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Duke Thompson Aug 2014
I hate myself
I've lead a life that a lot of people don't understand
feeling the need compartmentalize my life to the point I don't even know who I am
stopped wanting ***
even now find it crass and crude
just another way for people to use me
afterwards feel see thru and ugly and gross
wilted sunflower to be culled from yr bed
even if mutual with ample loquacious lovers
I curl up in ball
don't let them look at me
in ugly failure skin clown mask
the **** of all yr jokes
'he's great but he's quiet'
talk on

everyone just seems so cruel
I weak like veal
tender for the taking
fry me up
straight from womb to pan
cowards make the best cuts
of wet meat to ****
Emmanuel Chikody Aug 2016
My perturbed being paid huge negligence to my pen and paper meant to write a sonnet
For I'm drown in my own thoughts as I watch the sunset.
Thinking, how can I bring down this Jericho wall when I can't even blow my own trumpet

From afar,a chick called for its mother
Children taking turns to skip a gutter

I shifted my gaze upward pondering on the sky and it calligraphy
But there was more on my mind other than topography

Gone where the days when all we had were prophecies and signs
Now we have the proofs- earthquake, war, diseases , high rate in crime

Human uses human for nefarious and bohemian mischief
Acquiring a high decree in insalubrious acts and call it prestige

****** masochism,******,homosexuality,best iality,and with many severe strokes,
we've axed,hewn down and fall our hardest ethical timbered-oak

Immorality is now human right,transgender speciation is now technology.
Ostensibly, compartmentalize values and virtues are now seen as folk

Culminating this malady is 'Spurious Pentecostalism'-an acute locution for the aggrandize ecclesiastical new age religion loosely espy as ' born again ' movements

Which beget an avalanche of licentious sermons of grace extremists,
stealthily engaging in the defamatory of the Scripture.
The only exception is the law of tithing and offering.

As clerical entities,sharply dressed,suave,bogus televangelist
dispenses false miracles and prophesies of untold wealth to there flock
in return for their votive offerings

Take heed that no man deceive you (Matthew 24:4)

I Emmanuel sound it loud and clear
CHRIST JESUS IS COMING VERY SOON !
I wanted to write out a poem,but my feeling was been shaken by something very disturbing and the result is this poem
Taylor St Onge Aug 2021
I am soft and mandible:  
          fresh clay,         the inside of an oyster,        the belly of an armadillo.  
          vulnerable.                      tender.  ­                             the anti-sharp.

everything is blurred.  dulled.  hidden
behind a gossamer haze and ambient noise.  
a photo out of focus.            one eye closed and ten feet back.  

dizzy.            so dizzy.            disoriented.  
there is no logic here.             no rules.             no laws.  
and that’s what makes it horrible and incomprehensible.  

the transplant recipient still dies.  the man in perfect health
                                                                ­suddenly has cancer.
the proned patient flipped back to supine for intubation
                                                codes and dies immediately.  

nonsense.  it’s all nonsense.  
it's easier to take a breath and
                                                        compartmentalize.
write your grief, prompt #11: How has this loss made things feel sharp?
Amber Grey Jul 2013
The summer I interned in New York, I fell in love with someone I'd only seen from a balcony window.

I'd fallen in love with strangers before, on buses and in lines, watching their shoulders straighten and their faces grimace in half-sunlight. I fell in love with these people the way you could fall in love with a poem, finding personality in the way that their eyes flicker nervously from left to right, tiny instances where their stanzas throw you into a daze. But this time was different. For once, I wished to know a stranger without the brim of my sunglasses, for once I felt something when I knew I'd never see him again.

His apartment was cluttered, bottles of water and the empty cans of energy drinks piled in a corner where a conscious person would have fit them in a bin. There were clothes on the floor, and although I knew his high rise box was laid out just as mine, he must have used the expected closet space for something else - his clothes were everywhere, crumpled in heaps on the floor that were too erratically placed to not have some sort of lingering system. Posters of people were taped to the wall, covering the matte eggshell white, edges falling occasionally to show signs that he wouldn’t always live there. I hoped that if he ever owned a home, that those staring portraits would be stapled or pasted thick to his walls, just because he would be the sort of person who wouldn’t change his mind about what he liked or what he wanted.

I would watch him from the same eggshell white room of mine, with nothing on the walls and not a scrap of anything on the floor. From my blow up mattress to my suitcase of clothes, kitchen stocked of single servings and a solitary set of dishware. I had no curtains and no carpets, no television or pictures of friends huddled in an unexpected embrace. For all anyone knew, I could have been squatting. I would look out at him from the window spanning the entire north facing wall, aware that if he ever looked out, if his eyes ever darted south, he would see me cross legged on the tiled marble floor, hovering over an overheated laptop and cardboard coffee.

