to spare his foe.
The scholar never learns the truth.
The actors never see the show.
The hangman longs to feel the noose.

The hangman longs to feel the noose.
The artist longs to feel the flame.
The proudest men are not aloof;
the guiltiest are not to blame.

The guiltiest are not to blame.
The merriest are prone to brood.
If we go outside, it rains.
If we stay inside, it floods.

If we stay inside, it floods.
If we dare to love, we fear.
Blind men never see the sun;
other men observe through tears.

Other men observe through tears
the passage of these days of doom;
now I listen and I hear
laughter from another room.

Laughter from another room
mocks the anguish that I feel.
As I sit alone and brood,
only you and I are real.

Keywords/Tags: laughter, mockery, ridicule, another, room, anguish, brood, real, reality, dreams, persist, lovers, sinners, saints, madmen, poets, artists, minstrels, ministers, warriors, scholars, actors, proud, guilty, merry, blind, tears
Artem Mars Mar 2020
No one calls me smart
They all check my grades
Mockery of the success
Shameful of the less
Trophy for being a disappointment
I try my hardest
Just for the attention
The approval
Is what keeps me going
I want an A
But I’m labeled with a B, C, D, or F
The attention is all wrong
The ridicule
Not reward
Nothing feels retained
I want a place to post
To show I’m more
To feel seen and liked
To see mean and nice
To share what I do with a brush
What I can do with facepaint
See others
Share songs
But it's about **** time
That they see it isn't
The showing to others
That ensured my demise
The help they would give me
The eyes and the ears
To feel seen and heard
The spotlight again
It will shine on my face
As if everyone cared
As if I wasn't so scared
And I would feel cured
But the labels I gain
Seem to be retained
Without a constraint
Of worry and pain
School is no longer about learning, it's about passing
Mansi Mar 2020
He laid there seizing in pain
Because of an addiction
Gone wrong.

You could have said,
How can we help you get better?
You could have said,
We are family and
We are here for you.

Yet you said nothing.
You just laughed at his pain.
You ridiculed him as if
His pain was not worth
Your attention.
I wanted to dedicate this poem to my uncle. He is struggling with his addiction. But this is still some of my family members' view about him.
Bardo Jul 2019
(A Definition: OCD is a mental disorder where people feel the need to check things repeatedly, perform certain routines repeatedly or have certain thoughts repeatedly).
        ---------------------------------

Well, I'll tell you once
Better make that twice just in case,
Maybe even a third time to be sure
To be sure it's securely in place
Because you never know, do you, you
    never know.....

When I was young I worked for the
    man
I didn't have any other choice at the
    time,
A strange man, aren't they all
Had a funny way of going on
Had pet names for things, his own
    private little vocabulary
And there was always this one, this
    one little proviso
No matter what you seemed to do
You! you were always wrong.

If you were to ask him for directions
    you'd surely end up lost
Be left scratching your head or driving
    into a wall,
Even if you thought you knew what he
    meant
It was like he'd just turn it around,
    stand it on its head
And suddenly it wasn't what he meant,
    it wasn't what he meant at all!
But was something completely
    different
And you! you were always wrong.

"Where are your eyes, can't you see!"
    he'd say
I could see alright but not what he was
    saying to me
Everything was upside down, every
    which way across
All jumbled up, awkward, out of place,
I could never please him anyway,
In the end you'd just give up, just
    give in
Admit you were stupid, admit you
    were dim
Playing a game only he could win
With its ever changing rules all made
    up by him,
Maybe it was just the mood he was in
He was a man though and I, I was only
    a kid....only a kid.

                           II

Now its hard to live when you've
    always been wrong
When you don't trust yourself or the
    whole world around
You grow unsure about things, you
    start to check things,
Where others see things for what
they are, you simply don't believe it
Reality isn't reality you've learned, it's
    something else entirely.

Whereas the other guy can check
    things once and let it go
You gotta keep on checking & checking
You look and you look and you look
    again
You strain to see what isn't there really
Strain till your poor eyes are nearly
    popping out of your head onto the
        floor
And even then it's not over, there's a
    punchline
When you finally do get something
    done
You still don't believe you've done it
    right
A ******* doubt remains & it follows
    you about
A voice from your past comes back to
     haunt you
And to remind you, that "You! you
    were always wrong".

