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I found myself fracturing beneath his fists,
Beauty beaten in hues of blue, purple and black,
Like clouded midnight skies, full of rain.
My eyes becoming pools of stars,
Glistening with secrets of pain,
Shining dully into the darkness of our nights.
Saturated with his snide, stingy, cruel colors,
I soaked in his venom,
Becoming canvas for the art of abuse.
And wasn't it beautiful?

These tears in skin hindered no smile,
Bruises like paint, enhancing face,
Pupils shining like diamonds,
Rough and worn, but precious.
Aching bones breaking to rebuild themselves,
Tongue red with biting back curses,
Rosy lips curved and sealed against apologies,
Flesh as hard and gray as stone,
Sharpened against wicked whims and foul words,
Aren't I beautiful -

In all my rainbow tones?
Zaynub Jan 2015
in school
we learned about hydraulic fracturing
when they would send pressurized chemicals into the earth
until the earth began to “frack”

well that’s what i felt like
when your words rained down upon me so hard
my brain began to crack
Sam Temple Oct 2014
multimedia macramé
sloshing propaganda sewage
on the unsuspecting public
***** lice infest ****** hill folk
west Virginia outbreak threatening the world
as we know it
flesh altering nonsense explicitly graphed
charting movement of microbes
on air, land, and/ or sea
global currents the new deliverer of death –
infected immigrants sit smiling
internment camps providing nutrition
never before experienced
as non-natives negotiate freedom
by submitting to vaccinations baths
and the standard delousing powder –
paranoid hand-sanitizer users
glued to the **** tube
spray their shoes with disinfectant
praying to an absent GOD for health
while shoveling GMO corn chips into ever widening
mouth holes
pharmaceutical companies lick lifeless lips
as Congress recognizes their humanity
while rejecting the concerns of the poor
…..no money in it –
outlandish claims of outbreaking Ebola
flood the mainstream outlets
fear: version – infinity
one more plague plan to stimulate new legislation
more law
no touching
even looking at the infirm can be cause for isolation
radiation treatments
courtesy of Fukushima, reactors 1-4 –
new found focus on fracturing the shale
releasing new oil reserves
and old bacteria
dinosaur killers
free-radicals
radically changing the genetic code
humanity altered
once again –
Post-azure, cloud splashed sky,
washes with the suns descent,
breaking into melodies of sunset.
Fracturing into a blush,
the richness of the spectrum
makes itself known.
On a tangent of change,
amorphous clouds bleed
amber glow
and bittersweet combinations
of reds and yellows.
Vermillion streaks through,
and a few cloud folk turn titian,
like sumptuous surreal apricots
rotting in the sky,
that seem to augur
encroaching darkness.
Billows on the horizon
leak crimson,
like spilled wine on table cloth,
and pucker out
like blooms of flaming roses.
Fire refracted
coloured cousins of the sun
are dancing all about.

Here is the anthem
of wild transformation.
Here is cause
for quiet celebration.
Here at this fluent juncture.
Here at the closing of day.

The whole of the ocean below,
is the skies tremendous mirror.
It's reflection is variegated,
into variations a thousandfold.
Multitudinous, and ever differentiated,
distortions of above
ride the crests of waves.
Each apex is a new story.
Each new story,
just as soon as it is told,
comes crashing into trough.
Each finale is the ****** of beginning.
The dynamic roar
of the oceans ever-changing topology
is rife with meaning.

Colossal symphonic wonders,
the primordial song,
releasing upon: the uni-
verse continual,
sending the manifest
to move, with the give and strain
of immaculate design.

Here ensconced
between the safety of light
and the mystery of night.
Here at the oceans edge.

Above, shades of catalina-blue, in conversation
with the outer most cosmic-black
dismiss earlier brighter hues.
Tinged by the infinite nature of space,
the jeweled dome darkens.
Overhead, the first stars appear,
sky transparent to beheld blackness.

Luxuriant, pulling horizon, attracts
violet into it's unfolding theatrics.
Bloodied clouds turn purplish, then black,
a darkening rawness allures,
decaying with vivid beauty,
tragedies of a rouged romance
drug down into shadows play,
searingly alive, extraordinarily actual.

And then, the hush of dusk.
Darkness is felled, like silence.
Scintillating stars
strengthen in the nights
surrounding abyss;
giving radiance definition.

Dynamic Beauty
Lives In Transition,
Oppositions
Compliment.
Silence.

This is all we hear now.

Gone are the sweet words of the Sapphire-Eyed Serenity.

Gone is her radiant light that illuminated our world.

We have been thrown back into the darkness that haunted us for so long.

Yet there are no screams to torment us. No hisses to harm us.

Even the Solitude is silent.

Perhaps it has taken pity upon us.

Or perhaps it has learned a new method of torment.

Yet there are echoes that boom through the darkness, flashing memories in the sparks of light that accompany them.

The absence of the Sapphire-Eyed Serenity has turned the passion in our veins to poison. We feel our very soul dying, fracturing from its touch.

We beg for the light of the Perfection, but darkness is all that answers us.

There is none to come to our aid.

Our only solace is the words once written by the Sapphire-Eyed Serenity.

Yet even these words cut deeper into our wounds, twisting into our heart as haunting reminders of what we cannot have.

The mind cannot help but endlessly repeat the memories we created, its gaze unblinking while they continue to cast lacerations upon it.

We have tried in vain to pull the mind away from the memories, to save it from the anguish.

But it has become paralyzed, caught in a horrendous cycle of elation and devastation.

We are left with no other option but to numb the mind beneath a sea of liquid repression.

Yet even then, she visits us in our dreams, giving us the company we desired so desperately before, only to awaken to the twilight that perpetually surrounds us.

Silence.

This is all we hear now.

We have been forsaken, left to brood over our deeds while we lie upon the cold ground that is littered with barbs and thorns created by our own foolishness.

The Solitude looms over us, watching us shiver in pain as the blood from our wounds stains the ground.

We feel its harsh glare bore into our very soul, while the specters of the Sapphire-Eyed Serenity eternally whisper her words in our ear.

Our strength is dwindling, and our desire to carry on is fading, for all we see upon this path is agony and torment.

Our path is wrought with cracks and blades from lovers past.

The Sapphire-Eyed Serenity
The Traveler
The Fallen One
The Distant One
The Nameless

They have each riddled our path and our hearts with scars that shall never fade.

And the Solitude vows that it will continue this cycle for eternity.

That it will force us to crawl upon this wretched path, relentlessly reliving this horror if we dare continue.

Yet despite the twilight and anguish, despite our forsaken soul, there is one who has stretched his hand in aid.

The Companion.

Unaffected by our plagues and spines on our path, he kneels beside us and speaks a single word that sends the Solitude into rage.

*Rise.
Waverly Feb 2012
Come to me,
come to me
with paper and pencil
and too much coffee.

Come to me
like the Sahara.

Come to me
like skyscrapers
and bandaged
clouds.

Come to me
in a whirl of flesh
vivid as oil
under a streetlight,
I will make a rainbow.

Come to me with optimism
or pessimism,
hope and death.

Come to me
like I came to you in the night,
when you were suicidal
and I had to hold you
away from your stash
of oxy's
like a knot
and uncoil myself
in the morning.

Come to me
when the fish run,
and the whales
scream
and the jellyfish
wash ashore
like glass hearts
solid and fracturing.
Vivian Mar 2015
please shut up and let me pretend
that the streetlight shining through the
***** window is moonlight glittering
across my angel face, because
it is 3 in the morning and everything is
poised to break apart like
the ice on the Iowa River.
Topher O'Neal Feb 2015
Fracturing my mind, shatter like painted glass,
Smash the memories, Light a match and soak in gas,
I can't handle my own thoughts, too many at once,
All contradictions of the others, no coincidence,
I need to break it all away, all of it in pieces,
So all of my emotions, my mind releases.

