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Oskar Erikson May 2023
i stood in my new flat today
counting the spins the fan
made in its centre.
an americanism, too out of body
for me to keep an eye on.
what now?
but to wait till the inertion sickness
crawls its way from the soles up to oesophagus.

tilt back till back flat against the black flat floor.
(i hated that sentence but it needed some air.)
wondering if i can melt beneath the new money wood,
can i stand upside down,
ankles halo’d in my space and my head in the neighbours.

the hallway to the bedroom where he sleeps a little more soundly
now i’m out the bed,
dares me to leave him alone.
“you’ve clawed this distance out” i murmur back.
“i can trace it in the skirting boards.”

sitting up i go to close the window
and lock it, unlock it and smile at the little piece of freedom
i can’t ever give back.
I S A A C Apr 2023
DNA
my body carries a river of insecurity
causing floods upon innocent harbours
insane membranes, complex DNA
nobody is wired the same
no candle burns the same
but they all end the same
Mark Wanless Jan 2023
i see a pattern
ten thousand years old
new colors new voice
same oh same oh
nothing new is here now
same oh same oh
see the past here now
same oh same oh
Zack Ripley Mar 2022
If, today, someone walked
up to you on the street and asked "would you rather be seen or heard?", what would you say? Would you humor them and stay? Would you simply walk away? Growing up, I always heard kids say "I wish I was invisible."
Maybe it was because
they were shy.
Maybe bullies made them cry. Maybe they were embarrassed about how they look.
Maybe they just wanted
a safe place to read a book. Whatever the reason,
I can't help but wonder...if, today, someone walked up to you
on the street and asked "would you rather be seen or heard?", what would you say?
Would your answer be different than what it would have been as a kid? Or would it be the same?
byron Johnson jr Nov 2021
Even before 1619 chains and tormentors guided our fate’s
Decisions made by masters of disasters, calamity incarnate
Strict with the lash, fast with cash, made to be last
Ground into mash and left in the past
Hundreds of years drowning in the struggle
Voices ignored and submerged into a gurgle
Each strike an etching of fear to remind of us we belong in the rear
We belong under their heel, we belong in a field
Our place standing as equal, not real
'1865 and the wool is pulled further over our eye’s
The lies fly fast when equality is subject
You matter, you’re worthy, you’re heard and valued
Just enough to serve and just enough to observe
Now they tell me we’ve been unshackled from the hassle
Now our voices are as powerful as the masters
Now actions matter
With my newfound freedom, I looked behind the curtain
Found a sinister grin hiding a truth that leads us right back to where we began
Where my freedom of choice is blocked by the path to move forward
Where my value is determined buy profits that profit from me as a product
Forever a slave to shackles of titles that never really matter
Shackles of false power and influence
Shackles of masters too blind to see the new face staring at them from inside the veil
Forever beaten blue and yellow.
Broken Pieces Nov 2021
Read it forwards but it's all the same.
Read it backwards, give it a name,

Just go away.
They don't want to stay,

How could you believe they care?
Don't think that life is fair,

I'm tired of living in the past.
Turn the time, make life last

This isn't goodbye, I wish it was.
I want to be floating in the stars,

But life tends to be mean.
I want desperately to be seen.
~Read it backwards or forwards but it's kinda the same, not quite a palindrome, though the meaning is the same~
Alicia Moore Oct 2021
“All water tastes the same,” he spoke with a frowned brow.
That’s how I knew we weren’t meant to be.
Bansi Adroja Aug 2021
We still listen to the same bands
Walk the same streets
And think about the same boys that broke our hearts
When the only thing that mattered was the next class we had
Or who kissed who by the bike sheds

When 3pm was the end of the day
And we lived for every mistake we made
Because it didn't matter that we hated this town
And it didn't matter who we let down
We'd become something bigger than
Just names etched into a desk
And all of the tears shed

We'd love and learn
And forget

The only thing is  
After a decade and some change
After miles away
And time for it all to fade

It's still all the same
Nostalgia at its finest
Ken Pepiton Aug 2021
Trail of trials and tribulations,
woe is we
woe is we
and alla what's amattah, real or un,
who but we imagines
either one
or the other, is it real? What we think?
The meaning
centering being with science used
con-science, with knowing, so-vest, in vest
in finding the undeclared variable,
what is woke, in 2021?
Sense of some old known new named,
in a since from then to now, knowing
uses of knowing, knowing needless knowns,
- skei-sharper seps, see useless knowns,
- hard bought lessons you never lived without

"the double minded man ever falls forward,
into the forest" formed
from all the gardens
gone wild when the gardeners died,
it was sudden
nobody's fault, just - happened- as just does\

inside jobs, chrons and tension twisters,
springs of inspiration,
gears of cogitation
wheels in wheels in wheels in swirls
of fore gone conclusions,
we know
secrets, some how, now. We know
there never was a hell,
but the pearling process is valid,
the gate grows wider and the way
more twisted and iridescent than
ever, in all directions, at a turn
to bend the reflection you had
recognized as me, in your
hall of mirrors, right,
uber nur hier auf recht, re
thinking creative critical thinking,
but any re-applicant replies, pearl-wise --
lay it on me,
app-lie the essence of the
shining thing glimpsed scene,
-with wishery and fastest fasting
yet, this kind comes forth, to wink,
and lead on, a totally made up
way, a shone way where none is
as a golden street with no traveling
save messages encoded on reflections
of what the mind in peace has to say to
gloss the truth in eggwhite, wonder baked
in riddles,
as in the left brain's hall of mirrors…
the old fool stumbles in to the knots
all the thread infringed upon, and entagled
your requests to know what imitation lovers love,
sink this deep down. Imitation anointing,
have you never witnessed the super,
superior power of wind over sun,
did you never witness a wizard
with a power of presence like unto
PanaVision, to a pre-lingual toddler male.

Ritual passage,  - far subtler than any beasty
under tilled tale, telling all the trees,
keep growing, expand the life,
expand the knowing, once
known, this is it, this is where,
the forgiven sense appears a force
urging each o each little piggie, we we we
all the way home, pigs can swim, remember.

find the inner child, hall of dark glass walls…
expand to our mutual horizon,
see me see you past the stood unders,
look up,

this is joy being as beauty is,
it may not be devoid of good, nor useless
if I choose to enjoy, invest my will to happiness,
engaging joy receptors cast aside,
by the inner child, so sure the reflections
are others,
come to keep the joy I form re forming
more than one may think or ask,

a worst so good, we accept it as the best.
See.
Today is the only day you read this first.
What you imagine next, line
after line, as we,

no, me, hall of mirrors, I hear me
recall
"You are the most self-centered man
I have ever encountered."

Encounters of the pointy sort,
soul piercing insights, into who
and what
we are, if words are all I make them out to be.
Centering, hermiting, to the point of social exclusion, spinning straw to gold.
Giving any name that comes to mind to the force behind, pushing into emptiness all that wishes to exist, and making empty disappear.
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