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Dominique Aug 2018
I want to step out of myself
When I'm lying vertically on seaside rocks
Staring at the place a full moon should be
On the azure petal of a bright sky at noon
Because it would be easy, wouldn't it?

Join a different subjective reality,
Step into an opposite consciousness,
Without this heart that loves too clumsily
(It may be gold, but gold is heavy)
Without stupid desires or the weight
Of sparkling sins like bubbles in champagne
(Come on, girl, think of your grades)

Who's to say we're not a film?
A rattling picture show that keeps skipping
That lasts too long but is never enough
All I want is to have the chance to remember

That I am also a we

That I feel and I'm not alone in that
That we think therefore we are and we are therefore we think
So I try to step into the clouds
And find myself shackled to the ground
On a beach in August without sand.
sonder-  n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.

inspired by a conversation I had with two friends in Brighton about how our consciousness creates reality and how we're all connected <3 I often wonder how it would feel to live someone else's life for a while.
A M Ryder Aug 2018
We have no place to go but into the light
Born into lives casted off and undefined
We get so busy living lives on circadian loan
Hoping to forget that not one among us is owed another dawn
So we count our memories like blessings
Closing our eyes as each one goes by
Painting stories seldom told of the air we can't get back
And of the lives we'll never know
Janhavi K Jul 2018
The rains lash their love on the city,
a romance that’s hard to comprehend,
as the latter soaks up the former,
I sit in my room, fighting off the mundane.

I look over flocks of people,
moving around on the streets.
Living lives I’ve never known,
and perspectives I might not ever see.

The physical limitations of my body,
hinder the limitless thoughts it bears.
I want to live a thousand lives at once,
and my mind wants to break the cage.
Chris Fernandez May 2018
The Absolute Truths of a Sonderer; a project of homelessness and homefoundness.

1. Everything we see or do is an influence
Everything we hear or say is an influence.
We must define good & bad influence, and create accordingly.

2. Our personas exist in four dimensions
At home, at work, in transience, and as digital
All require boundaries, development and love.

3. Everyone is a dreamer, aspiring in their own way.
Share your dreams through demonstration & action.
Don't sacrifice your dream in pursuit of another's

4. Celebrate the diversity of identities people can be
Enrichen your worldview with another's definition of home.
Be weary of mindsets locked to race, gender or nationality.

5. Find comedy in the world's tragedies
Deliver comfort in moments of distress
For happiness isn't opposite of sadness, but rather encompasses it.

6. There is yet to be a human whose mental health stands invincible.
Permitting another to speak may be all the health they need
Acknowledge battle scars do not lie solely on the flesh

7. Wasting your ears is as criminal as wasting words
Seek knowledge, in whatever form, when a listener.
Express love, in whatever form, when a speaker

8. One man's trash may genuinely be another's treasure
Discard people or ideas when their weight grows disproportionate.
All will be reclaimed, repurposed, and reloved.

9. Our vices grant infinite patience for stupidity,
Spirits that steal from the future to consume the present moment
Their intended use will rarely match their outcomes

10. Your value is to be as treasured as your survival
Whether celebrated or beaten, ignored or adored
It is yours alone to define, and yours alone to defend.

I love you all,
Edgar Gordon Apr 2018
As I go past each, I am struck with sonder,
With each new face, I cannot help but wonder,
Have their lives been whole or torn a sunder
Live with purpose or live in blunder.

Hearts as complex, as unknown, as touched by others.
Friends and family, enemies and lovers.

Lives at rest or tense with stress.
Rooms all clean or clothes a mess.
Calm or angry, happy or sad.
Angel or demon, good or bad.

I know nothing about anyone’s soul.
All I know is that they have lived as all;
As strangers that I cannot begin to understand,
All of us stuck together and sharing this land.
Sonder is a made up word by The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. They define it as the realisation that passersby have lives as vivid and complex as your own. Its a nice word and words become real by our using them. So I wrote this to add to its legitimacy.
alex Nov 2017
have you ever tried to write poetry
when you’re not at all feeling poetic?
when life isn’t necessarily ugly
but it isn’t necessarily beautiful either?
when you could talk about
the sonder you try to feel
as the people sitting at tables around you
eat their food, talk on the phone, finish their homework, sip their coke
do whatever it is they do
when you could talk about how the
chill of this air reaches underneath
your goosebump skin
and draws out a shiver, a chatter
when you could capture the sounds
of the ice machine
and the clicking keyboard keys
and the rusty sliding of chairs on
a linoleum floor
when you could write about
whatever you **** well please
but it just doesn’t come to you?
have you ever been too tired
to feel tired?
god, i wish i were awake.
life is happening
and where am i?
one of those moments where i realize that at any other time, i would be feeling such wonder for all the people sitting around me, i would feel such gratitude for life, but i just don't right now. i don't know. @life don't move on without me; i know you've tried before.
tc Oct 2016
in a city of shifting faces
we become forgetful about life in different places
succumbed to a world within a world.
construction and history
poverty and misogyny;
the city is lost within me and i am lost within the city

we all suffer the internal blackholes of everyday life

in a city of anonymous faces,
we take no notice
succumbed to a world within a world where only our world matters
and we wonder what's for lunch whilst thousands live homeless and the irony of wondering why so many go hungry
in a city of greed

consumers consumed by consumerist propaganda

all the shifting faces we walk past on a daily basis
bigots, fascists, racists
and we are wrapped up
too engulfed by our own lives to care about others
but selflessness is only selfless if not done for self, but i was told
"no good deed goes unpunished"
but we should do good anyway
because in a city of shifting faces
be the face-shifter who stops turning pages and pauses --
take in the scenery
and be alive for every moment;
it is okay to be a passer-by in a city of nameless strangers
but never in your own life
Meteo Nov 2015
Next to your pyre
Nest to your flame
I am ashamed by my mortality

these days have made ash accumulating of me
the grown-up ghost I'm taken to be
a soundless sonder

Through another man's lens
through another boy's poem
you are still beautiful to me

Some other man's Eurydice
Some boy who didn't turn around
when faced with the world only a few steps away

Now I am buried under this city
practicing sleepless nights
I talk to you backwards and pray for the world to begin again

a double exposure in third person
the picture makes sense, the pieces don't fit together
My schizophrenia in monochrome

Limerance,
though spurious
pending supplication
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