I beat my mind, like a racehorse jockey,
Beat it on down, like a goon in hockey,
Stab it a few times, with crossed information,
Did that mean? Nope just hope from infatuation.
thomezzz Jul 2018
Maybe you said it once
And breathed it quietly in my ear
As we sat in your freezing car
Parked in front of the library
The roads were slick
But you were slicker
Handing out compliments like candy

Maybe you said it a couple of times
Over and over on the telephone
As we both laughed into the receiver
Me picturing your smile with every word
The connection was weak
But I was weaker
Falling head first into you

Maybe you said it a thousand times
And held my face in your hands
As we laid in that twin sized bed
Your body pressed against my own
The room was warm
But you were warmer
Moving for the first time in sync

But maybe you never said it at all
Or at least you never meant it
As you said this was the last time
Standing on the other side of the room
The air was heavy
But I felt heavier
Fracturing me piece by piece
They had once been here
before, beyond the light years
that are still in the calm silence
of the dreamscape where came the
oceans of hearts are fracturing the
fabric of the universe, to create
and see none other than
each other in the hour
of the night realm, others
are passing by are silhouettes
in time and ghosts painted
in their dream of tidal eyes
upon each other, wave on wave,
skin on skin,  their breath vanishing into
the quiet voices of blue flowers in soft
bloom, tears from the stars cascade on the
lovers with their hands in gentle
embrace and rising to the sky as the light
of fireflies return as starseeds
of many, twinkling amidst the
the lovers, whom are adrift in
everything,
everything.
(Little note: I was inspired by the title of Nicola Yoon's book
for my title, it is a book I dearly love.)
Yanehs MagTa Nov 2012
Awaiting was I,
patience safely intact.
As the wind so fiercely flew, 
it blew my patience, away too .

How rude.

Walking was I, now,
confused was how I felt
as a sudden overwhelming sadness
Tore it's way through my body,
thrusting through my chest spitting tears upon my breast.

I stumble as my pace starts to increase...
it's thoughts of you that surfaces to my brain.. 
how dare you settle amongst my mind
how dare you resurface when I had this all sorted out
How dare you pretend you know me when I no longer know myself
How dare I contradict the very essences of my being through, thoughts of you.


A way with you distraughting thoughts, for you have always had a way of fracturing my fragile mind...


The rain she came and put me to more shame.
lame is my heart as my thoughts would not depart.
You may not be the first but, my God, I hope you are the last.
for you make the sun shine through my rain you are the stillness to my day
you are the laughter that chokes my throat.


I know you are with another, but I'm not just any other.
I don't wanna be with you for that repulses my conscience brain, even though I feel for you so. 
I want you to take this all away way, shove it in a bottle and chuck it out to sea
for the lovers that we will never be, to greet.

The echo of your "tomorrows" still ring in my ears,
Tis the creases upon your smiling face, I would still love to embrace. 
I know i said tis the happy you i'd chose and refuse the grump that most times appears..
but i fear that it's the all of you i'd like to greet when it shows to my feet. 

I heard me beat in side your heart once upon our time... 

Don't tell me it's normal to feel this way.
Don't tell me this is how it was all meant to be
and that you were meant for me
For it's still her untouched body that i crave 
what happen to my brave.. 

did you take that from me to the day i spoke to you...


-Yanehs magta
This was written walking home one evening, when suddenly an overwhelming burst of emotions hit me as the rain feel in the same split second it was crazy, i tell you. Suffice the present moments pain i sat on the sidewalk and wrote this. This poem's a product of a few dramas in my life its not one I'd choose to share but I know few can relate to these feelings of being so I share my weeping words, with a smile
CharlesC Aug 2013
a withdrawal
from
cycle of life..
water
cycling since
primordial times..
afternoon rainstorms
diminished..
that rain from
earthly stimulation
now her flow
interrupted impure..
is now time
for fracturing
or for
joining and
return...?
prompted by article
Kabbalah and Fracking Don't Mix
Rabbi David Seidenberg
(see polarityinplay.blogspot.com)
LJ Chaplin Oct 2013
The stars look bright tonight. The crisp summer breeze rolled across my bare skin as I lay shirtless beneath the dead oak tree near the lake.  The sky was clear, barely any obstruction from an innocent cloud that travelled down the vast black road that stretched on for eternity. I always loved coming here. So did my father.

It had been four years since he had died. The cause is still unknown. All I remember is the gaping hole in his chest as he... left. So many unanswered questions are lingering in the back of my mind. How did it happen? Who or what had done that to him? Why did it have to happen to him? Why not me? I feared that these questions hung inevitably in the unknown, locked away in a subconscious prison with no means of being bailed out.  Life had to continue though, no matter how unconditionally excruciating the pain may be in my chest when I miss him, no matter how many times I had cried myself to sleep because he wasn’t there to tell me that it will be OK whenever I had night terrors. They started soon after my mother died. I would wake up screaming and writhing in fear. My father would run into my room and bring me close to his chest. He would whisper in my ear “Shh son, it’s OK, nothing will get you. I am here now.  Calm down, you’re safe now.”

After the yelling had stopped he would carry me downstairs and into the garden. The cool air would cause the beads of sweat on my face to tingle. I always loved that feeling. It was the indication that I was back in reality. We would both sit on the grass. Dad would run inside and return carrying a large blanket. He would wrap it around the both of us. It always smelled just like my mother, a faint scent of lavender and honeysuckle. We would then peer into the sky, where dad would show me all of the constellations: Orion, Pegasus, Cetus, and other names that I couldn’t pronounce. “Each of these constellations tells a story, son” he would say to me as I tried to make sense of the jumble of stars that floated in the dark sky, “and one day, when the time comes, I will be up there. One day you will be able to tell your own children my story. All you have to do is simply look to the skies.”

I shook myself free from the painful reminiscence. I am eighteen, these things do not happen anymore. I stood up and stretched, feeling the muscles beneath my skin pull and uncoil. I strolled over to the lake. It was surrounded by thick forest, silhouetted against the black backdrop of the night’s horizon.  Ripples rolled over the surface of the silent lake. The crystal clear water reflected the night sky.  I took off my shoes and socks and dipped my foot into the water. The stars rippled around me. The water was lukewarm, refreshing after the scorching heat of another day that had passed me by. After testing the water I couldn’t resist. I took a few steps back, sprinted forwards and leaped into the air. I crashed into the water, fracturing the serene reflection of the night-time sky. The water cooled every fibre of my body. I let the water soak into my bare skin. I could feel my pores filling with the liquid, the bubbles brushing delicately over my legs and arms. I wanted to stay underwater forever.

I hit the surface, puncturing the barrier between tranquillity and realism. I ****** in the humid air and let it fill my lungs. I let myself float effortlessly onto my back and glided across the water. The stars sat there in the sky watching me. Up there somewhere, I knew there was somebody among them watching me too, smiling and waving as he saw this boy float upon a bed of water.

I wish he could be floating next to me this very moment and enjoy the placidity of the night.
OK, so this isn't a poem. It's a chapter of a story I started a while ago and never finished, but this is my favourite chapter. I've never put so much detail into my writing like this before, so I wanted to share it.
Austin Mosher Nov 2013
There is a corrosion/a groove
            In the persona I've come
                       To believe.
    The mirrors in my eyes are shattering
     Around a turquoise salamander;
     His laughter made his presence
                          Known:
     (Orphaned in the depths of the
                  Alabaster forest;
Came rebirth, at the foot of the petrified tree.)
                  Shadow puppets;
  Constricting the shards of shattered mirrors.
                  Never relinquishing.
                         Never tireing.
    Fracturing my skull as memories try to escape.
Hadrian Veska Mar 2017
Everything has two sides
Two sides of the same horseshoe
Appearing to have different ideals
But secretly hating the same thing

The left hates religion
The right hates science
The left hate guns
The right like violence

The left are for equality
Of like minded people
The right are for liberties
Not necessarily equal

Two sides of the same horseshoe
Whether flat or broad
Thinking they are right
And the other one is flawed

When indeed they are inseparable
Both hating one another
Fracturing and dividing
Us and every other
Brandon May 2012
My sleeping mind cannot contain
                                                       {the horrid images of waking life}

All that my waking mind soaks up
                                                        {spon­ging filth from gutted city streets}

Dreams turning into lucid experiences
                                                     ­         {the hypnotic effect of being drawn closer to a blade}

All colors, sensations too intense to categorize
                                                      ­                    {molded into a colony of unthinking, unearthing drones}

