Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Claire Waters Aug 2013
i don't think that you know
what privacy means to me
i'm staying drunk in the quiet
of my safe liturgy

of thoughts because concepts
are honest and curious
they aren't gonna judge me
and that's what i need
some company with peace

but inside them i'm violent
i'm rough to the touch
i try to be silent
so i'm not caught searching
the corners for love

when every house party is about
"that idiot who said" or her "stupid makeup"
so i'm not sure where i expect to find
any sort of understanding
in these social engagements
i don't see meaning in
ripping down others just for being
in the same room as you
and minding their own business
it always makes me uncomfortable
i don't see the usefulness knowing it's
easier to call someone else useless
when you feel so

and draw your own conclusions
than admit you don't really know
it's easier to stab the surface
than to learn someone's breathing well enough
to understand the way their blood flows
it's easier to make a snarky comment on their clothes
than to sit down and get to know them

so admit it
our darkness thrives on judgement
and you will feel so much better
because once you let go of them
emotions flow through you like weather
extend your arms for once
and realize that every single person you know
knows something you don't understand yet
instead of barraging them with
the ways you wish you were better

you thought i was going
to say they weren't you

because everyone's partial
to weak knees and weak ankles
it's easier to strike the person
who opens their arms to you
even once is enough
to break them because you justify
they allow themselves to be
so breakable

and though i feel these things to be true in my gut
and want to validate every single person
i can see needs the love
i'm in need of my own breed of saving
and i'm sick of this negative engaging

i just don't have any more chances
to be so kind
as to offer you
a target
M Clement Sep 2013
There's an alarm going off;
it's not a siren, mind you,
but an alarm.

The very same buzzing and
beeping that oft
assaults our dreams
and sleep-havens;
bringing us back to the
dreary sunlight of day,
or the last few moments of night
clinging to what life it has left.

This alarm, of which I speak to
you now, is continuing.
The continuous assault on my
eardrums throughout everything
I do.
I walk through the leaves that begin
to grace the ground, saying "hello" to
the dirt that it's been so far from for so
long.
Within the sanctity of the classroom,
where professors grace students
with life lessons and years of experience
or lack thereof.
Within my own home where I continue
to make a meal for the evening, desiring
not to go hungry.

Continuous.

I hear it everywhere, and
as I reach for the button, to stop
this incessant noise
barraging my thoughts
and ears, I realize, I'm awake,
and I've been awake all this time.
There is no off button for this alarm.

