"obliges" poems
PTSD is not something you get over.
It is when soldiers get tired of hearing their own shots fire
Into a purple horizon of nothingness.
It is when assault victims are scared of becoming a statistic
And their brokenness is suffocating
It is when fear compels the mind to change
And it willingly obliges.
PTSD is when the darkness of human nature becomes evident
It is when it's stronghold is suddenly
More prominent than the beauty in the world
It's brash fingers create a vacuum
That ***** the sanity from your mind
Until you wake up in the middle of the night screaming
"Don't shoot me!"
"Don't **** her!"
You see him and now he is with your little sister
Taking her into his Jeep
While you stand there, watching
Tied up because you can do nothing about it.
This has not happened
And probably never will
But you are crippled by paralyzing bouts of anxiety and guilt and fear
From which your mind cannot console you
You can no longer hide the loss
That this event, this person, this illness
Has placed strategically within you.
It is when you will do anything to get these memories to stop playing on repeat
An endless loop maybe ended by alcohol
Check
Cutting
Check.
Promiscuity
Check
Anything that will eliminate cycle of not knowing
Of reliving
If only for a short time
Even pretending you believe in God
Because it makes it seem like there is a reason for this confusion
But then you begin to question why God would do this to his child
So you digress into darkness once again
Left feeling unsure.
PTSD is when you stop repressing memories
And they come back so forcefully that they knock you to the ground
Leaving you bruised and ******
Leaving you lost.
PTSD is different from other sicknesses
Because you do not feel sick
You feel there
Like you are in his bed again
And his room smells like mushrooms
That is actually a field of grenades
Waiting to explode throughout your small body
You remember the tone of his words
Slipping from his lips as though they are snakes
Strangling me, leaving breath unable to escape
This is not sick
As you feel no symptoms
But an altered state of consciousness
You do not even realize you are disconnecting as it happens
But this is Hell
This is war
You are broken
And the worst part about it
Is that you must understand your triggers
Your dissociations
Before you can get better.
Nov 26, 2014
Nov 26, 2014 at 10:59 PM UTC
Cold, cold hands.
These hands of mine...
Cold with red.
I carry a burden.
Such a heavy burden.
I bury this burden-I bury deep.
So, so deep.
As I drive, I feel relief.
My mind is wandering from place to place-
from thought to thought.
...I swirve.
Hitting a tree is not what I need right now,
or is it?
Maybe it would be better if I no longer existed.
I'm quite awful, really.
I lie to people very often-
no remorse.
Nah, maybe not.
Just keep on driving.
That's what I should do.
Exactly what I should do.
Home.
Home feels so wonderous.
I need my bed...but I shall retire to the couch tonight.
My sheets are awfully messy.
Pit pat,
ratta tat.
Knock knock,
it's twelve o' clock.
I answer the door,
and I find a man in uniform.
"Do you know the whereabouts of this woman?"
She looked very familiar...
"No, oh no, my, my, no, no."
I answer with earnest.
"That will be all, sir".
Men in blue.
Never leaving me alone.
I feel they like me.
I wonder why?
Night time again.
Oh, I love the night.
I don't love this woman, though.
She lays on my bed, naked.
Some girl from a bar-
she wants to lose her inhibitions with me.
What she doesn't realize is...
I'm losing mine with her.
I tell her to close her eyes.
She obliges.
I walk softly over to her.
Slowly, slowly.
I feel her body with my hand...
I feel absolute power within my palm.
Bliss runs through my body-
I end her.
Now I have another burden for the night.
It's no real problem, honestly.
I'll just take her where I dump all of my other burdens.
Hopefully I won't be too tired to lift her.
She's pretty light, anyways.
Feb 27, 2011
Feb 27, 2011 at 9:32 AM UTC
Ryan he likes slags called kim
I wonder if Kim's fat or slim
Is she ugly, is she grim
I guess Kim's good enough for him
Kim she's Ryan's piece of trim
Is it because she licks the rim
Are other slags out on a whim
Maybe their filled up to the brim
Bus stops talk they say so much
They seem to have that magic touch
Slags lives scrawled on shelters hutch
Straight to the point, not double Dutch
No other slags are good enough
perhaps their skanks and far too rough
Slags called Kim, must be so tough
When Ryan does not get enough
Not slags called Julie, Emma or Jane
Jodi and Rachel must be too plain
Just try Michelle, are you insane ?
Limiting tarts is loss not gain
Is Ryan partial to whips and chain ?