Wind down inside of me
                                        {boiling tornadoes raging from the depths}

Concentrated awareness of my subconscious obliviousness
                                                                ­                                {the benefits of obsidian isolation}

I wish that I could weave them all together
                                                        ­             {the stitches at the seams are wearing thin}

Like tall grasses woven into baskets
                                                         ­ {like scythed grasses cut down by rampant Monsanto}

Strong, unbreakable, able to withstand the heavy weight
                                                                ­                             {pressure baring down on fracturing ribs and shoulders}



                                                  ­                                 Of my spirit
                                                          ­                        {i feel alone}



Instead I leak through the seams, tear through edges
                                                           ­                            {leaving me tattered in a massacred pattern}

Five am cannot keep me
                                       {six am will never know me}

My thoughts scatter
                                 {my mind dances with madness}








                                               ­                             Drifting in and out

                                                            ­              {drifting in and out}
Collette Abatta Nov 2011
I am ready
I disobey the god's revival
And trash the odds of my survival
Unlike my mother, and her mother before her,
I refuse to dabble in caution craft forevermore
Second sight seductive suasion
My vaulting vision sans precision
Harlot harbinger I am of endless happenstance
Sterilized with indecision
C'mon, baby-bomb, take a chance

I am ready, now,
To throw everything here away
It's all just trash and trials treacherous

Earlier today
I had a fever dream--
Of waking in another place
The sun fracturing the skin on my face
(But still I laugh to dance blind
And kiss the cyan sky)

I dream
Of the tandem-lipped tides that vie to taste me
Wet finger fringes ******* at my toes displace me
Rising up to bring me down
(Almost makes me want to drown)

...but here my bubble won't burst
Here it freezes first and dies of thirst

And so I am ready
To dance dollars out of rich Japanese businessmen
For paradise I can translate all their yen
It doesn't matter
If I slither for our supper
Or whether we sleep indoors tonight

Islands wild with abandon
We could be living radical and random
We could be living freezer-burn free
An outbound invite to jaded shade

This golden opportunity
(Hourglass sands swallowed by the sea)
The spiders of the rainforest are calling creepy
And queer, sustain and dim to disappear
Echoes of whispers from the ancient banyan tree
Calling me....
1998, I believe
Em or Finn May 2014
Do I dare?

Do I dare shatter how you portray me?
Crack the mirror
Breaking how you know me to pieces,
Breaking how you think you know me to pieces.

Do I dare drown you in my pain?
The pain of past losses
The pain of past friends
Successfully attempting their suicidal deaths

Do I dare tell you the truth?
The truth about who I am
The fact that I pretend
Put on a counterfeit smile and pretend everything’s okay.

Do I dare say who I truly am?
That I’m asexual
With continuous social anxiety
Never really sure what to do around people.

Do I dare show my social anxiety?
Pretend everything’s okay when I’m scared inside
Show you how fragile I am
Show you how shattered I already am.

Do I dare break this facadé I created?
Fracturing everything I’ve worked so hard to create
Just to show my true emotions, how I really feel
And to be laughed at by my peers

Do I dare take a chance?
To put myself out there
To care about someone
Just to have them push me aside into my growing darkness

Do I dare care for anyone?
Because the last time this happened I couldn’t save them
They died on my watch
And I had to stand by, left here with the aftermath wondering what I could’ve done

Do I dare share my feelings, emotions?
Attach myself to another
When I feel that everyone I care about
Just leaves me in the end, one way or another

Do I dare care about life anymore?
It’s already wasted on me, a corpse of a being
Already half eaten, wasting away
To the point where I feel that keeping it short is best

Do I dare tell my friends?
How I truly feel
How I hate myself for my past
Not being able to help anyone

Do I dare be happy?
“Frolick in the flowers” is what they’ve told me
“Just release your sadness”
Yet you don’t know me nor have you ever spoken to me before now

Do I dare yell back at you?
Tell you how you’re wrong
How I’ll never change
How I am who I am.

Do I dare love who I am?
Yes.
With all my insecurities and faults
I will always make mistakes
But it’s how I overcome them.

Do I dare stand up for myself? For others?
I will always try my best
Even though some people need space or push me down
I feel that I need to find courage in my broken, bandaged heart

Do I dare speak my mind? Show my true colors?
I’m not sure, nor will I ever be sure
Yet I know that my true friends,
The ones that helped bandage my heart
The ones that helped repair my shattered self
Will always let me be who I am

Thanks to all who have let me be me
But the question still stands
Do I Dare?
Katie Murray Nov 2015
She sits there, fingers twitching erratically
Hands clasping, unclasping over each other

With the sunlight fracturing through rippled eyelids
I imagine I can almost see right into her eyes
Like paper soaked through with tears

But then she lowers her head
Shoulders sag from her weighted thoughts
Rays now falling to her ocean of hair

I wouldn't mind
But I can see the weariness she feels

She sits cross legged
But yet her back is weathered with unlived age
Her half smile barely reaches her lips
And her eyes

They're closed to contain the break lapping under her lashes
They're closed to trap the tears threatening to become lakes

They're closed and I don't mind
There's never a shortage of her to immerse myself in

Now it's her hands
Her hands are still moving
Wrinkles disturbing the still waters
Visions of waves promising to drag me down
To suffocate me among the depths of all I love of her

Trust me
I won't mind
And as I sank, I opened my eyes and saw stars.

Soundtrack: Second Chances - Imagine Dragons
22/10/15
Chase Graham Nov 2014
With looping hillside vendors
and red-light beams stalking the
cigarette smoke clouds, clinging
behind business men mobs (of 4 or 5)

and fracturing wildly from green-glass
bottles of soju and the girls
(oh the girls) who guard and call
out from dark thresholds with only
a spotlight of pink neon from

(***, Trans Cafe, Eat Me)
the signs from above. And the glass
walls separating the men
from the girls and the short skirts
(plaid like schoolgirls) beckoning,

silent and alone, sitting on stools
(one leg over another) paid at the bars
for two drinks (and 250,000 Won)
usually by Americans, bored and trapped,

stranded (at Yongsun Army Garrison)
they venture Incheon at dark,
with sad eyes and lust, (trading paychecks
for hand jobs) guilty and delaying,
waiting for a three year tour (of
what feels like a lifetime) in Seoul
to end.
mal monson Dec 2018
they let their sticky humid hands
hold my glitching hologram body
against the scratchy playhouse
walls and drag their clammy
claws where no child should
think to rub all the while
whispering into my vacant ears
how they would beat me and
bite me and cut me and kick me
if anyone were to ever find out
our little game as tapeworm
tears sludged from my sickly
sweet rotting eyesockets and
down my shiny shaking dust
stained cheeks silently over my
cold and closing throat and
when my dad finally ripped the
splintering wooden door across
the sandy shifting floor i was so
pale pink blue i could have been
six hours dead save for my
fracturing porcelain and
plexiglass heart destructive and
bashing and shattering itself
through my frail and brittle
crumbling ribcage whispering to
me how badly my dad would
scream at me for the way we
were playing
Bob Spears Nov 2013
I believe in just the right amount of light.
I've learned that in photography.
Not enough, means the subject is in the dark,
Too much and everything is washed out.
In either case, the texture of the subject is lost.
Too much light and you lose the shadows,
and shadows are important for the vibrancy of the picture.
Too little light and the shadows overwhelm.

I believe in just the right amount of light in life.
Too much and you have the Pollyanna syndrome.
Too little and you fall into despair.
If it's just right, life will have a rich and vital texture.
And the shadows are important.
They give the highlights contrast and meaning.

The photographer also believes in color.
Black and white has its place,
But in the end color is king
And gives a photograph life.
Color depends upon light,
The right amount of light.
Color is a fracturing of the rays of light.

I believe in a colorful life.
Not too garish
Certainly not too drab.
But just right.

