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I like when it storms,
the push and the pull
I'm addicted to the adrenaline and playing who's the fool
I've got a boat to survive the hurricane,
It's a little rickety and there's a few holes but what's love if you can't thrive in the rain?
Sometimes we drown but it's not forever, something about gasping for air makes that first breath of understanding better
I might run from your thunder until I match the beat,
find me in your orchestra-
the very first seat
It's always a shock when my lightning strikes, sudden and bitter and riddled with spite
But the worst part is when quiet comes, can we afford to rebuild or do we leave our land destroyed as it was?
And like a wild fire it's aftermath is devastating
But how can we breath new life into what's already overgrown?
Jessica 6d
I thought I was your captive
Like being struck through the heart, like lightning, like time
That rises away
Past a roof
And slips across
A higher landscape,
A different neighborhood

A silence that exists only in small noises
The humming of birds, the beach, the buzzing of the sea
The luminescence of another world,
the beat of the heart,
dawn and evening;
falling silent snow.

If any of these sounds open
Do they become roads
Become flowers
Behind walls
That seize the original heart
through some alternate pathway, via some underground stream

Night opens
Like stars
And that
Which is like
The sky
Between you and me
Songs of April
Songs of May
Stones of age, sparkling in sun,
gleam at the light to hold.

A few dull—where nothings run,
Seams with trifles cold.

Pressure and pressure— more dull rocks won,
Nothing to shine in light.

They gleam their darkness to fade the sun,
Nothing to shine at sight.

With enough pressure,
And time just right.

A fissure,
A spark— sets light.

For in the weight of ignorance- of dull stones,
A spark, not wisdom, pulls blight.

Now,
For the sheer weight of consequence to mold-
The light, of dull rock— can first hold.
abyss Jun 15
Shattered illusions.
Shattered hopes.
Shattered dreams.

A house with no structure
built from the remains of ruin.

A powerful soul
in a trembling body.

A house meant to fall.
A house that realized
it’s not a house at all -
just the memory of shelter
pretending to hold.

It asks,
"Then what am I?"

But no one answers.

And so,
what’s left
sinks into the soil,
quietly turning
back into earth.
Who are you when it all comes crashing down?
In a luminous lost space, my ego dissolved.
I’ve tasted the nectar, of cosmic resolve.
Through swirling patterns, a map would unfold.
I’ve traced the connections, of the timeless and bold.

A symphonic wonder, a radiant flow.
Where boundaries blurred, and darkness glowed.
The world expanded to a canvas so bright,  
And I, one of darkness, was bathed in its light.

My ego dissolves. What a gentle release.
I merge with it all, I merge with its peace.
The unity of being all truth was revealed.
In every single pulse, a bond is being sealed.

I observed full potential in a quantum bound space.
My energy, my soul. We morph with the waves.
In this transcendence, did I finally belong?
I’ve stitched harmonies from an out of tune song.

No darkness lives here, no shadows to hide,
Just pure ecstasy on an ever-living tide.
The veil, it lifted. Revealing the mind.
With every atom, sculpting this sacred design.
Laokos Jun 1
a hot summer night.
the world was a kiln
and we were clay,
hardening, sweating,
baking in it.

I walked by his door
and saw him—
left wide open like an invitation.
he was sleeping.
my father.

curled up in the fetal position,
no blankets,
just underwear.
the room dark
except for the faint
glow his iphone
lighting the back of his head
like a halo with low battery.
his iPad in front of him,
casting a pale blue wash
across his gut.
he looked like he was
plugged in.
dreams streaming through
a USB cord.

he looked so tired.
vulnerable.
like a deadweight puppet
left on stage
after the curtain’s dropped.

like he wouldn’t survive
whatever was coming next.

like he was still
just a kid
from small-town North Dakota
who wanted to fall in love
and did
but that mother left
years ago—
quiet as a predator
cutting his strings on the way out.  

and now he doesn’t
know how to move
without someone
controlling him.

so he just lies there—
the man
after the werewolf’s gone,
sleeping off the transformation.

breathing hard
in the electric glow
of a humming digital womb.
Jonathan Moya May 28
Between the Waves  

There was never a single border,  
only the shifting tide of language,  
guavas glowing in the heat,  
the churn of Spanglish rolling in  
before the tide could pull it back.

At the checkout line, the cashier asks,  
"Paper or plastic?"—so simple, so sharp.
I glance at Mama, but her words stick,  
caught between lips and hesitation.
I answer for us. The shame clings,  
her silence louder than any mistake.

Each summer, my abuela arrived  
with stories curled like conch shells,  
her voice full of salt and lineage,  
each word a bridge we crossed halfway,  
somewhere between knowing and forgetting.

