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Orchid Sep 2020
The thin glistening needle threads
back and forth,
back and forth.
As the black thread slowly tangles in a knot

It twists and turns through each circle,
creating a lump in the center,
stoping the artist in their track,
forcing them to ponder on the black thread.

Should they continue?
Or should they stop,
cut the string and restart,
unwind new thread,
And strain their eyes again?
Cross Boundry Sep 2020
don't stop to smell them
breathe them in on the winds as you fly past
-elixir- Sep 2020
Stop holding me back for once,
see the fire burning in every ounce
of scribbles and words of mine.
Stop making me guilty for my flight,
and look into the horizon so bright.
Stop making me resent your roof,
while all this time you stay aloof.
Stop shaming me for someone's fault,
and let them go into the devil's vault
of sins, see the virtues in me that I lock
from the fear that you might tear and block.
Stop thinking my life for your honour,
and save this human in me from this horror.
Stop it, with your words that shatter my esteem
and do make me drift away from your team.
Stop the assumptions from the lores of the devil,
and look into my dreams arranged in levels.
Stop it , Stop it, Stop it,
When will you feel words I write
and stop linking insanity with my fight.  
Stop it
STOP
Jonathan Moya Sep 2020
The earth is black
on both sides.
The yellow bus
taking the living away
passes pile after pile
of rubble, of signs that
were once there:
the Harley Davidson store,
The Rogue Action Center-
a nonprofit climate change group,
the community bank -
it’s vault the only thing standing.
Indistinguishable from the ash
is the mobile home park,
which once housed the migrants
that harvested the town’s fabled pears.
Only their metal survived the wildfires:
aluminum lawn chairs, a barbecue pit,
hubcaps of cars long since evacuated.
Among the stranded survivors
is the aged widower searching
impossibly for his wife’s ashes.
He had escaped and settled
here after the Paradise fires took
his previous home two years back.
Crows on charred oaks branches
watched and mock his effort.
He looked all around him
and wondered to God
if he had paid
enough grief dues.
When the bus stopped for him
he did not get on.
Amanda Kay Burke Sep 2020
Totally submerged in an ocean of fear
I lay my heart on the line
Those three little words I am desperate to hear
I feel like you're no longer mine

Shallow breath razor sharp in my throat
Puddles of tears soak the floor
In a flood of pain and I can't float
So I drown until I wash ashore

Halfway to Hell
No way to turn back
So we stop right where we are
Have no idea how we got so off track
I just know that distance is too far
You are my heaven but lately you have made my life a living hell
Ken Pepiton Sep 2020
Realized liberty, bike lanes,
okeh, Bret Weinstein is right, they do measure liberty

all my roads have double yellow lines, as a measure of safety
in a two-way world.
{which is partly why the code in DNA runs one way}

measuring minding
trips my trigger, to what I was thinking of writing
while watching a whispy-white haired man-my-age,
measuring the edge of a two-story house,

which a good man is building for his daughter,
down the hill, from where I sit.
That old man is bowed, in a compressed spine
kinda way,
bam bam men walked that way, in China, before the dams.

Tote that bail, tug that rope, nuthadayowe-der wise,
otherwise, aliens versus everything
pop knowns
you had locked away, in those gated intellectual troughs.
Yes, yes, troughs,
Pigs eat from troughs, cows eat from cribs,
chickens eat from dirt and sheep *** all the grass for wool
to pull over our eyes
filtering lies
like sunlight under big old Pines shading little old
Rosemary patches that feed bees,
wooly eyes, wise
meander, would you say away from world's wisest men discussing
what may be done, we set a spell, make peace with
having nothing else to do.

-- that sorta ran through my mind as I watched the elderly carpenter.
He was careful, but not afraid, aware.
He stepped from joist to joist,
at the very edge of the second story peak edge
perpendicular to the foundation square,

eye-ball-level to me
slow and steady he takes a tape, {such a witty invention}
a tape attached to a spring,
whereas once such things were actual hinged wands that unfolded
at the flick of an old wizards wrist,

then out came the soapstone, to lay down the line,
make the mark.
Here is where we cut, measure twice,
cut once,

he is sayin' in his mind, to me, I think, I imagine being told
this is how we learn what is right.
we learn to measure what works by what is.

If the distance between two points is beyond the reach, oopshit
I got distracted and he fell.
Things we imagine catching attention, good enough to step...
Ruheen Sep 2020
Sometimes a black dot in the middle of a page is
Just a black dot in the middle of a white page.
It's just that.
It doesn't have to be more than that.
Why do we have to complicate it?
Not everything needs a story.
We don't have to complicate everything.
We're just making it harder for ourselves.

So let that black dot be a black dot.
Don't look at as if it's life.

Because life isn't that simple.
We did this thing in class where we looked at a picture of a black dot in the middle of a white page and then had to write down what we saw.
I wrote exactly what I saw; a black dot on a white page.
Apparently, our teacher wanted something else; something more profound.
Why? Why psychoanalyze everything and turn into something so complicated?
Keep it simple.
Life already has complications, why add more?
That Girl Aug 2020
“Don’t take this the wrong way,”
I tell him.
I look off into the distance.
“Just stay away from me.”
I begged him.
Sadness laced my voice but it was also firm.
He knew I was dead serious.
I looked into his eyes.
Hurting.
Confusion.
More hurting.
I was glad I hurt him.
I felt no guilt.
After all, that’s how he’s made me feel for the past three months.
But when I told him to stay away my intent was not to hurt him.
I told him because I want to stop hurting.
The way he passes glances my way,
his kindness,
his mannerisms…
It all hurts me.
Hell,
even hearing his voice stings my soul.
I can’t do it anymore.
I don’t want to hurt anymore.
He needs to stop looking at me,
stop being kind to me,
stop being a gentlemen,
stop talking to me.
He has another girl to look at,
be kind to,
be a gentleman to,
to talk to.
And that girl is not me.
I walked away.
I didn’t look back.
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