What is it reminding me of?
What do I need to awake from?
I'm not sure I'm satisfied with how this turned out. May come back to it.
Oli Mortham Sep 2014
How can I search for Truth in a world that's built on lies?
A lid resting heavily over a once glistening eye:
Shielding, masking, concealing
What last droplets of wonderment are trickling and asking to pierce the concrete ceiling...
...Instead I cynically note its off and aging colour...
"Yellow: Choice Number 4!"
Relays my proud voice, with a more
Assertive tone; I, the host...
Discussing aesthetics to collectively pathetically awe-struck guests, over specially served toast...
"Yes, I'm an impulse shopper, so it seems"...
...(Well, according to the ******...something article I read in my monthly subscribed to magazine)...
Happily consumed by consumerism...
But still unable to consummate
Anything really, Truly sacred...
...Unless I'm exactly half naked...
(That includes wearing Calvin Klein SoCKs)
And crucially still sporting my brand-named top,
Designed for tight fit to cull any ounce of shoddiness,
Whilst giving the impression of an existing healthy body, no less,
And then, due to superficial attraction,
An end will occur, hopefully, of distraction,
From the absence of my once healthy mind...
...but that never happens...
So then, how can I search for Truth when the bricks of my own guise
Only resonate deceit, sealed to create a facade of falseness?
Sure, I can articulate,
Wielding words like swords,
Pure, planned alliteration...
Baffling the bemused by barraging both beautiful and brutally belligerent brilliance...
But...
Showmanship is the tool of the restlessly minded,
Those who search the hardest for the key to authenticity but yet cannot find it,
And then paint their walls with vibrancy set out
By observing the mass hysteria of the layman,
Because nobody wants, Truly, to be classed as grey...
Do they?
Or it may
Be that that is exactly what we're all tactfully missing:
The fact that appearance, in some sense,
Is reliant on one sense,
And thus, in defiance of what we're meant
To wholeheartedly believe,
It is, in its very nature, subjective.
We were not designed
With a panel of judges judgmentally judging what pair of shoes should be selected,
Our mind's
Blueprint was principally a highly charged and thirstily receptive
Open book, with no printed prose,
No preordained guide to "Truth",
Merely a transient vessel:
A glowing red beacon of vulnerability in glorious, continuous distress,
Uncompromisingly afraid of its own ignorance, which, through an act of defense,
Strives to follow other's paths,
In arbitrary hopefulness that someone knows the meaning of it,
The answer to it,
The code that locks it,
The spark that drives it,
So in our fearful and ever conscious lives it,
Makes us want to hide behind this
Fantasy of an apex being,
Where our car seats vibrate and our carpet is soothing,
So that we seem to have a clue of what we're doing,
And instead of resting our ego-bulging heads and choosing to accept,
That we're just not quite, you know, as adept
As we might have thought, we choose to reject and neglect
Our opportunities
In communicative
And interactive discoveries of the beauty
That goes beyond and lies behind that neatly fashioned fringe,
Within.
Love is humble as we are stupid:
We'll see that one wise man has cottoned on, and knows
That even though
He hates that smell that his wife
Adores, he incessantly sprays it lovingly from a canister for the rest of his life.
But he'll never say a word,
Because, from what he's heard,
Truth no longer exists:
In fact, as soon as the larynx allowed the habit of opinions to persist,
It became a frozen entity,
A vague depiction of pure, untampered quality...
A poem I wrote 7 years ago on the back of an envelope in terrible handwriting when I was struggling to sleep.
Elaine M Smith Sep 2012
I don't know what to feel,
how to feel.

Too many emotions are barraging me,
and it's overwhelming me.

Something akin to love,
maybe closer to friendship than anything...

Desperation for my wants.

It seems pitiful, and admitting it just
makes it even more gruesome.

But looking past the gruesomeness,
there is truth. Honesty.

A lack of denial...

I have to face it.
Andrew Rueter May 2020
I found my call of duty
inside your warzone
after leaving my pressurized cabin
and dropping in randomly
I started collecting money and items as fast as I could
to match the competition’s capability.

Everyone’s an enemy, everyone is hostile
I fear them and the weapons they’ll use on me
barraging me with dragon’s breath shotgun blasts
to put me down quickly
or silently sniping from far away
so I can’t defend myself.

The only way I can survive is staying in your circle
which keeps moving away from me
so I sprint through the fields and forests
making my way through already looted homes
hoping no one takes advantage of my vulnerability
racing to your circle before I suffocate.

Once I finally get to your circle I realize it’s too small to hide in
because everyone is so close together
I must engage them before they attack me
but they all lay siege to the small shack I’m trapped in
lobbing grenades and firing at me
I can’t even poke my head out.

So I stay inside
donning my gas mask
letting the circle overtake them and pick them off one by one
as I wait inside anxiously worried someone may try to join me
but eventually they’re all gone and I’m the only one left
and in that moment I have achieved victory royale.
Varshini Mar 2016
We meet, I obsess
I wait for a text, end up barraging them with more
I overthink myself into a crazy stupor
The cycle continues on.

I tell myself to stop
It's one more thing for me to think about
It's one more situation to waste my time
The cycle pauses, then restarts again.

Everyone knows about it because I tell them
I stop myself with metaphorical duct tape
I rip it off and tell everyone anyway
The cycle has no ending once it has begun.

