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Taylor Smith Dec 2013
Lies spew from your body as you pull me in tighter
Tighter
So tight that I can barely breathe
I’m suffocating here in your arms
And you don’t even care to notice
Complete and total oblivion
Not the tranquil oblivion of sleep
But the threatening oblivion of homicide
Not actual death but the death of the person I want to become
You don’t seem to notice the panic formed across my face
I’m an animal trapped in headlights, paralyzed
While you’re the speeding vehicle
The car that doesn’t stop  
You don’t realize as my mother that I look up to you
That you’re relationships are not just about you
The hold effect on me as well
You can’t seem to stop the fighting
You say you love him
But I think you love the rush of anger
When you’re screaming and then leaving
Leaving
You’re constantly leaving me
I’m caught between the cross fires
The cussing and the pushing
You take it out on me
When I finally get up the nerve to confront you about it
You say you have no idea what I’m talking about
Did I tell you I still have the necklace you bought me?
To make me forget about the first bruise you left on my arm
As if money and diamonds mean a thing to me
I may seem like a young lady
But my insides are ripping apart
I’m still just a child
I had a dream of being a mother
And a having a beautiful partner
Who has a dictionary of her own
And when she looks up the words:
Independent, beauty, and passion
The synonym is my name
I want so badly to be happy
But when I look at your relationship
What you call love
All I see is chaos
A fight that isn’t over until someone is hanging by a noose
And I don’t want any part of it
I hear that love is a wonderful thing
But now the word sends messages through my body and too my brain
They scream at me to run and run fast
To shut out anyone who could possibly care about me
I’m so tired of living this way
These hallways hold too many secrets
Too many hushed screams for my comfort
So I’m leaving
Leaving
I’m leaving before oblivion takes over
I’m gonna tear down the walls I built
I’m gonna free fall into the unknown
Im gonna find what love is
And when I finally do
She will show me the 7 wonders of the world
Just by looking in her eyes,
like crystal ships that have seen too many ice burgs
yet still so beautiful.
Her heart will remind me of an old shoe lace
Double knotted
That may be a bit too tattered but never falls apart
She will hold my heart in her hand
I will trust her not to shatter it
But to help me find the missing puzzle pieces
To make it whole again.
Grant MacLaren Sep 2016
I know how it was in that time
sixty years ago when roads seen
from above were little more than
two thin tracks through grass.

My mind has heard the noiseless roads
cutting unfenced fields, passing cherry groves,
skirting steepest hills and flat lakes,
making settled burgs where roads cross.

I know how it was in that time
when many-handed harvests,  
sweet smells and back breaking work
were wrenched away without referendum.

Wrenched away by Ford's cast iron.
Wrenched away without option of staying
to enjoy the scale of day-long trips
on foot, in wagon or buggy.  

Our innocent grandfathers too,
wrenched away, not unwillingly, from plowfields,
to be told by newspaper and newfangled radio  
of the one-day Atlantic crossing.

I know how it was in that time.
I've seen it from three or five hundred feet;
the quick shadow and lake-mirrored
image of fabric covered wood and wire.

I've gently flown, pocketa, pocketa,
in that time; in a ship as much a product
of those shifting decades as of its tinkerer/
designer, builder, pilot, Pietenpol.
JP Goss Jan 2015
—To me, a dream, in which she came: Mistwalker
—And I, a vessel, rose in her womb, bear this, to me, a dream.

Say, on this, untoward, the spiced breezes with salt
Came, if all, the light enkindled like whetted steel
Morning star through the mournful faces above
Rejected, yes, by their mothers, of past and now,
A cold came ashore, ancient besieged accounts
Wilted the pregnant vines of yesterday, sure to
The next, as gods turn to myths, stories to the dying young.

She stared, of memorials in print
Off into the terrible morning, gossamer filament
Swaddled at the breast, a tight form slack
In the great divorce of sea and sky,
Standing, contemplative, shouts and echoes crack
Unheard, discarded: sweets to the profane
Sedately, to that dark curve: a canvas was lain
Adrift on aether, drowned bones of Atlas,
Emerge on drift of the everlasting, there at world’s end
In curved states between:
Hell broods in the burgs of ice, Providence
Forsaken of she who becks on the entombing sands.
Thus, prayers come whetted
With none to brush the stray hairs from those astray
Men conceiving valleys, their mountains,
Structures, are we, to eternally pass the course of solitude
Under cross-borne tuitions, marbled elders’ auspice
Embossed of the very tongue spoken
Once in high infant chambers, Omnis Ipse?