How do we get there?
How do we balance the light and color in our lives?
No balancing act is ever easy.
Even Goldilocks had to deal with three hungry bears.
Angels find it hard to dance on the head of a pin.
After years of practice jugglers sometime drop the ball.
I'm still dropping the ball far too often.
But now and then a burst of light breaks through the clouds
And for a moment, I glow in the dark.
all was peaceful
   serene
      secure
content in this
sleepy isolation
with only the dogs
for company
had i wished
to disturb their
soothing repose
reading
a little-known novel
once heralded
the hero
if he could
be called such
was fracturing
slowly
on the brink
of shattering

before the incendiary
final pages
could be reached
this dormant comfort
erupted
interrupted
by a shattering
much closer
   to home;
both dogs
and man
on the highest
of alert
searching
for a cause
anything
   to blame
but finding
nothing
Sydney Victoria Oct 2012
The Ear Ringing Silence
Cuffs My Wrists
A Black Rose
Slices My Forearms
A Hand
Clasps My Neck
Pulling Me
Closer
Vertebrae Start Breaking
Along My Fragile Spine
And My Breaths Are Slowly Fracturing
And My Human Life
Flashes Before My Eyes
Nenookaasi Sits Besides Me In The Timber
Looking Away So She Didnt Have To Look
At My Shifting Body
And As I Complete My Metamorphosis
My Brindle Eyes Stare
Into The Sun's Amber Orb
And I Look At Nenookaasi
Her Dark Hair Covering Her Complection
Before She Notices
I Flee Deeper Into The Trees
She Watched Me Leave
And I Stopped And Motioned Her A Fairwell
As I Ran
To Find My Clan
She Knows Who She Is
Mari Mar 2015
I don't know
how much longer I can cope
with the demons
in my head
and monsters under my bed
I feel the walls caving in
crumpling like
paper
slowly giving way
to the pressure
slowly fracturing and tearing
at the structure
of my
Barely. Breathing. Heart.
Pearson Bolt Apr 2017
the black and white photographs you took
five years past still hang framed in my room,
just above my turntable. Deja Entendu
spills from the stereo as the needle finds its groove.
a shelf filled with all the records
we used to listen to for hours
lines the wall and succulents
adorn the windowsill, waiting patiently
for the rare rays of sun, golden
and flossy as your hair,
which somehow manage
to peek between the tenement rooftops
every now and then.

we still live in the same town. sometimes,
people bring you up. they ask me how you are,
how long it's been since i've heard from you.
i neglect to tell them that, aside from absentee
notifications popping up on my phone
at intermittent variations, we've only spoken once,
in a crowded, little coffee shop
in the city we both love to hate.

you pretended you didn't see me, but i felt your eyes
notice me at the bar as i sat typing another story,
bobbing my head, listening to Daughter.
if i hadn't approached you, i imagine
you would've acted like i was invisible.
the conversation was terse, abbreviated.
i find it strange how once
we were the best of friends
and now we can sit twenty feet apart
and act like we never knew each other at all.
i can't really recall why
our friendship collapsed in the first place.
have i suppressed it? or was it just the casual
slip, like Pangea, elapsed time
fracturing our continent.
National Poetry Day 2.
The forest, as if in suspended animation
Exploded in a cacophony of sound

It was nothing more than a twig
Snapping beneath the weight of a padded paw

Yet, the silence was shattered by this atypical step
By this stealthy dark shadow slowly moving through the forest

His heart raced!
His usual calm...replaced by an awkward anticipation

Earlier, a howl he had heard off in the distance
So familiar, yet as if from another lifetime, beckoned

Ahead, with the dusky sky as it's canvas
A giant white pine stands as a sentinel, protecting...

...a lone silent figure...

Carefully, quietly, he approached
"I can hear you" said the now, not so silent figure
"In fact, the whole forest can!" she giggled

His golden eyes, now, intently stared directly into hers
"I heard your howl", he said attentively
"I knew U would come", she assuredly replied, "U are always there for me."

As he drew closer, she asked..."Am I dreaming?"
"Does it matter?", he inquired

Her breath quickened, slowly fracturing
As did her fragile spine as her body contorted

Into a shifting form, that would mimic his
Strong and sinewy

Rejuvenated, she moved with assurance
Once again, feeling familiarity in this form

In her sheen coat of white fur, she now stood
Next to him, and his coat of fur that matched the raven's wing

They stood in contrasting, yet symbiotic fashion
He pulled her closer, and without making a sound
Gestured that it was time for them to go...


(c) 2013 Shawn White Eagle
This poem, well, probably more story than poem, was written for someone very special and was inspired by a number of writings of  that someone who is very dear to me...I know this is something with very deep meaning to them, and is actually a "reprise" of sorts to one of their recent poems of the same title..  I purposely left the story open ended, perhaps that certain someone will "reprise" my reprise. :-)  I love U Lobo!
Michael Ambrosio Aug 2024
The current day is May 1st, 2024. I believe I might have found Brianna. And she’s gone. . .

About eight years ago from this date, I would have my first encounter with this mysterious girl. With all of this having taken course over such a long amount of time, a lot of the details are blurry compared to how solidified they used to be to me. But, back to the first encounter, although encounter sounds more like a passive aggressive frightening experience, I’m not sure what other word I might use to describe it. Maybe it was a chance meeting or divine intervention, but encounter gets the meaning across a bit more fluently, as every time I would find this girl I would be in total shock, utter disarray, and my heart would beat so fast I’d feel as though a heart attack was right around the corner.

The first time I ever met her was through a dream. . .

I can’t remember what this particular dream was. I’m not exactly sure what happened in it, why I found it so profound, or how it even got me to begin thinking about this girl. All I know was that it got my attention and I began to pay attention to this idea, this one night miracle where I first met this mysterious woman.

The night I had that dream, I’m pretty sure I thought nothing of it. Who doesn’t have a dream every so often where they’ve met their true love, their other half, their once in a lifetime love of their life? I’ve always been a bit of a hopeless romantic and I’ve always known that this was one of my deeply ingrained character traits. From my first ever year in school in first grade, I had a very large crush on this girl, Ashley Amaya, and I remember wanting so badly to be her crush as well. I even remember a moment from school when I saw a spider crawling towards her and me while walking across a paved walkway to get to our next class, and I leapt towards it and crushed it, despite having a massive fear of the little demons at the time. But, I did it to impress her!

All that to say, the first dream wasn’t extraordinary, and instead it was just another more than usual somber morning when I woke up only to realize the beautiful woman I had just met was probably a mixture of something I ate and some tv show I’d probably seen the afternoon before. Time would go by, the memory of that first dream fading to the farthest recess of my mind with only a hint of any remote recognition still reminiscing in the deepest abyss of my head.

But, this is when what started out as a dream began to become a bit more substantial. This is when Brianna began to plague my mind.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I began to have recurring dreams of being in love with this mysterious woman. She began to become more familiar in a very inconvenient and unreliable way which was of course through the remembering of my dreams. In the beginning stages, I’d only ever catch glimpses of her face and the reset was usually a silhouette or a very rushed moment. The rushed moments were hard to describe but they were full of light, always this wonderful warm yellow light and though they were rushed, time also slowed down significantly in a perplexing way that I still can’t really understand to this day.

I’d see her dark brown hair flowing and filtering the light into these tiny and magnificent rays making a twinkling in what was usually a dark atmosphere. I’d catch the corner of her mouth turning ever so slightly into a warm beautiful smile as she looked away, something else in the vicinity stealing her attention for the moment. There were intense feelings of joy and tranquility and there was a warmth about the situation I could only hope to ever feel in the true cold and lightless world we all collectively call home. Something about her was so intensely special, and the fact that I even got to share a dream with her was the highest privilege I could’ve ever received.

As time would go on, I’d continue to have these dreams. She always stayed the same, with her long dark brownish red hair flowing ever so gracefully. It got to the point that when I would have these dreams, I would’ve preferred to not wake up, just so I could spend more time with her.

Over a year would go by. At this point in life I was still just in high school and still brand new to learning life in the real world compared to the sheltered view I used to have. I had just gotten a job at the local Home Depot as a cashier, literally a few weeks after I got my license since my parents were unwilling to pay for gas for me (as good parents should do!) I was still figuring out life with my friend groups and trying to balance the reality of starting to become more mature and take on more responsibilities while still trying to cling to my childhood of digging holes and bashing legos against the wall with my brothers! It was an odd time, which I guess many can easily familiarize themselves with the timeframe as we’ve all at one point been teenagers.