I would get home at seven forty-five, shower in the New York water that tasted like dust and gin, and towel off, walking to the balcony. He, just like I, had a long, narrow balcony spanning about four feet on the right edge of his loft, and I would lean on the edge of the concrete slab, smelling the foul city air, taxi music floating from the lumpy yellow marsh below. That was when he would unlock his door suddenly, sometime between eight and eight-ten. He would step with his entire body and move into his crowded room and stand still for a moment, as if to collect himself; restrain from tearing faces off the walls and pummeling fabric into the floor. Sometimes he'd shut the door closed with a twitch of his foot, untying the half apron around his waist with one hand and pulling the red tie strapped flat onto a black dress shirt loose with the other. Once, he did all that in succession and proceeded to slide against the shut door until he hit the ground, falling into himself like a dropped jack's ladder and rubbing his fingers from his jawline to his eyes, up into his hair and back over.

But most of the time, he would just force off his shoes, never untying the laces, and move to the balcony just as I did. He would go out to the balcony too, but he would always keep going, moving to sit on the edge of the short wall, socked feet dangling over the city. His legs would be splayed wide, hands placed right in front of him, flat on the ledge. He would look down at the golden sea below, and when he was done with it, spit a flickering cigarette into the glittering bank.

He would also smoke when he woke up. He got up at six, like clockwork, and would stumble back out into the smogged pilot's seat in a plaid bathrobe, hazy faced and staring down. I don’t think he was ever late. He would get dressed slowly and fix himself in the mirror for a good half hour at the left of his room, until finally turning around just to watch the door for a moment. Sometimes I could swear that he watched for so long that he must have thought it would up and race away.

He slept with the lights on. He never came home late. He didn’t go out at night, never blundered in at two in the morning with a lithe model girl, long hair framing icicle eyes. On weekends he would sleep all day, rising every few hours to go back on the edge of his balcony and smoke. He would stare at the faces on his walls, the callouses on his palms, the murmur below; but never, ever at the empty loft across the way, dotted with a blue plastic bed and a speck of a person.

I left New York in September, on a red eye flight vastly cheaper than the rest. I put my toothbrush and toothpaste into the front pocket of my luggage, squeezed the air out of my mattress, and left. I hadn't left a trace in that home of mine, and it didn’t leave any on me either. When I left New York, I felt nothing. It was almost like I had never set foot in the city, forgetting to socialize with the locals the way someone could leave their hat at a bar.

I never knew if the man across the canyon hated coming home to a loft like I did. I wondered if it bothered him too, the lack of walls or rooms to compartmentalize the space. I wondered if he didn’t like to eat at home, if he felt sick when he watched the sunrise. I wondered if when he looked at the tidepooled city, if he also saw salvation. If he wondered every day from eight to eight-ten about what a dangly thing of a human would seem like to the loft across if it was spit from the edge of a narrow, four foot balcony.
A bit long, I suppose. Thought I'd post some prose.
CautiousRain Jan 2022
I'd be such a good girl for you,
making sure to cram and compartmentalize every piece of me
into whatever shape you'd prefer;
I've never known any better.
It's what I've always been told.

If I'm not here to make you happy,
then what is my purpose?
I've never known to take care of myself,
but I would take care of you in a heartbeat.

I don't know how to stop,
I don't know how to love correctly,
and I definitely don't know how to be loved.

If I keep giving,
what does it mean if you give back?
I think I'd feel nauseated knowing
you spent so much energy into me.
I'm not your sink, I'm the output source
and I'd never let it be the other way around.
And this is why I need to heal and get out of the fawn response. I don't have to do this to be loved.
Nicole Mar 2018
My heart weighs heavy
Tipping this scale so far
Until I hit the ground
So unsure if it's the alcohol
Or these feelings
That keep me so far down

I just want to breathe
And I want to hold you
But I don't know what that means
I compartmentalize my feelings so much
All tucked sweetly away in the empty crawl spaces
Until I look in the mirror and don't know who I see

I want to feel something
Anything but this sadness leaking out
Of all the holes in all the closed doors
My mind is a maze without a map
Even though I've created it myself
I still don't know the ceilings from the floors

