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The Moon and Sun shared Ecliptical Longitudes the night They murdered The child.

Beneath a stelliferous empyrean,
Like Sojourners among the quiescent Twilight, Mother and child, Ventured to meet the woman’s husband, the father of the child.

She, no more than five and ten years Old,
The child, a girl, of only months,
Lay swaddled across the Woman’s
*****, tucked inside a papoose.
A rustic device carefully woven
From wool and hide, in it contained a
Priceless world.

She cooed and clucked in the frigid
Night air.
The sound penetrated the
Spectral calm and was matched only
By the maternal soothing of a muted hum.
Together, they represented the
Heathen form of the wilderness,
The Tempi Madonna among the
Silver and shadow moonbeams that
Glimmered like the dust of diamonds
Across the river’s obsidian sheen.  

Ahead, where the river narrows,
The silence stirred and was broken.
Hushed voices rose from the outer
Dark.
The woman strained to listen.

(British Soldiers, she thought)

Foreign words...

        (Drunken and ravenous)

                         ...slithered from their mouths like Venom. Fear bloomed in the woman’s Chest.
Her heartbeat quickened.

        (Touched by the chill of terror)

Her eyes darted madly about the
Darkness.

         (Alone no longer)

Their  shadows manifested like
Smoke along the tree line.
Their
Features blurred in the darkness.
Their gestures muted.
Like birds of
Prey, they set motionless upon their
Perch along the stony shore.

I say, a man said. Indian children are natural born swimmers,
Capable at birth of swimming great distances.

Utter foolishness, old boy, another opined.

We will need proof of this claim, my good sir, an anonymous voice Quipped from somewhere in the dark.

She let escape from her full lips
The tiniest of shrieks.
Followed immediately
By
Sick
Regret.

(stupid girl, her mother’s voice echoed in the dark.
                             You always were too impulsive.)

Rage consumed her as
She struggled against the current.  
She tried to paddle for deeper
Water as the men broached
The black sheen of the river.

The moments passed by
In jagged surrealism.
There was no sound
When they pitched the woman
And child into the
Frigid abysm.

The splashing of water.
The gasping
For air.
The primal
Grapple and
Grunt of men.
The cold, pungent scent of
Fear and sweat mixed with the
Alcohol-stale air.
The twisting of
Hands that groped about the
Darkness.

         (Her rage now eclipsed by fear)

She inhaled.
Her body, numb.
Her appendages quaked.
Her body fading
As they fall upon her.
Their thick bodies
Blacked out the stars.
Their gaunt faces
Pinched and rucked in the
Moonlight
Reflected the fury, the
Hatred, and
The disgust for what would come next.
Their hands moved across her
Ravenous
Like demons as they
Groped at her small body
Beneath the choppy wash of the
River.

(A hand grazed her thigh and she shrieked in Terror. Another
         gnashed at her buttock. Another fell upon her back. Her mind
         reeled at the possibilities of what would need to come next.)

They tore at her clothing.
Her body jarred about the water as
She writhed against their grasps.
She clawed against the murk.                  
    
         (Escape the horror)

She released the paddle—

(Forever lost to the deep, useless to her now)

Hysterical animalistic thoughts
Trounced off their tongues as they
Laughed at her doom—

        (Like a pack of hyenas)

She kicked at them in nameless
Places.
She thrusted her hand into
The fabric where the child had been
Moments before cooing and clucking. 
Mere moments ago she had sang to the
Babe the same song her
Mother had once sung
To her.

             (she felt nothing where the child had been…)    

She struggled away from them.
Her mind frantic with pain, the cold,
And panic
For the child.
She no longer cared for
Herself, or what they would need to
Do with her body.
Her appendages
Flailed and churned in the dark water.
          
         (A single gasp of air followed by
              The burning inhale of water)

A shrill call to the child—

(a name lost to time)

Her voice cut through their maniacal
Laughter.
It echoed off the water and vanished,
Disappearing entirely
In the outer gloom of the wilderness.

        (like afterthoughts, lost)

She groped relentlessly among the
Water for the child.
The men, near
Frozen, lost interest and returned to
The adjacent shoreline.
It was more ****** that way.
They jeered at her,
Proud of themselves.
          
        (The seething lust of the mindless savage, she thinks)

Their mouths salivate
As they watched
Vicariously.
Her struggle
Became the current
For which she bore.
The impending death of the woman even
More satisfying than the feeling against their flesh of her cunning, wet crease that lies exposed between
Her brown legs.
They watch like wolves
Unable to reach their prey,
Desperate for fresh meat.
Despite the frigid cold,
Their *****, hard,
With the anticipation of death.

The woman clamored among the darkness
She searched for the child.
Heavy fingers fell upon woolen fabric
By chance—

(Hope bloomed in her constricted chest)

Her body finally beginning to seize
Exhaustion permeated
Her mind.
She freed the papoose
From the frozen depths and expelled
The last bit of energy she possessed
To swim to the far side of the shore,
Temporarily out of their reach.

The soldiers,
Quiet now,
Returned to the spectral woods.
They disappeared back down the
Black road from which they came.

She felt the blood as it began to
Return to her appendages, the pins And needles feeling erupting in them.
Her teeth clattered nearly exploding In her mouth.
Her body
Quaked Violently

         (The child, near in her mind, cried)

She reached for it.
Her chest,
Rising and
Falling,
Rapid like the river
As she inhaled the burning,
Frozen air.
The child let loose a cough and  
She clutched it
tighter to her *****.  

