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Terry O'Leary Jul 2015
As dawn unfolds today beyond my fractured windowpane,
a breeze beguiles the ashen drapes. Like snakes they slip aside,
revealing wanton worlds that race and run aground, insane,
immersed in scenes obscene that savants strive to mask and hide.

Outside, the twisted streets retreat. Last night they seemed so cruel.
While lamps illumed lithe demons dancing neath the gallows tree,
their lurking shadows shuddered as they breached the vestibule.
Within the gloom strange things abound, I sense and sometimes see.

Perdu in darkened doorways (those which soothe the ones who weep)
men hide their shame in crevices in search of cloaked relief.
The ladies of the evening leave, it’s soon their time to sleep!
The alleyways are silent now but taste of untold grief.

Distraught nomadic drifters (dregs who stray from street to street)
abandon bedtime benches, squat on curbs they call a home,
appeal to passing strangers for a coin or bite to eat.
Rebuffed, they gaze with icy eyes that chill the morning gloam.

Observe with me once more, beyond my fractured windowpane,
the broken boy with crooked smile, the one who's seen the beast.
With tears, he kneels and clasps the cross to exorcise the stain.
The abbey door along the lane enshrouds a pious priest.

At nearby mall, Mike needs a cig, and stealth'ly steals a pack.
The Man, observing, thinks ‘Hey Boy, this caper calls for blood’,
takes aim, then shoots the fated stripling six times in the back.
Come, mourn for Mike and brother Justice, facedown in the mud.

The shanty town has hunkered down engaged in mortal sports
while shattered bodies' broken bones at last repose supine,
and mama (now bereft of child) in anguished pain contorts,
her eyes drip drops of bitter wrath which wither on a vine.

Fatigued and bored, some kids harass the crowded alley now.
To pass the time, Joe smokes a joint and Lizzy snorts a line.
The NRA (which deals with doom) can sometimes help somehow,
though Eric died with Dylan in ‘The Curse of Columbine’.

Marauders scam the marketplace (with billions guaranteed)  
while babes with bloated bellies beg with barren sunken eyes,
and (cut to naught) the down-and-out (like trodden beet roots) bleed.
Life's carousel confronts us all, though few can ring the prize.

Yes, Mr Madoff, private bankster (cruising down the road,
with other Ponzi pushers, waving magic mushroom wands),
adores addiction to the bailout (coffers overflowed),
and jests with all the junkies, while they’re bilking us with bonds.

A timeworn washerwoman totters, stumbling from a tram -
she shuffles to her hovel on a dismal distant hill,
despondent, shuts the shutters, prays then downs her final dram -
a raven quickly picks at crumbs forsaken on her sill.

Jihadist and Crusader warders faithfully guard the gates,
behead impious infidels, else burn them at the stake
(yes, God adores the faithful side, the heathen sides He hates),
with saintly satisfaction reaped begetting pagan ache.

All day the watchers skulk around our fractured windowpanes
inspecting all our secret thoughts, our realms of privacy,
controlling every point of view opinion entertains,
forbidding thoughts one mustn't think, with which they don’t agree.

Our rulers (kings and other things) have often made demands
of populations breathing air on near or distant shores
and when they didn’t yield and kneel, we conquered all their lands
with sticks and stones, then bullets, bombs and battleships in wars.

Come, cast just once a furtive glance… there's something in the far…
from towns to dunes in deserts dry, the welkin belches death
by dint of soulless drones that stalk beneath a straying star
erasing life in random ways with freedom’s dying breath.

But closer lies an island, where the keepers grill their wards.
Impartial trials? A travesty, indeed quite Kafkaesque.
The guiltless gush confessions, born and bred on waterboards.
No sense, no charges nor defense. A verdict? Yes, grotesque!

Now dusk is drawing near outside my fractured windowpane
while mankind wanes like burnt-out suns in fading lurid light;
and scarlet clots of grim deceit and ebon beads of bane
flow, deified, within a corpse, the fruit of human blight.
Keith J Collard Jan 2013
"Wow, what a mansion!"--Albert Wesker RE1


Gothic mansion, where every warrior lost it,
head, heart, and soul--as Faust did,
there walks a scientist who's blood is acid,
with glasses that turn to shade--death reactive.

" Who dares touch my holster" he says bombastic.
as walls evaginate victims, send out vines,
it is from Jesus' in the crowd--Mathew--his lines.
the sight of thorax, stinger and fang,
******* the slain,
do not phase him, for he is phase-less,
turn off receptors of pain, and all is pain-less.
A fallen teamate, still and a'swarm,
the black shades do not mourn,
as thorax crawls ontop of her
but laughs at the irony of a female,
impregnated with ovipositor.

He helped design those creatures,
and--he is her traitorous leader.