This is the mistake I constantly make
I feel clingy, even though I probably am not
(But I am, so it is fruitless)
The cycle rotates in the backburner, a solid reminder.

It’s not a crush, it’s just a shortlived fascination
I declare my love, as I do for countless others
Masochism is apparently inbuilt
The cycle goes on, an infinite loop of repeated thoughts.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2020
guilty until proven innocent...
tomaš (sh) komenda...
   25 years and hardly...
a shawshank redemption story...

but...
   that... the anglo-saxon
pre-:   ordained... supposition...
      assumption...

    innocent: until proven guilty...
last time i checked...
it's nearly impossible...
man is no architect of gravity...
as a law...
   a killing is a ******
with a thought invoked...
   but by chance: it's a homicide...

innocent: until proven guilty vs.
guilty until proven innocent...
protestants vs. catholics...
otherwise...
       some injustice happens...
but it's like a ***** lottery...
then the whole system: kneels...

at least there's a story of redemption...
beside: death the sole redeemer...
given some magnitude
of the golgotha crucifix...
dear mother death...
         i pray to you...
   because... i see a puppet of
a crucifix... even though...
        
              innocent until proven guilty...
how much of wording
is...        would you ever posit
behaviourism against ontology?
                       a meat-grinder of ψ-ops...

it's not unfailable, this motto anglo-saxon
motto: innocent until proven guilty...
driving on the left side of the road...
whereby... coming to a roundabout
you experience... clockwise "gravity"...
well! pitch-perfect!

innocent until proven guilty
will make you dream and dare...
               there's the capacity to break /
if not merely to strain the law...
                   because? isn't it obvious?
i abhor the nuance sensation
of the presumption of innocence...
a lie is so cheap: an unbearable lightness
of being (to borrow from miland kundera)...

innocent until proven guilty...
a filter: for not of all transgressions...
but the obvious ones...
        innocent until proven guilty...
  the act itself is proof...
             witness...
    but the reverse...
guilty until proven innocent...
is it as primitive thinking as:
protestantism is the dawn...
catholicism is an auburn sunset...
and orthodoxy is... a prized china set piece:
touch at one's peril!

wouldn't: guilty until proven innocent...
work as a deterrent
         that... somehow...
                    the transgression of law
will always be proven...
        to be: aligned to the shackles of
original sin...
              it's not like: having the stomach to...
digest: innocent until proven guilty...
you could play the gamble...
and hope for the thrill of: getting away with
it...

jack the ripper... the zodiac killer...
the man who discovered beer (ref. plato)...
                            and... albert hofmann...
i sometimes wish for the experience
of the latter's "igloo"...

                      couldn't it be a deterrent:
guilty until proven innocent...
perhaps... given the serial killer's glee of
compounding a series of events...
running with the grand pillar of thought
made concrete and non-experimental...
hell! let's line them up!
count to: neun­und­neunzigluftballons...

come to think of it...
can man pass... not... man cannot attain
the capacity to pass a universal law:
to create a universal law...
   he can find a universal law...
but he can never write one...

the knowledge of good: and - evil...
       because it's subjectivity...
            always will be...
there can be an objective law concerning theft...
an objective law concerning killing...
but... just because it's objectively refined...
and escapes the perils of fiasco subjectivity...
it's still not a universal delight...
it's not: water boils at 100°C!
                                 gravity etc.

i can't comprehend the notion:
to drink one's sorrows away;
whenever i drink... i invite my sorrows...
and whenever i have an inkling
of being alone - there's the seance
of shadow clinging...


otherwise the go to painting;
     a drab cold nearing autumn evening...
and... rain droplets on a glass...
imitation of a george seurat...
or it's not necessarily music...
but it's a polyphony of rain teasing
leaves and a wish for tin roofs...
always that wish for tin roofs...