How can I look at your face and not hear her words?
"Just stop hurting people" she says
Trust me baby all I do is try
I try so hard to not leave scars on these beautiful souls
My instinct is to help the broken
Though as soon as I'm ready to leave they're ready to die

Babe I promise that I see you
I haven't known you long but that's never been the issue
The problem is that I can't see myself
I'll feel this love for someone one minute
And the next I could ice them out for days at a time
Left to wonder if it's actually me or just the liquor off the shelf

I don't believe in God but I'm praying now
Begging someone to help salvage this broken soul
Yet I'm still surrounded by silence
In this life you have to save yourself
But we all need help sometimes
And too much pressure leads to self-directed violence

I'm trying so hard
I just want to be ok
I just want to be free
Then I get nights like these
Choking on this random sadness
Left to question if this life is really for me

But I'm trying
And I'm growing
And this will pass one day
I just hope until then
You love me enough
To want to stay
I went to therapy today and my therapist and I addressed that I either invest too much of myself into a relationship or I compartmentalize my feelings until I'm numb, there is no in between due to an intricate web of childhood trauma that still affects me today. This is inspired by that conversation and some things an ex said to me recently.
Joshua Phelps Jun 2024
Dear dearly beloved,
It's me, again.

I'm sorry for the
Pain and sorrow.

I just want to let
You all know that

There's only
So much lower
I can go.

There's a bullet
With my name on it,

But I don't want
To pull the trigger.

I promise I'm not a quitter,
But I'm far from
Being a winner.

I'm always pulled in
Every direction,

And I feel I fail
Every time, stepping
In the wrong direction.

It's hard to compartmentalize
And section my emotions,

I'm always one step away
From jumping off a ledge,
And it's getting harder

Just to hold on.

Dear dearly beloved,

Pray that I make it through,

So my soul doesn't get
Crushed by the weight
Of the world,

And delivered to the underworld.
Holly O'Brien Sep 2014
19 years,
4 boys,
2 girls,
Heartache after heartache,
The process doesn’t change,
It doesn’t become less demanding with age,
If anything, it becomes only more methodical,

In the way that a surgeon analyzes and studies his procedure before operating within a breathing, organic creature,
Or how a jazz bassist finger plucks melancholic yet beautiful riffs made of memorized scales,
With practice, I have learned something of a system to heart break, and interestingly enough it always starts with me, it never starts with you,

5pm. You don’t break up with me, I always break up with you. I lay in bed for hours, struggling to match up the phrases “meant to be” and “not this time” in ways that are gracious and kind.

7pm. I communicate my best self to you, I tell you I love you and oh, the potential I saw. I say everything I need to say, it's a courtesy to you and a necessity to me. You’re cold to me, I’m still hot for you; it burns me up inside until I choke on my “maybe some days” and “what ifs”. You’ll find someone new.

8pm. I can’t move my legs and my stomach is weak, my heart fails within me and my eyes are so meek. I search for solitude, this is the moment when the only thing I know how to do is follow my feet.
I retreat to the streets.

9pm. This is the second hardest part. Let the pain spread and seep into every vein. In the words of John Greene, it demands to be felt. I debate myself that no one should feel such pleasure from love without knowing the searing anguish of loss.

10pm. I cry out to God and weep into my friend’s teeshirt as thunder crackles around us. If you don’t let it out, you won’t let it go. My ribs snap open from explosions of emotions.

12am. Feverishly angry, unhinged with pride; I will foolishly convince myself that you meant nothing to me, though in this moment i am anything but dispassionate. Accusations, assumptions, confrontations. Gain perspective, but only the kind that convinces me of myself. Compartmentalize it.

2am. I’ll distract myself with something, anything to pass the time. I’ll go out at night, a little excitement, a little bit of drugs, a lot of adrenaline, might just set my brain chemistry balanced and my crooked jaw straight.

5am. I’ll come home, satisfied with myself. Crawl back into my bed where I began the night and think, oh if only you could see me now, i have definitely won.

6am. This is the hardest part. The sun rises along with my guilt and inhibitions. I could NEVER say those things to you during the day that I spewed out like kerosene during the night.
I want to call you baby, tell you I’m sorry, but I’ve lost that right.
So I will combust from my own words and actions, set fire to my excuses and torch down my pride.

I want to whisper good morning to you, because I’ve learned the mornings are made to fix things, to start fresh, and become new.
My father had an anthem for me that rung “Holly, you’re not a bad person, you just make bad decisions. You can always try again in the morning.”
Well, it is the morning and I want so bad to try again.

