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There's a stream,
splashing and gurgling,
sending up in the air a single bead of water,
sun beams giving a lightbulb's twinkle
  and inside lying fragments of it's history,
 I wonder if it has a tomorrow
As I daydream about it's mysteries;

The path down the stream,
taken within the flow
with other waters,
weaves,
in and out of the gills of a baby minnow,
over and through smoothed rocks,
Seeping from a canal
racing through locks,
drifting down straights with no bends
Left from the **** of a stag weekend,
And before that a can of cider,
and before that a tube in a mechanical assembly line,
from a water tap,
that came from a reservoir,
Which fell from clouds above it's perimeter,
and before that splashed from ocean froth,
lifted up in a collision of waves like a table cloth
after being taken on the hull of a speed boat
carrying ******* from a river,
where it had once briefly been on a paddle
from a man fishing to make his living.
And further up the river where it divides into streams and then nothing,
and then famine,
moist ground from tears,
It had been someone suffering.

A million lives
entwined in a drop of water,
each one a coincidence,
coinciding just by chance
the spectrum of it's experience of us is wide,
and with each and every drop the water empathised,


Tears at a wedding,
At a funeral,
Christmas spirit in mulled wine,
A plume of sea water from the belly of a jellyfish,
Pushed forward through it's life,

A trillion drops of water helping to make gravity decide
How high or low to go to make the tide,
Unified in direction
helped by the sun's and the moon's light,
Does it take the love of one direction (not the band)
to be unified?
Terry Collett Mar 2013
Miss Schinzer do not undress
they said but she did and so
they locked her in the side
room alone and she heard the

key turn in the lock and that
was that she heard them walk
away along the passage heard
the footsteps getting soft and

softer then silence the silence
of that abbey she went to some
years back as a child and the nun
with her beady eyes said here

one must absorb the silence here
silence is our food and drink and
she remembered the way the nun
empathised the word silence

the way her lips moulded the word
as if it were brand new and not to
be damaged or spoilt but that was
then as a child before the voices

began before the orders were laid
out for her to obey do not undress
Miss Schinzer they had said but her
voices inside said undress take off

garment by garment and as you do
so think of Christ and how he was
disrobed and hammered to the wood
and she did hearing as she undressed

the hammer on nails the jacket and
then the blouse and then the brassiere
and she felt the chill about her *******
how they stiffened she thought waiting

to remove more cloth waiting for the
voice to say undress more of the clothes
and she recalled how Mr Dimpledone had
said the same thing but she was a child

then a girl in the choir but she didn’t ask
why she just undressed and he just stared
at her and said what are you doing child?
but you said so she said no no he said gruffly

be silent unless you want to leave the choir
but she didn’t remember him saying that not
then but couldn’t be sure and the voices said
take off the lower garments and so she removed

her skirt the black one the one that made her
look like a nun she took it off and then removed
her slip and underwear and sat on the floor quite
bare remembering the hanging Christ the hands

curled like ***** nailed to the cross beam his
naked flesh the wounds the blood and she lay
down flat and put out her arms forming a cross
and her legs tight together one foot touching

the other and over in the corner knitting and
humming some Schubert her bossed eyed mother.
halfheartedsoul Dec 2014
Being good enough is entirely subjective.

Not knowing,
but understanding,
that you'd never be.

So alone I stand,
record as clean as a babe's.

Not because no one's good enough.
But because I'll never be good enough.

When they leave,
One
By
One,
I never protest.

I watched,
and empathised.

What I have,
everyone has.

What I lack,
anyone can make up for

I only wish for that simple happiness.
Of love.

Yet how can I?

Thus I'm content,
in my halfheartedsoul,
that I will never be anyone's cup of tea;
should never be.

They deserve better,
much better,
but I just can't help myself,
from thinking,
if.
aurora kastanias Mar 2018
Escaping memories I ran
To the setting of beginnings
In search of new encounters
A rescuer, an owner, a gentle

Word. Penn station had evolved
In years with my emotions,
Beguiling decadence lost
To opulence decay.

Pink granite covered in grime,
Glass filtering sunbeams had
Now turned light into grey,
Eerie shadows reflecting

My vanishing intentions,
Dwindling strength,
Waning hope.
The mellifluous cadence

Of alphanumeric flapping metals
That used to sooth me with dreams
Of arrivals and departures
Had been silenced for evermore.

Solari boards swapped
For liquid-crystal displays,
Even people had changed
Flaunting grimaces of disdain,

As they whispered rumours
Of terminal demolishment
To the benefit of a sporting arena
They would call The Garden.