One of the biggest things in my life I remember being a bit troublesome though, was all my friends I had made and my groups of people I had become so entangled with. With going through these changes, I had some friends that were still absolute children at heart and some friends who were practically ready for college! I had loads of moments through those years where these friends I had grown up with would start to feel like strangers and I’d begin to not really feel as though I had a social place to call my own.

Work was a new outlet, and I actually used to love talking to people as a cashier, ringing up their items, and learning the social norm of small talk that would amount to nothing less than an afterthought. I made a lot of friends with people who were retired and with college kids who seemed to be the coolest bunch around, who knew how to live life and have fun doing it. It was such a variety of friends where I’d talk to Tina about her granddaughter or Jim about his retirement and stock options and then I’d go up to Isaiah and he’d tell me about all the dates he’d been on or all the party stories of him and his friends living life to the fullest. It was a pretty great time in my life though, because one thing especially it taught me was how to be social, though this process would still take years and years to fully develop until I was in my early 20’s to be fully confident in my ability to put it on and be charismatic if need be. The reason I mention so much about this job though, was there was still a deep  and unrecognized subconsciously aware desire in me to meet the one.

Home Depot of all places was the first time I saw her. In person. . .

I remember it was a day much like the rest of them. After having struck up some conversation with our customers and being a little groggy from waking up at the crack of dawn for the early shift, it was time for me to finally get some lunch. While taking my usually route from the front of the hardware store I stopped at my usual coworkers stations to say hi or make a passive joke as I strolled happily on my way.

I can’t exactly remember why, but I had the need to talk to one of my managers, and it was something I needed a response for by the end of the day, so I figured before I clocked out for lunch, I’d get that little task out of the way. But, on the way back to my manager’s office, which was this little 10 foot hallway with doors on either side, one leading to a bank of sorts, and the other side hosting two doorways to offices, I was stopped in my tracks. Right next to the old clock-in machine were two seats where you’d usually sit and wait if the manager’s doors were closed so you could catch them as they walked out. They were also the seats I had sat in when waiting to get an interview for this first job of mine, where I nervously and anxiously awaited the outcome so many years ago.

In one of those broken down, flat cushioned little seats was a girl so beautiful, I literally lost my breath at the sight of her. I knew immediately who she was. She was the girl from my dreams I had been having over the course of that past year or so. Recently through my dreams, I had learned a very crucial detail about her and that was that her name was Brianna, and there sitting right before me within a few steps walk was the girl.

I froze. I made eye contact. And I immediately turned around and walked away. How I wish beyond wishing I would’ve said hi now. . .

Seeing that my manager was currently in the process of onboarding her as a new employee, I decided to take up my little question with my manager a bit later and I went to lunch. While walking into our break room, I ran into one of my new co-workers who I had become pretty good friends with. His name was Brad Brad.

At this point in time, I had more of an idea and more of a recognition of the fact that these recurring dreams of mine were something special, though I hardly let anyone know because of how embarrassing and odd it was. I mean, who would go around blindly telling people about some chick that they’d been dreaming of that they were totally in love with?? (Definitely not me eight years late. . . ) But with Brad Brad, I trusted him and had told him about the story a few days prior to running into her.

Not knowing her name and only having seen her face, I walked up to my friend and asked him about the new possible employee. He immediately knew who I was referring to her as he had seen her just a bit ago and apparently gotten to know her slightly! I asked him if her name was Brianna, being almost definitively sure that that was her name, and just wanting to check to see if I was either certifiably insane, or possibly blessed with this odder than life knowledge.

Brad immediately confirmed her name was Brianna and asked if I had spoken with her, and this immediately had me out of breath, terrified of how the girl from my dreams was truly true and realer than life. I don’t remember exactly how the rest of the conversation went down, though I can safely assume I was blabbering like a lunatic and telling him every single detail of every single dream I had had of her before. I walked out to get lunch knowing that I’d finally become acquainted with Brianna over time in the work atmosphere which was a relief to me, knowing how social I was at work while in comparison to how introverted and quiet I was at school. Life was looking to good to be true.

Brianna, didn’t get the job.

A few days would go by and my excitement to go to work was through the roof. Never before had I had so eagerly gotten in my car, driven to work, and immediately clocked in in hopes of seeing this new girl around the work place. A week would go by and my thoughts of her were still as excited as ever, but I began to realize that there was still training, a full on hiring process, and that it would most likely take time for things to get in motion. A few weeks would go by and then a month and an unsettling worry began to haunt me as I started to wonder if she didn’t actually get the job.

I started going around asking all of my fellow co-workers if they knew her or if they had any ideas of if we were hiring anyone new. I became obsessed with what we called the, “war board,” which was a schedule of all cashiers’ schedules for the day, what departments they would work in and so forth so on. But, I never saw Brianna’s name pop up, and I began to realize that I might have missed my one and only chance of getting to talk to Brianna.

As time progressed I finally decided it was time to talk to Brad about this new girl since he had been the only one I had talked to about her, and this is when the strangest thing ever happened. Brad had absolutely no idea who I was talking about. He could tell I was obsessed with the idea though and he saw how persistent I was that I had had the conversation with him before, and he even sympathetically lied to me about knowing her just to appease my insanity by saying,

“Ohhhh yeahhhhhhhhh! I remember who you’re talking about!”

I was crushed that the only person who knew her didn’t remember her and at the time I’m unsure of why I didn’t ask my manager to see if they knew who I was talking about. Maybe it was embarrassment or the thought of not being able to see other potential employee’s information that scared me. Either way, I wish I had asked more and been more determined in finding information on what had happened to Brianna.

Months and months on end would go by and the fascination with work would disappear as I got older. I’d check the war board on a pretty consistent basis always hoping that by some miracle, Brianna would show up to work for the day! And even though we eventually would go on to hire an incredible Brianna that I’d become such dear friends with, she wasn’t the same one.

I remember how I used to day dream about Brianna walking into the store and how I would recognize her and how we’d instantly fall in love. Especially on those hot hot Summer days when I was stuck in the garden department with nothing but my thoughts and a dream. As life began to progress though, I realized I didn’t want to only dream about Brianna. . . but I wanted to find her! What good was all my wallowing around if I didn’t make any active attempts to find her!

Thus began, the searching for Brianna. What might just be an everlasting one. . .

I began to take a reality check on this recurring girl who haunted my every thought and when wondering on how I would find a girl from my literal dreams, I thought maybe the first best place to look would be there! Literally in my dreams. I took on an idea I had borrowed from the movie Inception where first thing in the morning, if you try to remember your dreams you’d have a better chance of seeing more details.

Doing more research into this line of thought, I read about dream journals and how some people keep entries of their nightly subconscious activities in order to become better at what’s called lucid dreaming, where basically, you have full and utter control of the dream and realize that you’re in it while still sleeping. My dream journal over time would start to slowly fill and fill with some pretty crazy stories and hilarious dreams. Actually, I wonder if I still have it. If I can find it, I’ll drought down one of my entries here for you to read. . . whoever “you” might be.

I won’t lie when I say I found it in about one minute. It was sitting on my desk right next to me. Oddly enough, my first journal entry is far further in this story than I thought as it was written on October 9th, 2022 (thank God I wrote down dates!) Here goes my first entry.

10-09-22 (#1)

My first dream, I remember being at Home Depot, working while pushing carts. I was very sick and delusional and the atmosphere was rainy and dark. All I could feel was gloom and sadness. There was no one to help me which added to the exhaustion. A customer managed to break 3 carts in half and I had to try and fix them, but I couldn’t. The feeling of wanting to go home was very strong.

10-09-22 (#2)

This time I was in a small class with two other men. It was our first day and our professor was already making us write books worth of homework. But, she soon assigned us Minecraft assignments and the rest of the class was devoted to playing Minecraft. A mixture of falling while playing the game repeatedly occurred and was frightening, yet exhilarating and fun.