In how many different languages can i try to explain that I don’t know how to give it up,
Or how to let someone go that was never mine to begin with?
I’ll just replay you walking through the invisible door in my mind until I take the hint.

Then I’ll sleep the day away so I can wake up, sobered up, numbed up, a few hours later.
Remind myself that my mother taught me to allow only one night for despair and tantrums.
She says life goes on and so should I, she couldn’t bear to see me defeated or crushed.

So I’ll force myself out of bed, shower, shake it off, lock it up.
I’ll move on because love is not without pain, life is not without burden, courage is not without fear,
And people are always worth taking chances on, even though the last chance I took never healed.

I know that there will be other nights when I think about 4 boys and 2 girls,
But those times, I’ll drift to sleep without saying goodnight, and have forgotten about it before the break of morning light.
anastasiad Dec 2016
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Julia O'Neary May 2014
Sitting on the floor of my apartment
Eating peanut butter from the jar with
My fingers, I don’t want to ***** a spoon.
Surrounded by boxes filled with
Belongings that don’t feel like mine.

On my way home, boxes packed into
My mother’s car. I would have driven
Myself but two months prior fate
Pushed my pretty red car off the
Road with a U.S. mail truck. *****.

Unload the boxes in a room that
Looks like a memorial to childhood.
The memory of summers past are
What I cling to now, for the next three
Months feel like someone else’s time.

Look for a job. Look for a car.
Look for signs that he moved on.
Look for an excuse not to and
Go to the beach by myself instead.
Look for a place for storing boxes.

I should unpack. Boxes arrogant
And weighted to compartmentalize
All the expectations I would rather not
Remember and disappointment  
I am tired of looking at.
MGoering Jun 2012
§


We wander through this life
donning a thousand masks,
all the while believing
that nothing we do is of any consequence.
He compartmentalize,
and after countless failures
many give up.
But there is Hope!
There is always potential for growth.
The stagnant swamp we dwell in
year after year,
afraid of the criticisms of our youth,
the slingstones and arrows of our foes,
is not the only reality.
Lashing out and trying to ****
those who want to help us
solves nothing.
It only makes us into the monster
that they think we are.
We are not monsters
We are beautiful angels.
Reach through the shadows.
Stop being afraid,
take my hand now!
There is hope.
For every last one of us.
No matter how hopeless
we may think we are.
Despair is the only illusion.
Shatter it, cast off your masks
and come walk with me.
I know who you are...
You know me...
I have lied before, tell me
Am I lying now?
Max Goering June 2012
Banana Oct 2015
I am a global citizen, a temporary resident of this earth,
I barely exist but I refuse to be anything less.
I refuse to bury my head in the sand behind borders.
Borders are just ideas, right?
Ideas that compartmentalize people and places,
It's easier to be apathetic to foreign faces.
It's easier to be controlled and lulled into the hamster wheel that keeps the world going round in the right direction for those with the money.
As long as we run and don't ask questions the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor.
But the worlds' pain is my pain, and their pain is your pain-- wake up.
Children are dying in horrific ways, people are suffering, and the real irony of it all is that it doesn't have to be this way.
While I'm writing this, the old boys politician clubs of our "democratic" countries are smoking cigars, driving foreign cars and talking about the weather.
From the ground is where I came from.
And one day it's where I shall return.
Carbon particals compartmentalize into every flaw.
That has set me up to burn.
Torn and broken picking my cross up.
Out of the mud that we slip in.
Don't let the changes and good deeds fool you.
I'm still a coward behind this structure.
Of broken clay.

But the potter will catch me when I fall.
He will never allow me to break.

I have fallen so many times flat on my face.
So many times I pick myself up to start again.
Where will I find solid ground to stand on.
My feet are calloused from treading the sands.
Of a lifetimes of letdowns and disappointments.
Serving one so true while I've just learned to stand again.
This fresh blood has yet to even dry to my hands.
But you shall lead me to purified waters.
So I can wash away the filth and be clean again.

I don't know where we're going.
But we shall push through the quicksand.
Together hand in hand we'll reach for his.

We are all a flawless diamond.
Beneath the ash and soot of flesh and bones.
The dirt and dust will build up.
And skin shall die and slowly float away.
For death was engraved into out genetics.
But there's no need to fear this.
For he has an oasis up ahead.
And all we need do is lean foward.
Take his hand and jump.

JUMP!!! Take the ultimate leap of FAITH!!!

