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Elizabeth Vogel Dec 2011
I.
Walking like slow molten-rubble-
Sleeping like acid rain--
Always know when to retreat.
She told me to always know when…
‘that’s how they get killed, you know.’
If you don’t know the proper steps—
1, 2-and. 1,2-and. 4. One-e-and... One-e-and. A.
There should be no pull, shove; strife.
The crawl should be effortless, so seductive
they don’t even realize what’s happened.

Until thoughts flow too easily,
like emotions used to.  
Organic; *******…
and they don’t even have heartslungskidneys.
Not any longer.

II.
She
was, or seemed to me,
to always be
there. When I felt most in need of that fix.
The itch for darker comforts.

She, as part of her lethal charm,
projected the kind of strength
Meant to be used in battle against
iron moralities.
She spoke of all things
gore and destruction
like she’d been there, like she’d done it all.
I have no doubt she had.

She used these things to her advantage—
As part of her recruitment
of the ones she could mold,
deform really,
into shapes of beast
always so willing to do as she wished.

III.
We used to laugh-
Hm hahuhhu hahhmm-
taught strings plucked mercilessly.
They told us we were a different breed:
there was surely something better about us.
We were going to grow impossibly
We were iron-strong. Never clad.
We were __inforced (no need for the “re.” we never had to be told twice…
Though they always did)

The first time a commander roars,
you are to act. The repetition is for it to really sink in.
Not the steps to take,
But the absolute power this (rounded reddened) man holds
Over you.
Hm hahuhhu hahhmm.

IV.
We stumbled home,
Some missing limbs, other chunks, and others-still others-
missing an entire brotherfatherson.
We expected no forgiveness,
did not pretend to even want it.
This poem was inspired by four songs: Tautou by Brand New
Somewhere A Clock is Ticking by Snow Patrol
Seven Nation Army (originally by the White Stripes) performed by The Vitamin String Quartet
Let’s Hear that String Part Again, Because I Don’t Think They Heard it All the Way Out in Bushnell by Sufjan Stevens
SJ May 2019
I recognize my privilege.
I recognize my uselessness.
I recognize my inability to function.
I recognize that I may not be capable/disabled physically. But I am emotionally and mentally.

Though most of the voices are dimmed and quieter than before. They are not gone.

I feel them at the back of my mind.
Pressing at the barrier that is inforced by medication.

My self-loathing is stronger than ever though.
At every and one situation where I keep failing them.
At every and one situation where I keep being a disappointment.
At every and one situation where I am a disgrace to my mother's memory.

I know I am garbage.
I know I am worthless.
I know I am privileged
And Gods do I know I don't deserve anything I have.

Maybe I am proving that ***** right.

But the thing is.
I didn't ask for this.
For whatever broken thing that makes my DNA.
I didn't ask for this existence. This life.

I must have done something terrible in my past life to have been born so broken and in disrepair in this one.

I want to throw up. I want to die.
I don't want to be a part of this collective.
I don't want to breath anymore.
Let me drown.
Let me break my body into pieces against hard asphalt.
Let me suffocate in a car filled with gas.
Let me hang from a tree in the most secluded part of the park.
Let me drink the poisons under the sink.
Let me starve myself until my heart gives.
Let me burn underneath the hot sun until only the crows come to great me.
Let me fall from the highest point of a cliff.
Let me drink all the pills in the bottles to numb me to sleep.
Let me slit my veins vertically across my arms.
Let me puncture an artery so I may bleed out.

Let me
Let me
Let me
LEt mE
LeT Me
LET ME

Let me breathe into the icy tundras of the north where my lungs will freeze and toes will turn blue.
Let the bite of a most wondrous creature in the humid south taking me into fevered dreams.
Let me bite the built so I swallow it whole and paint the walls, red, pink, grey, and wet.

Cant, you just let me pass on and away?

"No," says the instinct to self preserve the only thing that keeps me tied to this place.
I want yall to know...i don't plan on dying. Lol. Cause my body won't allow me to. There is a thing calls passive suicide idealization. My depression tends to manifest most often than not as apathy and or irritability.
kammy Mar 2018
I am from the past, who didn’t quite know when to grow.
From locked doors to the grassland below.
I am from the barrier that guards dangerously.
But within, carelessly.

I am from the smears,
that obtain memories
within a frame.
Where these lay on the shelves of revival,
containing hope for the unknown prospective
that we yet to see.

I am from broken flesh,
mourning to be stabilized.
I am from colours, aimlessly falling from virtuosity,
controlled by ferocity.
Where fanfares erupt into paradise,
and hallucinations rupture.
Where I’m from, emotions get merged into blackness,
struggling to reach the vivid axis.

Now, I embrace my differences,
letting go of references,
grasping to the importance of life itself.
Where I'm from,
none of this occurred.

I now cross the line,
that never was yet to make,
and find ambition within the space.
It's my calling to surrender the actuality
to the mentality.
To unchain the affliction
from the prediction
all teens are held to.

Where I'm from, makes me who I am,
without the destruction,
and the scramming effect.
I am from a war,
that has just conquered love.

In this exact moment,
my quest has not been completed.
The revision of the universe
still holds within my time slot,
gradually fading away
with every step I take.

On my wall,
I clasp to the movement
that wasn’t fully satisfied.
Swinging from the clothespins,
clinching to what was left behind.
  I am from these callings,
yelling to break the norms,
that my past had inforced.
Based on the writing style from George Ella Lyon's poem, "Where I'm From".
Commuter Poet Dec 2015
I expected nothing
And from that I gained something
You expected everything
You did not get what you wanted

They expected nothing
And somehow they gained their freedom
Others expected everything
The people disappointed them

They changed their expectations
And re-inforced their disappointment
The people lived in reality
And created a community

Leaders expected something
They became disappointed
The people lived true
The people lived true
25th December 2015

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