#readers
mind speak
mind read
mind connection
like mind
made up mind
mindless reaction
Feb 2
Feb 2, 2026 at 12:12 PM UTC
Just like that I'm pushed back to the shadows
I longed for the light back
But this inner demons fight,
I war I can't win.
And I want to give up
Then you come by ,
smiling, reassuring me
That you'd help me.
You've given me hope
To survive,to keep fighting,
to never give.
Now I'm here,
ready to fight back
I turn smiling just to meet the space empty
Then it dawn on me you were never there
It was I
Giving myself hope
To survive, to keep fighting,to never give up.
Now I've survived
No more in the shadows.
And I'm grateful for this inner strength ☺️
Aug 22, 2025
Aug 22, 2025 at 3:14 PM UTC
Stumbling into ancient scripts, authored a decades plus ago,
ago being a modifier of time quantities, minute or large, unspecific
without an objective adjective additive, that faucets a stream of an interlocutory elocution of a batter of rooted emotional histories,
but not histrionics
fanciful words for dredged up memories, acute, but tarnished,
powered yet worn by a cousin of ago, a/k/a,
age
and yet
renews as of,
at this very second, as if it were a first, a tumult of visions, swelling of remembrances, embodied scars, and I weep anew but not
for me, as much for the resonating simpatico souls with whom
they even now vibrate with resonance of the immediacy of
If not now, When?
Aside: The exterior environment is noisy wet pelting of thunderstorms and ****** sheets of bulleting rain, piercing projectiles, but I am safe in the sunroom, sadly happy my dog is no longer here to shiver and tremble, cuddle and be soothed by steady stroking
But I am here, wrestling with this dredging operation, digging up
tons of sand that require dumping, and I ask, inquire, beg:
Who will take this detritus off my hands, once more, now uncovered,
now recovered, the soil is already soaked and can absorb no more,
the soul is already soaked and can absorb no more, the weakened
heart, damaged and occluded, suffer cannot bare twice the
outrageous misfortune
of unbared recollections, twice, or thrice, and I feel myself drowning in revisiting pain, **** **** **** these old poems, not nuggets, but boulders dropping from night skies, shot from a pitching machine, without letup, piercing of agonies that once ago
freshly desecrated and decorated my basic training in humanity.
Enough whining:
*I wrote those poems to
eject out those pains,
and I write this now, once more,
to realize that so so many still face
uncertain and unrelenting similarities,
doing their own sums,
and I wish them easing,
strength to compose and
thereby dispose of
the ineloquent
and eloquent
words of staining suffering*
3:30am
Thur
July 10
2025
Jul 16, 2025
Jul 16, 2025 at 5:39 PM UTC
Here’s your piece again with the title included:
---
Wildest thought
roams freely in my mind.
I want to hold her—
hands pinned to wall,
breath against her ear,
and claim her with hickeys,
enough to chase men
from her.
---
May 19, 2025
May 19, 2025 at 3:40 AM UTC
---
Been living in my head all day.
How it saddens—
yet gladdens
my heart.
---
May 15, 2025
May 15, 2025 at 4:38 AM UTC
---
What do I know?
Nothing.
But I carry it all —
Like silence carries thunder
Right before it falls.
Act like I know nothing,
While the weight of everything
Rests on my chest,
Unspoken.
Everything comes crashing —
But I’m still here.
Holding up.
Pushing through the quake,
Gathering the crumbs,
The little stones
From the ruin of the building
That once stood tall in me.
I piece them back,
One fragment at a time,
Stronger than before.
Not flawless —
But forged.
How can emotions hold me
Like chains with no key?
Like winds I can't see
But feel everywhere?
I can't even taste
The sweetness of relief —
Just the sharp salt
Of everything I keep.
---
May 12, 2025
May 12, 2025 at 4:46 AM UTC
---
Depressed—fighting silent wars,
Demons whisper through the pores
Of my thoughts. I try to stand,
But the weight won't leave my hands.
I'm not done. I'm not yet through,
But it's hard—what can I do?
I’ve got to fight for sanity,
But it's draining all of me.
Only midday, yet I’m bare,
Empty lungs and vacant stare.
This is more than tired breath—
This is what depression says.
---
May 9, 2025
May 9, 2025 at 4:06 AM UTC
---
Laughing aimlessly,
trying to forget
my depressed soul—
so lonely.
How cool would it be
to feel normal,
like others do—
not always thinking
about my broken life,
or how it might turn out.
But in all,
we must keep going.