She tells me of the women before us,  
how her mother boiled guava leaves  
to ease the aches of growing bones,  
how a girl’s silence could mean strength  
but never surrender. “You carry oceans,”  
she says, pressing a shell into my palm.
"Listen, and you will always know  
where you come from."  

In the humid dusk, I traced my name  
in sidewalk chalk, watched rain  
blur it into something new.
Could memory be pliant? Could belonging  
be washed and reshaped by the wind?

But what of the body—  
its slow turning, the way girlhood folds  
like an old dress, pressed into something new?
What of the hands that will cradle, will teach,  
will shape another name into the world?

I watch my mother’s weary eyes,  
the way she smooths the hem of her days,  
thumb and forefinger pressing the fabric,  
flattening something unseen.
I wonder if I will smooth my own worry  
the way she does—without pause,  
without breaking.

Outside, the cicadas rasp,  
their voices a low and constant hum,  
a pulse threading through the thick heat  
like something old, something knowing.

Here, the neon hum of the city never rests,  
palm fronds shudder against the skyline,  
the edge between past and present dissolving,  
Miami swallowing whole every homecoming,  
every goodbye never quite gone.

At the bodega, my friends are waiting,  
laughing too loud, pressing tamarind candy  
into my palm, the sticky sweetness clinging—  
a small amber stone, a promise of what remains.
We swap bracelets—plastic beads clinking—  
a quiet oath in neon-lit safety.

But between jokes, between  
sips of cola and smudged lip gloss,  
I catch glimpses—mothers’ tired hands,  
names that slip too easily from memory,  
the weight of futures we pretend not to see,  
just for now, just for tonight.

Still, the tamarind sticks,  
a sharpness beneath its sweetness,  
as if warning—this is not just candy,  
but proof of change, proof that  
what is soft can still pull,  
what is sweet can still sting.

As I walk home, salt on my lips,  
the moon folds itself into the bay,  
the water whispering,  
"Listen, listen,"
until it carries the answer away.

Somewhere, I smooth my sleeve,  
flattening the fabric beneath my palm.
I am not my own strength – nor am I my own words
I am not the sum of silver, or rich as the world,
Nor even close to a sliver of gold.

I am not my future – or any better than my own past
I am all of my mistakes made in the present,
And all of the things, hoping to come to pass
Nowhere near a love that endures without question –
Nor the calm; being a life of many, many scars.

I am the quiet battles, that tears praise my triumphs,
The stillness in inner storms, battling emotional riots –
Marvel of flesh, fragile code; built of miracle science
Living in society’s endless bias, where the little
You hope to give, is the hope that will be trampled
Beneath the heels of Giants.

A faith that’s ALWAYS under intense heat
And so many pressures; pressed and refined,
I emerge as a Beautiful Diamond.
Jonathan Moya May 26
After all the operations, after the slow unraveling,  
I trace the shimmer left behind,  
a pearl forming in the absence of what was—  
the weight of my steps lighter, not in grace,  
but in uncertainty mixed with hope.  

I do not run anymore  
Yet, I watch Tom Cruise sprint, sprint—  
limbs loose, effortless at sixty-two,  
vaulting over rooftops,  
clinging to the side of airplanes,  
breathing forever underwater.  

He crashes, bruises, bleeds in theory,  
but never in flesh—  
his smile intact, his hair untouched,  
a muscular chest absorbing each blow,  
with no marks,  
no limp, no hesitation.  
I content myself with the thought
that I am the real mission impossible,
the one facing the final dead reckoning.

Sure,  I sit here, reckoning with the
dead weight  of legs that will not vault,  
feet that drag instead of sprint,  
watching a man outrun time itself,  
as I count the losses my body cannot ignore.  

Neuropathy hums in my hands,  
a static whisper beneath the skin,  
feet waiting for signals that never arrive.  
Pouchitis returns, rhythmic,  
a ghost cycle that feels almost natural,  
a body remembering what it should forget.  

And yet—there is something else.  
Not just the loss, not just the ache,  
but the way illness made me listen,  
the way it softened the edges of my voice,  
the way it let me hold my wife’s hand  
with a reverence I never knew before.  

I see faces at the mall, at the movies—  
those moving without thought,  
and those like me, learning how to walk again.  
I see my brother’s quiet grief and joy,  
my own reflected back in his silence.  

To confront death is to speak to it,  
to name it,  
to let it sit beside you,  
to let it teach you how to be human.  

I am a better poet for this.  
Not for the suffering,  
but for the softness it left me.  

And somewhere within the nacre,  
within the slow layering of survival,  
I am still here.
of survival,  
I am still here.
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