Wipe the dust from your lips the mud from your face.
The blood off your hands let the dirt fall away
We are all ***** but by his graceful waters.
We are clean we are saved.
Rebirth.
We're just diamonds in the rough falling into place.
Written by Willdean Don Frix Jr
7/19/2014
svdgrl Dec 2017
Labotomize these thumbs,
they scroll more than they strum.
I don't mean to be dumb,
but I can't respond back so I hum,
and you won't hear me.
No, you can't see the words that I write.
I'm sure you'd only
be tickled,
If you knew that I think of you all night.
Because I can't sleep, love.
And I can only touch me right,
Yeah, that's right.
Just me, love.
Hope I can keep up with this fight.
And I know you don't really care,
and you haven't got some spare
feelings left to share
and if there are, they're barely there.
So drop the pity,
I'm mad you got to hear me whine.
How unsexy.
I'm supposed to just be doing fine.
I'll compartmentalize,
put it in a box and tie it with twine.
while you're liking every post of mine.
I'll compartmentalize.
While I reread your every line.
bcg poetry Feb 2015
You never felt much.
You can turn your feelings for me off like flipping a switch.
You compartmentalize and focus on one task, while ignoring the other.

You forget about me, I know you do.

I feel everything.
Every word, every forgotten call, every missed message.
I feel everything.
And I can't turn off your blue eyes in the back of my mind.
I can't forget you, like you can forget me.

But that doesn't mean I don't spend every empty bottle trying.
Jordan Frances Nov 2014
I cannot continue to compartmentalize
Each aspect of my life
Individually
Separately
In cardboard boxes on wooden shelves
Waiting to be moved into one house.

My existence does not work in cubicles
Sectioning off each area of who I am
One by one
9-5 jobs
Some work overtime.

And yet, I do this so frequently
I continue to store things away
In the back ruins and corners of my mind
They go into storage units.
I guess I picked up the technique after being abused
So I could dissociate from the experience.

But I cannot keep putting on different identity hats
Sarah, the child abuse victim is a black beanie
Sarah, the ex-cutter and ex-bulimic is a red bandana
Sarah with daddy problems is a knit cap
They are all mutually exclusive
They cannot occur at the same time.

So why can't I continue to shelve these things
Intricately and one by one?
Because I am Sarah
The whole person
The individual
The human being who deserves recognition for her progress
Not her vices.
D'Arcy Sahn Jan 2015
Everybody has their story
I want to here them all at once
To feel them all at once
With a curious disconnect
A clinical warmth
To compartmentalize with a surgeon's precision
Then when my heart is full,
Burst open and bathe everyone in empathy
But not emotion
I used to be good at listening to the struggles of others, but my mind seems to have lost some of its elasticity. I just want to understand what others going through, but be able to know when I need to disconnect for my sake.
Imagine burning by fire,
hustled bones piling up, a sanctum
seeped in dust.
It his here where I compartmentalize
the fire, its embers and heat
stacked neatly on hotbed coals, a flame with
labels, numbers, a name.

I keep the space neat and airy,
I have room for all of the fires
as well as some extra storage
yet to have a specific set purpose.
In this room of fire I read
constantly. I am currently on Marx, and
my next read is Durkheim's
Suicide, which is much less strenuous
than one would believe, having been
familiar with Durkheim but
not his work. All of this clatter and
sociology.

The fires remain lit, I have no need
to run the heater this winter.
Fire, in all its compartments,
organized and labeled as it is,
and still, with my world in such a state,
I cannot hold fire in boxes.
I am blindly adding fuel.
Suicide, Émile Durkheim's 1897 study on suicide rates among Protestants and Catholics in France, was a groundbreaking work in the field of sociology.
Melody Mann Mar 2021
Time is a number,
A value we have denoted to a moment perceived as the now,
Its presence doctrines society and its functionality,
A fickle means of conceptualizing the abyss.

Time is but a construct,
A bid to control what is everlasting,
A scattered ploy to compartmentalize actions and obligations,
A means of justification.

Time is arbitrary,
For the essence is eternal,
Our soul is formless,
As the creation is infinite,
Relinquish your mind to this celestial current,
And harmonize to its flow surging within.
Q Feb 2015
Vertigo.

The world is turning.

Turning.
                 Turning.
                                  Turning,
Too fast.

Turning until
A rip forms.

A tear. A lesion. An open wound.

Raw.

Don't touch.
Don't look.
Don't speak.
Don't hear.
Don't smell.
Don't feel.


it hurts.

Thoughts come then.
Too loud, too quiet.
Too bright; so, so dark.
.
     .
          .
               help.