(Deny the river its prize)

A stream of consciousness,
Steadily slipped from her lips.

       (A great heathen prayer calling up some
                       Great Spirit
                                As she relentlessly brokered
                                            For a
                                       Life for a life)

The moments passed by like hours.
And the
Great Spirit, with
His wanton lust
For despair, did not manifest that night.

The child fell silent, then still.
The tears came now.
Blurred vision and
Angry sobs.
Darkness consumed entire.

The river flowed by her electric as if
Its lights descended from a place far
Beyond the black taciturn veil of
Night to reflect the merciless
Tragedies among the wretched souls of
The Maine Woods.
Eric W May 2018
Consider me like an afterthought
and I will fade away.
Drifting
kay Feb 2015
when I was born and named a girl, my older brother decided he hated me. there was nothing to it; he wanted a brother because that way he could take out all the anger planted in him by my other siblings, and he got a sister who idolized him because he could make friends.

when I was three my mom, in a moment of clarity, took me to a doctor after I was sick for three weeks. a nurse heard my heart not beating right and sent me to get seen, six months later I was cut open and sewed clean, a hole in my heart to match the one my father had sealed up by modern medicine.

my mom never forgot that "miracle" or that I told the surgery psych that I was getting my broken heart fixed, and that my father was more worried that I'd live in constant agony than that I might die on the table, in mind or body.

at about four and a half, my dad came and took my brother and I out of my mom's care, because he had a home and didn't want us on the streets if he could help it. it never lasted, homelessness was as commonplace as walking to school for us. I didn't know it wasn't okay to live in a car until I was six.

when I was five I missed most of kindergarten because I lived in a shack on a ranch and had lice, and by the time I was back in class, I was the only one who didn't get basic math and couldn't read, but California doesn't hold kids back unless they have to and I got pushed ahead.

in second grade I made my first friend, and a few months into the school year I made another. I was a girl back then and they thought it was cool that I wasn't girly, so I was allowed. one day on the way in from recess I got called fat and ugly to my face the first time, and when I looked for support, I was told it was true.

I was nine the first time I wanted to **** myself. I ran my fingers over the blades of my father's razor and I wondered how much it hurt to bleed out and if blood stained linoleum and how much it would cost to bury me somewhere, and then I closed my eyes and remembered that my father would **** himself if I wasn't there.

by fourth grade I didn't care what was happening, I just wanted to read and sleep. I never did homework and my friends were only interested in me if I knew an answer they didn't. the teachers were convinced I was learning disabled but I was busy growing up two-parts ignored and one part abused, because the day I brought home my best grades was the day my uncle decided that he'd punish me himself.

when I was twelve I was told my dream was STUPID because I was never going to be good enough, not me, to write what people want to read. I was told that, with the grades I was getting I shouldn't even be allowed to do anything but schoolwork, despite my constant requests for help they wouldn't or couldn't give.

the first time I cut myself, I was in seventh grade. I stayed in my room all day and stared at the scabs, and then I scratched them off and did it again. it felt better to be bleeding outside and crying than to be collapsing inside and crying; there was a physical reason to my methods.

when I was fourteen, I was hospitalized for two days after I threatened to **** myself, and the doctors told me the "rosy glow" I always have was rosacea, and that I was depressed but not depressed enough to take up space there, and sent me home.

I wish I could say I stopped cutting then, but I didn't. it got worse when I moved in with my mom again, because she told me everything I secretly was was disgusting, and the two months she kept me medicated lamented over the high price of $50 for her child's sanity and well-being; even if it never worked, the thought that it wasn't even worth trying hurt more than the razorblades she kept around to tease me with.

I was fifteen when I carved HATE into my left forearm.

it took me time to understand that humans smile and the whole time I tried to learn I was ordered to STOP SCOWLING. it took me time to learn how to talk to people, to understand that unless someone starts a conversation I'm probably not wanted and to trick myself into thinking of character flaws as quirks and of the shattered pieces of myself as ripples in a pool instead of the breaks that they were

I learned to hold my face in a smirk and my arms around myself and that if you laugh loud enough no one looks too hard at the scars that keep multiplying, that if you joke often enough the tearstains on your cheeks are normal and the way you bristle when someone puts their hand up too fast or hugs you first will become afterthoughts, just like I taught myself to be and that no one worries about you not sleeping for a week if you memorize interesting things while you're awake.
Debra A Baugh Jan 2013
there is never an afterthought looking
at society as a whole but, in times of
discontent; we look disdain in the eyes
as it dulls humanities open-mindedness,
aghast

yet, we find clemency to overlook abominate
behavior in our fellow humans fore... the storm
will pass in the face of sullen words that may
darken our path; it behooves ethically to consider
their trials and tribulations in life as they unmask;
revealing their torment to mind and soul, giving
thought to their utterances and actions seeking
forgiveness, falling to their knees in repentance

dare we ask of their dilemma or do they shutter
in the wake of humanities wrath; shall we re-consider,
silently ingesting; fact or fiction in a society of closed
minds, refusing to shed their armor, their protection
from the few in the masses with no afterthought,
no understanding as a mind clashes with thoughts
of self-destruction; finding no justification

thinking God has abandoned them to face irrational
minds and behavior; not realizing He's right by their
side walking in their shoes; carrying them through
their burdens, trying to open up their eyes mind and
soul to see hope at salvations door , fore, they have
not been forsaken...the minds a terrible thing to waste
on societies triviality
David Bird Feb 2010
That chap we'd all forgotten
You know, with temper rotten
  Full of fire and flair
  Masses of curly hair
It's furious Ryan Sidebottom.