Howling night forest, awakens the staff,
as if they sleep facedown in saltwater tides,
shuffling and whale moaning, as if  harpooned--
going to lonely depths to die.
then there are the hunters, reptilian apes,
can open locked doors with skeleton claw,
move to quick in hallways,
why pump buttstock you saw.
Pepper the **** on the bed with full load,
with zombies fellating down to bone,
scream through your muzzle,
slide room apart in jigsaw puzzle.
then watch your six for the hunter,
it is stalking you, wants to put its foot on your face,
and dig in, then kick its leg--and rip off your skin.
retreat from hunters and faces bloated with cadaverine,
find a safe room to safely scream.
Sit down at the bar, pull scotch from its coffin,
on counter, rest pump and Colt python,
do not think of the things you will die from.
there are three darts in the bullseye,
in William Tell style,
but the board is in fashion of an atom,
with electrons in orbit,
the  numbers are the human genome,
and a surgical marksman has scored it.
He is Wesker, and this mansion is his tester,
blood and bone is both colors of his litmus,
horribles awaiting in dark room pay witness.
his muzzle flashlight's rooms with hot spark,
entry beats claw swing, shades now clear in dark.
they say in total black silence, one will go crazy,
from the sound of their heart.
but "My trigger that squeezes within,
charged from pupil's firing pin,
sweet semi-auto strokes of violin."
as he vaunts over dying beast,
and darkness returns to his shades,
from moon light through window,
reflecting knifes on wall from moon in wane.
he slicks back a loosed strand,
locks the door behind him, and continues with his plan.
" In my father's mansion are many rooms,
" I'll go prepare a room for you." he mocks, as he walks,
with parabellum hollow points and acid round glocks.
This is his mansion, he is Achilles loosing knees,
he is warrior and scholar, a student of Thucidydes.
team-mates--out air holes in jungle boot bleed,
blood seeping through pants--
olive drab uniform now fatigue.
rooms: blood grooves running down your bayonet--
traps-- channeling you to your death.
prop open  oaken door with knife, hope  it will hold,
walk to the far side of parlor,
the sound of medieval bolt.
door spits out knife,
just scream through keyhole.
The iron maiden taper is coming slowly,
do not let it go through non-vitals,
a slow way to die,
take it through frontal lobe behind eye.
alas a team-mate hears your screams,
in the sepulchal hall,
door swing, and out of deaths thrall.

Charley Mike: continue mission,
and paint the walls black,
with dead flesh backsplash,
gun or nerves jam, then die a ripping death,
smell a cannibals breath.
Be it known, the man in black and strap,
laughs off exposed rib cage slats,
with only a scrape to his pistol belt.

Enter the man in reactive shades,
Picture a alligator, calm, age old in the everglades.
One in the brain, and none in the chest,
those extra shots for rooks, without prowess.
" Wesker, you'll pay for this treachery," invoking Karma,
but the man in black measures her tears as he harms her.
So all that enter mansion portal,
and reach the basement, before becoming morsel,
finally catching up with Wesker,
no more trail of labotomized minds,
and jaws and eyes in epileptic shock,
from a calm trigger squeeze of glock.
Face to face with the master of the saxon race,
mastering gunpowder under the scope,
and you hear the hunters off distant,
primal howls and hissing.
Listen to what the man in black says,
the mortal contest is over,
and he has a virus to offer,
" Die here, and your death will be longer than your life,"
says the man, who's shooting hand is the reapers scythe.
" But live with this virus, and you will never die."
but watch the sun burn out in the sky."
You can refuse him, and face the nightmare creatures alone,
adding your skeleton to the calcium of mansion stone.
or take the virus that invaded the first cell,
invading mitochondria,
making 'other men' the meaning of hell.

" Come decide, lest I go prepare a room for you".--
From powder burns,  your tears are black,
eardrums ring from screaming contest of
chrome python against giant asp.
shoulder numb from combat loading shotgun,
thumbing shells straight to chamber--
almost cyclic.
blood in boots: not much fight left.
your friends are dead, and you answer,
" I rather die forever traitor, to rid the world of your cancer."

In my masters mansion, are many rooms,
dying, crying, moaning: eternal tombs.
how resident evil the movie should have felt.......I only cite the 96 video game, which only shared the setting with my poem.
Don Brenner Mar 2011
Sometimes I wonder why
I write and what the reason is
for breaks and lapses in words
and writing and why I would write
about an Elvis pumping his neon
with unleaded and myself
at the pump across the way
with my eyes fixed on this Elvis
a forty something burnout
with too many relapses
who returns my stare and says
in the most average Elvis voice
"How ya doin"

How am I doin
I think to myself
okay and think about why I write
and why I would impersonate
an impersonator in words
for my own consumption
or for the one person I will have
read this or entertainment
or just a way to get from eleven
to midnight to one in the morning

it seems my dreams
have taken over
my life
I sleep like a dolphin
with one eye open
Josh Jul 2014
Open your mind to wonder.
Don't close it with belief.
For the spell it puts you under makes it difficult to leave.

The road to self deception, paved with preconceived conception, makes an evolutionary blunder that much harder to believe.

But in the natural ways we suffer and the things we have achieved, I don't think we should be misplaced -- mistaking all things as perceived.

And the self-redeeming peace that lives in uttered pleas for buttered ease -- like praying for forgiveness for the feeling of appease.
Or kneeling-bound to beg facedown for children with a sickness.
(Although prayer doesn't prove to cure disease or wickedness, it seems.)  

So if you ever get a chance to wander and start to see the world with wonder, don't let it slip into neglect.

Nor impose upon another what you chose when you were younger.
Don't abuse your self-respect.

Instead, just seek to be free
and find the wonder in-between.
TC Mar 2013
Calcified age lines,
driftwood was once a shiny ship:
hallowed bow, curved spine, dead.

Jaundiced and gaunt didn’t appear
until after the fact,
break a bottle on its back
because I'm facedown,
dead drunk, waves of saliva breaking
desperately against the asphalt.
Tree branches grappling together in the wind
are handsome
like a handshake
in a bad poem
but they're just trees, just wood.
I am slowburning like an all natural cigarette.

Jaunt through the woods. Drinking spot.
Acrid friends.
Warm bonfire, I want it to be more like a movie.  
Davy Jones my sorrows. Sitting on a log.
Rock bottom and I’m sitting on a log.
Weird girl comes over, she’s artsy and dyslexic.
I hate that word. Artsy. *******.
She asks if I’m okay and I say yeah.

At home,
exhume pillowcase from *****,
futon forget-me-nots
some thick haired little boy
had curled up to die inside;

Post embrace.
Crashed; a solemnly sinking ship captain
with skin peeling like lottery tickets
too leather-faced to shout anything but
TEN THOUSAND THUNDERING TYPHOONS
as he goes down
with his cracked nymphal exoskeleton
wipes the fire off his brow
he is burning like an all natural cigarette
but phoenixes are not legends
they are metaphors,
and that is enough difference for me.

The sea is salty and stinging
and they say
a smooth one
never made a skillful sailor
but you cannot build a ship
out of driftwood,
just watch one deteriorate into it.