How could you ever hope to win
Working three or four times as hard
    just to stay even, just to keep up
        with the next guy
And it's hard, real hard, all that
    indecision
It's no great surprise when you start to
    fall behind
You look up & suddenly they've all
    passed you by
You look at them like their some kind of Supermen, the ease with which they
    can do things, like real men
But you, still like a little child who can
    never get it right
You feel such a failure, feel so small, so
    small and so inadequate.

And you stick out, others begin to notice you & your little peculiarity
They snigger and laugh behind your
    back
They joke about you and call you
    names
Their not like you, no one's like you
Nobody wants to be your friend,
No! Nobody wants to be a friend to
    that.
You feel you don't fit, you don't belong,
You feel so lost, you feel so alone.

Bosses too, watching you work, they
    shake their heads and say,
" He's not very productive, is he? He's
    very slow
No! We can't keep him, he's no good,
    he'll have to go ".

                          III

But where do you go? What do you
    do?
When all the doors are closed on you,
If you're not all worn out by then,
    your health all gone
Well, maybe....maybe you seek another
    reality, yeah,
You take a drink and then another and
    then wow!
What's all this? a world gone crazy,
    out of control, spinning & whirling
         around
And it's funny and you'd be laughing,
    laughing at the craziness, the
       absurdity of it all
And the great thing, you didn't care
    anymore
You'd say to yourself " this is great, this
    is amazing,
Maybe now I'd found a world I could
    live in
Where things were always funny and I
    wouldn't always be wrong"
You'd made a new friend, and a friend
    worth having
Here was someone who could really
    help you
That could ease your pain and dull
    that crazy brain of yours
Someone that could fix you and
    maybe, carry you home.

And so, you managed to get yourself a
     job, then rising real early every
           morning
You'd put some music on, then get the
    drinks in
Have yourself a little/ wee party
Wait for the effect to kick in, the click
    in your head to come
When the seriousness would all
    dissipate
And the funniness come around
    instead
Then you'd head off to work, you'd be
    high but careful to conceal it
So as not to give yourself away
You'd be like an actor playing a role,
    the part of the 'normal person'
        whatever that is
But behind it all there was you,
    watching yourself
And you'd be sniggering & laughing,
    far away and far out of it;
And you'd be able to keep up with
    them, the others
Keep up long enough until lo and
    behold, surprise of all surprises
You'd see one of them make a mistake
And this would give you some
   confidence
And you could build on that
You'd start to think, maybe I wasn't so
    bad after all
And maybe they weren't the
    Supermen I thought them to be,
And slowly bit by bit, you'd start the
    long trek back, back to sanity
Till one day, suddenly you wouldn't
    need it anymore, the drinking
You'd have realized the truth, that you were as good if not a whole lot better
    than any of them
Yea, you'd realize the truth, that you'd
    been robbed, you'd been duped
There was nothing wrong with you,
    there never was
It was Him! all Him those many years
    ago
And that crazy way he had of going
    on.

How he always liked to make you feel
  that it was such a really big deal
Every time you made a mistake, did
    something wrong
It was something terrible! something
    heinous!!
O! It was the End of the World!!!
His words, how they'd hit you right at
    your heart's core, leave you reeling
Made you feel you weren't human
    anymore
You were hopeless! Impossible! Like some kind of freak, some alien being...

You know, sometimes I look at great
    structures, big buildings, bridges
         and the like
And I wonder what kind of mind
    made such a thing
It wouldn't have been me that's for
    sure
I'd have been too afraid they'd
    collapse or fall into the sea,
And I think again of him who made
    me this way
His parents died when he was very
    young
He had awful teachers who scared
   and beat him mercilessly
He had to emigrate to find work like
    so many others
Had to work with foreigners far
    from his own home and kin
Who knows what he must have gone through to make him the way he was
What crazy world created him and
    made him do the things he did
He never wrote anything down, no!
    not like I could
And so it is...and so it goes
(When one person bullies another and destroys their perception of the world)

Now I know it's going to **** me one of
    these days
This penchant I still have for checking,
    this overconcern for things
When I think of all the energy I must
    have wasted
The things I could have done with it
(I could surely do with it now)
What might have been... if only... if
    only.
You probably won't read this in any psychology books.
'look at that madman'
says the ***** and her victim

'look at that madman'
says the intellectual in debt

'look at that madman'
says the activist with rigor

'look at that ******* madman'
i screamed with them
as i looked into the mirror
'you ******* madman;
persist and never wither!'
Next page