Graeme Smith is great
If you want someone to hate
  There was a nick
  the lying *****
His presense again does grate

That man has no **** SKILL
And him I'd like to ****
  His ears not SHARPER
  ****** Darly HARPER
I know I need a PILL
.............
I was unhappy with England and Daryl Harper was kind enough to give an extra target at which to vent my spleen. Also, I realised I had better "do" Sidebottom as he wasn't in my initial Upbeat XI.
Frank Corbett Dec 2012
An irrefutable dream,
fulfilled tenfold in the illusion
made imperfect by dreamers' oblivion,
sought by the delver of selves.
Rejection of messengers,
the hive of deluded apathy
that saturates the air thick with the droning of silent hesitation
hexagonal compartmentalization,
sundering your cedar carapace,
which cancerous excess shatters,
and only cracks remain;
the afterthoughts of paradise
and undiscovered paths of depression,
an anxious exodus of life-force.
Part thine red sea,
lest plate tectonics make waves,
that cause molecules of hemoglobin to disperse in light,
the crimson tears of a soul,
sweeter than the lips coveted.
shaffenstein Aug 2014
What I wanted to say
on Saturday as we sat
on the park bench,
chatting idly about
the way crocuses grow,
was I don’t know when
we started to pretend
the cup was still full,
how we didn’t notice
the train jumping the tracks,
if going back was
still an option.

And I thought then,
as we discussed the
profuse bloom of the
crocuses in June,
how very strange it was
for a flower to need the
dark chill of winter
just as much as the sun.
And even though you laughed,
I thought maybe,
if we mixed the good
with the bad,
we’d have a chance
to grow.
Lily Luty Dec 2016
Land bewitched by the breathy ash,
Which falls, unreal, around me,
Subdues my inner ticking
With a single, ringing note

Or the dulled sepia mufflings
Of distorted joy and feeling;
An amber pool of flickering light
and blind entertainment.

The bright, unfocused conversation
Drifting in lazy circles,
Gold silk stretches between us
And smiles become light

My limbs slow, and my mind speeds up.

The fading world echoes these
Surreal rythms, softened life.
Yet panic blinds and cripples me,
As the grey fogs take hold

And the
Snow is gone.
Megan Hundley Sep 2012
Sweetheart
A gritty man said the world is a place to bury
into. take both feet, heels deep in the city.
coughing through thick smoke, he said
you will know that people are as stuck as gum under the rails
I responded: maybe they are taking their time

when I sleep my eyes don't close
I beat dust with my breathing and let my eyelids flutter at the fan
dreams of sailing entice water from my eyes
I reach over and let droplets cascade into your hair
it always smells like coconut and driftwood

Each morning you wake the sheets are chilled and my is suit warm
I breath perfume from your blouse while I type, see your strawberry hair fall
to your eyes. I relish in solving paper stacks and late night empty floors, yet
I crave the sound of our garage door as it closes behind me

I let my hands fall, careful to miss my pockets
sliding them loosely at my side.
I go out into the clean cut gray window gallery, rows of traffic
The man's smoggy afterthoughts say the subway is as beautiful as
his exhales, sleep is only a man who can breathe both above and below a great sea
and suits secretly climb up slides and swing across monkey bars-
each craving their own private happiness.

Sweetheart
all I really want, at the close of each day
is to make you peanut butter truffle cheesecake and lemon drop tea
paint the bathroom cherry red
rub your feet during movie nights
and hold your hand while we sleep
fray narte May 2021
i think i've always known i've loved you — in smudged postscripts in the next page of a letter, in the secrecy of bated breaths, and lonely, sunset afterthoughts. i think i've always known i've loved you, and to be able to say this now without fear or cowardice or equivocation: i've loved you, in past and in present tense — it's magic. it's transcendent. it's freeing, and free-falling, and stepping into the warmest summerlight. it's us — in subversion of poetry, yet just as beautiful, my love — and just as poetic.

i think i've always known i've loved you — in smudged postscripts in the next page of a letter, in the secrecy of bated breaths, and lonely, sunset afterthoughts. i think i've always known i've loved you, and to be able to say this now without fear or cowardice or equivocation: i've loved you, in past and in present tense — it's magic. it's transcendent. it's freeing, and free-falling, and stepping into the warmest summerlight. it's us — in subversion of poetry, yet just as beautiful, my love — and just as poetic.
Caroline Grace Jul 2014
When I am gone from here,
when I have drifted into the ether,
my thoughts will continue.
Long after you've forgotten how to sing,
they will be a song for your eyes.

These are my children
nurtured over breakfasting tables,
coming alive at four a.m.
uneasy in their sleep.

And you will ask:
Is this how she spent her time
behind that pensive gaze?
Was the sky really that naked?

I won't mind if you skip the daisies,
they're not your beau ideal.
I won't mind if you dig deep into their roots,
they are already dead.