Maybe that’s the point.

For three years,
I found myself in an oozing freefall
base jumping as I carved through the air
like an anchor
parachute made of somber bottle twist
carved cork and microscope slide,
salt stained shoes,
brackish eyes
distort flashes of organic sunlight
thick necked forays into begging for fare
at deserted train stations
lashed out at friends with bullwhip arms
I couldn’t reach my own back
freefalling, base camp
welling up to greet me
from the depths of a tar pit
but the thing about rock bottoms is:
if they don’t destroy you
they give you something solid to stand on.

And if you leap back up, spread eagle
Like a petrified starfish, swim through that tar pit
that is ocean, the warm hovel of under the covers,
Bonfire, whiskey in the back of an old sailors throat,
All natural cigarette,
You can be born again. I promise.

Depression is not sadness, it is the absence of hope
And it is numb. Reduces us to ashes and drowns us all at once.
But it waxes and it wanes, burns itself out if you let it.

And from that flame, scattered splinters in the ocean,
The shedding of my cracked, nymphal exoskeleton,
I understood the impermanence and necessity of flailing tendrils
White hot curling up a mainmast like a handshake
Wet flesh in the womb of moment between sleep and wake,
Breath slipping away like low tide
Gasping for air until it’s easier to ****
Oxygen out of the saltwater in your lungs
Pain killed a boy and made a man

Watch a phoenix **** a baptism
Violently conjure steam into existence
Just for it to disappear, watch them smile.
You’ll understand.
liberty cline Feb 2014
And i'm dying to hear you say the word,
but forever is a hoax and I'm trying to find my way back home

Do I look fine ?
Do I look ok?
raindrops falling down
My window
Everyday
And you wouldn't know
You can't see my face.
When it's facedown on the pillowcase

And I'm dying to hear your voice
But love is just a bittersweet word
They tell you when your dumb and young

Do I look fine ?
Do I look ok?
raindrops falling down
My window
Everyday
And you wouldn't know
You can't see my face.
When it's facedown on the pillowcase

And I'm dying to feel you here
But the distance is too great when your miles away and just don't feel the same

Forever is a hoax and love is just something they tell you when your young and dumb, young and dumb
Your don't feel the same.

Facedown on the pillowcase
My escape.
asgarth Jan 2017
come on now, you didn't think you were going to get away with not dreaming about the undead after all this business at work, did you?--that was the problem with you thinkers: all you ever did was thinking!--the truth is that you thought far too much--you should've been out there living, trying to get laid, trying to knock the hell out of the world with your next verse...but instead, there you were lying awake for hours, literally hours, and all because of what?: some witch at work who wants to run everyone's world by being what she can't help but being?--you'd even said it to yourself driving home, that she wasn't a bad person, she was just a petty and sick ******* who had to make everyone's life that much lousier, that was her "power," if you wanted to call such a thing power...but it's not like she was your boss, she'd just said something that had injured you because you'd allowed it to injure you, because it had been true a long time ago that you'd let it appear that you'd "****** up" when in truth you'd saved yourself a ton of misery by doing so--the thing itself was so small, though, that only someone who was picayune was ever going to know that you'd still felt ****** up over it...it just so happens that she had remembered and that she was just petty and picky enough to throw it back in your face at the exact right time...but how often had you said to yourself that you really needed to combat such ******* behavior by thinking as clearly as you could in the moment, by just knowing that you hadn't done anything wrong, that in most cases, you were probably smarter and more capable than whoever it was who was accusing of something ridiculous or trying to make you look bad for whatever reason...and how often had you failed in taking this information to heart, facts that would make anyone else feel good about themselves, but with you, it was just another reason why you made yourself miserable: you just couldn't translate all of these individual positive things about you into a more cohesive and positive whole--to you, you were always doing spin control to get yourself back from the edge you felt they were all pushing you closer and closer toward--and when you got there, and if you went over, what then?--only what had happened last night, which is what was happening all the time...you lie awake sleepless and fuming over feeling like you were made to look bad even understanding in the moment that you would never remember this ***** or anything she said, that you'd even forget her name in time because people like that were nothing to you, they meant nothing to you--but how long would that take?: five years, ten years?--you wanted to forget all about her now, but it's not like you weren't ever going to see her again, which is why you were getting all stressed out, because in a few hours, you'd have to drag your sorry carcass out of bed and go back there and do it all over again--so you were going to have to figure out a way to evolve through this experience, you were going to have to sort all this out in your head and get right with it somehow because in fewer than twenty-four hours, you'd be right back here, crawling into bed and asking yourself if it was going to be "another one of those nights" where you got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and when you returned, found it impossible to get your mind off of anything but what had happened involving this woman, this creature, this **** who was a bought on all womankind--yes, she was really that bad, maybe not a bad person per se, but bad enough to lump her in with all the other ***** you'd ever run across in your travails in this world, these bleeding animals who just wanted the world to serve them in one form or fashion and who didn't care who had to lie facedown in the mud to do it--in such a scenario, that doomed fool lying facedown was you...but you didn't want that to be you, and at the very least you'd wanted to have your slice of revenge by having your slice of life have nothing to do with her, by being able to crawl into bed and get good sleep and if you couldn't, then let the reason be anything but having to do with her--god almighty, how many women like her had you encountered in your life, and already your father's voice was drilling down to the very core of the question: how many times had you met people like her, and how many times had you let them get to you, bother your harass you, ******* up, make you look bad, ruin your sleep, ruin your day?--and you still hadn't found a way to not give a ****, you still hadn't found a way to disconnect from caring about whatever it was that made you feel like it was your reputation on the line?--your old man was right in his own way, though: you cared far too much about how you were perceived than you wanted to believe you did, and wasn't all of this, wasn't your insomnia over this ***** the proof of it?--and now you were going back to your old nervous habit of chewing at the dead skin of your fingers, watching them become gnawed and decayed and all because of this nonsense you had let go to your head--and you wanted to think therapy had made you better somehow, that it had opened up the pathways in your mind to the "self-talk" that was going to save you?--did you call this bit of torture salvation?--but no, it wasn't like this every night, it really wasn't...only when things got to you, only when you were stressed out...but still, the question should be, "why do you allow yourself to get stressed out over situations out of your control?"--invariable, it all leads to these dreams where the undead find you wherever you go to run and hide, and last night you'd gotten especially clever and told yourself if all else failed, you could hide in the walls, and yet, you had seen her climb into those walls, which is when you knew even your dreams were smarter than you--enough was enough though, right?--no way on earth or in hell should you allow any of this to continue: you were a grown-*** man in his mid-forties, you were a hard worker, you were good at what you did, and more than anything else, this ***** did not get to decide what kind of a person you were--you needed to detach yourself from the idea that she was going to make your life a hell, that she was going to do this or that to you because what was all that anyway?--it was just worry atop worry, and all of it was useless and needless, all of it was based on fear and as you'd been asking yourself for the last few decades, when had fear ever served you?--all of this only seemed like you were in prison, but it was one you had built for yourself...wasn't it bad enough your old man had drilled into you not just those words of criticism about how you'd let everything "get to you," but also that he'd made you care so much, too much, about what others thought because you were always trying to please them just like you were always trying to please him?--and how often had you been able to do this successfully to the point where you didn't have to try so hard anymore?: never--you had never succeeded in such a venture because there was always another hour, another day, another task for you to accomplish to another's satisfaction...this was the paradigm you'd been locked into...but it wasn't too late, for look, just look at how you'd analyzed all of this, at how wonderfully you'd dismantled all the **** that surrounded the real reason why you wasted others to accept you, to find you and label you as "good"--that never would've been possible before, you would've just stayed awake the whole night long and woken up in a foul mood and let it ruin a new day...but not anymore, right?--well, almost: because while the slogan "knowledge is power" seems like an empowering one, what is it really?--do you feel any more powerful than you did before you started having this conversation with yourself?--were you going to be able to make all this ******* in your life disappear just like that(!) because you'd suddenly figured out that you wasted people to think highly of you because you'd never been able to get your father to think highly of you?--no, no, because there you were turning over and over in bed trying to unlock the thing that would let you live again, that would let you sleep again...there you were begging for mercy, for a clue as to how to do this nightwork within you, for it felt like you were being made to dig your own grave whenever this happened to you, and the deeper you dug, the more out felt trapped in that hole you'd just made deeper--what else could you do but make it deeper?: but when had you looked up, when had you asked if you couldn't just dig your hands into the packed earth and climb out?--this is how and where your imagination had failed you, for yes, you had managed to fal, back asleep, it hadn't conquered you quite so much...but here you were being presented with the facts all over again that it would happen again and again and that you were doomed to allow it to because, really, who didn't want others to think well of them?--you were always going to be human--
remington carter Mar 2018
lying facedown on the train tracks;
home is where the heart is.
i sharpen my alibi on my mother’s bones
blink blink blink
the rays of the sun gouge my eyes out and
i blink, feeding on her conscience
through roots in the dirt.
regret metastasizes inside of me
like the very consumption that killed her

