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 Oct 2018 touka
Jean Sullivan
Anger
 Oct 2018 touka
Jean Sullivan
Anger is an acid,
which does more damage
on the vessel where it is stored
than on anyone
which it is poured.
Not mine, but a fine line
 Oct 2018 touka
Dennis Willis
Amongst the silly humans
fumbling about
these parts
is

this heap
this leap
this unfairly fashioned
female sweet

who's presence
Burns like the
certain sun








Copyright@2018 Dennis Willis
 Oct 2018 touka
c
Bleeding Words
 Oct 2018 touka
c
When I left
I told myself
I was fine
With being me

But I’m bleeding poetry again,
So am I really myself at all?
 Oct 2018 touka
E Lynch
It arrives
 Oct 2018 touka
E Lynch
It arrives,
Unnoticed, unannounced.

Quiet,
At first.

Slow,
Seeping, dripping.

I put it down to a few stressful weeks.
I carry on.

It unpacks,
Worries, anxieties.

Gently,
For now,

Tiptoes,
Whispers, creaks.

‘It will leave soon’ I think ‘It always does.’
I keep going.

It settles in,
Getting comfortable.

Getting louder,
And louder.

Banging thoughts,
Insomnia.

‘Please don’t be happening again’.
I shuffle along my daily routine.

Claws in,
Insidious.

Screaming,
24/7.

Shame, worthlessness,
Hurt.

‘Please go away’.
I’m barely coping.

Growing roots,
Into my brain and heart.

Blossoming pain,
With every beat.

Emptiness, loneliness,
Abandonment.

Silence, Stillness,
‘I can’t move, I can’t cope.’
 Oct 2018 touka
Chloe
Like an old friend inviting you to come inside.
Familiar. Comforting.
It will grasp you in its arms and hold you close;
And when you're ready to leave, it wont let you go.
You will beg and plead to be happy,
and it will put up a fight.
It will make you think that the only way to escape it is to take your own life.
If you are lucky, you can break free;
and it will sit and watch you from afar.
Calling your name.
Welcoming you back into it's arms.
It will intrude your thoughts.
Make you think you are worthless.
That you're better off dead.
Just keep telling yourself that it's all in your head.
Keep moving. You will get far.
Depression is not who you are.
DISCLAIMER: This is only from my personal point of view and how my battle with depression has been. Even though I am trying to recover, the battle gets very difficult for me sometimes and I have to remind myself that I am not my mental illness. My mental illness does not define me.
 Oct 2018 touka
Nat Lipstadt
Why Men Cry in the Bathroom

For so many reasons.
I will tell you the why.
I think you know,
Or perhaps, you think you know.

Men are always O.K.,
Even when not.

We expect the worse,
Accept the worse,
Nonetheless,
We are forever unprepared.

Wearily, we cry,
In the bathroom, in private,
Lest sighs slip by,
We be unmasked,
Early warring, strife signs warning.

Copious, tho we weep
Before the mirror confessor,
It is relief untethered,
Unbinding of the feet,
An uncounting
Of beaded rosaries,
Of freshly fallen hail stones,
Of night times terrors
By dawn's early edition's light,
and welcomed.

But look for the mute tear,
The eye-cornered drop,
*** tat, that never drops,
But never ceases formation and
Reforming, over and over again,
In a state of perpetuity of reconstitution,

The tippy tear of an iceberg revealing,
And I see you peeping, wondering,
What is beneath


Look for:
the torn worm-eaten edges of spirit,
thrift shop bought, extra worn,
grieving lines neath the eyes,
where the salt has evaporated,
discolored the skin.
worry lines,
under and above,
browed mapped, furrowed boundaries.
the laugh line saga,
where better days are stored,
recalled, as well as recanted,
publicly, privately.

Why just men?

I don't know,
Perhaps,
it is all I know.


Jan 6, 2013
your effusive and lengthy comments are each a poem in their own right.  

Tinkered with June 22, 2013
With a push from Bala,
A serial peeper, thank God!
 Sep 2018 touka
Donall Dempsey
THROUGH VERY SHORT TIMES OF SPACE.

The red door of No.16
North Frederick Street

slams behind him as he
enters into this newly minted

morning
sunshine so thick

one feels like a fish
swimming through it.

Sunlight spangles
a tiny puddle

turning it into a jewel
that only the eye can cherish.

Ahhhh "...the ineluctable
modality of the visible."

He turns right into Upper
Dorset Street

pulling an "Ahhh...howya!"
out of the man who makes the false

teeth!

Then turning left into
Eccles Street

giving the nod to No. 7
Bloom's house in ULYSSES.

Here in its run down state
though still shining in his fictionality.

Soon they will knock it
down and what will the tourists

do then
poor things.

Sure some bright spark
will rescue it from its rubble

and the door will live again
some streets away again.

Ahhh...." the ineluctable
modality of the visible."

I go to Quinn's gym
to get my Molly

(  Philomena her name is )

a cottage cheese with pineapple
on a Weetabix base.

It is a 16th of June
somewhere in the 80's

as I retrace my own earlier
Joycean footsteps.

Rat-a-tat-tat on Bloom's door.
"Are ya there Leopold?"

But the bold Leopold
doesn't answer.

The 16th of
forever I am

"...walking through it
howsomever."

The sun smirks
as such Joyceisms.

"I am, a stride of  a time.

A very short space of time
through very short times of space."

A horse and cart as if
from the past

saunters by
timelessly.

Ah "...the ineluctable
modality of the audible."

My Molly who is really
a Philomena

spoons the deliciousness
of the creamy dessert

into her
and yes she says

mmmm...yes....mmmm

Yes.
 Sep 2018 touka
nitelite
Stretched skies and vast spaces
Erase my name from society,
And mosaics, trigonometry, and fractals beneath
At my feet in time become simple and empty.

So with distance, their powers are diminished,
Finishing off the last busy thoughts to my name.
And the explicitly raw material world disconnects
objects of connection to my world and within this plane.

Shut off from the rest of the world, time wasting,
Tasting the distinct flavor of being in time out,
Awaiting a landing that may or may not be homebound,
Undrowned, within the stream of consciousness’ drought
this one felt really weird but i'm glad i tried something new c:
traveling really helped to clear my mind before school started c:
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