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Zywa Feb 2023
They take off my clothes

and smell my mouth and my heart --


whether I love you.
After Ruhollah Khomeini's return to Iran, on February 1st, 1979
Poem "In this blind alley" (1979, Ahmad Shamlou)

Collection "Truder"
Purcy Flaherty Apr 2021
Media moguls
(The big six)

Media moguls, farming us like baboons, leaving just a flicker of our human potential; enough to consume.

A bitter machine, manufacturing and selling the illusion of fear and failure; ******* with our subconscious, spinning and expanding this dark material world; for nothing more than prestige and false profits.

There is more to life than this!
Wake up Space monkeys!
A constant stream of negativity, greed and desire.
Tyler Matthew Mar 2021
It is one thing to advocate for equality, representation, and unity.
Indeed, each is an inalienable, fundamental right.
But it is a whole new beast to lay waste
to anything that frightens you or that challenges your beliefs,
or that simply does not mirror your very own ideologies.
How heavy the hand of tyranny that now lays across our mouths,
yet how light our opposition.
Though I do acknowledge the delicacy of the issue at hand,
the fragility of the minds of hysterical mobs
who resolve to smashing windows in blind anger,
who ***** out free thought in daft castigation,
or who ban books even, it seems, like those monsters of history
to which they declare themselves to be diametrically opposed-
even in light of that, it is no excuse
to remain subservient to senseless autocrats
and the absurd legislations they bludgeon us with near daily.
To do this – to do nothing - is to lay down and die
without dignity, spineless and shameful,
though it seems that only myself and a handful of others
can recognize this.  Indeed, how easy it is to glimpse from the fringes.
I, a man of only twenty-seven years, do not recognize you, America.
I long for the days of comfort (so far removed from them, I am)
when I could safely retreat into the lofty and quiet halls of my mind
to enjoy a self-assuring thought that only I created -
a thought with no real purpose but to occupy me for a time,
to entertain me in my moments of dull apathy.
Now I shudder in a cold and contrived prison of vetted words
and unnegotiated mandates where I am told
to wrap myself in our flag to keep warm, to feel safe,
that this is for my own good.
I do not recognize you, America, for this thing you have become.
Gabe Mullen Nov 2020
everything  got real quiet
and his thoughts opened up
and inspiration struck
and he knew that he was

it's not often he seems himself here
swimming through his cacophony of fears
he wonders whether he truly knows
the bounds of what his emotions hold

he wonders whether the eye of God shines itself upon him
knowing how deep and dark his need is for sin
it's not possible to know the truth of it
to know whether his emotions play him like a puppet

it's easy to see all from a birds-eye view
and he knows he'll look back and hate that he knew
what it was the entire time he was supposed to do

it's getting loud again so i think i should say
who this poem is written about on this day
his thoughts opened up and they went astray
he knows there's only one spot he can truly hideaway
so if you wonder who this poem is about
i guess you must look further than the words i spout
moonrabbit Sep 2020
It begins as a tingling in my legs,
unpleasant like something squirmy trying to get out, something huger than my skin, wriggling, bursting to get free.

Without ceremony it spreads, bulging in my chest, prickles poking through my shoulder blades. Suppressing only makes it worse, I need to run, to fly, to breathe-

"What's wrong?" you ask.

I cannot answer, it is taking all my
willpower not to scream, or punch an
innocent bystander. Would I? Whether I would or not I've never found out,

I just leave.

"I love you," you say. I still cannot reply, the tears have been melting my face, but now they trickle down shiny scales.

External sensations have become
insensible, overpowered by the
overwhelming rage of barely managed fire within. The sharpness of my teeth meets an unfeeling leathery lip.

I go downstairs and leave the building. I don’t know if I remembered my keys.

I run
just as reptilian wings free themselves from my back, they flutter, stretch out wide at last.

I'm free,

but I still want this thing inside me, this thing that now is me, to leave. I am ashamed of it, afraid of its newness and my inability to control it.

It's happier now--
in the open air where it can thrash about without restraint. I let it, no longer worried it will lash out at something or someone breakable.

We fly far and long, my arms and lungs ache, but still the fire burns in my whole body waiting to be unleashed.

We soar, sore and angry until suddenly I'm alone again.

I look down but I don't need to look to know the scales are gone. My lip feels soft again beneath my rounded teeth. The wings still flap but gentler now, quietly bringing me back to the ground then softly folding and
painlessly absorbing back into my
shoulders.

I head home.
Diego Morales Mar 2020
It is odd to think we are free,
And to idealize liberty, and to praise expression.
But how at large can we truly be,
If within, we can only draw upon unruly self-repression?

If in public, we dare not speak our minds?
If our love, we dare not confess?
If to wrongs, we turn blind?
If from singing our hearts, we digress?

We claim to be free,
The thought alone, within us, sets a torch alight,
But the truth for truth we must see,
When given a pen, hardly one of us would write.
B Aug 2019
She is lonely
but she wants to be alone
She is trapped in a room
with the door unlocked

She doesn’t remember
but her dreams don’t let her forget
She wants to wake up
even if she can still see the stars

She wants to be the best
but she feels like she is the worst
she works hard
even though she cannot move
Shutterr Aug 2019
Why does it feel like
I'm suppressing my thoughts
To be in something
That makes me happy
I don't understand
EzraZebra Aug 2019
My mind
is pregnant
with alien thought
An unending duality
A dormant dialogue

Mutually multi-facetted
layers of truth and
untruth, shifting
sands and false
dichotomies
08/01/2014
Ahnaf Jun 2019
Let me take a page out of the book that gave you every look you passed me when I went about my life the way that I was taught

If you had only gone as far as lit my cigarette and smiled I would have given up the world for you and your trials

When you find your rhythm let me know, but I feel that you were never searching for truths not in your bestseller book

I’m sitting here still waiting for a turn to speak, but you’ve stuffed your ears with amnesia of history; it makes you free

I’m here looking at the sky; it’s my way to feel free for a bit of time, and it doesn’t hurt anyone, unlike yours

We were never in line, and it’s all fine, until you cup my mouth with all the force you gained from never having to think twice

Now let me take a lie out of your book and make it choke on all the tears that could have drowned your pages and made you realize

Shy and soft-spoken though I might be, there are ways to talk without speaking a single word and it’s worth a thousand photographs
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