i found a way out, what now?
the daylight picked out my ribs one by one
the moon died and i buried her in the flowerbeds.
brave molly, come save me, the train's at the station

maybe today
i can talk to myself
out loud on the way there.
primal scream therapy.

(in between bittersweet fragments of memory
i can say your name without—
gangrene makes a home within my brittle skull.
cyanotic lips preach to me the
everlasting weight of my sin)

today
i’ll talk to myself out loud
on the way there
and maybe the echo won't
sound so **** scared
it's taken me one grueling year to be able to write again. logging back into HP and seeing everyone's beautiful writing again has made me so happy. i really did miss you guys
Holly Salvatore Jul 2013
When  my mom was dying
We put a bed in the living room
Fresh from the hospital
In front of the piano
Behind the rocking chair

We still called it the "living room"
I didn't mention the cruel irony in that
And the living people
Who knew my mother
All came and sat around her

And we weren't allowed to touch her
Cause the morphine lost its memory
And every bit of her was falling down
Dozing in a straw house
When the weather man called for hurricanes
She was right there
But miles away from rescue efforts
And hand-holding daughters

Marilyn Monroe went the same way
In bed, I mean
Facedown
Her pill supply run out
And I imagine her room was a beautiful mess
Full of roses and tokens from insincere men

An icon deserves better than that
A pin up with no one
But ex-lovers and sheets to hold her
And a pillow stained with last lipstick kisses
All those little white beads of forgetfulness
Crawling on the floor
And happy birthday Mr. President

Billy woke up bawling the other night
In bed with a girl
Who was not my sister
And he called and told her he loved her still
She hugged my dog and cried into her fur
She finished the roll
Of toilet paper blowing her nose

There were three of us in bed that night
And two somewhere else
Continents, nations, states apart
The air in my room was like asphalt
And allergies weighing us down
Lulu barked at our crestfallen hearts

Under the supermoon
I turned into a twentysomethingwolf
Keen senses acute defenses
And all I could smell on my sheets
Was the kitchen I work in
I wanted to be human
Taste the fear and perfection
Of being a ******
In bed with a boy who is not family
A teenager whispering under sheets again

I stayed at home alone
Soothing, sighing, and howling sweet nothings
To my lonely bed
Telling mom and Marilyn Monroe
The fever dreams in my lone wolf head
Praying "please God, send us someone"
"Please God, let love burn us quick and strong"
"Please God, don't draw the blues out. We all buckle."
Devon Leonel Jan 2014
NEXT!
Good lord, that was a disaster.
Forget the script. Perhaps it's time to improvise
Get her on stage and just dialogue.
She has such a comfortable presence up there,
Like she was born to play that part.
It's as if she's seen the words contained within those pages
Even though they lie, facedown, on the chair.
But the script is direction, it is control.
The script. THE SCRIPT.