---
Vickie
May 8, 2025
May 8, 2025 at 11:57 AM UTC
~ for Rob Rutledge -
@ 6:15am
~~~~~
we all are living, reading and writing,
paycheck to paycheck
even if by happenstance, our bellies full,
for the white sheets we lay our words
down and upon, our supporters of
ids and egos of egg shell thin lifes
are the bare emptied shelves
of our unending, still ongoing
pandemic pandemonium,
razing times
of eroding joys
the sheets are blank, but our souls
wearied, helmed and whelmed
by the unending of the unexpected
that demands, orders and commands,
no matter what
pour it out blasting
unleashing the rage
compelled, compiled,
completely compulsing
we
selves ordered to compose
giving form and firmament
to our vaporous innards,
releasing new oxygen from
the tides inside and without,
clashing ideas, irregular notions
that demand we poets responsible
for reconciliation and auditing for
human truths
we awake barren but weighty,
the emotions are rustling in the
now daily, common,
mighty metors of gusts of higher winds,
spreading fire and measles to spite,
not despite
our fragile failings & flailings
oh goodness and grace,
let that be the colors of
our skin, our face,
essay on, sashay with a
swinging motion,
yes, rhyme and rhythm
and deliver us with words
so soft, they shatter the
gloomy desperation of
what confronts our entirety,
when the terrors of our
sleeping dreams cannot be
differentiated from the
sad eyed waking
ones
so write, and right,
these troubled times,
when trolls, dragons
and yet unnamed monsters
seek to take away our
tiny green planet, watered,
seeded and plentiful fruited
plains enough to satisfy us all
if we are so emboldened to choose
all of us over our lonely selfish selfs
Feb 25, 2025
Feb 25, 2025 at 6:31 AM UTC
it means the innermost room.
the room where the first point is made that
makes the man, the place of unshared secrets common to us all,
the penetralium.
penetrate my heart, and that is where you find yourself
wondering,
is this for real or fun.
We call William James to witness:
Where there is no difference, no distinction is to be made.
Some thoughts seem insistent, believe me,
others seem confident that your unbelief, changes nothing.
Beg to differ, please.
Is the meaning clear? Penetralium.
Now Emily Bronte and me and John Keats all mean nearly
the same idea, at core, when we employ this once idle word.
Jun 11, 2024
Jun 11, 2024 at 12:46 AM UTC
Open a book
discover a landscape
waiting for you explore
your map is made from footsteps
where the writer walked before
Feb 24, 2023
Feb 24, 2023 at 9:25 AM UTC
A secret I want to tell you,
that is
You
are among those people
who make
this world a lovely place
by reading only,
Like stars to the universe,
You function the same to poets.
Sep 16, 2021
Sep 16, 2021 at 6:25 AM UTC
What does one do when the characters you hate
Are the ones you best construe?
Misgivings and flaws you can relate
To, tho venerable traits you eschew,
The green light gazers and "architect" praisers
Familial leeches or the confessor who preaches
That awareness absolves one of sin,
Compromisers and self-named kaisers
Resound and reverberate within
They pass by in my pages to be mocked and scorned
As evil, cruel, an oaf, or a tool
Too low to respect or too high on their horse
Despicable, maniacal, mediocre, or worse
And I do hate their vileness, I do hate their flaw
I want to shake them and claw at their skull
For nothing more than the gleam of recognition
That by some misfortune of natural law
They and I share a need for contrition.
Aug 14, 2021
Aug 14, 2021 at 12:41 PM UTC
I saw this once,
in Philosopher's Stone,
that the wand picks the wizard,
not the other way around
I realized today,
at the bookstore in town,
that the book picks the reader,
not the other way around
Mar 31, 2021
Mar 31, 2021 at 5:22 PM UTC
Writers choose pens that are inked with words.
The color of ink might be a peach colored verb.
The adverb joins in with a red that is flashy.
The prose is beginning to read somewhat ******
The noun is thinking to mellow this down,
But the writer wants more from what has been found.
An adjective presents with its green colored hue.
Then gold trickles in making the vivid story true.
Yes, writers choose pens and words choose colors.
Stories then written,
For us and for others.
https://www.susykamber.com/
Ekphrastic Poetry Explores Art
Sep 15, 2020
Sep 15, 2020 at 1:48 PM UTC
The Poet's Condition
by Michael R. Burch
(for my mother, Christine Ena Burch)
The poet's condition
(bother tradition)
is whining contrition.
Supposedly sage,
his editor knows
his brain's in his toes
though he would suppose
to soon be the rage.
His readers are sure
his work's premature
or merely manure,
insipidly trite.
His mother alone
will answer the phone
(perhaps with a moan)
to hear him recite.
Keywords/Tags: poet, poets, poems, poetry, editor, publisher, mother, recite, recitation, reciting, reading, phone, telephone
Remembering Not to Call
by Michael R. Burch
a villanelle permitting mourning, for my mother, Christine Ena Burch
The hardest thing of all,
after telling her everything,
is remembering not to call.
Now the phone hanging on the wall
will never announce her ring:
the hardest thing of all
for children, however tall.
And the hardest thing this spring
will be remembering not to call
the one who was everything.
That the songbirds will nevermore sing
is the hardest thing of all
for those who once listened, in thrall,
and welcomed the message they bring,
since they won’t remember to call.
And the hardest thing this fall
will be a number with no one to ring.