Magically you will be lured into me-
Bee for my bell-flower, asking:
Is this how she spent her days,
gazing into the distance?
Planning the future,
silently moving on.
Terry O'Leary Jul 2013
Remember all the Wise Men on their knees upon your yacht?
With orphans on their backs they’d crawled (with others that they’d brought)
Through rubble on the highway sands and residues of Lot.
They came from severed cities selling postcards of your thoughts,
Though offered for a penny piece, not even worth a jot.

They mused
               “How are you feeling? What it is you want, you’ve got.
               The words you scrawl on calling cards: ‘I AM – the others NOT’
               Shun wisdoms of the Seven Seas: ‘Salvation can’t be bought’ –
               Your fathers tried before you and your fathers came to naught.

               “You started out by gelding goats and then by casting lots
               Of bodies to the battlefields, contorted, tight and taut,
               Then wallowed in the wake of trails the dervish devil trots.

               “With marching bands of fatherlands, and drums of Hottentots,
               You lure your legions in harm’s way like giant juggernauts.
               Like Tweedle Dum your minions come (the sober and the sots,
               The troglodytes, barbarians, and mislead patriots,
               The Vandals, Huns and Hannibals and seaport Cypriots,
               The Japanese, the Congolese, Americans and Scots)
               To vanquish bows and arrows, spears and catapulted shots
               Of those who hide in bamboo huts their families, pale, distraught,
               (Their withered wives with dried up *******, their swollen babes in cots)
               Who swoon, engulfed in poison darts and vats of acid hot,
               Consumed by magic mushroom clouds, atomic megawatts.

               “In churches of your deities, your Holy Huguenots,
               Your Imams, Rabbis, Voodoo Dolls and Mitered Lancelots
               Lit wicked kindled candled walls in temples (while we fought)
               (Used pins and needles, magic spells on makeshift mock whatnots)
               And mosques, cathedrals, synagogues have blessed each new onslaught
               With prayers for pipers, puppets, pawns, your rigid armed robots.

               “Upon your knees in golden naves, while peeking through the slots,
               You horded thirty silver pieces, downed a whiskey shot,
               Then crossed yourself and wrapped yourself in furs of ocelots,
               And danced on cleated cloven hoofs in purple polka-dots,
               Then drank His blood from chalice cups with pious afterthoughts.

               “You’ve treated men like mongrels chained, like little flies to swat,
               By doing what you wanted to, instead of what you aught;
               You’ve wiped your nose with dollar bills and paid your serfs with snot,
               But when you’ve paused to preen your pride, you’ve scrubbed a scarlet blot.

               “In ashes of our victories: the diamonds that you sought,
               The crock of gold, the Golden fleece of bogus Argonauts -
               In mirrors of your lifelessness, the evils you begot.
              
               “The haunted winds strew leaves of time across a shallow plot
               Where now, beneath the frozen stones blanched bodies bathe in rot,
               Disintegrate, return to dust to feed Forget-Me-Nots
               Amidst the bane and pits of pain where broken bones lie caught.

               “In fields above the catacombs and tombs of Camelot
               The black and withered tree of Death arises from the spot
               Where oft beneath a bleeding moon you hid your gold in pots
               Embedding doubts neath barren bogs where roots of wormwood squat.

               “While waiting at the river Styx, in twisted time untaught,
               From branches of the gallows tree, in recollections wrought,
               Your soul, a beggar’s blanket, hangs in crazy quilted knots,
               With dangling pearls and diamond studs mid dripping crimson clots
               And gaping wounds with bulging eyes like fouling apricots,
               For wrapped in chains around your throat, the Reaper’s grim garrote.”

Yes, that’s the fate of all your kind, disclosed by Wise Men taught.

But that was, oh, so long ago, by now you have forgot…
the Sandman Feb 2016
Our city
of forts and malls and cinema halls
is littered with the filth of our minds
and our mouths.
We are lost; we are broken;
we are muffled and soft-spoken.
Big city dreams
of art and changing the world
slip away every time we wake up
on grimy beds we’ve never seen before
with soot on our feet, and our hands
bound with ***** hair,
backs bent under the weight of all they’ve left us.
The mud in our fingernails leaves us a mess,
in the shapes of the night's sticky, grubbiness:
a twisted Rorscharch inkblot.
We see it all replaying,
—flickering, as we’re swaying—
on grimy ceilings, where the light bulb
seems askew, and dangling
in an effort to hypnotise us,
left, and right, and left.
Every day is a repeat of the same,
chai glasses, and cigarette butts
with redlipstickstains,
rickshaw rides (exactly thirty rupees steeper
than the rate on the meter),
cat calls that slap in one ear and slip spit out the other.
Our roads are lit by TV-light,
a muted glow that follows us everywhere.
Anonymous blankness follows blankness
and the dark dankness
of grocery stores and souls
that can’t recognise each other anymore.
Silly young things dreaming of bliss,
And new couches, and tiny feet
Instead hear only
"Scrub harder," "Needs more salt," and
"Turn over; come closer; be quiet."
Bare feet in splotchy grass
with brown and green ankles
are replaced by sore heels and push-up bras.
Pens scratching on paper
are replaced by knives slashing skin
and flesh and bones
hitting sharply so that the onomatopoeia
of the shlick-crack-crack
draws out delighted laughter
from blackened, smoky mouths
— and peals of screams that no one hears,
the afterthoughts of parking lots.
The fire of fingers leaves marks, scars;
and their tips grow spikes
into the goosebumps on our arms;
knuckles peel away skin,
everywhere they trace;
and fists clench
around our bodies,
that don’t belong to us.