It's wrong.
The script is wrong.
The lines are wrong.
Her delivery is wrong.
This whole theatre reeks of wrong.
Wrong, wrong, WRONG!

Out. GET OUT.
**** the lights as you go.

Nothing but dark, and quiet.
The darkness persists, but the quiet cannot last.
Unwritten lines met with easy delivery,
Unscripted staging matched by effortless movement,
A couple of bumps in the road
(What production is without those?)
But still, beauty in the performance--
Now replaying in the silence.

A single bulb flickers on,
Casts its wavering light over that script,
That work, crafted so meticulously.
A fat lot of good it's been.

A new idea strikes.
Certain? No. Nothing is certain.
But worth a shot.
The script? Facedown in the trash
Except the few words to set the opening scene.
The play? Not for one actor, but two.
A note scrawled to she who was chased out,
And nothing left to do but sit
Under the solitary bulb
In a darkened theatre
Hoping for a knock at the door.
Roxanne Pepin Oct 2010
Never let the ******* get us down
The world won’t stop, won’t be letdown
The ground won’t shatter, won’t be a breakdown
The power is out, complete shutdown
Fall to the ground, facedown
Sometimes all is not okay in the comedown
Sometimes all you have to do is slowdown
Don’t make this into a showdown
Turn it into a knockdown
Quarantined, put into lockdown
Don’t let them be a putdown
This world is a freetown.
© Roxanne Pepin 2010
Brady D Friedkin Apr 2017
The morning came slowly on that third day
The sun wondered how it might be able to shine through such darkness
The tears of the earth came early in the dew that morning
The flowers began to bloom in an open defiance to the earth
Perhaps the decaying body of the Lord gave them new life

The birds sang songs of jubilee that morning, as if there were reason for joy
Did they not know that the Light of the World had been snuffed out?
Did they not know that the one who fed them had gone away?
Did they not know that their creator lay below them dead in the ground?
Or did they sing defiantly knowing what we yet did not know?

Much like it had been in Bethlehem decades before, the world was silent
Breaking the silence like the Divine Child’s cries, somewhere a child cried
As if this child knew that his Lord lay dead below the earth
As if he could feel the thick darkness that surrounded him
But then, in defiance like only a child could bring, the first laughter in days

The new world was cold, dark, and bitter, and a child dared to laugh
While the rest of the world cried and mourned the death of their only hope
This child laughed while the birds sang and the flowers bloomed
It was as if they did not know that the Life of the World was still dead
Rather, though, it was as if they had read the prophets of old, and believed

When the sun finally rose, it could not shine through the thick darkness
We lived in a dark purgatorial world where we awaited the judgement
What a terrible judgement that must be coming toward us
We, who drove the nails into His hands, and gave Him over to death
But then, a glimmer of light comes upon the horizon

The light was not the rising of the sun, but some holy other
Those disciples who had run away while He hung on the cross ran again
This time not away from their Savior, but toward that otherworldly light
When they came to where He has been buried, they fell upon their faces
The brightest light to ever grace this old world poured out of the tomb

Then they heard a voice, the voice of the Risen Lord
‘Rise up you men of earth’ He said to the men lying facedown
‘Rise up oh you sleepers!’
‘Behold the Light of the World is upon you’
It was then that the world began its slow change

The cosmos, which had fractured so long ago in Eden, began to mend
Dead men rose to new life
Dark places were then filled with life
The world became a new place where the old had passed away
Every crack and crevice filled with an uncreated light never before seen

For the Lord has risen from the dead!
Indeed He has defeated death!
And forever, we shall keep the feast !
Alleluia!
Carlo C Gomez Feb 2021
Pine needles in my head
Snowbird starts to fly
A want of apricity
Enters my blood stream
Like lukewarm sea water
Enters hiemal streams
I'm sprawled facedown
An angel or so
Below the snow
The taste of frost
Technically wintergreen
From your breathy kiss
Hinting at a return
To rays of affection
And the crush of limbs
Jane Doe Dec 2012
I found myself facedown on the floor in the bathroom of my tiny east-German apartment with my cheek pressed against the ***** tiles and it certainly wasn’t the first bathroom I’ve found myself facedown in but it was the furthest one from home and I turned over and watched moisture beads gel on the underside of the sink and when I stared hard enough one looked a little like an elephant and it was a bad joke but I laughed anyway because it was just moisture beads and the only elephant in the room was me.
JDK Aug 2014
Burnt out psychenaut
trying his hand at making art.
Mosquito bitten,
from bed-ridden to facedown in the swamp.
Glorifying mind loss.
Tossed and turned in ocean waves.
Slamming into stop signs.
Disney's just a hindsight.
Theme parks just a crime spot.
Tourists just a foreground to hide what's in the backdrop.
Florida has its own particular kind of madness
Verisi Militude Oct 2010
Doesn’t run.

Doesn’t even curse.

Just sits there as the tide

Comes surging forward

And the clouds tumble

Over one another in the sky.



Doesn’t run.

Doesn’t even curse.

Just pulls out the tile

In her pocket as dull black

Water sizzles and froths

In a torrent all around her.



No, she



Doesn’t run.

Doesn’t even curse.

Just stares at the engraved

N and the sub 1

On the game-piece’s face

While the water drags her in.



Even when she loses her footing, she



Doesn’t run.

Doesn’t even curse.

Just clasps her hand

Into a tight fist before

The icy water

Swallows her whole



And thinks:



Where are you now,

Ocean Eyes?

Where are you now,

When I really am drowning,

And not just in every word you say,

Not just in every thing you do?



The force of the tide

Is not very strong,

Yet she does not fight it.

She is limp,

Now part of the water

Just as she was once part of him.



Where are you now,

Ocean Eyes?