No help.
.
     .
          .
               help.
No help.
.
     .
          .
               help.
Helped.

Boxes.
Boxes and boxes and boxes.

A library of thought and feeling packed away
In
One


second.




Peace.
Calm.
Joy.


False emotion.
Easy breathing, easy living.

Compartmentalized.
Strike-through.

Recompartmentalize­d.






Lather, rinse, repeat.
Luke Gagnon Feb 2013
You cannot just give up religion for lent,
and expect no consequences.
I am in every moment you discard.

You run on insistent consistency,
analytical calculations,
scraps of math equations
pieced together to
form your
functioning

But, you cannot rationalize away my
emotions.
My heart and my affection.
You cannot compartmentalize me,
shave off my soft curved edges
with a butter knife to fit the
labeled angular box you have created for yourself.
I still count even if you’re
making things even.

But I understand,
sometimes my hugs last 3
seconds too long.

--

Luke,
There is no picture
on a box to tell you what you’re
supposed to look like
when all this is over.

You might have built yourself,
but I was born.
I am more than a body.
I am your past,
your perspective
your platelets
your pacemaker
I will never truly
leave.
Elena Feb 2019
Sometimes I sit down and think, “Is this all there is to life?”
Compartmentalize my feelings of sadness, joy, and excitement into boxes
Some of which stack higher than others and tumble down into subcategories
Times I was sad because of my period, because of school, because of ----

Other times I stand up and I don’t think, “I am completely satisfied with life.”
Because I am not
I look at cracked paint on walls and study the paths the minuscule crevices decided to take
So easily permanent and there

My head has established a tyranny of overthinking and anxiety that boxes with itself
Left, right, no left, up, maybe down, sideways, maybe
Too much to think and my brain can’t seem to understand there is still time to think
No decision has to be made about anything ever just yet not yet maybe

I understand time casts an infinite shadow
It forever runs out even though it’s nowhere near the finish line
It’s always running out
Always leaving me breathless
idk i wrote this cause im feeling anxious also procrastinating on my english homework
Lyzi Diamond Oct 2014
Desperate avoidance of pronouns, articles
and questioning favorability of parts of speech
in desperate attempts to compartmentalize neurosis
like you're embarrassed and I'm foolish
swimming in this sweater
that was never mine anyway
although in dreams it was bequeathed
and I hold tight to that reality

How can a forest be on fire
while it's raining?
How can you put aside your
shiny weapons and arch voice to smooth sounds
lyrics that speak nascent truths
excuse me, sir, if I ask quietly
will you provide some affirmation

Getting to me, getting me
it moves slow, it shouts
I never forget my luck, my two-step
I stay patient, hungry
I built a bunk bed in this speaker
are you planning to stay a while?

I'll touch your caveat if you touch mine
I'll sing your songs if you lie still
bucky Jul 2014
i'm sorry about the way i fumble for words and breath, but i just can't catch my death i mean breath
and i'm sorry if this is weird but there are some people who mean more to me than i can express using any number of adjectives
and sometimes it scares me because my body was not made to hold this many hearts
there is impossible love in my fingertips and it will bless anyone who comes near me
i'm sorry for being a dreamer i'm sorry i got so close i'm sorry for holding galaxies in my hands but i want to be just like you when i grow up
and there are supernovas whispering behind your closed eyelids.
you cannot win acceptance from expectation i know this from experience
and maybe it's okay to be a little ****** up but i'm pretty sure my heart shouldn't ache in time with people who don't exist
i'm desaturated, not colorful enough i cannot handle pure cyan or magenta but give me olive,
give me chamoisee and i will breathe a little easier
paintings come in all shapes and sizes and rainbows i painted mine on my hands and fingers
i cannot help it if my acrylics mix with other people's watercolors
this is how i am
sometimes i go up to your front door and do not knock
i hope you will forgive me for this
i'm not in the habit of wasting breath but i will waste death until i have no more seconds and minutes and hours to do so
tell me you love me there is a heart shaped box in my chest
it is sandpaper against your palmprints but you will clutch it, fingers tight
curling in and around like it's a part of you
i'm not a geometry problem that you can solve i'm more complex than that there are wires
buried beneath my skin pumping iron through my body i'm more machine than flesh
but that doesn't mean i can't feel your hand in mine
i measure time in the beats of your heartbeat against mine
you watch me like a car crash, like i'm moving in slow motion but you still can't keep up
compartmentalize your love songs and love letters and love
your heart will stop beating if you just tell it that it can't feel anymore
i am a sea of compromises this was not the first one i have had to make and it will not be the last
but i promise you that when we're dust blowing through the desert
a thousand and one lifetimes away,
i will remember every second of you
and we will be constellations sewn into the galaxy
another fairy-tale to be read at night when our fears are loudest
and i will press my fingers to your neck to show you that your heart is still beating
i am a rainbow paint me onto your blank canvas like this is the last time we'll ever see each other
i'm not scared of how i am i'm just like everybody else
it's not my fault that i have love pulsing through my body like tidal waves
paintbrushes are rough against my rocky craters but i love them just the same
i will love you just the same.
when i saw you it took my death away
Stark Dec 2018
Flickering lights
Scrolling past image after image
Of loss, suffering
While i lay back on my bed
My life is mirage of the chaos outside