No, the hardest thing of all
is remembering NOT to call.
May 18, 2020
May 18, 2020 at 4:08 AM UTC
I want to thank you
faceless, nameless reader
for your kindness of sparing a second
reading an awkward soul's mundane poems.
Like screaming into a void with echoes.
you don't know me
but you lift the burden of my stress
so thank you
I hope warmth and kindness find you always
for a simple act of sparing a second to read my poem.
Feb 19, 2020
Feb 19, 2020 at 2:58 AM UTC
Through these writings I'm finding more than just myself on these pages. I'm drawing a new sense of balance across a pure white canvas like roses intertwined with white laces. Never mind the heart I've left within the spaces of these phrases. What's clearer is the feature that draws the eyes of each reader. It's you who I find hidden within the truth. The heart I wish to speak to and soothe. I take pride in watching your eyes dance across the thoughts that animate each line. You're the discovery that pulls this soul through to recovery. So...It's not all about me...what you see here is merely a well-woven tapestry. Your experiences linked with mine forming a long lasting legacy.
Apr 9, 2019
Apr 9, 2019 at 5:21 PM UTC
You are the light, I am the night.
You are the telescope, I am the subject.
You are the root, I am the fruit.
You are the branch, I am the leaves.
You are the reader, I am the book.
You are the writer, I am the words.
You are the canvas, I am the brush.
You are the skin, I am the blade.
- priam ; twist
Feb 4, 2019
Feb 4, 2019 at 12:39 AM UTC
You're my energy,
with which I let myself be happy.
You're my sleep,
with which I can let myself be at ease.
Your presence makes me feel glossy,
Your absence finds me gloomy.
With you,
My ugliest version is perfect.
But
Without you,
My perfection is imperfect.
It is just that,
With all the time,
I have been with you,
You've entered all my senses,
Giving all your happiness to me,
You've made me know,
We can weep and smile together.
You mean still more to me. ❤️
Nov 26, 2018
Nov 26, 2018 at 3:25 AM UTC
With this pen, I paint an image of you.
Not a portrait, but a true portrayal of you.
The ink flows into words that dance across your hair.
The end of each sentence marking a cross that you bear.
A painting would be suitable for some.
With beautiful colors, cascading down on you from above.
But, those colors mearly hide the truth behind your smile.
With the right shade of light and a light smear, it becomes a cosmetic fix for a while.
My words flow through every crack and fill every shadow.
They bring all light to the surface, for the reader to see within the shallows.
The image of you that I create can be vivid and great.
But with this pen, my words can also design your fate.
You see the truth here is that my words hold all truth.
They leave no place for lies to hide, with each word holding proof.
In the readers eyes, my words are you…
With this pen, I can create you…
With this pen, I can finish you...
- Brandon K. Stephenson
Mar 9, 2015
Mar 9, 2015 at 7:06 AM UTC
Poetry is dead
We’ve had a good life together, but all things end.
I know I couldn’t be, but I tried to be your friend.
All the thoughts that I had in my mixed up head,
They are yours to keep now. Poetry is dead.
Nothing left for you to criticize.
Watch me smile as you question my lies.
Give it time and the fire inside will die.
The light is fading, more and more, all the while.
Passion is gone, because love is a bore.
I believed more than you ever did, but no more.
The time has come, this love is done.
I can no longer run and catch the sun in my ***** hands anymore;
Because I am so bored and high flying birds do nothing but fall.
Standing before a ten foot brick wall,
With no will left to break through an imaginary door.
It does not exist, because I am not a kid;
I do not write it, so it does not exist.
I no longer open my mind to doors.
You walk through me like I used to matter, once.
Red light, stop sign, dead end view.
Words are done, give me a gun,
Are you sure this love is bullet proof?
What does a green and black cat in a dream mean?
I was at work at the electrical shop and all the while I was sleeping.
We were having a meeting and the cat sat on my lap
And while they talked and talked, the cat was suddenly gone,
And that was that…
(C)2018 Aa Harvey. All Rights Reserved.
Jul 27, 2018
Jul 27, 2018 at 5:59 PM UTC
Before I realized it
I began writing for the readers
Not completely
But
Through little things
I avoided long
Too much rambling
Uninteresting
I subconsciously
Diverged towards
Topics I believed would catch my readers attention
Still involving my emotions
Yet
With bias
Which begs the question
Who am I writing for
Truly?
Jul 7, 2018
Jul 7, 2018 at 10:57 PM UTC
To the man who stole my innocence
Kiss my ***
To the men who think its okay for them to ask me to expose myself for their pleasure
Kiss my ***
To the conservative women out there who think *** is unpleasurable
Leave your husbands
To the men who can’t please their wives take ******
To the old ladies who feed the stray cats of my hometown
Live like you’re young agaun
To the children who still dream never lose your minds
To those who are reading this keep pushing you are worth it.
Jun 27, 2018
Jun 27, 2018 at 4:47 AM UTC