Where are you now,

When everything is just too hard,

When I really do need

To disappear inside something bigger than me?



Seagulls scream overhead.

The sky is a black oil rag,

The lake a dark,

Rippling curtain,

The wind a shrill lamentation,

The girl a hollow husk.



After a time and with crunching,

Crushing force.

Her ragdoll body collides with a rock.

But she doesn’t move.

Doesn’t grab hold.

Doesn’t climb on.



No, she



Doesn’t run,

Doesn’t even curse.

She floats facedown,

Almost as if to look

after the tile

that falls from her hand.
The lines have escaped me once again,
all buttered up and sliding under furniture
like cockroaches at dawn.

I was made with a different chip.
My heart, she dances to her own music,
a song with no words- just Gregorian chanting
and an amnesiac beat; she dances lonely.

My tongue is tied to the floor of my mouth
with fresh sinew that I stole from the belly
of the cat still steaming on the damp asphalt
beneath alien streetlights, streaming
unhurriedly past a new Mercedes,
seeming to fall in chunks down my throat...
neverlanding.

Every trip, every drip, drop, knife or needle,
only leaves me more alone when my imagination
is gone again, and the elevator panels
have ceased giggling as I tell them ***** jokes
between floors two and four.

My dreaming lover lies while I stare rudely,
washing his clothes and feeding him broth.
He wretches over and again, poisoned
by the arsenic in my kiss, the lead in my bowels.
Not this lover, nor any other, could survive
the rugged terrain where I insist to live,
where the well supplies me well
with replacement tears,
yea, even blood.

The mosquitos so strong there,
despite the heat and barren broken stones,
they lick me dry as I methodically flip the light
and lift the coffeetable and ottoman in the den,
finding the nests of my soulmates
who have eaten my lines slowly,
savoring the bitterness of cheap paper.

I refill myself at the well,
swallowing the unsuspecting larvae,
while the one I love drowns facedown as I watch.
His heart stops, and mine, she quickens her step.
She can hear the tortured tongue.
Tickled with every gulp, he's giggling.

I take a step forward, over the void.
The elevator disappears as I turn the corner
into the falling crimson sun.
Carlo C Gomez Jul 2022
people are friends
to the bone
—bottomliners,
no human can drown,
but they can turn
from a solid to a liquid,
whose name is written on water,
whose laying facedown
on the topsoil?

lovely thunder today,
good weather for an airstrike,
the road is a gray tape
over magnetic fields,
too fragile to walk on,
a sudden Manhattan of the mind:
all of the buildings
are time passing fragments
in spawned harbinger,
accidently reacting like
a stream with bright fish
below the waste.
Amanda Evett Jan 2017
VI**

No.
These books lie.
These words and these voices and
These photographs
Hoodwink us into thinking
Titanic is really gone.
No.
It was the Olympic, dear
Baby girl Titanic is still out there
Twanging lovely cello notes
And drifting with smooth propellers.
No.
Adrift like a ghost
Is she…
**** those photographs
They feel so untrue, because in my heart
I was there
I am there.
So I am drowned?
I am facedown in the water
Gasping for a breath my
Body cannot take?
I am dead?
NO.
My boy is still alive
I am still holding his hand deep
In the sea
Blue blue ocean
If lovely girl, Titanic, has broken
I am broken too.
From a series of poems told from the perspective of the victims and survivors of the Titanic tragedy. This is from the perspective of a disbeliever of the sinking of the Titanic.
M Harris Mar 2017
Silent Killer,
A Predator’s Smile,
A Guise Engulfed In Disguise,
A Child of Immaculate Torment,
Her Diamond Lies, Insidiously Advent.

Lost In Her Radiations,
Trapped In Her Demented Seductions,
Fenced By Her Hype,
Immersed In Her Gripe.

As The Clicker Goes Down,
The Ideals Start To Facedown,
As I Cauterize In Her Suicides,
Ashes Divide,
Weeping For Absolution,
Filled With Consternation,

Her Angel Eye’s Smirk, As I Charred Alive,
Screams Slowly Vanishing In Void,
Devoid Dismantled,
Lured By Her Lust,
Transcending To Dust....

- 03:07AM
Maddy Tidrick Feb 2013
Even when blank
you flash with memories.
Mindless doodles,
quickly jotted poems.
Stains of past lessons
still remain.

How many eyes
have gazed out at
your white vastness?
How many hands
have nervously fumbled
with your squeaky markers,
scrambling for answers
inside their own minds?

Do you see us?
Some racing to
take the notes
scribbled upon your
pallor surface,
and others facedown
on the desk,
trying to recover
sleep that was lost.

What have you created?
Perhaps a scientist,
or a few?
A lawyer, a doctor,
maybe two?
Without you,
oh ever-present whiteboard,
I doubt our teachers
would know what to do.
Lillian Harris Nov 2013
Just because I’m quiet doesn’t mean I have nothing to say
Behind these closed lips are thousands of stories,
Endless words, thoughts, emotions
Waiting to be summoned
But fear is the glue that keeps my mouth shut
And the words scrawled on these pages
Convey more than my hushed voice ever could.

Just because I smile, doesn’t mean that I’m content
Beneath this ill-fitting cloak of concealment
With all its plastic sincerity,
There is a girl with fragile dreams
And eyes brimming with fire
Thrown into a world where she suffocates
In the heat of human expectations.

Just because I am ignored, doesn’t mean I am transparent
Carelessly I am dismissed, overlooked
They don’t understand that, like them,
I have felt pain, sorrow and joy
I am alive
My heart beats as their’s do
But we are separated by invisible walls.