Papers strewn about my desk
An internal struggle for innovation
Ignorant of what lays beyond the cold, glass windows
A hand cast over my eyes
Shielding them from what is too painful to see

As the numbness washes over me
i stare at the ceiling
Stressing over what to do with my life
No purpose, no hope

A feeling of uselessness

Maybe i should just die
A self-centered voice cries out
No one would care
No one would notice

but what would happen?
i question

is it really better--
to live without a hint of the future to come
or to die knowing the outcome?

the idea flew away
gone away like the rain

Yet the blinds remain closed
To the outside world
Only the strobe effect of artificial lights fill the room

Shut into a enclosed space
Where only i stay
Poring over words
Their beauty
Their pain

Once, we were unable to look at a violent image
Without regurgitating
Now i can see something like that and compartmentalize it
Trap it in a box, never to be seen again
No more tears fall from my once-swollen lids
As i’ve moved on from the emotional
Towards an unforeseeable future
Dehumanized
a few years ago, many things took a wrong turn in my life. it was like murray's law that "all that can go wrong, will go wrong." i've been dealt better cards since then, but it still has an impact on me--it left me feeling dehumanized. i feel like the dehumanization of our population is very real today, so i wrote this poem based on my feelings from that single year and applied it to center around dehumanization.
Jodie LindaMae Dec 2015
I get easily annoyed,
Being the only sober person along
On this tirade
Of ******* kisses
And malformed care.
I spend my time easily convincing myself
That the only way I will believe he loves me
Is if he splits his bleeding heart
Over my chalice
When they display my body to him
At the morgue,
Toe tag so lifeless against my sole.
I think of my body not as a temple
But a bear trap,
Sprung or in the process of springing,
His ankle twisted in it's teeth.
We walked into this together
Knowing each others baggage
But suspecting there to be hidden compartments.
With ease
I compartmentalize my anguish
And move one,
My emotions just a simplicity
Too enticing in their entirety
To be dealt with accordingly.
I have brought myself to believe that he loves me
But only in his frontal lobe,
My life and personality
Being at the root of who he is today.
I say ******* kisses because he is addicting
But I say ******* kisses because
He is deadly.
Arke Dec 2018
anyone else here enjoy slow torture,
like backtracking months ago
in chats of failed relationships
to cringe at how strongly you
loved or seeked approval or desired
realizing how long it was unreciprocal
watching your patterns and foolishness
wishing you could stop the you
from the past from breaking the heart
of every future version of yourself
reliving the past like ptsd
watching yourself die over again
to prove it was real, that you lived, once

so I travel back months in time
to when we still spoke
and wish I could revoke every feeling
take back every word and every sentence
stop myself before I said anything nice
but the past is set in electronic cyberspace
arguably more permanent than stone

so I read and internalize every "k"
every empty emoji or moments
you were terse or upset with me
because they remind me to always
choose the one who loves me most
to play it cool and careless instead
compartmentalize it and remind myself
the one who loves more loses more
free is the one who has nothing to lose
and I'll get there too, someday soon
but until I can lose my feelings entirely
I'll keep numbing them with words
the ones you wrote to me
the ones I wrote to you
the ones you never voiced
and the ones I keep writing to this void