But we know, one day,
our spring will come
and we will leave the heat on our backs
in dust.
We will go down with Persephone
and take our flowers with us.
We will swim upside down
so we feel like we can fly.
Every rock laying unturned, we know,
has a cosmic universe throbbing
patiently under it.
We will lie, resilient, awake at night,
dreaming cautiously, softly,
so no one hears,
but dreaming nonetheless.
Dreaming of our wings melting
over and over again,
when we get too close to the denied,
day after day, until
we can build wings strong enough
to hold the heat of the sun
inside them, and then propel further.
We’ll show them
— tell your sisters and daughters and friends!—
we’ll show them,
Because your sticks and stones
Can break only our bones
And not our minds. We are
Goddesses, even in a dimly lit bar
Or the back of a fast car,
Just as in temples. We are
Goddesses, whether we whisper in soft tones
Or shout it in the streets,
Whether we lie in strangers' sheets
Or break our backs bending
to ***** feet.
When we're beaten by a spouse,
Or changing tactic,
We'll be both your angels in the house,
And your madwomen in the attic.
S Aug 2018
but i'd miss you
and as cliche as it sounds
i'd cross those oceans even if it meant i dissolved in them somewhere along the way
and thats the sad reality of life
..and as I lay in my bed, some think I may die,
some think I am already dead.
I look to the sky and call on my creator,
'don't bother me now I'll see you much later', and thus as I age
another page turns.
ShirleyB Feb 2016
This year was different
or was it me?

same Trafalgar crowds
link-armed-laughing

pigeons
puff-chested gluttons

different air
full of afterthoughts
I could almost touch
fluttering away
like rusting leaves
on winter's breath

I waited
on our bench
dark cold
stark old
wood

lovers kissed shyly
birds squawked
she laughed
eyes wide
flushed cheeks

Valentine's heart pounding
in a fledgling chest

I wondered if she were me
willing me to remember
hugging him close

I longed
to melt inside her happiness

old words, love and burger-boxes
where do they go?
It's a sad Valentine's poem.
There is a video version of this poem on my blog at

http://videopoems.co/2016/02/05/old-words-love-and-burger-boxes/

tickled pink if you visit!
Karisa Brown Oct 2018
I'm death defyed by you
Your warm skillet
Of afterthoughts
And tongues

The sweet taste of
Teardrop and bubblegum
The *** from the nurses
Cabinet

The stairwell
We had a good habit

Only to lash out
Of many times like this
When I kiss the cheek
Of a monster
And steer down
A road less inhibbited

One we want to know again
One that taste of teardrops and sin
And fun nights of running
With guns down
the streets of Adalie

And once again
We find this bliss
Somewhere between
Heaven and who gives a ****

Where the stars kiss our toes
And wine fills our holes
From valinquished unrelinquesed love

Replaced by sweet current aftertaste
Trying to perfect this flow
Is a hell of who knows
Why must I travel down it again alone
Ma Cherie Oct 2016
I feel the heat
                 upon my neck
                  sparking fire,
                   just a peck
                     liberated,
                 what the heck
                    kissing lips
                 & moving hips
                  touching me
                with fingertips
                hot and steamy,
                 & very dreamy
                   skin of gold
                smooth & creamy
                  inked in breath
                 & just like death,
                come to take me
                 then forsake me
                  words you utter,
                make me shudder                
                     afterthoughts
                 a coming morning
                   & even though
                 ample warning
                  your way inside,
                   you are horning
                      romancing
                of the coming reaper
                   our feelings go,
                   so much deeper
                       not so much,
                 a peaceful sleeper
                      cannot wait
                    or take a pause
                   surgery needed
                     for the cause
                     releasing me,
                    a lovely clause
                    plunging knife,
                      causing pain
                       cutting out
                      the ugly vein
                      taking hold,
                   a waving mane
                      telling me,
                    familiar songs
                     come inside
                 where you belong
                       even if,
               they think it wrong
                darkened hearts,
                 climbing walls
                  a melancholy
                   southern drawl
                   like a wanting
                    Vodoo doll
                 pounding sound
                 inside your chest
                    Am I cursed
                 or am I blessed?
             buried in a loamy nest
              heart arrhythmia
                   taking start
                 take a blade,
                 remove my heart
                    taking love
                    & pull apart
                  I hold it beating
                     in my hands
                   relieved at last
                   of its demands
                   as shadows fall
                   low in the deep
                   of promises
                   we'll never keep
                    curling toes,
                   as blood it seeps
             colored in cascading red
                 of endless nights
                     that I have bled
              laid at last, telluric bed
                   I'm melting slow
                   into your arms
                     dissolved into
                the haunting charms
                       glad that I,
                  just bit the farm
                        lying in
                   a field of wheat
                    covered by
                  my linen sheets
                    a **** place
                    for us to meet
                     & burning
                 in the guilty heat
                I'll write you here,
                 inside my room
                    skies apart,
                 forgiving gloom
                     push aside
                 impending doom
                 or what dangers
                   wait & loom
                 I wait for death
                    & love
                    ...to bloom

