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Emery Feine Sep 2024
Back then, I thought I was making the right decision
If only back then I had my present vision

If only I hadn't done that, my life would begin anew
Numerous more opportunities I would've gotten to

I don't want to think of it as a regret, but a way to ascend
But after that, for two years, my freedom came to an end

Even now I know his soul is kind
Or is it because I wanted time to rewind?

Now I'm back again, with a second chance
But I can only see the similarity in your glance

I don't want to make the same mistake as before
Or am I just supposed to have evil in my core?

I did say I wanted a true friend
But will this be the ultimate end?

I prayed that in the future, I'd learn to think twice
But this test is most certainly not nice

So please, don't let me fail this test
Because the continuation of this story, I know the rest.
this is my 20th poem, written on 8/18/23
Ken Pepiton Sep 2024
How to read an evolving novel form
of witnessed am-usement,
think with a poet like yourself,
become remused, bemusedly
free, but for the cost of your attention,
freely paid, and freely taken on the come,

come to see how it all ends, in real life.

/poems/popular/
or /latest/
read down the stack, find
sacred knowledge muses use to rate
treasures that force a full blown what if…

Read any poet who rates being
in your hearted pile of impressive works,
hellopoetry.com/handle/poems/popular/
take the mind, let it be in you,
read each word chosen on the fly,
pause, rethink, the stacking algorithm,
most read pieces, past tension piling on,
it was good, as it's, so
and on, people's choices, random,
right on, reasoning rationality,
what's a minute's worth of musing,
precious, indeed, taken time, used,
is all time is for, others read first,
to pass on noticeably new, mere ifery,
used to make common sense used to read
wildly unorthodox translations of basic,
towb ra
good and evil, OOPs, flaw interpreted,
beautiful adversity, face to face,
true, real yes, first novel knowing
tell me a story, tell no lie, boys,
will be boys, until sense
common as all get out,

comes to account
for idle words,
used to get by those wasted years,

to when, beyond
what ever hell are you now,
thinking, y'gotta carry on, squint

to have the eyes stretching time, now,

we have seen it done
https://hellopoetry.com/MK/poems/latest

did it today,

put me through a blizzard on this year's hottest day.
a chthonic boldness makes such suggestions, think yourself a part of the pages in the book of all our lives, and our job is learning things we neve knew words can do.
ZACK GRAM Aug 2024
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100,000,000
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Fax
Jeremy Betts Apr 2024
This is some creation creators best?
Eh,
I'm not impressed
I'd hate to see the attempts that failed the test
Must have been monstrous
Hopefully not but most likely numerous
And the couple that was decided on turned out to be a complete mess
Brought on solely by his hubris
Pointless details distract from what comes next
Switching focus from the main quest
To put damages to rest
Staring directly into the dumpster fires conquest,
I notice,
Life as we know it will burn out like the rest
And we've learned nothing from a history that literally leaves no reason to guess

©2024
Jeremy Betts Jan 2024
I find everyday is either a challenge or a test with little too no time for rest
No time to reflect so I digress
No one there when I confess, only after a sneeze am I blessed
Mocked and laughed at for simply making a mess that my life reflects
Heart trying to beat out of my chest as I push through this bogus quest
Win or lose, I can always count on another hardship coming up next
Perplexed 'cause I can't tell if it's god or the devil trying to flex
Guess they'd have to prove their existence first and not only at the exits
But the names not Job, I will surrender to this hex, it's a guarantee, I've placed my Betts
I will say this, I tried my best but don't think I should've ever been allowed to enter this contest
Will go down as the perfect example of a bad contestant
I didn't ask for this complex nonsense
I'd be hard pressed to find any arguments to the contrary to try and digest
But to fit into the mold that best reflects the rest, I speak of the witnessed hardships of my life in jest

©2024
MetaVerse Jul 2024
The bestest
stress test.


Ken Pepiton Oct 2022
transfer attention,
spend time
in contemplation

temple time,
sit silent, hearing humms,
sh,
some birds, far away, about a
fair infield fly away.

How far is that, would you say,
a hundred feet,
thirty paces,
perhaps… there's the catch.

Precisely right place
right time.

Think how rare that seems,
then look around
and see it isn't.

Gnatcatchers and bats catch
things with more measures
of possibility assessed accurately,

instant prayer and answer.
Gulped in thanks.
Not a single read in five days
Robert Ronnow Mar 2022
Should I become a middle school math or English teacher?
Leave my bed early in the morning and return with test papers to grade.
With what authority will I persuade those kids to sit still and perform
      calculations and interpretations.
I won’t be allowed to teach A Good Man Is Hard To Find. Nope, it’ll be
      Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies and Slaughterhouse Five. Novels
      that annoy.
Poems and math are magic. Words and numbers are things no one has
      ever seen or heard or touched.
But the administration keeps them separate. The curriculum’s
      determinate.
The kids are beautiful but combustible. When middle school lets out at
      the periapsis of Earth’s orbit, that’s the face of joy.

