Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Jeremy Betts Aug 2024
The result of life is death
The price of life is your sanity
The toxins leach more from each drawn breath
Eating away at both mind and body
One day more replaces you with one day less
A simple enough concept conceptually
Everything living is born with this terminal illness
No one has ever survived this tragedy

©2024
Virtuous Aug 2024
O lover, O muse, you strike me–abuse!
Your tender, graceful kisses–******!
Your words are greased with lies obtuse,
Oil enough to light a fuse.

I was born of pedigree,
Taught and raised with chivalry,
To, someday, be noble knight,
Of strong and loyal moral might.

Then, you came and caught my neck,
Breathing lust in tender pecks.
"Man of valor, lie with me.
Savor love with liberty…”

Strong with urge, driven by hate,
Lust-filled love–yes, satiate!
Your saintly face like holy art,
Too late! You are the Devil at heart.

Now I lie in grueling pain,
Body slain and spirit stained.
Repenting–pleading!–by blood and mercy,
That I might enter into life, though maimed.
i'll fall into a gold mine

licking wounds that were never mine



mid may, my casket turns

violent proof this heart can burn


you halve my heart

i die from lack of a heart
Tragedy
Virtuous Aug 2024
Sweet the girl and tender her age,
She's too young for the fire's rage.
But, alas, the law still stands,
And punishment for her crime demands.

Little Oshichi, that greengrocer girl,
Her hands, restrain; and hair, unfurl.
She stands upright against the stake,
Weeping as she regrets her mistake.

She had fallen in love with a page,
While a fire had roared and raged.
As her house was burnt away,
Love, within her heart, gave way.

Entranced, enraptured, and captured with him,
Oshichi went forth on a fanciful whim.
Believing that it would bring them together,
She struck a flint and started a fire.

A clanging tocsin pierced the night,
"Me-gumi, hark! There's a fire to fight!"
A throng of ***** steeplejack boys
Rush to the scene with swaggering poise.

Oshichi now gazed in horror, aghast,
Watching as the fire spread fast–
Her dream of meeting her youthful lover
Set ablaze with burning desire.

Arrested, tried, and sentenced to suffer,
The judge, kind sir, tried his best to save her.
"Are you not 15?" he asked, worriedly.
"I'm 16, my lord," she answered meekly.

Bewildered and anxious, he asked yet again,
"Surely you're 15, young one, dear saint?"
She bowed her head and shed a tear.
"No... I'm 16," she answered with fear.

Cursing his fate, the judge had no choice.
He gave his sentence with a downcast voice:
"Yaoya Oshichi–what girl so tender–
Shall be burnt an arson offender."

Bound and burnt for want of love,
Oshichi lifts her gaze above.
Weeping as her smoke ascends,
She cries to heaven, its mercy lend.

At last, Oshichi succumbs to the fire,
Consumed by passion borne of desire.
Sweet the girl and bitter the flame,
As her lover cries out her name.
A dramatization of the legend of Yaoya Oshichi.

*Me-gumi: one of the 48 fire brigades serving Edo (Tokyo).
ankle deep
I strode
through the memory
through the horror, of waking

up, from the depths of my knowing,
into the realms of my understanding,
conjuring tempests of fear
my heart
wailed in terror
ankles snagging every root
I was snared,
sneering
snapping at the world
hoping I'd find the sense of peace
where your innocence was lost
where your heart bled alone,
in the wildernesses, of time

the crossroad
was empty
but surrounding
were the totems
wolf head, vulture head
rat head, fox head
python head, jaguar head
hanging from their maws
the souls of the dead
and there,
your soul
betwixt the union
our destiny
our annulled embrace
I bore my soul for yours
risked my eternity to be the raft of your own
to be your driftwood
your belly of the whale,
your captain of survival
your eagle o'er head, watching for danger

and yet,
truly you were my savior
how your kiss was never on my lips
but in my heart
in my thoughts you loved me like no other
strode me as a victor
winning my honor with your passions
tempting me with dreams of moons
where honey flows thick as melon dew
cream of the gourd,
pouring into your womb, your sacred desires
your arid climes of keeping
burrowing into your hollow trunk
into your belly, nourishing your will to hold me
to tame my fears of abandon
and trust my every touch,
running down your cheek with a feather's grace
my finger tracing the goosebumps you can't hide
the embarrassment of pleasures simple
yet overwhelming
gentle... yet deep

I touch you in my heart as a promise
a lover's wish that you live eternally
that we may meet in paradise
for, in this life, I never knew you
never held you

I will never
make love to you,
but,
I've filled your immotal womb with my doweries
storing every day we'd spend together
in a perfect life,
where, if we'd only saved each other,
from the monsoon
that swelled in the cascade,
the tearfall,
of the knowing
that we never said,

"I do."
I wrote this with a woman in mind.

Someone who has been one of the few women I've admired in my life whose personal glow, seductive charm, ****** allure, artistic spirit, and celebratory persona has captivated me repetitively, although I only know her as a model and acquaintance, not a close friend.

With my health as it's been for so long, and my sociability being at an all-time love, I've been single for the past 14 years and celibate for the past 5 years.

Being a fan of women only, who provide their services as purveyors of digital, ****** indulgences, has been my only means of keeping to myself and not suffering the ache of venturing to sail the seas of dating that have, truly in my time, convinced me never end well and never shall as I'm decidedly, and experientially, undatable.