And Kim obliges him with pain
Kim must be different with the cane
It's no wonder he wants Kim again
Kim maybe great, from where your stood
She's just a **** who likes hard wood
Come on now Ryan, you know you should
There's other slags that's just as good
Oct 4, 2018
Oct 4, 2018 at 2:15 PM UTC
When the soul seeks
the song frozen in time,
Divinity obliges by
sending a few echoes down my path.
They reverberate across
the blue champagne
waves of inertia
to awaken reminiscences
of our harmonic rhythm.
Moments flow syllable like
to find a meaning
between the lines etched
on destiny's canvas as
a presence converges into resonance.
Every word is amplified together into
honest understanding breaking apart
the rational mind icebergs
that predominate love.
Oct 13, 2016
Oct 13, 2016 at 12:49 AM UTC
I - stricken biped
Reside
Arranged on patina of dust
Compacted from its own breadth and comingled humid vacillations
Misplaced intent resides carking upon my ribcage
Cerebral reliquary reprises
Enunciating: distaste – mediocrity – insufficiency
Clandestine exhalation configuration obliges principal
Luminous descants evade ebullition bound in stained crystal
Eupnea elapsed - foreboding
Enigma binds frame to pith
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 9:04 PM UTC
Barefoot, and exhausted she enters the plantation,
The sound of leather loafers move towards the counter,
Decadent heat swells across her forehead making sweat shiver down her temples,
*Sweaty palms ****** a decorated mug, and contaminate the elixir with milk,*
Her dark hands desperately search for more beans from the plants, before giving up and filling up her sack and returning to the village,
spices and sugar sweeten the blow, of knowing the bitterness of black coffee,
The sun is an enemy, and pelts her forehead with heat as she returns to the place called home,
Artificial winds cool down the man of many titles, as he pretends to take an interest in the international affairs presented in his daily newspaper while waiting for the finishing touches to his brew,
the load begins to take its toil on her back and she drops the sack,
searching for a visa, meaningless coins are dropped on the coffee shop floor,
She immediately collapses in a frenzy to pick up the goods and dust them of with her fingers,
His eyes momentarily dart towards the silvered coins on the floor, and he ignores them and enters his card into the machine,
‘These are still good, they must still be good, they’ll never know, we can still sell them’ she convinces herself as she clasped the coffee beans into the sack,
‘Aren’t you gonna pick that up sir’ , ‘Um, yeah probably afterwards’ he laughs at the cashiers unconscious desire to obtain as much money in the tip jar as possible,
She picks up her sack and continues walking up the hill, until eventually shanty huts are in sight,
*a printed off receipt is quickly ******* up into a ball in his pants-suit and he obliges himself with a sip as he strolls towards the doors,*
Her faint body seems to motion towards the ground, but by this time other villagers have spotted her and begin running towards her, her lifeless body is circled by their glances,
‘Too bitter… it needs to be diluted’
‘Spices and sugar sweeten the blow, of knowing the bitterness of black coffee’
Aug 1, 2011
Aug 1, 2011 at 1:42 AM UTC
*** is the consolation you have when you can't have love”
“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.”
“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”
“It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.”
“Nobody deserves your tears, but whoever deserves them will not make you cry.”
'No matter what, nobody can take away the dances you've already had.'
“There is always something left to love.”
― Gabriel García Márquez
Mar 29, 2015
Mar 29, 2015 at 10:03 AM UTC
Weaving itself, the dream-spider:
I see an aged man
(Wearing his evening time-machined body,)
Walking,
Traipsing upon the jogging track
At a pace which nature observes.
His frame battered,
Pummeled by age's indignation—
Of youth's battle lost.
His mowed grass-like hair showcasing
a white hue patented by age's theme of perseverance.
Beholden to years which he beheld.
His suspenders holding matter elegantly
Despite the invisible mass adhered to his layers
Excreted by years matured;
Increasing his gravity
Making him denser, heavier;
Decreeing excess energy.
Yet he obliges with his compromised gait
in reiterating verbs of motion.
Taking twice as much time to complete a revolution,
Taking twice as much
As his yesteryears.
In a witness's capacity, I relay:
Everything is a disciple of change,
But your energy...
Your energy remains as the constant
to the proportionality of age and will.
Mar 22, 2019
Mar 22, 2019 at 5:33 AM UTC
Miryam stands beside
two Arabs
and a camel
to be photographed.
Baruch presses
the shutter
of the camera
and the scene
is captured.