                Cherie Nolan © 2016
Idk inspired?! Truly by a lovely muse this Autumn.
Marie-Niege Apr 2014
Why do
you
love
her?
Why don't
you
love
me?
What is
wrong
with
me?
What is
right
with
her?
What is
right
with
her?
What is
right
with
her?
What is
so
*******
right
with
her?
forethoughts?
Brandon Webb Nov 2012
1
light falls in river
to red head
red ear
creating glares
of open spaces
in the shaking airwaves
of tapping shoe
slice paper
slice language
cut
to the core
of this planet
where solid liquids churn

2
repeat, go!
Slice into your  mind
Write the outline
Of everything…
Something…
This…
I think
What is left
when everything
disappears
into
something
that has never been
like a river
born from
phoenix ashes
rushing,
thundering
as it strikes, burns,
chars the unyielding
earth
the imprint hinting
at the boots
of an unwelcome hiker




3
(dreams of a wheelchair bound germophobe)

each finger map
creates a face
a person
with cheeks
rosy and full
like plump
grapes, falling
from the
wispy clouds
into footprints,
memories
of what?
Somewhere
A closed door
Hollow, but solid
Rat bitten,
The vermin, running
*******
Stinking of disease
As they squeak
Dying, in the wine
Spilled
In the corner of
Damp cellar


4
sandpaper chipping
contrasted fingernail
pale on brown
the world turns
upside-down
black powder
pencil shavings
fall
somewhere
without door
hallway, walls
floor, ceiling or..
no, forget it
there is nothing there
a black hole
against
untouched
white wall
her face
eyes hiding
behind
the world
as she runs
into the ocean
holding
fire
she discovered fire
the fire of…
of
nothing
of, afterthoughts
a period falls
from blue line
expanding
to form
entrance
to
sewers
rats with red eyes
stare out
that smell,
their breath…
mouthwash
and air freshener
too expensive
to buy
so
in revenge,
they fall
from an inside
pocket
and again,
you are alone
in a room
full of
eyes, which
lead
below,
above
and the world
turns, twists-
the horizon
becoming
needle-point
as they draw
blood


5
puzzle pieces
fall,
crumble-
sand sound
an ocean wave,
the tapping
of a blind cane
a language
unidentifiably
foreign
each word
burning
outlines
into…
what is an
outline?
A silhouette?
A silhouette…
There is nothing left
But a reminder
Of the past-
Filing cabinet
Names
Arranged
Tab by tab,
Letters go down
Stair-steps
Of and unending
Case
Trumpet case?
Violin case?
Or case of words-
Arranged
Letter by letter
Each starting
With “dear…”
Before they end
With blank edge
Discolored
And bent
A broken
Finger
Outlined by
Screaming recipient
Hotel bellhop
Misplaced bags
In the trash chute
And they slide
Into an unlit
Hole
They have yet
To install lights
And show the
Path
Which,
As a child,
The follower
Will not follow
But
Never will they
Know if their
Footsteps lead
Forward or sideways
Through
Night-forest
Of concrete





6
silence:
the existence
of nothingness.
Nothingness
Permits nothing
To be
Permits no one
To see
And in the shadows of un-being-
A sea
Of crashing waves
Colored
Pine needle
To
Watered blood
Shapes ebbing
And waning
In
And
Out
Of focus-
Giving
The effect
Of loose
Fitting
Glasses on
Someone
Otherwise
Engaged-
A jogger
Whose feet
determine
path and
distance-
whose minds
eye is the
only eye
working
ever.
Glasses
Fall forward
And are
Crunched
Underfoot.
Shadows
go black
again



7
nodding
and sniffling-
balding head
shining back
is field of
water-lapped
river-stones-
singular
tide
washing
them
bare-
gl­are
like
windshield
thrown
at highway
speed
onto
midsummer
tropical
gravel road.
gravel
under boots
sounds
eerily
similar
to hard
cereal
in
slime-chunk
milk,
each
grain,
or chunk
is its own
universe
ecosystem-
unaware
of the
rotten
space
in which
it is implanted-
a bullet
into a
tree-
not
piercing
but
remaining
forgotten
to rust
into
non-being
until
only rust
fragments
remain,
to be
scattered
and re-grow
forming new
shapes,
abstract
shapes
tilting
and
twisting
above,
below-
be­low
blue
boundaries
hinting at…
leftover
unwanted
but
envied
in form
by
lesser
beings,
bottom
dweller,
memories
of
ancient times


8
administration
location,
power
fall, topple
off, of your tower
into- elsewhere
but- where?
Does the world
Offer a choice
Of where we
Disappear
To?
Is so
That is
The only
Choice
Given-
Truly given
Upon inspection
Of society
And life,
The structure
Of the life
Of the living
And
The dead,
The dead
The living
Are dying
And in time-
Become-
The dead,
In piles
Of dusty
Tomes-
The past
Was once
Called now,
And now,
The future-
In only
The tick time
Of a second-
Now, will
Be long past-
In two,
The future
Also will be
Past.
Time has
Shifting names
Which change
Faster than
It passes




©Brandon Webb
2012
this is stream of thought from last year, an experiment of mine; creating my own world instead of interpreting that around me
Megan Hundley Jun 2012
It was the mouths fault
smacking together, flicking sticky
reality onto her collarbone.
Squishing perfectly whole beginnings into soggy afterthoughts
It could have left them alone, yet
silence is failure, and success was all it could talk about