The purpose of school is to introduce us to the world’s innumerable
      wonders. The periodic table, World Wars I and II, Huckleberry Finn
      and Jim.
Once a gaggle of teenage girls bet whether I wore boxers or jockeys. I felt
      ambushed and unlucky. Also a bit afraid.
There’s little love lost between the students and the teachers. Expect to
      forget and be forgotten. Information.
I remember Mr. Killian my chemistry teacher. So boring about something
      I now find so interesting and important. He wasn’t boring; I was
      boring.
I remember Mr. Christensen my history teacher. He was fat and funny but
      taught as little as possible. I was known to laugh so hard I cried.
I remember Mr. T my calculus teacher. He dressed everyday exactly like
      Gene Kranz in mission control. I was confused past help so he didn’t
      help.
I remember Tone Kwas my music teacher. He said I was the worst
      trumpet player he’d ever tried to teach and switched me to
      sousaphone. He was right but so what! Playing badly is the best
      riposte.
Anya Feb 2022
To know or not to know that is the question. I mean; I already know, I took it once. Yet that once was back before the continuous onset of diarrhea (which could have been caused by the accidental switch up of my stir fry or the unending pastries I filled myself with), before the sniffles and the sneezes (caused by the cold wearing a too thin jacket to the gym), before the exhaustion (wack sleep schedule). I knew before all of that. And even then, that know was a rapid test (but still a test) which could’ve been wrong. So, should I? Should I take it again? Or should I go about my day, and attend dance practice with none the wiser?

…still there? Hey, where’s she gone?

Oh, she’s at dance practice.
Ken Pepiton Jan 2022
Rich in time, at the distant shore
of Stix, laughing with the ferry men
and pall bearers, all retired, the gig is up.

There never was a Santa Claus,
and there never was a hell… that is,
an everlasting grief for failure to know
what no authorities allowed known,
even grown to full stature,
the things we agree
1798 was for some reason, poetically
important
now 2022

I hear Cordelia. What? "nothing, my lord."

With graven mudpies,
patty-caking clay and straw, straw
another story creature, or
character, entity, yes, an ity-ness
some being, whether operator or
operand, all opera is
some minds presenting das gestalt,
nicht whar?
A we.
Heavy, cold molasses heavy, very
worthy, measured weight, shipped,
dripped,
sent, in hope, one day,
the effect of a message in a bottle,
occurs, as any reader
sees another knowing for a reason,
hidden
upto, perhaps a true 151st preposition
aiming at an upper limit,

How high can mind go after body,
augmented with nets of ordered signals,

is laid to rest, in my future, all the books
I never wrote, drip from my fingers, I am
the trained brained qwerty and morse guy.

Ghee of Auvergne. But for the e, I remembered,
though you may know now this is after
I paid effectual prayer through AI,
to ality of Rheality, all the knowledge in the tree,

in the nut, that falls to the ground and grows,
morpheus, makes it symbolic as hell
and the eucharist hoc es pokemonic -****!
you're a scannable canticle cannibals' cambial
allusion .
cambium (n.)
1670s in botany,
"layer of tissue between the wood and the bark,"
from Late Latin cambium "exchange,"
from Latin cambiare "change" (see change (v.)).

From <https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=cambial>


Are we under your skin, slow think, we
is who
we are thinking. Let ter by letter stepping on

the compliants subsurface, softer than sand,
that cave - null arbor, tree of null-ity
annul - ah, "to make to nothing,"
that fine a dust,
a locale thought, linked, in a beautiful way
I may show you some day, these silken threads
that tie me to a wombed man,
in the land down under,
distant thunder, no sense of doom, this is happy
summer rain,
come to settle dust and fill all the puddles and ponds,
wells and cisterns,
gullies and wadis and broad sandy beaches,
visible from space,
any augmented eye may see, we live
on the wreck of a world.

One shell told Ben Franklin that, he said
that to many sons, many sons,
has Father Ben, the Humanist,

I insist, a hume-man ist, a human being
sapient, the action in the term sapience,
using that, knowing
I am thinking in terms any who read may define,
sift to the essential Eu-clade, literal
silence in time stop state, patient waiting if this
is why I live,
something I may have done, I did to dare the liar
smite me, many's the time,
cliché click heels snap

I salute my double mind minions, characters
set in array, as suits in a soap opera rich guy's
closet, close, close
always be
closing, set, the scene then changes and now
matters
- was Plato a big blue ox?
Why were poets banished? Truly, we are dealing
in common knowledge now, the sheet let down
from heaven, pick and choose,
you cannot or can not, wrestle with God,
and walk away,
without a limp.

Distillery stories, lotta sittin' around, drinkin'
spirits from former years,
we was young and in heat of the moment, tuned
to TV news, because we could know, what was
goin' on, after reality included knowledge
of fusion energy in seventh grade science,
right, when confusion was a word in spell-
ing bees, hmmm
ding
weedy insights, like first grass in fields burned
last fall, tender shoots for tiny kids and lambs
and calves and colts, and coyotes and squirrels
and cotton tails, and quails.

How rich are we?
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