Though my timeline of the dream journal and me beginning to write it might be skewed in this story I’ve been telling, as you can see from October 9th’s dreams of the year 2022, it was in fact something I started to do. There were quite a few pages from this journal missing and I can’t recall if they were pages of old homework from school and the notebook was one I self-recycled or not. But, I thought I had started writing these way earlier in my life. Maybe one day, I’ll write up all of these dreams into some sort of official funny document, but as of right now, they’ll all stay in that book. It might honestly be for the better!

Either way, it’s obviously apparent that I became obsessed with this idea of Brianna and I began to play my life events in my head over and over again, and this might have been harmful to me later on, but at the early stages of these occurrences, I was very much into reading. Being the introvert that I was in school, and having no access to a smart device, I used to read so so so many books all the time! My best friend in high school wasn’t any other student really but the faculty and staff, specifically our school librarian Mrs. Hogue.

Every time I’d walk into that library which was probably like twice a week, she’d see me and know it was time for me to become obsessed with a new story or spend the next however many months of my life engrossed in a series. I absolutely loved Mrs. Hogue and while she was very strict with all the other obnoxious kids, she loved me too. We used to talk about life and such and the day I graduated, she was one of the people I made sure of to talk to her and wish her a goodbye to.

Anyways, this obsession with writing and reading of mine was one that really flourished during high school due to these circumstances. It feels rather odd writing now when I haven’t gone about it aside from formal essays and school work since specifically 2018.

2018 was the year that I decided to run with a lot of these creative concepts my mind had created over Brianna and turn them into an actual book with full on character development, a family for Brianna, a place to live and friendships and occupations of all sorts! This is why I mentioned just earlier that this might’ve been more harmful to me, because, sometimes I can’t remember with Brianna what’s memories and what’s a figment of my imagination developed by a creative and passionate former younger writer of myself.

Either way, at this point in my life you could tell I was so devoted to the idea of Brianna being a real person, and this one specific idea plagued me like no other.

The idea was that Brianna was also dreaming of me and that we could only communicate through our collective dreams.

This idea for a young hopeless romantic was intensely alluring and from this idea became the now published and only book of mine, “The Fracture of Reality.” In this book, there’s two main characters named Ian and Brianna. Ian oddly enough matches almost identically all my physical and intellectual traits, some of the only differences being him having a place of his own, a pretty successful job and a bit more muscle, almost as though he were a version of myself I hope to one day be.

Brianna, well, she was and is the Brianna that I know.

The premise of this book was, well how should I put it? Better yet, I’ll just plug in the summary from the back of the book I wrote many years ago!

“Dreams and reality are relatively similar terms. Dreams describe and amplify events that occur in reality whereas reality can capture what little glimpses of the dreams remain. But, it never occurred to me that the two could blur together. Only when it was too late did I start to realize that reality was fracturing…”

Although this summary doesn’t really expound on what the book was about, only now do I find it so profound that I established this saying, this line of thought while I was still younger. I’ll write to you now that the basic premise of the story was a bit of a thriller! Ian begins to have these dreams where he meets and speaks to this mysterious tranquil and beautiful girl. He starts to fall in love with her as he slowly begins to realize that she is in fact real and having dreams of him also. But, with his dreams comes the slow beginning of his down fall where his dreams start to predict horrific events that will occur relatively soon. Along with the dreams comes the mental breaking down of his sanity with a deadly progression exponentially on it’s way to happen far too soon. Through the connecting of his dreams, he needs to find Brianna who he hopes when finding her, will stop the terrifying decline of his conscious nature.

In the end, and [insert spoiler warning here hehe], Ian finally meets up with Brianna only to have one of his dreams predict a horrible event of him and her being hunted by some men that Brianna had gotten in bad with during her youthfully naïve years. The story ends with Brianna and Ian in a cottage after Ian in real life has been shot. The story ends with Ian being unsure as to whether or not his dream reality is real life, or if his reality with the pain of the bullet in him is the truth. Brianna tells him that it doesn’t matter, and tries to convince him that the current peaceful reality that they’re currently in? That that moment and that present feeling is real, and that’s what really truly matters.

Look at me, doing a synopsis of my own books six years later! Writing this book and creating my dream journal and doing research was really the first phase of my obsession with Brianna. The older I’d get though, the more it’d become real to me. I’m unsure as to whether the past eight years of my life has made this idea so authentically real to me, but now I see this all as fact rather than speculation and a possible decline in my sanity that I used to be subconsciously aware of.

More years would progress in my life and would lead to the graduation of my high school and the starting up of college at my community college. There, I’d me one of my best friends which will most likely be my best friend for life KJ, but it was also a time of maturing and shying away from the ideas of Brianna as much. Rather than focusing on the idea of her, instead I got so busy with work at Home Depot, balancing friendships at community college, and still trying to socialize with my family that I hardly thought of her.

But, circumstances would change and even though I went a while without thinking about her, she was always there. When I began my first semester at Columbia State and accidentally sat next to this absolutely beautiful girl named, you guessed it, “Brianna,” I thought that she was her! Only to find out like literally two days into the semesters that she was married, whoops! But I still became friends with her and weird stuff like that would occur every so often, but at this point in time, life was changing so rapidly and my mind was always so distracted that Brianna began to fade.

I’d still have my occasional dreams and when those hit, it’d be more difficult than it used to be. The feeling of wanting to stay in those dreams was so strong and so hard to swallow when I woke up and realized it’d only been in my head.

With school starting though, my priorities changed a lot in life! My job was the least of my concerns at Home Depot and I’d more often than not skip all of my shifts as it always drained me of all my energy having to socialize with a bunch of people I didn’t care for or care about. All the small talk became irritating and whenever I was there, I guess I had come to associate that little hardware store with the idea of loss and gloom. I mean, if my dream journal didn’t speak enough for itself, I think it’s because I missed out on my one and only chance to actually talk to Brianna.

My new priorities were to make as many friends as possible and to turn this new page in life and that’s exactly what I did! I was incredibly social and went out of my way to introduce myself to total strangers just to try and escape the old Mike and pursue a new version of him.

It wouldn’t take long for Brianna to come back to me though.

Nobody that tells you how quickly life goes by can truly explain the depths of what that means and you sort of need to experience it yourself, and with the pandemic of Covid-19 happening around 2020, those two years at community school and the two years at MTSU would go by like a wisp of air. Like a breath, **** the time went by. Sure there was quite a bit of stuff that happened throughout that time, like me beginning to fall in love with creating content through YouTube about Minecraft, getting internships and freelance work for my degree as a Graphic Designer where I won competitions and published my art in many places and had the opportunities to be in a crazy high end internship.

But the amount of time, was just literally gone. I was too busy. Brianna became an afterthought.

That is, until fairly recently. To drop some dates for you, I created my first official youtube channel on September 18th, 2019 and published my first video four years ago a day after I made the channel. At first, my channel of Minecraft specific content was created both to prove to my brothers that I could create content as incredible as the youtubers we watched, but it was also just in hopes of turning it into an actual career since it was something I genuinely was okay at. Having had architecture for for years in high school Minecraft felt like a more creative and liberating way to express those abilities and live them out in an actual environment I had created. But also, Minecraft was an excuse for me to turn off my mind.

Covid and the pandemic was sort of the greatest thing to ever happen to me, because it gave me so much time to think and play this wonderful game. I know I mentioned above how I didn’t think about Brianna that much, and that part is true, but when I had those dry moments of playing Minecraft and grinding out some simple tasks of literally just breaking and placing blocks, my mind would wander to her. I used to choose the most essentially mind numbing tasks of mining for hours upon hours which only consisted of holding down a button and occasionally moving your character around to mine some more. But though the task was completely and utterly boring, my mind was active as ever thinking and wondering about Brianna.

Finding these quiet moments in life were far and few between, but I began to cherish them. All the moments from day dreaming while mowing the lawn and sweating to death in the 100 degree sun, to sitting in my car after a long first four hours at Home Depot while staring at a semi-vacant parking lot, to even just the long walks across my enormous campus at MTSU or the long walk from parking spots I chose purposefully to be super far away from my campus at Columbia State. These moments while rare, gave me a chance to keep Brianna at least in the back light of all the real life moments I was constantly distracted and thrown around with.

But, going back to Minecraft when I got into youtube, this changed everything.