Never reach for a door closing if you
can't handle the pain.
Pinched knuckles inflamed with blame,
stiffly folding in quiet fury
Nails are diva's
rallying strikes when ignored, scratching at patience
always needing attention
All active in the community: grabbing and giving, holding and pushing,
killing and mending, building and breaking.
Thing is, fingerprints only matter in crimes

It's losing pressure. Deflating, collapsing.
Rubbing is hopeless, exams are lazy, blinking is irritating. No focus
Look at her-
                         Can't.
Look her in the eyes-
                         Won't
No focus, no focus, ......no .....fo....
                                      {bare shoulders
                             fingers intertwined
                                              soft...­lips..
                                   broken skateboards
                                              midnigh­t bench talk
                                         sun burns
                                    you're it
                                           you're it
                                                            yo­u're}

                                                          ­                     Not.
Reading makes it worse, table charts said it would continue deteriorating. Always blurred, always squinting.
So much depending, so much waiting. so much, so much, ......so....muc
                                                 ­      {desire
                                                        ­           promises
                                                        ­    hope
                                                       backseat lounging
                                                                ­   hours of music
                                                   October coffee
                                                          ­      I'm ready
                                                           ­             I'm ready
                                                           ­                                    I'm}

                                                           ­                                                    Not.




Never. Stop.
Don't quit, don't go easy.
Committed- following through, following these vines. These promises
Don't underestimate- prove it.
Every day, every day, every.single.day.
                                 but.
                                please.
                   ­              I am,
                                     hurting
                                I trust
                                    and
                   ­             I'm failed
                           I won't let you down
                                   but.
                          Don't take me for granted
                          I am strong, I am strong, I am strong
                                   but.
                          I have moments

Mouth's lie, hand's reach, eye's fade, heart's ache.
Be more than the weakness
I am only human
           but.
I want more
**his mouth, his hands, his eyes, my heart**
E l l e Jun 2018
Climbed down from the pedestal,

Because I realized nobody wants to be up here-

Worked so hard for it....

But then again nobody knows what they sign up for.

My white gown is stained-

How could anyone do such a thing?

I guess nobody remembers the values of accusation
Because nobody was charged...

Sitting on the ground-
Warm like the memories I instill in this town;
I'll eat the fruits to remember what it all tasted like.
A taste of my own medicine.

It's kind of ironic how one thing can be taken for another

Maybe the pedestal after all was a pit of thorns..

Luckily I didn't stay long enough to get cut..

At the same time, the ground here is giving me a bruise!

I'll have to tell someone that one day.
Maybe being at the top isn't always the best view for the mind.. Maybe being grounded is what we all need.
gesine Oct 2012
everlasting awe
a dance when sighted across the street
goodness, trust, virginity
stars and heights and depths
breathless, breathtaking words
late night is the only time to talk
smilekissing
he sun she moon one earth
the ******* of thoughts
the licking of dreams
youth, old age, immortality
afterthoughts of bliss
pragya santani May 2021
Free flowing thoughts
Moonlit sky
Dinner by the beach
Hands reaching
Far across my thighs
Long summer evenings
That turn to dawn
Empty wine bottles
A seat in a lawn
We sat there in silence
Side by side
Hand in hand
Watching the Crimson sunrise
With coffee afterthoughts
A slight hesitation
Before our lips lock
Third Eye Candy Jan 2013
in the dark honey, the knees of bees and afterthoughts coagulate in burnt gold and warm blood.
the air is made of dander and random. the dog barks a virus you check for fleas. and the north star -
is violent. in the blemish of symmetry, the ruling class of ravens, flock to your discord,
they adorn your wretched gorgeous. they engorge the zenith
of your curse.
javelin happy, the stab behind the eye that sees too deep is delight's dagger !
the imminent ruse of a persistent Truth and an eternal Lie.
the  Macbeth in your chicken soup.

and the Soup.
Scar Aug 2016
Where did you go?
With flaxen hair, all whirling and twirling
You escaped through meteor showers
And we got tangled in afterlife moon rocks

We lie in familiar basements and discuss
An ink on skin memorial for the best friend you gifted us
An eternal mother's day playing to the sound of
Loose change in my pockets

Still, no one cares to ask if Rachel can breathe
We continue through the motions
Sailing over your hometown on glass shard boats
The ice is getting thinner

And I must wonder if we will all erupt into
An overflow of you
Or sink into the sludge
Not quite knowing what to do

We keep faith in sure hands
The secrets lying at the bottom of the bottle
Cigarettes on the overpass
The promise of August and Everything After -

A freelance writer with knotted blonde hair, coming through in stereo
Kiernan Norman Nov 2014
The past few weeks have been mounted in hot pink and mahogany.
Hot breath; sticky and drooling,
dogs up the glass and
I resist the urge to
outline my name in a one-finger, window-fade, Arabic script-
I can’t keep my giddy heat
and roasting hands to myself.

My thoughts pirouette a coconut,
slippery-sweet meld of dazed concentration while I leprechaun-leap over cool evening sidewalks
and tip-toe in stairwells for that
last fevered kiss
as the heavy door
crashes shut and we're still alone.

The hole in my boot sole
grows with each step;
I feel the full magnitude of
each drying leaf as I go forth and pulverize.
I don’t think I can help it-
The leaves fall and the fall
falls and I might be falling.