            will pedagogy some day...
address the need to...
      manifest itself in... a study of...
psychopathy?
    it's not somehow desirable to
know the capital of mongolia...
or whether or not albania was
incorporated into the mini-soviet
project of yugoslavia...
      but somehow knowing
whether your friend is a psychopath...
i.e. whether he has a body...
most probably thought parameters...
but... he fakes the nuisance of
a god and therefore...
is incapable of a constraint of a soul...
i was naive too many a times...
but the last time i was naive:
i became exceptional in my reaction
to it... this debilitating aura
of a robinson crusoe "syndrome"...

       just please ask for a pretty face
with an explanation of:
"stop living in the past"...
   well... so much so...
that it is in the past...
therefore: i see no future barraging
in with a me... and the same mistake...
it's not nostalgia...
it's a debilitating learning tool...
         the damage has been to grevious
that... at knife-point...
licking metal...
is enough to stun me into a freeze...
but at the same time...
conjure up a mythological serpent
ordeal... loss of eyelids...
perpetual brain-frying insomnia...
  
          the psychopath the lizard
some poor schmuck a variant of petty mammal...
it's almost like mammalian predatory
feasibility doesn't exist...
                     but when it does:

this grand celebration of the strong
preying on the weak in herds...
the grandiosity of the lion
the lean chop of diatribe herd...
unlike a feasted upon...
domestication privy...
               quote: misquote...
islam is an ideology that abhors
the concept of pork...

but... is quiet willing to pursue
passing a white flag of bite when it's
served a... caron-nibbler...
a pristine choice of protein via
a crab...
           or a lobster...
             "we" have yet to make
concessions of staging our coincidental
loot of time...

mine is... from the backward prime of
eastern "europe"...
               is romania a "south"?
       is greece not... western?
                  innocent until proven guilty
vs. guilty until proven innocent...

i am not... going to argue...
i'm not convinced by either side...
it's not like i can be: unconvinced by
a technicality of thorough greasing and
pristine fail-safe mechanisation
of replica example of a gravity churn...

but there can: if there isn't anything
concerning a must... of a debate...
that the maximus prime stage of putting
theory into practice can be...
somehow... upstaged...
      
       that drinking with others has become near
impossible... red wine aids my digestion
of facets...


            it has to be some welcome:
a fragrancy of innocence...
peppered with a lineage of redemption...
but that's hardly enough...
nor / or is... creasing paper...
before the grand oration of the kite
and a democracy of the wind...

gulf wind zero! zephyr guiding a dozen
zeppelins! my stomach churns...
a prospect of butter and -y....
lame... hand at the -shake....
               all details are somehow...
a becoming of the intra-personal...
              the devil becomes:
leftover detail.... some variation comes
to mind: deus ex machina "contra"
**** in machina...

that man is always a contest
between gods...
                 and the... man an architect...
the bridge than swallows
the canyons, whole...
with a passing that's... a nonchalance...
the pristine effort lined up
beside... a jurisprudence...
to guide a bridge across a canyon
or over a river...
but to somehow...
           grease an objectivity vs. subjectivity
quality, demand....
and express it in a quantity of
the universal...
              
thesaurus rex:
objectivity is quantitative...
subjectivity is qualitative...
                  
    a... rather than the: pursuit of "happiness"...
**** out the sun-worshippers...
   arab-cake and kale party...
           bishopric of lost nuance...
this fake before the amnesia
and some variation of the viking invasion...
    my happy-sorrow...
  my sorrowful-glad...
                             the double-thread
of hugging silver birch trees
for ulterior concepts of: the welcome project!

come 1am of a today...
and what's coming to a tow with
a tomorrow...
i must be hindering the nocturnal
markets of fresh fish of Billingsgate
from a 5am prized banquet of a yawn.
Guido Orifice Dec 2016
I did love you once.
-Hamlet

Light floods the road
invisible from the pavement
turned into beds of beggars
begging for the godly hope.

People plainly pass
perennial plot of pretensions.