I'm not a ******* but you still hurt so good.
Alexander S Mar 2010
I wear my heart on my sleeve I guess
Easily dirtied sometimes
It’s not hard to see when something affects me
The steps drag a little more
My gaze turns slightly downward
I might lose my place
Or forget where I’m walking
I can try to hide, try to cover it
It’s never worked
To my knowledge
It’s good I guess
To retain such close ties to your emotions
But at the same time
I’m so easily hurt
I wish I could do otherwise
Compartmentalize
But I could never hide from who I am
Shannon Apr 2014
how many ways must i give you up?
grief is just a sport for lucid and the lame.
how many boughs till i break this falling-
to the mossy hill below?
where grief is just a shallow pool
with reflections of me beautifully crying
We ugly mourners live to talk.
selfish shallow pool of grief-
my yellow rainboots fall madly
upon my mirrored head.
i am just a puddle
and i wear it like a man because
sometimes...
grief is just a tailored suit
all dressed up in pawpaws best
neatly pressed.
the seams of your life sewn in a straight line.
it's easy to compartmentalize the times you weren't your greatest you.
in death you leave the lovely
behind
and take away the rest.
in life you leave the death
behind and take away the lovely such a wasted irony.
grief is valentine.
wont you be mine pinks and whites? sugared promises of time.
grief is a lovers candy heart. sentiments on marble etch the total of our time.
grief of mine, such weather beaten blanket. when did she become my lover?
cast aside your sadness.
grief is a friend of mine, grief is a friend of mine.

Sahn 4/22/2014
after experiencing a significant loss in my life, i became aware of the rich layers of grief. thank you for giving your time to read these poems.
Hannah Frances May 2013
I couldn’t define it.
Words tricked from my lips
A babbling brook of incoherence
Grasping for phrases, attempting to capture
Something so perfectly intangible.

I couldn’t build walls around it
Hold onto and confine it
With explanations and reasoning
Boundaries of sanity, a cushion of protection

I just couldn't find a way
To nestle it away safely
Within the recesses of my soul
Amongst the other “boxes” I’ve created
To compartmentalize life.
Persephone Oct 2015
my thoughts are on fire
my stomach is burning

i’m roasting my matches
to swallow my options

internalize bad dreams
consider the source

forgiving old flames
compartmentalize

planning on empty
execute with intent
feedback is appreciated :)
Tashyana Handy Oct 2016
He looks at me for the first time in years

And tells me I’ve changed

And I can’t help looking at him

Completely enraged

But I convince myself that it is not his fault

I must have done something to provoke

The appall

The disgust

And though I know that it is my turn to apologize

I stand there in silence

For the first time in years

I stood there in silence

Allowing the thunderous noise of

Nothing being said

Question my intention

Of calling him brother

Defiance

I am in so much trouble now.

I can see the cracks between his skin

Where his beard masks the frown

Of doubt and denial

But he doesn’t tell anyone

He doesn’t ask God to restrain the trials that he must now go through

Knowing that his little sister is not like what she once was

She is sixteen now

And fierce

Outspoken

Frank

Not gentle

Ruthless in her ways

And yet silent when she truly speaks

He tells me he misses me

I tell him that

That makes two of us

He begs for the stories that have radicalized my behavior

But I tell him that I have lost my trust

Not in the way that most poets

Tend to romanticize so that they appear profound

This is what is truly raw and reeling

You won’t understand the feeling

When the sanctuary of your mind is ripped apart

Like a **** victim

And everything you are

And everything hidden away in your heart is taken away from you

Yet you are expected to rise from the ashes

And be strong and courageous

Because the men in your life have taught you how

Your femininity is never glorified only hidden

Never respected only acknowledged

He tells me that he believes in feminism

And I ask him what kind

Because the only sense of feminism in this society

Is the acceptance you get when you are badass

Or Emma Watson

It’s the approval you receive when you are able to compartmentalize

And not bring your emotions to work

The only feminism I see is rights given to women for the sake of equality, and not of justice

He tells me that I am wrong

That the game is changing

But how on earth can the game change when the rules of the game

Are set by those who define the word oppression.

I anticipate his disappointment

A practice I know all too well

A practice of which I have mastered

When people ask me if my older brothers were rugger players

And eventually I have to let them know that I paint

Write poetry and can’t even punch people in the face for dishonesty

Haven’t they taught you anything?

I should be ashamed of myself for not being able to

Control the gut wrenching things that I feel

Cause apparently a male spoken word poet has so much depth

While the rest of us just talk about our feelings

Feelings that we should be ashamed of

Feelings that we should put away

So that we can become so much more

Self-aware and apologize for all our naturally provoked disparities

He asks me to be gentle

And I tell him that I don’t know how

Cause for the years he wasn’t here

They’ve awarded me for insensitivity

And I’ve just grown numb

You see

I was given two options

To be way too pretty to understand things or

To understand things the way someone else did

And not how I perceived it

And now I am an artist in deceiving

For even though I feel things

The way I feel them

They remain dead inside

Until my brother see them.

— The End —