I went from having at least some spare moments to having literally no moments at all. The only time I would rest was when I had experienced such bad burn out from trying to do everything everywhere all at once, and between that and the occasional sleep I would get, my mind had no time to think. I still can easily get into that workaholic mind set sometimes and it’s a dangerous one to be in, but I’ve gotten better as I’ve figured out why I believe I fell into that mindset in the first place.

The reason was to escape Brianna’s grasp.

As I went through school hanging out with friends and making new one’s internationally through the development of an ever expanding youtube channel, I had just about no time for anything. The only time I had to stop and think was my 10 minute drive to get food and even in those moments, I had no time to think, because I was too busy driving trying not to get killed by crazy drivers.

Three years of school went by before I finally said that enough was enough. With school being as difficult as it was, I decided to “retire” from my newfound love of youtube because in all honesty, it was driving me mad. My retirement video from Minecraft came out on December 5th, 2022. I stepped away from the never ending grind and set out to enjoy life and the little moments that life offered.

The only problem with this was that my mind began to ponder Brianna once again.

At this time in my life, after retiring I was actually working for a famous youtuber named PrestonPlayz. It was a random freelance job and for the past year or so I had been jumping from freelance to freelance work with little regards to cost and payments real life had always waiting around the corner for me.

This would make me end up ultimately getting a job back at Home Depot for a few months to pay off debts I had incurred from being financially stupid and buying stuff I didn’t really need. But, between all the financial problems and weird life situations I had so much more time to think about Brianna. The dreams of her still occurred every so often but the frequency at which they had started to occur was less and less. Maybe this was all due to me reaching a new level of maturity, but I’m still not entirely sure what caused it. Maybe it was the distraction of a busy workaholic life or the hopes to find someone, really anyone that was a girl that would love me that I could love back.

But, like I said my mind began to think about her more and more. I began to see her in my thoughts like I had years ago previously and it almost felt like I was back sliding into some weird territory I had just grown oblivious to with the amount of time that had passed. Either way, that was my life. A jumbled mess of thoughts and ideas all scattered in a brain far too busy to stop and breathe coming to the new age of silence and habit.

With my mind able to breathe, I thought of her again. . . and then I saw her again. . .

I can’t remember the exact day or time of year, but on one of these days of my “retirement” I was driving home after having just gotten some taco bell. (I was obsessed with the place back then) Driving up my street, I saw a girl with long dark curly hair and bright pink clothes, what might have even been pajama pants on her, walking up my street! I didn’t think much of it until I looked into my sider mirror and saw her face and saw that it was the one and only, Brianna.

Brianna was walking up my street right next to my house. In person. Alive and breathing.

I panicked and jumped out of my car with my taco bell nearly crashing to the ground as I roared into park in my driveway with my car. With bare feet, since I used to drive with no shoes when I went to fast food place, I dove onto an aggregate driveway and started running down it, knowing that there was no way on earth I was missing my chance to finally talk to her. I had nothing but time that day, and I was overly excited to finally introduce myself in person

But when I turned around, Brianna was gone. She’d simply vanished into thin air? I still don’t know how or why, but she was gone. . . possibly gone forever. . .

This experience drove my efforts to find her to another level of passion as I began to research through many google forums and sites and social media platforms praying to God that I’d be able to find her. It didn’t matter if I had to cross the entire ocean to get to her, I was going to find Brianna, no matter what.

I started to revisit old ground and went to the Home Depot I had worked at, asking the new manager there if he could search records and being able to find her that way. I found old coworkers I used to work with and asked around trying to find any trail or any lead and couldn’t find a single thing. I even managed to find Brad Brad’s Instagram and messaged him only for him to have literally no idea what I was talking about, go figure.

With nothing working and having literally no idea on what else I could do, I began to passionately work on a project called, “The Bri of My Dreams.” What this basically was was an ARG or alternate reality game which was a puzzle game I setup for my prior youtube community to solve and have fun with. But, it was more than that. It was the telling of the story of Brianna in a way that I could hopefully publicize and gain some popularity on so that maybe instead of me finding Brianna, she’d be able to rather find me! So, I started working on it behind the scenes unbeknownst to anyone in my community that I was going to use this new found passion project to hopefully find her, but also to bring me back to youtube content creation.

To this day, I’m still not sure why I wanted to go back to youtube. Well I know some underlying reasons, that being tied loosely to Brianna, but now many months later still being at it, I’m unsure as to the real reason why I still create stuff on there.

Either way, after creating an entire animated short film with a script and what I consider to be one of my greatest projects of all time, “The Bri of My Dreams” project was finalized and ready to publish. I put it out there hoping that it was only a matter of time before I finally heard from her.

Hardly anyone noticed I’d returned to youtube, let alone my project failing horribly as only close friends I knew even attempted the puzzles.

My final efforts produced literally no results, and well, this brings me to about right now, this moment that I’m actually writing this all down on May 1st 2024 at 4:21 p.m CDT. For the past few hours I’ve written down all of this while listening to The Caretaker album on youtube, a depressing soundtrack meant to represent the stages of alzheimer's.

This morning while sitting around doing nothing really, I looked up Brianna one last time, despite me telling myself I would be done with her after my ARG project. I found a girl, about the same age as me that matched the name and the description. Her father’s name was funnily enough the same as my own, Michael.

What I found about her and her father were obituary statements.

I’m unsure if it’s okay or morally right to even think that might’ve been her, but something I noticed when doing research about Brianna in my earlier days. . . For some odd reason there’s a lot of young beautiful Briannas who unfortunately die in their early 20’s. It’s an odd and horrifying fact I’ve come to know over the past few years through my odder than odd research.

But, this case I found today? Well the exact date this Brianna died on correlated almost exactly when my dreams stopped of her.

I don’t dream of Brianna anymore. I haven’t for years. . .

I think the reason I’m writing this, is my own way of finally saying goodbye. Wherever she is, I hope she’s okay. I hope she’s well. But as for me, life continues to go on and it’s finally time after these past eight years to finally say. . .

Goodbye Brianna. I’ll miss you. . .
Finn Dec 2021
Shaking shuddering vibrancy
A blink and I'm gone
Past the twisting fracturing light
Stretched and bent around gravity
The twisting halls that are pulled out into eternity
And instead found in Aether

Galaxies and stars searing my fingertips
Dark inky waters surrounding me
Skin sliding off, muscles turning to dust
Revealing my core
A bright
Spiraling
Supernova
Burning and revolving with rings of ice,
like Saturn
But much like how stars burst in their passion
And time itself will trickle the last grain of sand in its hourglass
A ticking timebomb in my soul
An explosion of firecrackers waiting for me,
at my end
The heat death of every universe living in my mind
and sprouting from my skin
Even Gods are forgotten
But as I reach like Icarus once did
setting myself aflame on white dwarves and red stars
And I
finally
feel
Alive
this is what happens when I drink redbull
Kiernan Norman Dec 2014
It’s nights like these;
when the sky feels raw-quiet
and the moon hangs so low-heavy
and pulpy, parchment yellow,
dripping and left to sun-stain and disintegrate
against dull ghost stories
and stinging to-do lists.
This is when I feel it- the fracturing.
You’re out of sight.
I’m out of mind.  

I crack the window,
blink loose stars out of focus
and send them shotgun galloping
across the flat-hum pulsing,
tin tinged and navy evening static.

The North Star needs new batteries.
He flickers and sways but won’t
extinguish. He is soft and solemn-
a lazing, dazing anchor whose fraying rope
weaves bowline knots
and hitching ties
into each inch of my drying hair.

Every strand of the night breathes itself into life.
The pieces are softening and shifting,
howling and crawling.
They become young men planning,
flexing at high tide and daring
each other further out with each set of waves.
They are posing, pretending to be
what they think the word ‘reckless’ means.

They are throwing their bodies into surf
and wailing.
They are crashing hard
and violent
against the shore.

They are shaking out golden limbs
and rubbing bloodshot eyes.
I watch bruises bloom and gashes erupt a flash
of crimson before salt water clean and stung.

They are flashing gleeful smiles
and throwing taunting screams across
whole seas while diving back,
quickly, elegantly,
into the same rough surf
that just spit them out.