Peace tonight is fragile,
so fragile that car honks fade,
so fragile that tire screeching
dies in the night.

Above are stars eaten by smoke.

The father and daughter
shared the night
with the blanket of stars
made of dusts.

(The night so fragile can’t hide their stomachs growling)

1.

Clarita, 24
let the night pass
under the warmth of coffee
and her broken press
whose myth died years back
but never in memories.

2.

(An old woman passed by with her cane fiddling the asphalt. I can hear her wishes. She wants to die.)

3.

It was Clarita who smiled
to all foolishness of childhood. True.
It was her way to ****
the marrow of life
knowing Thoreau or not,
from the threads of forgetting
& horrors of remembering.

4.

Her communique
falls flat from what she supposed to say
for she can’t utter a syllable
so ironic that she just tend to pretend
she never remembers
she never cares
for all what she need
is to let things reveal themselves
so apocalyptic that even herself
don’t mind when.

5.

(Lovers passed by with their hands swaying, either by gravity or by air)

6.

Her mother tried her luck to pick cherry blossoms.
Her father stole her past.

Clarita killed them in the vignette of her neurons.

7.

If only she can turn back in time
and live like her diary’s wishes
Clarita, whose heart pierced by a chance lost
will redeem what she has to,
& sleep like a child in a dusty bed
where the blanket hide her
& her universe.

8.

The phone rings. She can’t ignore the line.

9.

She hates the feeling of falling in love
like how she hears the phone ringing
in the middle of the night
where insomniacs finally sleep
from a distant snoring of customers
barraging like thunders of senseless
predicaments and tongue-tied promises.

10.

Tonight, Clarita made a promise.

She will let the night pass.
Eric Noble Feb 2018
I'm going to bed fully clothed, which happens from time to time
Not because it's cold, or I need to leave in a rush later
Or because I even think it's that good of an idea
It just feels like too much tonight
To even take off my pants

There's a spot in here for you... if you don't mind the denim jeans
Or the blankets, set aspin, like loads of clothes in the washer
Or arms and legs barraging you in limbo 'tween wake and sleep
A brain too restless and concerned
Can't lay still to save your night
John Prophet Mar 2018
Modernity.
Technology.
Racing
head long
helter-skelter
into the
future.
Like a
runaway train
speeding
out of
control.
Historic
societal norms
breaking apart.
What to
think,
what to
believe
losing
resonance.
Explosion of
information
barraging our
senses.
Overload.
Current institutions
clueless
of what’s coming.
Acceleration.
Biotechnology.
Information technology.
Nanotechnology.
Artificial intelligence.
All converging
on top of
our heads!
More change
coming
in the next
twenty years
than seen
in the
last three hundred.
What to
do?
How to
cope?
For now
at lest,
step away.
Relax,
visit nature.
Walk in the
woods.
Meditate,
sit by the
ocean.
Leave the
technology home.
Our minds came
from
simpler times,
not designed
for
light speed
change.
Step away,
at least
for awhile.
Reset your
sanity.
Less you
implode!



.
Taru Marcellus Dec 2023
Peace.                 Peace- short lived
Boredom.                Boredom- soon come


A hum.     A chirp.     A shattering of glass.
Questions. Questions. More questions.
Rampant questions. Barraging questions.
Stillness       stirs muddy
Strained mixing of unknown content
Syrupy. Thick. Sticky and difficult to wade through.
Questions.     Answer. More questions.
Distressed confusion.


Silence- uncomfortable.
Stillness- uncomfortable.
A thrashing of drums. A clashing of symbols.     A chirp.
Noise for noise’s sake.

Say something! It’s too quiet in here
Talk to me. Talk at me. Say something
A conversation about everything.
A conversation about nothing.
A chirp.




A chirp.



Aren’t you glad I didn’t just stand here in silence for a minute?

An archeology of silence.
Peace.                 Peace- short lived
Boredom.                Boredom- soon come

— The End —