These days have been oil paint
thick and layered inches high
on expensive canvas, on the
cardboard I've plucked from the
dumpster at work.
The smell of thin trees
and bright fields;
combing out and
rinsing off
and tucking
themselves in for winter naps,
cradle the breeze and
bellow a
proud conquest with its sweet,
smoky hum.

My own long, dark,
hair is lured up and around by grinning wind.
Earth waltzes with the bits of me I've let grow.
Hair is dead, right?
(and the longer the deader.)
In my long, soft, dead parts I am waving free-
finally free and laughing.

I’m laughing because nothing is tangled;
nothing stings yet.
I’m laughing because if--
When,
this ride crashes
I can't imagine how I'll
survive the wreck.

Because I'm caught on the details;
the tiny everythings that get me.
The little choices made
(but so sweet-muted,
they're not printed in the script.)
They are dull-pencil-scribbled in later
by an actor who’s fading fast into
a calmy, balmy, dreamless sleep.

Still, they're the bloom-blushing afterthoughts that catch me
off guard and whip my guts up
warm and oozing.
They stick in my throat horizontally,  clawing and breached.

I acknowledge them softly
and play like this easy
kindness is not
completely foreign to me.
I’m carefully absorbing.
I'm mutely, blinking back
slow-welling eyes
because this feeling of unworthy
coiled deep in my bones
is too rooted, too tangled,
too stutter seep quaking
through my marrow
to just shake off.

But I am trying.
I’m quietly,
radically,
hiking a mountain to
meet him halfway-
desperately hoping he won’t *****.

I’m dizzied and melting to the throwaway habits I’m
beginning to crave.
How his fingers pray the rosary
on each bead of
my cracking knuckles.
How he kisses my head when I'm looking at my phone and thinks I don’t notice.
How lately, the sleepy way
I let my posture disintegrate into his body,
(a place that's sun-stained and velvet.
a place that's formed and transformed endlessly across decades and continents)
feels like graceful landing after so much turbulence.

I've met moments of calm locked in limbs and new security in the shapes my fingers find tangling with his.

Even glances can anchor me. A sip of his eyes-
eyes that have shown him so much of the world;
the bright corners and ***** streets,
the graveyards and parades,
the sidewalk saints and stumbling souls,
a world he knows can be beautiful and horrific
and both and neither all at once-
those glances manage to steady the sway
of my tangled body and droop-heavy soul.

and okay, I don't see poetry in
the way I swing myself up;
arm, leg, arm, leg,
into the front seat of his truck while
he closes the door behind me-
(my own faded muscles stopped atrophying
months before I could even remember his name,
but calves and obliques still recall the sensation
of ripping, pinching and splitting
like raw cotton in the presence
of heavy metals and four wheel drive.)

Still, there is something
almost too easy to weave
into words about the
smell of soap on his chest even
late at night and how there-
right there,
is a small island
to double over in laughter
or sigh your stress aloud.
With the tiny details
and subtle quirks I’m
shorthand jotting and jacket-pocket folding
it'd be too easy
to fill a notebook.

And though I'm still treading lightly,
I think if you asked me
to describe the word ‘worth’
right now,
I’d probably tell you about the way
I can pull away, look up and smile during a kiss
and find his eyes already in mine,
smiling back.
Elaenor Aisling Jul 2014
I am queen of afterthoughts,
rarely of fore.
Especially not in matters of hearts.
I am dry heaving sighs,
with leaden guilt
and what ifs.
**** them.
**** me.
I want to curl up and die. I can't stand to hurt people. I didn't mean to, just stupid me didn't think things through. *******. I don't know. I just wanted to do the right thing.
Samuel Feb 2013
Razor-tipped pencils that surgically
               slice patterned pages
Soft brushes from fingertips like afterthoughts
                    puddling atop pillows
M Sargent Jun 2014
Rain drops racing down the train window,
For just that split second time is irrelevant,
Life is on hold,
We forget what's going on,
Sounds become just a background,
Problems are afterthoughts,
All that matters is which drop will finish first,
Because we are forced to think,
Which drop do I want to be?
The one that finishes first,
Trim and slick,
Or the slow one gaining water,
Majestic and thick.
For that split second,
A little rain is all that matters.
Ashley Thao Dam Feb 2018
I've been called many things
Unsavoury and unkind
Words that strangle what little hope
I've stored in myself
What little light
That's been left
A flame so heavily guarded
Yet barely burning

I've been called many things
Crazy
Sometimes I crumble within myself
Forgetting where I am
Who I am
Who I've been
Who I could be
Wishing I could just spotaneously
Not be

I've been called many things
Emotionally draining
How is it that I feel everything?
And then nothing?
Instantaneously

I just want to feel again
I just want to feel real
I just want to remember that
I'm more than these names
These things
These afterthoughts that
For some reason
You decided to impart on me

I've been called many things
Things I didn't want
Things that aren't me
Things that barely touch the idea of me

Among these things
These verbal illustrations of my personhood
Disconnect
Alienating and cold
Misconstrued and yet so sharp
Ambiguous yet so sure

I have been called many things
But never yours
Jason Adriel Feb 2020
perhaps
i should have
seen the obvious:
the margins between
hope, fear, illusion
and the bitter truth
and how i
shouldn't have
mixed them all
into a blur
to satiate
my innermost
desire.

You.
Realization is always tough...

— The End —