I empathised with the unfluted
Columns of the Roman colonnade,
For I too had been deemed
Obsolete and inefficient,

A wreck no one shall retrieve,
To be suppressed, a panacea
For a collective consciousness
That would rather not see,

Turning blind eyes to me,
To cost-effective identity
Annihilation,
While Bobby freed of me

Won the New York State
Championship
At Poughkeepsie.
On Old Penn Station, Nyc
anthony Brady Oct 2019
I tried to be a man that's patient:
someone kind and calm,
open and understanding.
Someone who felt other’s pain
who didn't let it turn him cold.

You see, their lack of trust
wasn't entirely their fault...
they grew up stunted:
watching their father
abuse their mother.

Or, in his absence they grew up
without him ever there:
erratic, extreme emotions;
thunderclouds of anger,
thus implanted self-hatred.

Then he would return, amusing,
funny - the centre of attention.
Other times he was miserable
or an erratic, manic-obsessive,
a hopeless compulsive mess.

Their mothers stayed quiet
took the lashings, the outbursts
to keep the fragile peace,
while they internalising them,
kept feeling it was their fault.

Innocent, naive, hurt, numb
always feeling like a stranger.
Home?  a war zone where
words were irrational, erratic
weapons of mass destruction.

They learned to hurt others
to protect themselves.
They witnessed human weakness;
the unreliable became friends,
the consistent the enemy.

They grew shy and reserved
couldn't stand the spotlight
their skins  made them anomalies
spectacles, defectives, tattooed
victims with emotional scars.

Rejected by the outside,
no place to call a home
let alone a safe haven.
They numbed every inch of pain,
outcasts. Or so they  thought.

Once in a while their anger
would burst out unexplained,
their heart would pound and
their body would shake
over the slightest inconveniences.

Their  thoughts expressed:
"Am I like:my father?
Bipolar, violent, irrational?"
Often flooded their minds.
I believed their words – empathised.

“I deemed myself unworthy
of consistency, reliability,
happiness, trust and love.
I preyed on the weak
they reminded me of my mother.

I destroyed my body
with any drug or liquor
that I could get my hands on.
Denying myself of food,
Starving myself of love.”

For years and years and years,
I helped them stumble  upon peace:
once I explored the inner crevices
They surrendered to the war within
and stopped abusing themselves.

Years of therapy.
Countless hours of running
notebook after notebook
Of poetry and musings,
they learned to let go and love.

The trouble, you see
is often lack of self-love:
my perceptions revealed it.
They finally learned to trust:
I've fought one hell of a battle.

I was a Social Worker.

TOBIAS.
Universe Poems May 2023
Twenty six years
Long stay
Then life must change
Imagine that's all you have ever known,
in life everyone should be happy,
that should be shown
A few years later
You came along,
at times we both felt not strong
He does not judge
He sees you as you are
He does not listen,
to what others say by far
His own opinions of you,
is what enables him,
to see what is true
When there was no one there,
just love and care
The journey in a working life,
he stayed and never left
A lot of information he reads,
but he knows it supports the needs
He never complains,
only supporting the life reins
He has faced bereavement,
and great loss,
in the last few years
A father,
then grandfather,
both close together,
but we both empathised,
as we both faced a loss
of looking into a father's eyes,
while breath passes through,
their bodies and the skies
I will forever be thankful for you,
and I will love you,
even when I live my eternal life too

© 2023 Carol Natasha Diviney
#to #a #great #person
M/P
Varsha K Jan 2020
Laid my head beneath the sky,
Timid stars, looked so wry.
Asked, "Have you lost your bright light?"
Stars smirked, "You see dull 'cause your eyes fright!"

Showed my teeth, puffed up cheeks,
"See the smile? I'm not that weak!"
Stars mocked, "Fooled the world
Think you can fool me?"

Startled, distressed, I shouted
"What do you know about me!"
Stars smiled, "To be a star,
Had rough path, but never left glee.
Behold! what do you see?
Struggle? Or just sheer beauty?"

Suddenly, I was seeping in ground
Those heavy words dragged me down,
I lost my groove, as I struggled to bound
While the stars looked bigger in their glinting crowns.

Reluctant, I asked, "Is sadness all I've got?
Am I just like a desert's drought?"

Stars empathised, "Alas! You don't know what you are,
Pull yourself from isolation's tar,
& leave the lonesome den afar,
For you can shine brighter than a star."

— The End —