Maybe they’re proactive,
maybe things hurts less when you
know where the hurt will come from.
Maybe the game isn’t to stay lovely
and bright and whole;
but to know pain’s possibilities so intimately
that when it comes time for you to break
you can do so without shattering
completely.

Nights like these;
sitting cross-legged with a blank
page open and an aching, reeling,
sickly-warm ribbon sprouting from my molars-
I get it.

Streamers wave proudly across
my body.
They grip and simmer,
they wind tightly around  
organs and bones who
gave up their hiding spots
and surrendered their secrets
the first time I let him come in.

The strings are bright and knot themselves tight.
They tether my windpipe,
weld each rib colorfully between sternum and spine.
They coil down and tie off;
thick, swaddled and bobbing, bowing
themselves regally around my coccyx.

Nights like these I have no armor.
Where is my skin?
I stir and rattle to even the slightest shift of Earth.
Exposed and quaking, I body-map bolts of light.
The light is tap dancing over lungs,
igniting blood and ricocheting through the summer camp,
arts and crafts hysteria fusing my anatomy.
It plunge pastels deep into the marrow of my bones.
The room is smoky, my gut splashes about, electrocuted.
I stop feeling tired.

The thing is- what I’m really trying to say,
is that I have no words right now.
There are no pretty lines caught in the twine of
my hip joints and no fiery prose laying
eggs in my spinal fluid.

There is no poem to write
about the fleshy, sour
smell of my own heart
roasting on a pyre or the hours it will take
to scrub off the charred bits of melting muscle
now staining the carpet.

This bitter heat creeping up my throat
and the sallow contraction of my
belly are not the prologue to a revolution-
my diagnosis is not a metaphor.

They are simply the tangy symptoms of the sadness
pinging around my insides and playing
peekaboo among the weeds of my broken body and sticky mind.
She will wait, biding time, for a properly rapt audience.
I whisper then whine that I’m too messy,
too slouchy, too emotionally ill-equipped to house a heart
maybe breaking,
definitely ripping, across-the-ballroom
slipping and wrecking-ball imploding.
Sadness smacks her lips and smirks.
No one rides for free.  

Nights like these I think
maybe I’ve wasted all my words;
my sentences and precious syntax and swooping rhetoric,
on lighter blows and mere heartaches.
I am a ragdoll limply stretching.
I am standing completely still, taking inventory.
I’m puzzled, though decidedly unthreatened,
by the glass-littered ground, my bleeding feet.
I mean look at the big picture:
I lit myself on fire.
I’m not worried about sunburn.

I know now that it has happened-
the hurt circulates my veins
and pumps me full of vehemence.
The act of breathing is ferocious,
I am a tangle of raw nerves.
This is the night I’m left with a heart shattered
in six hundred pieces on the floor and absolutely no poetry rising
from my pores to help glue it back together.

I said I get it.
I should have practiced.
I should have left my clothes on the sand and
ran toward the sea, naked and unembarrassed,
while diving head first into fierce undertows
and crashing with the boyish bodies of the night.

I should have experimented;
explored all the ways hurt could find me
while the beach was still mine to breathe out and yell for
without fear of being told 'no.'
But I didn’t. I kept my clothes on and my secrets to myself.

Tonight I’m a wreck and this isn’t a test.
I'm so far out, weighed down
by this boxy, heavy pain
ripening in my arms.
I'm panicky and paddling in any direction,
trying to keep my head above water
and praying the shore will appear and welcome me
once I get through this next set of waves,
through this next set of waves.
Ominous Jun 2014
They always comes first
everything comes first
the meds, the doctors, the hospitals
the bleeding, the bruising, the fracturing
the screaming, the despersonalization
the doping, the doping, the doping,
and then me.
why me after all this
why not me before the first medication?
i wonder
and wonder
and wonder
and i've come to a conclusion
that i'm way too ******* selfish
you've got a life &
you need to care take of it
before you try to
call me & notify me
about your
doping
and
your life
and your
pain,
but through all
of this
all i feel
is the pain of waiting
too,
don't you see?
it's me, waiting for you
here.
Kelynn May 2015
Hydraulic fracturing
Is ecoterrorism,
Pollution,
Hide the name:
The Chemical attacking,
but they call it fracking
Jack Jenkins Mar 2017
Lately I've been struggling to look Up
My faith is fracturing, not reflecting
I know God is just sharpening me up
To be the warrior that He's called me to be
In order to do that He's inflicting the pain
But I'm trying to handle it in a fleshly way

I'm trying to say I'm sorry for getting so consumed
By all this hurt that I don't know how to let go of
I'd rather hang onto it and then blame You
Take it out of Your hands and lose my way
Lord I don't know what to do anymore
I'm angry at You for all the things I do
I'm so sorry, I never meant to become this way
I hate the fact You died so I couldn't condemn myself

God, please don't ever take away the anger I have
I just pray You show me how to redirect it away from You and myself
I pray you don't take my pain away, but allow me to endure it
Give me the strength to crucify myself and the demons in my head
Please let me trust in You again, because I know there's no other than You.
Kenna Oct 2012
he seeps into me
fracturing each bone
contorting each muscle
The rich creamy nonsense of it all
Like a dark chocolate pudding filled with raisins; contrasting in the most horrific way

We don't fit
we just don't
there is no explanation
there is no burning fire
no raging passion
just a thousand pieces of broken china laying on the floor, never to be collected, or reassembled

I feel the darkness
it welcomes me
and washes over me with deep calming breaths
this was never going to work.
Like Rushing Water by Kenna McCafferty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Emily Rogan Jun 2013
It beats, and rumbles, and breathes;
like the roar of an irrepressible beast
our lust and desires shake the earth below,
fracturing the dusted dirt of our hearts.
Cherished hopes become slow dancing trees
we burn to feel warmth
as we chase after an unsustainable beauty.

Then with an abrupt ebb,
our intrepid recklessness sobers,
So we turn to jesters and alleyway fools
to learn how to quit.
© Emily Rogan
Micheal Bevan Jun 2010
Fear and infractions,
Basic senses,
Subtle subtractions,
Delayed response,
Relayed reactions,
Play off the hint,
Winter hue,
Malice tint,
Hateless tasteless,
Faceless placeless,
Placed placement,
Playful payment,
Frivolous and fevered,
Tempered beliefs,
Believers,
Belay the bounty,
Beautiful and temptress trite,
Fracturing county,
Past tense recite,
Fast forward rewrite,
Rewound and respun,
Locked and lead loaded,
Geared and gunned,
Sudden and semi-accidental implosion,
Rewarming,
Sickly hex,
Weakened flex,
Internally overcasted and overtly storming,
Outwardly warning,
Slowly learning,
Forever turning,
And in turn,
Burnt and still laid burning,
Waking a ghostly turning,
Soundlessly and -ly burning,
Smokey on the peripheral,
Ethereal,
Eternally external,
Forcefully feared,
Into inferno,
Out of opinionated opressionables,
Que wide and willingly willed questionables,
Wordlessly whispers with the whim of the wind,
Beget blindness,
Begets mindless,
Begets beauty bound by which beauty begins,
Found fearfully,
Torn tearfully,
Retold beautifully,
Molded after mourning,
Mourned before morning,
Night neared,
Sadness teared,
Tearing soundly on edges,
Destruction and dutiful pirouette,
Tasted tyranny teem and endance pledge,
Irony stills,
And the air dare not forget.
Ken Pepiton Aug 2022
As an avatar or an actual mind, acting intelligent,
slow choice of words. Act Intuited, as if,
uranatural, and grammar is not all it was, we have
lines and commas and an entire cognative kit,
-as any natural outcome of minds agreeing,
some reason concept offered, take hold, claim a piece
- past the fracturing, full-on insane, dementia in a friend…

one hundred and fifty-one pre-positions, counting upto.
Now.
Readers are rare, where you were, when
some sense akin to whatif, we did, and then
****-prooof dust as is,
this is it. The long and the short, attention spans
bubbling along
this same pebbled wide place where minds converge.
Such a pleasant feeling, posting here, in clouds, most fragile medium minds have agreed to imagine

— The End —