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Rich Dec 2021
Agitation, despair and its winged variations, you name it
all repressed but still rise to test me

What is my recourse?
I tread lightly on this Escheresque concourse
It’s repeated often, I know
but the pen and keys are my most cathartic release
they’re magma to emerging flames
they’re sedatives for demons and angels alike
that reside on corners of this clavicle

How many steps could you take through my lens, my concave mirror?
Have you felt what I felt?
The brimming, cerebral cauldron bursting, putting volcanic geysers to shame
the questions outnumbering seconds spent since Earth’s nativity
the emotions ripping a rift through which rationality deep dives
it becomes Phelps in unknown depths
your body becomes both a Vatican and a Colosseum,
place of worship and place of war
and you walk the tightropes your vocal chords have morphed into
careful to seem like another replica, don’t wanna upset the blades they all balance on
don’t wanna scare the rest hollow, no,
best to follow and best to follow the regimen:

coffee beans and spice of delusion in the hazelnut syrup,
sip slow
follow the same cycle because change is a cocoon and cocoons ache like the past
keep on pretending to love the workplace
love the norms held over you
puppet strings bring warmth after all
in this solitary world cold as winter missile silos
and just as destructive

So I ask again, have you felt what I felt?

Do the few days in utopia offset the majority on rodent wheels?
Have you risen so high, to satellite peaks, to the best you’ve ever been
only to have the worst waiting on the coin’s parallel?

We flip like saltwater fins and backstroke till a back is left broke
I’m learning to discard hope but breathe in the alternative
I believe in better days, I will carve them from local stone
and build a home upon their surfaces
I now know paradise is a set of blueprints
happiness is no state of mind, it’s a direction to me
you may not notice when you arrive
but you keep going

and that’s the beauty of it
you let it be the wind
It’ll find you on your journey

Tell me again,
have you felt what I felt?
K Hanson Sep 2014
Dirt clogged scrubgreen foothills
roll to meet obscured mountains,
veiled in translucent exhaust haze.
Terracotta tile roofs
top flaking white buildings
piled together. Escheresque
march down broken streets.
Traffic clogged arteries pulse
toward tangled city center
disgorging cars,
weary souls.
Perig3e Feb 2011
Oh, Joel,
I see you've gone the way
of HP vanity
with your two score & eight cantos
            pdf-ed
                         and
                                covered
in Escheresque!

============
Wishing you brisk sales and an IRS audit :-)
All rights reserved by the author
Scorch'd Diana Feb 2021
Somberness, see it sanctuarily swearing
sword-tongue worded spellspeech secretly sunder a number
apart from another,
no ear so keen just to hear the equation
crackle into informal shatter.
No regrets nor bother
among preachers nor hypocrits,
so same as it's sad, their chatter
a masked creature
that fits this disordered scripture
of us.

Aware of a far-reaching freedom
each of them fathomless to their undone dares
to fail becoming one;
they,
all feature a familiar pattern
which matters even less to them
than a fantasy's thorn to their first thoughts, frankly;
they,
who share the same history they're enacting
their manifest destiny of a doom chosen
their fair share of despair
so spectacularily reflecting through
their fleet tranquil escaping
from those fear-forsakened frail bone-marrowed
branch brittles they've rosen
so fro as they are, frighteningly awake
fleeing those fractures so alive
in fashions gorgeous fractals alike
no grit, no wit capable of constructing such a lit, yet aesthetic scene of delight.

They,
each afraid of their boundaries beloved
to be breached apart so badly
only for captivity and nothing else
as they beg
counter-intuitive measurements taken
caught from under the counter countlessly
those captives, their algorithms split, entwined;
so better, better don't mind it;
undozens of them
all death-grasping frozen
from just a slightliest rattle
of the crispy pages bearing a poem
or a *** pinched by a laddle.

Falsely do they believe revolving
advancing their middle
however, with its Forever forgotten
prayer by prayer
for the sake of a splendid soil
oblivious to the seed that is rotten.

Oil-devouring tumoil tactically targets their entire toil
pouring visions filling each stare
for each one to chisel only another
effort-evaporating Escheresque stair
for ground and ground apart at the borderline
they are,
the sharp scraping of the air
gnashing winds under the ice of a somber sunshine.

These crystalline brimstones
spacelessy stranded;
vile ambers, yet of beauty unspoken
sparking like cider, from apples royalty-branded
perhaps even prickling, peach-flavoured honey wine
reminiscing silent lovers' moans
ones a satyr favours in folly
in gayness he eaves his hallowed shrine.

Without answers
a riddle is meant unbroken
shards of their failure, silkenly sanded
faintly, a filthless spirit's essence,
so fine.
Some insight may have been awoken
perhaps this and not another time.
Just the right questions
painfully born from the sublime.

In and on,
however a retrospect away
a new future rises from the ashes of fallen hells
mere memories of an old fiend
darkness encountered
for each delusion you slay
and eventually
even you, as well, will listen
listen to the bells from the yondersome elsewhere ringing, wailing
hailing their soul-crackling harmony
somewhere from above us all.

Cardinal numbers are breathless,
while we,
so proud to appraise prime numbers
so wishfully down to their core,
rather dream unparalyzed a dream
of an unclaimed nowhen
stuck in a less corrupt algebratic behaviour than before;
error-ridden operations so holdlessly scaffolded
our somberness
submerged and suffocated.
Down
down we swam to see sunken cities of sorcery;
suicidal endeavour, hive mind agony
our race means for the next galaxy
yet still a race meant for parsimony.

All in all, ****** in brickly rubble
what once was wall, popped much like a bubble;
crumbling, stars burst our skies apart
fates laughing the madnesses' mirth
no hand unscorched, suddenly so much to win.
They listen, scent, and see,
the ones they miss, and what they've lost;
gasping, gazing up ahead
wings spread, glare brightly
flame-feathered doves of rebirth
released, everyone's dignity
finally freed from the heart.

We're not, not mindlessly suffering a somewhere
but this time, facing this inquiry:
What else is there
reality or not
modality or possibility, probably an actuality;
as we learn to sincerely care and to feel
the current breath, the nation, the spot
they all are our responsibility
doubtlessly and definitely real.

Thus, secondary to me
each second that ***** my spirit dry
throughout a minute
anywhen
as we spire from hour to hour
honestly, far, far too often
and not from now and then.

Primary, however, is
my mistake which I'll hold me dire
I would rather not anymore, ever
divide zero by itself again.
What I learned like so many before
cannot count in this realm of some foreign heart
- now, for me -
anymore
which is indeed my problem
as I'm burning these pages I tore apart.
01011001

— The End —