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Emery Feine Apr 6
I push my fear behind my eyes
Further back than I can see
My dream has been eaten by lies
But I am no fig tree

I'm an orange watching my brethren
Ants chewing on their rotting skin
Their future, I was supposed to share in
Their peel, greenish of sin

I'm watching a rotting fig tree
That I know someone must've seen before
I mouth her, she mouths me
Is this all I'm waiting for?

My future may be determined
A rotting orange is all it may be
I thought it was self-determined
But I am no fig tree.
"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip  of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."
Oliver Feb 1
A fire in my veins, it burns and spreads,
No solace found, my pain instead.
It courses through me, an unseen dread,
My heart beats hindered, slow and dead.

I gasp for air, my breath a plea,
To regulate, find sanctuary.
Isolation's grip, it smothers me,
Abandoned here, in misery.

The spreading burn, a growing blight,
My center bleeds, devoid of light.
Rot consumes me, without a doubt,
From inside out, it spills about.

My vision blurs, my words a mess,
Organs churn, enduring stress.
A fleeting glance, at moments past,
Life lived too fast, it couldn't last.

The forecast grim, my future bleak,
A question haunts, my soul to seek:
Was it all worth this fleeting chase?
I shunned the breaks, embraced the race.

Lost in the maze, of fleeting fears,
My peers' applause, drowned out my tears.
Exhausted, striving, never to stand out,
My grotesque form, a silent shout.

"Leave me," I begged, a final plea,
But now the burn consumes, sets me free.
I forgot I wrote this, I do remember I took heavy inspiration from the song Rotting by Sushi Soucy & Jada Valencia.
Zelda Jan 12
Heavy
life is a heavy (wasted thing)
this year, no different—(i am
sludge,
the rotting bed

if only—)
can i just—pretend
i don’t exist?
Jan 12, 2025
Madison Tomes Dec 2024
Peach peels and sticky fingers
Blanket pulled from a cooking body
Its worthless
Rotting full of maggots of poison
Im growing flowers
Bright greys
Unseen by any
Eyes protrude from my ankles
They see the rainbow
They watch the blood drip
How it sinks into the floor
Sipping
made during a really tough time. I really enjoy making poems that feel like this. I find it fun to experiment with
Laura Kaňková Nov 2024
All I seem to remember
Are the hollow eyes
Peeking from behind damp walls
Walls dripping with misery and the cold winters day
In a land where no flowers break through the heavy clay
Even though they try their best
The beast always catches them at the stem
Tears the blossoms out in calm rage
The feeling sold by its empty eyes
Like a useless spy
Wandering the streets sick with smoke
And liquor

Under starfull skies
Praying to God for a comet
To yell my wish at:
“Oh,to be more than just a clump of cells and flesh and bones
Patching together my soul
Creating something mine
The only thing I can call so“
Because I know each breach carved with the steady occupation
I could lead your hands into the gaps dug by
My litospheric plates moving
                                                   shifting
                                                                colliding
Far too soon

Now I have forests and mountain ranges
Peeking out of my veins
Spreading the dark ecosystem of my mind
I can feel the frost and the gloom biting trough my skin
The fog covering my every inch

Fangs dangerously close to bones
The only part clean of the parasites
Unlike my tunnel-disrupted skin
The penetrated veins sticking out of it

Slowly decaying away
While my heart fills my leaking body with new blood
Sisyphean effort
The life that goes to waste
But stains the flesh a vibrant red
My half-alive corpse
The only thing radiant on this grey lifeless street

The monster slowly kneels down to my side
Pierces its talon through my bone
Sells me to death
Leaves my core to rot
Defeating its defences like an unknown weapon
Injecting terror into the cold white stuff tangled around my heart
                                                                                     stuck around my veins

It sets me onto fire
Letting its own creation burn
For the sake of its pleasures
As the luscious woods burn to just skeletons and dust
The hollow eyes filling with the shadows of the light
As it snarls
A twisted caricature of a smile
Kai Oct 2024
People surround me
They have a different energy than me
They drain me
They make me mentally exhausted
Too exhausted
To the point where I want to lock myself up
To the point where I don't want to wake up

I'd rather rot in my bed
Just to not be called "Special Ed"
Just to not feel pain
Again
So I don't get hurt again
So I don't get shamed again
So I don't get drained again
So I don't have to be anymore insecure
So I can feel secure
While rotting away in my bed
While the depressive thoughts evacuate my head
CS Modei Sep 2024
Everything rots, doesn’t it?
Watch with me, dear reader
This petal falls from the rose
Your body starts to decompose

Another petal falls
Maggots burrow into your brain
A Panther tears open your chest
All of your organs are devoured hastily
Not to be put to waste

A third petal is blown by the wind
Your skin starts to peel
revealing marvelously white bone
a small sprout grows up through
the ribs and shows itself to the sun

The fifth and sixth petals fall together
The rain brings forth a flood
washing away the dirt and leaves
only your skeleton left behind

A curious dog takes your femur as
the seventh petal falls
You are rudely moved from
the forest floor to a dark room
They give you a name

The eighth petal falls
They put you in a box
The sun no longer shines on the sprout
and it too wilts
cries of people
surround you as you are then
dropped into your grave

The rose decomposes,
just like you.
The box doesn't last long
And your bones finally
are given a rest
As they crumble into dust

Dear reader, you see,
Everyone rots.
Heavily inspired by 'Amanda the Adventurer' and her monologue on how everything rots.
Karma Sep 2024
The Raven flies,
But just to die,
For the children that it bears,
Bit of the hand that fed them
In a land bereft claimed fair.
A world where god bids all to live
When they say “If we dare”.
A place where all that was is not,
Yet The Raven does not care.

The Raven, dead,
Its children fed,
Its life, long forgotten.
Covered in red,
They laid their heads,
Leftovers, ever rotten.
With its soul fled,
The life it lead,
Its memory now shotten,
The land it left ignored its death,
And upon it grew soft cotton.
monique ezeh Jun 2023
days crawl by
and humidity stills the air.
the black flies are late this season,
though around here, most things are.
below the gnat line, girls like me
seldom get to die easily,
perfumed powders
masking the scent of illness,
flushed cheeks and damp foreheads donned
as our feeble bodies recline on fainting couches
to delicately languish away. we know that
there’s a certain beauty to decomposition,
to fungus gnats invading potted soil,
to fruit flies nesting in sink drains. we know that
rotting is a clock that never stops,
tallying each unflinching, humid second while the
days crawl by.
Monique Pereda Aug 2022
Kahoy na inaanay
Barko na butas
Lumulubog ng marahan
Kinakain ng dagat

Sugat na nagnanaknak
Balat na inaagnas
Nauubos na dugo
Sinisipsip ng linta

Prutas na nabubulok
Nabubulok ang lamang loob
Malansang amoy na umaalingasaw
Uod na lumalamon sa laman
Tahimik na pumapatay
Ngumunguya ng palihim
Sinisira ang malusog na anyo
Ang anyo ng huwad na katotohanan

Nakasusuklam, nakasusuya
Nakasusuka, mapait na lasa sa labi
Ngunit walang luhang itatangis
Hindi maghihinagpis
Hahayaang mabulok
Hahayaang mamatay
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