I, too, was born beneath the hero’s breath,
Taken by the glimmering sheath and steeds
To the awful wiles of merciful truth,
She to the enemy of standing beyond, within.

If ever a summer had kissed the city where cold descends
Or snow reminisced stars in the eve,
I, I—she hurts in the mists—have only tasted, bitter,
Sketches, between them, the finitude of their light,
That of warmth, of compassion
Man fall distracted from, therefrom grace,
A beast shed of its other back, hubris of its wing—
Am I the maiden of its song? But it’s maiden?—
One season, ever-aged, harbinger of this isolation
What is the ****** ewe years of searching for I,
Is sacrifice, thus becomes the phantom, the slave
Of that distant black, the sullied mark, consumptive
Unremitting arms of purpose, of man’s calling.

These hands are spelled, veined by charcoal dust
Adversarial oaths kept close, of myself, in idle play
Where what I will, wills but a will
Where none are to come, but the mast of a hero
Whom she is tied, of those winds
Seminal of her words—I shall be the breath
The cusp of every storm which blights the high waves,
The knife of sheer walls of stone,
Moments of oblivion which rend the heroes, ill-stayed.

Eyes burned holes for the starlight of awe
Pouring o’er the wastes of her paper skin
But, that she overturns the rueful words
Again, again, again, cycled in the oceans,
Where gardens of kelp revile the current
Strands, becoming of the arms she wishes to hold—
To write myself out of comprehension
Is to risk the very marrow has I obeisant,
These lusts of the greater body, those of the Mother
Clad in jewels and customs, as wave desires sky;
A journal I’ve become.

Mist came, froth, the spiral of wars inside the heart
They inveigled her, to my dismay, to the blind air
No longer, the sweet tine of imperfection of voice,
Inspired of spoken word, recent memory took leave,
Ambivalent joys came raining on a pen,
Reluctant to write homage to freedom,
Caught in the morphless air, calcified transformations
Odes to let go. But.
Nobody’s right, if everybody is wrong,
As people get warm under the collar,
Singing the continuous global warming song.
Planet Earth, hot lava inside, which builds,
Up steam over time, which needs to escape,
Every day, more asphalt, concrete, buildings,
Covering vents on the surface, creating internal binds.
More world - wide population, each person close to 100 degrees,
Then the sun, that burning out star in the sky,
the orange ball we see, as we circle it 24 hours a day,
These reasons, are never mentioned, in any way.
Rivers, waterways, rising, from melting ice burgs, far away,
Our planet, many voids, from coal mines, pumping of oil,
Sand, rock… always something being removed, some way,
Direct that rising water, into those empty spaces,
Which would help, cool off that inner fire, during our stay.
Fires in California, A flood on the East cost build a maze of,
PVC pipe, every time a utility, installed in ground, put pipe,
Along the side, eventually connecting, open valve in flooded areas,
Free water moved to the fire, connect to fire hydrants, farms for spraying,
Places we do not need to pay to treat water, to use
Saving money for towns, we need to take advantage, of situations,
Stop blaming the people giving them the run around.
The Original: Tom Maxwell© 3/13/2022 AD
This mattress feels like my back is on top of boulders
These sheets wrinkles are like two by fours in my shoulders
The stinging in my eyes makes them hard to open but hurt to close
My mouth like sandpaper from my throat all through my nose
My heart beat as steady as the long breaths I take
You can feel your thighs quiver as your wrists begins to shake
Fingers numb in ice burgs, but palms sweat from inferno
Stomach cringes from the drop but nothing left to show
My mind lied, Imagining my neck slowly closing tightly
You wouldn't think that this occurs nightly
I feel my bones crack as my cells die second by second without pause
But then again there is always that single strike of pain without cause
An alarm clock running through my head without a single snooze
The ringing I can't stop, but my control I can easily lose
Knees and elbows as ridged as the sound of my teeth chatter
Lips blue, skin pale, in constant fear that i may shatter
Kayla V Barreto Oct 2014
She falls asleep hoping to awake by morning
She tosses and turns throughout the night
She jumps thinking of her past nightmare
She opens her eyes struggling to see

She sees a strange figure in the corner
She burgs her head under her blanket
She waits trying to fall back into her slumber
She's restless and suffocating under her blanket

She lifts her head squinting to see
She hears the floor creaking
She beings to panic, something is approaching
She jumps and turns on the lights....

To only see the wind blowing her coat on the hook
I'm frozen in my own time
in my own Pompeii at 72.
Every day is a play with
the same cast and acts.
It's been lived to death but
still plays to smaller crowds
who leave at intermission.
It's the freakiest show on earth
ready for the road shows in
small burgs with the hicks.

— The End —