I am more than a flickering, nameless face
Whispered words, a vacant smile
I am not a long-forgotten book lying facedown on the shelf
I am an endless world below the barrier reefs
Of a vast, uncharted ocean
But no one ever dares to leave the shore
And break the surface.
The uniVerse Jul 2021
4 A.M.
A body lays slain
facedown in a pool of blood
a halo to match her name
stabbed 4 times in the chest
a street worker
like all the rest
who would want to her hurt her?
- to put her to rest
your guess is as good as mine
she may have not been the best
but someone was prepared to cross that line.
————————
An innocent as far as I could tell
first night on the job
tell me who goes to hell?
- those who give or those who rob
her next of kin were called
so that they could name her
once at birth and now at death
twice they tried to save her
an umbilical cord wrapped around her neck
a noose just two months earlier
maybe now she got her wish
released back to the sea
this angel fish.
She was someone’s daughter  
we are all humans just the same
if life has anything taught us
that we are never dead
just released from our pain
Melissa Banks Dec 2016
First my fingers go numb and I can't feel my lips
So I drink your presence like I drink cheap tequila
Rough at first
But after a couple sips, smooth as water
You touch me but my body is without sensation
Something different is pumping through my veins
And Novacane blocks any feeling
From the pain that comes as you cut me open
My blood drains but I don't sense it
Ignorance is bliss, they used to tell me
That is until you're facedown in a pillow
With the life escaping one strained breath at a time
My teeth clench and my knees lock
I can't help it but tomorrow I'll feel it
If tomorrow comes
Songs about feeling high in love
I don't want that
What happens when you're too high
To notice the person in front of you
Is the one pushing your face down
The Devil Incarnate?
Naiveté suits you, Honey
And so does misery
Third Eye Candy Jun 2013
don't try
be the acorn in the molasses. be the demon in your thimble of hope. be That Guy.
save your trophies in your spit. keep breathing, but don't quibble with ice long trinkets and dead sky.
trip on your theme and plant facedown, the rally of your kingdom !
you
Will Be
at some
Time,
the Unspeakable Lisp of your Acute Prayer
at half speed, the true grit of your paralyzed steam... the frozen lightning
of your effortless... The True Would, if You Could.
but you can't seem to Jimmy the Lock
as much as be locked; you canter
in the stable Chaos.
You dust off the Rotten Preamble
too a previous
Horror.

you come
equiped to slip into the trojan noise,
you come as often as a candle
in the pitch dark

without a voice;

in shambles.
b e mccomb Aug 2016
i have this nasty
habit of leaving
day-old sweat
in my pores
and scraping out
years of
hair follicles in
mere minutes.

have you ever gotten
to thinking about
inadequacy?
or the way a
thursday morning is
so busy but you
just feel
fogged over?

not breathing is
really gross
meaning i must be
exceptionally disgusting

and i cried when
i told you about
the fresh scars
and you gave me a
hug like i needed and
i rubbed the back of
my neck where the
humidity clung.

you see i feel
guilty keeping secrets
but even more
guilty when you worry
because nobody
should worry about me

it's not
worth it.

i'm seventeen
days clean now
seventeen
days closer to

closer
closer

**** it hurts
to be a failure

once in awhile i think too hard
about the graduation parties
inserted into forced friendships
and i wonder if any of my
darkest moments had
been felt by the other girls, too.

there are dark moments
that stand out to me
too bright on the
canvass of life.

i was seven years old
and some boys shouted at me
and told me that my pink bicycle
(obtained secondhand from some
nice church family)

was actually theirs
(it wasn't but i can
still see the scene in my mind
and don't know why it still
bothers me sometimes.)


i was a little older
and somebody was slamming doors
running up and down stairs
and i was sitting on my assistant
pastor's couch with some
eighth-grade girls i didn't know
who were crying their eyes out
and i was feeling very bitter and afraid.

somebody was screaming
****** threats and my heart
was pushed into my throat like
pony beads between marbles
inside paisley print just like that
necklace from that one funeral

was it papa's funeral?
i can't even remember.

all i knew was that
there had been a car accident
and i knew that just hours before
he had won one of
barb's stuffed giraffes in a raffle
and christmas had been coming up
i think i cried in the shower
but i know i sat in the living room
stared at the wall and jared said
"you could go downstairs and
talk to somebody"
i didn't.

that was the first christmas
that ever felt truly wrong.

i have never felt so
alone as i sat cross-legged on
a hospital bed in the blue
paper scrubs they put you in
when they think you're a loaded gun
and listened to the world run by
tears barely dried and pen
scratching away

i never would have ended up there
if i had known how to manipulate
the system like i do now
but i wasn't smart enough to know
that saying you have
suicidal thoughts is as
good as saying you've got a plan and
a knife in your back pocket.

i think my arms were still
bleeding under my sleeves
when you looked me in the
eye and slapped me in the face.

literally
i mean that you
literally
hit me in the face
oh but mom
was ******.

i still think about that sometimes
while we're at the dinner table
all eating together and i'll move
my chair over two inches
because you're right next to me
and i know that it only
ever happened once and you
would never do it again but then
again it seems safer closer
to the wall
and sometimes when you're
standing by the cupboard
i walk all the way around the
stove to avoid getting too close.

i was fifteen years old
and crumpled on the bathroom floor
probably had something to do
with exhaustion and blood loss
i was seventeen years old
passed out the wrong way on my bed
brand-new laptop facedown on the floor
a byproduct of the education system

(seventeen year olds should not
have to experience going into a store
and spending the last of their
birthday money on shapewear so
they can feel almost okay about
their body at the dance
but that's just a footnote or a deep
gray addition to my blackest moments)


i remember that time a couple
months ago when you threw
me into a relaxing bath and i was
afraid you'd see my legs

and i was afraid of who
i kept finding myself to be
on sunday mornings at ten
when i was still at home
lying in bed and listening to
ambient instrumental music

(ripping myself away
is the worst feeling
i think i've ever felt
especially when the
questions start coming
sealed signed and delivered.)


hanging on by a thread
watching all the worst parts
of my memories flash over
and over again late at night
when the music hits that tiny
little crack above my heart.

but i've been thinking about
being a failure and wondering
if every girl has had her own
bathroom floor moment

and does the
difference lie in
how late at night she
lets it keep her awake?

