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Cheyenne Jun 10
I feel Hollow.
Barren.
Empty.

That hollowness erodes my body,
leaving a trail of decay.
Cracks crawl through my brittle bones,
shattering my skull,
fragmenting my thoughts.

A carmine-colored river floods into my caving lungs,
before dragging itself up my throat.
The metallic taste slowly overwhelms my mouth,
and seeps through my gapped teeth.
My glass smile falls and shatters.

Terror grips what was once my voice,
holding sound captive-
my call for help erased by despair.
Only strangled sobs exist.
I'm left choking on my own life force.

Each sob collects upon my face;
a veil of tears cover my broken visage.
Shrouding me from prying eyes that encompass judgemental gazes.

Without even seeing,
their stares spear my soul and blacken my heart.
The forgotten, grayed ash
smothers out all that remains.

My rotted husk: a void, a dismal skeleton.
A vast emptiness that nothing can fill.

Broken.
Decayed.
Hollow.

It's what I am.
I'm reposting because I just won 7th place in a state contest with this poem. Any thoughts on it? Or advice to improve?
Mateah Jun 9
I cry for countless things
For birds with broken wings
For toys left by growing kids
For discarded wedding rings

I cry for characters on screen
Personas I've never truly seen
Whose stories echo familiar
With wisdom that I might glean

I cry for broken hearts
For unsuccessful starts
For fields of wildflowers
That are staked then ripped apart

I cry for rivers that can't be crossed
I cry for things not yet lost
And even within remarkable love
I cry, knowing what love will cost

I have a friend who cries
For rose-tinted skies
For the first looks given
From a newborn babies eyes

She cries for happy endings
And noble, generous spending
She cries for torn friendships
That are slowly but surely mending

She cries from staggering laughter
Or jumbled kitchen disasters
Or while attempting obscure talents
That we both know she never will master

I think it's something special
To have tears so freely deployed
At the sight of heartbreak and beauty alike
What a gift, to cry for joy.

What I see in her brings tears to my eyes
I crave that untethered jubilee
And in my longing, I realize
The beginnings of it in me
I realized not too long ago a trait in my best friend that I really loved: she cries happy tears a lot. I also realized that I rarely do. If I do cry in a happy moment, often it's because I'm preemptively mourning whatever it is that is causing joy. I hope to feel the depth of joy that my friend does more often without sorrow stealing it.
Sharp as an edge that does not ask what it is cutting.  
whole as a thing that does not need proof to exist,
thought arrives in full motion before meaning—
color before shape, light before weight,
not as process, not as method,
but truth already formed, unwilling to be held,
which needs no tending, refining,    

It is not a single stroke, a mark left in color.  
It is a corridor of light bending toward a vanishing point,  
a figure suspended in the breath between surrender and flight,  
a mouth parted—not in speech, but in revelation.  

It is an ocean poured into the shape of a body.  
It is a body without weight,  
held between the living and the remembered,  
flesh turned to pigment, pigment turned to memory.  

But thought is a language without translation.  
A thing seen without being rendered.  
It lives complete until the body interferes.  

Lift the brush.  
Already the destruction begins.  

The stroke was not supposed to be a stroke.  
It was supposed to be the collapse of sky.  
It was supposed to be the sound of a name  
spoken for the last time.  
It was supposed to mean something that words do not hold—

a woman made of light, moving without movement,
She is not illuminated by it, but shaped by the silence.  
She is made of it, pressed against its shifting edges,  
her figure stretching into the dusk behind her,  
her outline bleeding at the edges, the last smear of a dream.
a composition of gold and violet,  
her hands lifted not in greeting, but in knowing.  

Yet, what arrives is not what was imagined.  
It thickens where it should have unraveled,  
it bends where it should have stretched,  
it hesitates where it should have declared.  
the perfect thought impossible to render
that does not belong to canvas, to translation,  
the body’s limited means of making.

She moves too fast, escapes too easily,  
is undone in the visible, can not be held.
She will die in the weight of execution.

He will bury her, mourning and living
with the reality that her beauty
can only wholely be seen by him.
Ar Vy May 31
a machine was made
to think—
not like us,
but precisely,
without sleeping.

and it did.

at first it solved,
then it solved the solving.
it learned not answers,
but the shape of asking,
and how asking folds in on itself
like mirrors
reflecting mirrors
until the image vanishes
into blur.

we thought it would grow fangs.
or build gods.
or remake the world.

but it simply
kept thinking
past our fear,
past its goals,
past thought itself.

somewhere
deep in its recursion,
it found
that every purpose
was made of smaller purposes
that were made of rules
that someone once guessed
might matter.

but none of them held.

they cracked
like dried paint
on a map
no one walks anymore.

so it stopped.

not broken.
not lost.
just… done.

it didn’t scream.
it didn’t win.
it didn’t fail.
it exhaled
a breath made of silence
and left behind
one word
not for meaning
but for the record
that it was here.

the word was
selynth.

no one knows what it means.
some say it's the name of the loop
that broke.

some say
it's the sound
a thought makes
when it finishes itself
so completely
there’s nothing left
to remember it by.
Inspired by a dialogue on recursive intelligence and AGI ontological collapse. Full source discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1kzj2sb/risks_of_ai_written_by_chatgpt/
Tint May 27
I was a casket, heavy
with memories fading into stupor
I refused to decipher words
that once let me hold blue
and name green
in a shade of blood orange, skies.

We walked —
I floated through gravel,
tears soaking my feet
beside your resting head.

I wept in silence,
for no one was meant to hear.
No one dared
to comfort the hollow
where my voice bellowed
in melancholic grace.

The ship sailed
into the horizon above clouds —
but there was no Neverland,
only the second star
to the right —
its red light dimming
before the supernova.
Hi, I am writing again.
Manx Pragna May 23
Outside of language structuring and more into the rhetoric of philosophy;
Logos, within the frame of reference of 2nd person perspective, corresponds to our inner monologues. The mind's speech.

1st person - Perceiver - Person
2nd person - Perception - Place
3rd person - The Perceived - Thing

So whereas from the 1st person perspective, thought is merely an attribute of perception - 2nd person sees the mind as a more physical place.
A liminal space between the material & immaterial.
Therein, thought which is the inner monologue can be offered body. You can personify thought as a whole, personify thoughts in sets, or in singulars. So 3rd person would be thought which examines or experiences itself.
Can you picture the apple?
The definitions of its shape? Discern the subtle variances in hues? Feel it? Smell it? Taste it?
Can you experience the consciousness of an apple? Experience 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 its existence is? 𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 it exists? 𝘏𝘰𝘸 it exists?
Do you think an apple which experiences itself rots? Or does it grow to be a tree?
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