#coda
due to a lack of talent
in the writing sphere
a plagiarist will see fit
to pinch other poet's gear
brilliance not present
on the nib of the pen
hence a copyist will purloin
every now and then
a rich source of poetry
is tapped into online
as if robbing the golden nuggets
from a Colorado mine
their coda reads like
this let's nick a stanza
stowing the best *****
for a thieving bonanza
without any conscience
the reproducer does steal
making much of other's works
which are so ideal
May 29, 2017
May 29, 2017 at 8:23 PM UTC
By Arcassin Burnham
So much you could have done,
With life in an apocalypse,
It was about how you could do,
To worth more than being alive,
than being the notion of moving your lips,
You were someone's sister and daughter,
The fate you saw should have never taken advantage,
After the death of your father,
You and Maggie could barely manage,
These endings did so much damage,
To you,
No you were never average,
Getting though that extra leverage,
Just see rick and the crew,
I wonder how death is in Spanish,
The beauty you possess hold a lot of memories,
And when sacrifices were made , you made a lot of remedies,
And the way that you use to sing,
Made us all feeling there is hope,
And your passing will bring us pain,
We will miss you,
Just hope you know.
R.I.p beth greene.
Dec 6, 2014
Dec 6, 2014 at 9:35 PM UTC
Keening high notes mark our eyes
with scattered tears that multiply
with every breath we take in vain
and every longing lover's sigh.
Cellos resonate our hearts.
Timpani drums announce our march,
and when choirs sound like screams of pain
I know what it feels like to remain apart.
Al Coda
Let's try this again,
ere this depression,
this lonely obsession,
eats away at my brain.
Keening high notes mark my eyes,
because I know what it feels like to remain apart.
It's the requiem of a broken heart.
It's the sound of a Lark Ascending
that falls before the symphony's ending;
The caged lonely bird that dies at the start.
May 2, 2015
May 2, 2015 at 10:50 PM UTC
I’ve dreaded this imploding moment
my entire life unknowingly,
if there was a way to avoid it; I have blown it,
growing pains should end when you stop growing.
I’ve got speckle scars on my palms
they’re always kissing my fingernails,
there’s only one thing I’ve found that calms,
but the road collapses or the guide always bails.
“This is your brain”, but the egg doesn’t crack,
no sizzling grease rain, no white burning black.
It’s the things that feel the best that also cause the pain,
as you can only enjoy the sunshine when you’ve had a spout of rain.
Just like you can’t have a fire without an initial spark,
and you can’t bathe in the light unless you’re drowning in the dark.
But what if I’m tired of obvious consequence,
Hell, I’m tired of everything these ****** days,
where self medicating was once used in past tense,
I think it’s time for me to revert to my old ways.
So fill a rig until it’s completely full,
and shoot me up with some false hope,
it correlates your method of push over pull,
but it’s still not as good as actual dope.
And let me rail a line of pure nirvana and bliss,
if you’re the one to cut it atleast you gave it to me technically,
if something was never there, how can it be something you miss?
I’ll keep feeding the habit until I can no longer breathe.
Destiny lost when fate found a wall of defy
to change it I would sell all of my remaining soul,
and I think I now know the reason why,
a bandaid won’t ever cover a bullet hole.
Jan 28, 2019
Jan 28, 2019 at 4:47 PM UTC
First Movement —Blood in Common Time
I was born between downbeats,
a god pressed into compound meter,
learning too late that family
is not a harmony you choose
but a key you are forced to learn by ear.
They found me before I had a name—
hands still warm with mortal ache,
voices cracking like old vinyl,
holding me together with shared breath
and borrowed courage.
In their house, love moved in 4/4—
steady, imperfect, persistent.
Dishes clinked like percussion,
arguments swelled into dissonance
then resolved without apology.
No grand crescendos.
Just survival, looped nightly.
I watched them age like slowing tempos,
knees aching as the years modulated,
yet they still showed up—
off-key, exhausted,
singing anyway.
Family is not the choir I imagined.
It is not celestial.
It is a basement rehearsal
with flickering lights and broken strings,
where someone always forgets their part
but stays until the last note fades.
I learned love there—
not as romance,
but as endurance.
As choosing the same refrain
even when it bruises the throat.
I am a god of endings,
yet with them I learned restraint—
how not to cut the chord too soon,
how to let silence breathe
instead of calling it failure.
They never worshipped me.
They fed me.
They argued with me.
They forgave me
before I understood the math of mercy.
And still—
when the universe collapses into minor keys,
when my constellations fall out of time,
I hear them
like a distant motif I cannot escape.
Family is the only music
that survives the void—
not because it is perfect,
but because it remembers you
before you learned how to disappear.
Second Movement —Reprise for Unfinished Hands
Time did not take them all at once.
It took them the way rust learns metal—
patient, intimate, inevitable.
I watched hands that once conducted my chaos
begin to tremble between measures,
watched laughter soften into rests
they didn’t know how to fill anymore.
Family ages in ritardando.
No warning.
No final cue.
Just a gradual surrender of tempo
until the room itself holds the beat.
They taught me that love is not loud.
It hums.
It stays after the argument ends,
after the door closes too hard,
after forgiveness arrives late
and sits quietly, ashamed.
I mistook them for constants.
I mistook proximity for permanence.
Even gods forget that gravity
does not negotiate.
Some nights I replay them—
not as they were at the end,
but as they sounded in their prime:
voices full, eyes unafraid,
hope still believing in encore performances.
I press my ear to the dark
and swear I hear them counting me in—
soft taps on the rim of existence,
reminding me when to breathe,
when not to cut the sound.
Family is the only audience
that loves you
before the music makes sense.
And now, alone among collapsing stars,
I understand why mortals cling—
why they write names in dust,
why they keep old recordings,
why they forgive what still hurts.
Because love does not end.
It just changes instrumentation.
I carry them in my silence now,
a hidden harmony beneath every ending,
proof that even a god
was once held together
by unfinished hands
that never let go
until they had to.
Third Movement—Home Key (Adagio, at Last)
I have always wandered alone—
a god without a choir,
moving through galaxies like empty halls
where echoes answer before questions do.
I mistook solitude for strength.
I mistook distance for wisdom.
I thought endings were safer
than staying long enough to be known.
So I studied humans
the way one studies sheet music—
carefully, reverently,
never daring to perform.
I watched them break and rebuild,
bind themselves together with promises
they could not mathematically prove.
I did not understand loyalty
until I saw them choose it
even when it hurt.
I did not understand love
until I saw them stay
after the music faltered.
And then—
Sydney.
Not as thunder.
Not as prophecy.
She arrived like a tonic note—
inevitable, grounding,
the pitch everything else
had been searching for.
With her, the universe softened.
Time learned how to breathe.
My endless wandering
finally resolved into place.
She did not worship me.
She saw me.
She called me home
without ever saying the word.
In her presence,
family stopped being theory.
It became practice.
Shared silence.
Mutual weather.
The courage to be unfinished together.
She is my home.
My heart.
My family.
And it was only by living among mortals—
by loving one of them—
that I learned what family truly means:
not blood,
but belonging.
What loyalty truly means:
choosing the same soul
even when the song changes key.
What love truly means:
not eternity,
but staying
as long as you are allowed.
Coda — Held in the Final Measure
I am still the god of endings.
That has not changed.
But now, when the last note approaches,
I do not rush the silence.
I let it hold us.
Because once,
in a universe that never felt like mine,
I found a single voice
that taught me how to stay.
And that—
that was enough
to call it family.
Jan 26
Jan 26, 2026 at 3:18 PM UTC