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My feet move forward but my mind stays stuck,
I walked this road alone before, I tried to stop picturing you with me, no luck.
Though I know you're long gone, I still see you peripherally,
A shadow seeped into the corner of every memory.

Everyone I've ever loved has a home in me,
I let go in body, but in spirit you're weaved.
A tasty snack, an even better smell,
You're in my air, in this breeze, embodying a perfect  nostalgic hell.

I have new goals, new friends, new skills
From time to time I still think of our thrills,
Sometimes it's quiet reflection, sometimes its tearful and loud,
It's wild how I can still find you in once familiar sounds.

I can't bring you back but how I wish I could, if I could do it all differently believe that I would,
If I found you now would the spark remain the same?
Souls are so fragile, and who knows what time has changed.
I watched an anime recently Frieren: Beyond Jounery's End,
And it just really struck a cord with my soul
A depressive episode
Is a terrible experience
But once you're through
All the chaos and despair
The aftermath can be
Even worse...

Every color fade
Like you're watching life
Through an analog filter
While everyday tasks
Seem like climbing
Mount Everest

But we keep going
We somehow accomplish
Our extraordinary ordinary
Invisible little struggles
Just to get through
Another day

And maybe that's enough
It's been 2 months since my last depressive episode...
We saw waves crash against the shore
an orchestra played
and in black and white films
we knew they were getting laid.

All very quaint

and then when the music stopped
and the sea became calm
arm in arm
they would walk along the beach

in the old days
they had such nice ways
of telling a story.
Maybe if I let people in
I wouldn't be so lonely like this
No one to turn to, no where to cry,
I just lay here and fester while the days go slowly by

I really don't have real friends, none that I can talk to everyday
Almost thirty years of people pleasing and they all watch me decay
It's dramatic, this I know,
But it's where my mind tends to go,
When the lights are low,
And I feel even lower
You are a papercut,
An irritant in this life.
A sting to the tongue
When licking envelopes.
Insane like the crowd
Shouting, "Do it, do it!"
To the one on the ledge.
Your only goal, it seems
To be a harm to others,
Of which you succeed
Often and repeatedly.
Somehow, it makes you
Feel like a superior man.
But only shines a mirror
To your inferior interior.
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

               One Shouldn’t Complain – But I’m Going to Complain


           It will not bother me in the hour of death to reflect that I have
           been “had for a sucker”…but it would be a torment to know
           that (I) had refused even one person in need.

                               -C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady


Do you sometimes feel that you are on call
Twenty-five hours a day, on days you don’t even have
For all the needs and moods and whims and wants
Of clingy people who disapprove of you anyway?

When you come in from work, someone needs a ride
When you wake up at dawn, someone’s battery is dead
Someone needs a ten – could you make it a twenty?
And say, could you take my kid to school today?

For you The Golden Rule is a golden letter -
Still, everyone agrees, you could have helped them better
It was a fine box
a box with flowers on
and not a flower box
more of a pine box
which was fitting for
the occasion.
Words activate something in me
even if I’m just thinking, not writing.
So I soon find myself back at the keyboard.
It seems that my life’s been a series of keyboards.

My motor’s always running—I idle fast.
But I’ve been untying my intellectual shoe-strings recently.
Dissociatively avoiding intellective pursuits,
and embracing entropy (since school ended).
It’s been relaxing—I’ve felt new to my body.

There’ve been happenings lately,
particularly in the nocturnal theater of romantic nights.
My bf Peter’s here—trying to look impressed by an under-grad degree. He’s a pretty good actor—for an amateur.

We’ve been interrogating the richer aspects of love,
testing it’s configurations you might say,
with constant motions and lush indulgences.
We’re savoring this temporary freedom,
devouring it, like mindless carnivores.

Peter lives in Geneva, you see, while I’ve been in New Haven.
If I’ve learned anything, in my ivy league, senior year,
it’s that you can’t cheat closeness with virtuality.
He may have a new job in New Jersey and I'll be in Boston.
I've already calculated a year’s travel expenses from
Logan to Liberty and back 52 times = ~$62k. Make it so.

I'm an enumerator, I count everything
—the left facing croissants on a tray,
the days Peter and I have been apart,
and the modicum of hours we’ve had together.
I’m somewhere on that obsessive-compulsive bell curve,
and I’m a Libra, uncomfortable in an uneven world.
Perhaps there's no shame in this.

I wonder sometimes, when we’re separated, if we’ll still work, when
we’re reunited, and then, like sunlight can suddenly define shadow,
we can see that it does.
That love is more potent than wine.

I dream of things I can’t have—yet,
like the life I’d like to live—someday.
Hey, I’ve something to look forward to.
.
.
Songs for this:
Love Train by The O'Jays
Easy by The Commodores
BLT Merriam Webster word of the day challenge 05/08/25:
Modicum is a formal word that means “a small amount.” (used with *of*
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