summer
makes me sick.
Copyright 7/15/16 by B. E. McComb
Turn my eyes inward
Scatter the nerves that flirt with shades pale and bright

My skin crimson and sour
Like an untimely foetus
Let it roll into a curl facedown

Reduce that deadly tongue
To the serpent it fears being
Race down to my swollen belly

When the trinity is gone
Darkness will prevail
And we'll see once again.
Mark Rubilla May 2010
I am making a wall that is so much
I cant break it down, on my own
this is my mistake and I cant change it
I tried my best to tear this apart
but my best is so worse

Ive been hopeless, no where else to go
Is there an open door for me to go in?
Take this ways, Im so vulnerable
When I am alone and with the crowd
I end up with tears at night
And praying facedown to the floor

This heart is always thinking of you
In my dreams, you are there
Sometimes you are annoyed of me
Just like in reality
And it breaks my heart
I woke and I ask myself

Why are you so selfish?
You are always thinking of that
Many people were telling you to stop
but are you listening to them?
This will carry you to great deliverance

Its been too long since Ive been here
Im so anxious of the future
So curious that never wanted to lose my affection
Because of this self-centeredness of myself
I cant talk with you personally
My tongue never produced a word
There is no victory in my way
It condemns me day after day

My time was consumed by this feeling
I thought that this is over
but as I walk towards holiness
Its getting so hard and heavy
I cant defeat this fiery ordeals

They are everywhere
I can sense there presence
God, you know my heart
If this is love
Teach me how to prepare
If this is not the thing that You suppose to be with me
Let the root of this infatuation vanish
Let it sink into the ocean floor
Or bury it into the ground
So that I will never put to shame
You’re just rough enough
To make me tremble, and squeal,
And this delights you.

Make me helpless, Take
Everything you want, push me
Facedown, hold me fast.

Desire, raging fire,
Clothes rip, teeth nip, you devour,
Merciless master.
Apparently, 'Desire' and 'Fire' can be either two or one syllables, handy!
sandbar May 2011
The dust in kicking up, windy night in New Mexico
Watching the moon rise up over cactus & canals
Listening to rocks become pebbles
Filling our stomachs with cold water
Under the blanket you wove for me, the one
we slept in
On that cold October night, when we thought the
sun would never rise
And when it did, it shone with such brillance
Stuck our hands out, between the cracks, just
to catch its radiance
To stop the shaking, it set me on edge
Made me want to run, just to feel myself sweat
But I'd just fall facedown in the snow
Lost in a canyon, full of black rocks,
dead trees
And a silence we forgot existed
Nat Lipstadt Mar 2017
~for Joel M Frye~*

give me your blunt, stunted words,
rooted in the genome human

give me rough, toughened words,
wizened savvy by caress and punch

what use angels ethereal pinheaded,
inexperienced in the vocabulary of the maddening crowd

give me anger, rage, envy-jealousy,
the burnt ashes of the remainder of real

give me perspective of eyes facedown on concrete,
feel of flesh hands pounding the soft spots of the skull

In return for? What bargain struck?  What consideration exchanged?

for your blunt, stunted words,
I give you this:

the homage of inspiration
the honor of no questions asked

one day of my life
poured into your vase
Joseph Schneider Jun 2014
Self destruction has tainted our way of life.
It's time to break the cycle.
In the darkness of fear, there's a dawning light.
It's time to break the cycle.

We stumble around and fall to the ground, but are we too proud to reach out,
to reach for a hand that can help us to stand, and keep us from falling facedown?

We're only helpless because we're heartless.

In a world
headed for self-destruction,
the answer is here;
are we too blind to see it?
In a world headed for self-destruction,
the answer is here; are we too blind to see it?

-For Today
For Today.
Kristen Nix Nov 2011
10/26/11

I lay myself before the throne, broken and alone.
A mess I am, as I lay facedown before you.
Tears are no longer held back by the dam I've built for my protection.
Your very presence knocks them down, returning me back to my original design.
They fall fast and they fall free.
My God, my God, I can't do it alone.
I'm so tired of trying to keep myself together.
I hate this.

Help me.
I am desperate.
Crying out for you
Ashley Rodden Jan 2015
Show me what I'm worth
When you're facedown, thinking
You're so ******* when you're running your mouth
Got a few things bottled up
Jump on a couple bottles like double dutch
Jager's got your faded when society has me jaded
How do you expect for us to grow
When all you want to do is break
It's time to let **** go
Don't be tough
Just make sure I see you cry enough
Don't bottle this up
The way I make you feel when I'm around
You got to wake up this is the real world
And you're only hurting yourself
When you spend every waking moment
With your fingers crossed
I don't think you can afford to set karma further in motion
Go ahead
Talk **** it means nothing
Ask me what I see in you
I see nothing, I see right through
You're transparent, I know you don't want to hear it
And I don't want to be the one to hurt your feelings
But, I'm not afraid to freak out
Because deep down it ***** to be you
Making small stabs in passing
But the pain is bigger than it seems so,
Stop holding me under and just breathe
michelle reicks Mar 2012
the
      smoke
         fills his lungs
           like a smokestack.
                   the butts litter
                             ashtrays like
                    little potholes of ash
           throughout
                        his room.
              stacks upon stacks
          of the disgusting things,
brownish yellow- just like
           the **** on his
                            teeth.
                              
                                 his
                            breath
                                smells
                               and tastes
                                      as if you were
                                 lying facedown
                            on the hot
                              pavement, tongue
                            to the ground
                      gravel, dirt and gasoline
         on your tastebuds.
                  he burns
                             he yearns
                          for the fix.
                   when he works on his car
                       in the hot sun,
                             his fingers shake
                   unless he's
        holding a smoke.


                                           And every day when she comes home
                                            she kisses him full on the mouth and
                     breathes
                            
                          it
                              
                           in.

— The End —