I've come to a point of acceptance on the matter, and to no longer feel shame that I'm definitively incompatible with most if not all partners past, present, and future.

The most pressing reasons are firstly my financial and vocational spirits, talents, opportunities, and experiences, that are virtually impossible to pursue nor entertain any longer in my life as I have had it with persisting either as an artist or as a 9-to-5 employee of any business or institution; secondly, I am, sad to say, wholly committed to being euthanized, but cannot afford it, and it is regardless illegal in most territories in the United States, except under the strictest conditions of physical ailments that are terminal, which is ethical, and a surefire safeguard against medical malpractices, but not realistic for people like me whom, I believe, have legitimate concerns of wellbeing, quality of life, and ultimately, are sufferers of having no will to live to sustain ourselves and consciously bear the passage of life.

Like Frodo Baggins, in the Lord of the Rings, I feel that call and that pull to be away from life. To travel away. But there is not "traveling away" from life.
There is bearing its passage until death. And so, I see not other means of existing but bearing out however I may survive until my mortal coil expires.

So, in my deepest of heavens, where I sustain my wills to romance in my mind, heart, and soul, the woman to whom I dedicate this poem is someone of a true inspiration to me, and one of two whom I've written poems for, of this like, which can be found on this site.

I have no sense in me of ever truly wishing to be with this woman.
Her life is complicated, and far from my relativistic reality of experiences.
I doubt we could ever see eye-to-eye or get along long-term.
I wish that were not the case. Regardless, I hold her in high regard as somewhat of a light to me. Someone who lit a fire in my soul that never quenches, and never fails to illuminate my mind with the breath of love, romance, inspiration, courage, and peace.

Yet, this same woman is also someone through whom I've seen, felt, and feared the deepest terrors, visions, and heartaches of unrequited, forbidden, doomed, self-destructive, and tragic love made manifest in our unity.

I know not if that is true, or if it is truly, rather, my sense of living a nightmare, separate from her and my pining, that tinges my experience of her with dread because I am an inferior man, truly, in the face of any kind of meeting with her, and I'm terrified, not only being lesser than her in stature, experience, maturity, and having established a survivability in this world, but I also fear how free, and dangerous, she is, and that danger, that freedom, is something I would never afford myself the love of.

I could never love someone that free and dangerous because love doesn't survive in those stressful climates borne in her promiscuous lifestyles of heart, body, and mind. I could never imagine marrying her, having children with her, living together with fidelity and honor, and truly making every effort to value each other with the eternal heart of God as our footing in our time together.

And so, truly, I see myself wounded in finding my heart so willing to be open to her, but to closed to the experience of what I imagine is certain, undeniable, and fatal pain that would end our union as powerfully as it could ever have begun were it to have become a union made real.

Despite all the omens in my purview, eclipsed by all the potential holy revelations of love beyond imagining with her, I see her as an elixir of beauty, forging ever anew in my heart every day I wake and think of her - someone I don't know and haven't spoken to in over a year, but still treasure in my heart in a way she could never understand or know.

Several months ago, she moved to a city nearby, and in the passage of her arrival, an earthquake happened on the eastern seaboard spanning from her city across to mine.

She truly is someone who rocked my world, but I don't know whether she bodes well for me, or is the source of harsh, perishing, and punishing lessons for me to wake up and learn that love is not a dream for common men, it is a war for the hearts of lovers that cannot be waged without the sums, strengths, tethers, measures, and weights of power, wisdom, and truth worthy of defending that love, be that love holy, and Of God.

Regardless, I pray she remains well. And she is always in my heart, but going forward, perhaps more in my prayers. She is an angel to me, but in the sense of being an evoker of passions, not of faith and fidelity, which is where I find my boundaries and safeguard planted, fortifying me for when she is someone of a heart, mind, and soul alike to mine.

As always, enjoy...

DEW
Bea Rae Aug 2024
Why do I find every reason to stay
With the man
Who makes me question
My own morals
Q Aug 2024
Darkness fills my eyes,
As the stars disappear,
And the sinkhole becomes a black hole,
Until I’m left suspended.
In the nowhere,
In the somewhere.
Between chaos,
Between pain,
Part of the one?
No, I’m another.
Because I must be something other than this.

I think I must be a child of the stars.
A stolen kiss between the night and day.
Forbidden to exist.
That’s the only explanation that would explain
Why just the simple act of breathing,
Offends the gods.

It seems everyone is made of some scintillating light,
Twinkling and dancing,
As they hold each other,
As laughter and love seem to be their constant companions.

Why is it when I see those brilliant lights,
Shame and wonder tear through me?
No, I know why.
Because-
I was woven from the sorrow of abandonment.
More midnight than bright light
And made up of nothing more, than finite moments.
I am brought out by the darkness,
Only to be forgotten when day comes.
Is it selfish of me to ask
For you to hold me tighter?
For just a little longer?
Just long enough
For me to make a permanent memory
Of this fleeting moment.
Bea Rae Aug 2024
The floor is littered
With dishes as broken
As your promises
chewing the scar



it's something given

confused, please grant me this burr

guilt & I dance into your throat

your ghost losing me
together now
searching your left behinds


one strip of me
pale, finally open & quiet
walking away
tragedy
fold me into place

it's a free ticket

my petal falls off
tragedy
Next page