She pays
the two young men
and they walk off
with the camel
talking in
their own tongue.
She adjusts the bikini top.
Brauch puts away the camera.
Someone said
they expect to be paid,
she says.
Why not,
Baruch says,
watching her fiddle
with her bikini bottom,
her fine behind.
The Moroccan beach
is deserted, except
for the departing men
and camel further
along the beach.
She complains of the heat,
fingers her fuzzy hair,
stares at Baruch,
scratches her nose,
gives a Monroe pose,
hands on hips.
Take me like this,
she says.
He obliges.
He shutters the camera,
his eyes capture,
stores away her image,
in more ways
than one.
She talks of his drinking
into the small hours
in that Tangier's
night club
the guide took them to,
the belly dancer,
the snake charmer.
On the way back
to the camp
in the back
of the truck
with the others,
he remembers,
the kissing,
the embracing,
stirring his pecker.
She talks
of the early morning sky,
the smell of kebabs,
her feeling heady,
how she thought
he'd come to her tent.
Too tired,
he says,
besides I had to think
of your reputation.
Others would know.
I'm not a nun,
she says,
getting me stirred up
and then leaving to stew.
They walk hand in hand
along the beach,
the tide coming in,
touching their feet.
She talks of her parents,
medical professionals,
the boy she had a crush on
who went off
with someone else.
Baruch feels her pulsing
along the wrist,
his fingers holding there.
She talks of the other evening
when they came down there
to escape the noisy party
at the camp, the dancing,
the music, the wine.
He recalls the darkness,
the deep tuffs of grass
before the beach
was reached,
she and him,
kissing, embracing,
moonlight shining,
stars like scattered
sparkling diamonds.
No one missed us,
she says,
no one knew
about me and you.
He remembers
the echo of music
over head,
the gentle breeze,
distant voices,
her murmurings,
sound of sea
upon the beach,
both feeling
and touching,
giving pleasure,
each to each.
Jul 14, 2013
Jul 14, 2013 at 3:24 AM UTC
He perches on his black-crate bandstand,
stationed between the payphone and postbox.
The view from his seat never varies:
a restless audience of briefcases and knees.
He closes his eyes, concentrating
on breath becoming buzz becoming blare,
and he pictures his notes glossing Manhattan’s
thunder-colored walls.
Each tone fills the pavement, square by square
until the sidewalk is a harlequin filmstrip,
colored by notes coaxed from his brass mouth.
Passersby withhold their gaze, because giving a nod
obliges giving a dollar, and no one is inclined
to employ this trumpeter. But he pays no mind;
his own eyes secured until song’s end.
As long as his fingers are jumping,
he doesn’t have to be Gerard Wall–
who lost his wife to cancer and mind to the War;
he can be Louis, Miles, or Pinetop Smith.
When he looks up once again,
sun and spirit have faded,
and he watches the evening embers
drift out of his horn.
Jul 2, 2014
Jul 2, 2014 at 3:39 PM UTC
it's horrible of me to look at him and be in lust
for everything about him
to long to be in his arms
and get lost in his eyes
oh those bright, beautiful, blue eyes
that make me melt and freeze in the same instance.
and oh how I wish he would share with me
the way I have shared with him
the intimate and dark past behind me
how I have cried to him and asked of him
and always he obliges
but not a single tear shown to me
or secret even crept from his lips
oh those wonderful lips
I wonder how they feel
against my own, against my skin
or how sweet the sound would be
to hear those three worlds
I Love You
a symphony written for only me
we have stolen the night together
not in passion
but in so many words
so many glances
and even the question
will you ever love me?
but no.
I have broken that which I wish for daily
when I had him as mine before
I tossed him aside
crushed his heart
and stole his trust
i cheated.
I was young
and in love with another boy
another fool
who made me smile and feel on top of the world
but then took my all
as it had once been taken before
I was lost with him
but too afraid to be without him
...
but long has it been since that chapter was written
and the first man, oh how he has grown
and changed
yet not...
he accepted me
as a friend,
back into his life
kind to me every time we talk
every time I act like a fool
.....
i have apologized so many times
but he says it doesn't bother him
I was just a child
....
how young and stupid I was
...
and now I watch him
love another
ironically with the same name as mine
so how bitter sweet the words sound
when he claims "I Love You Taylor"
my heart races
skips a beat even,
but it is not for me.....
it will probably never be
how horrible of me to think of him this way
to get lost in the thought of his arms around me
or smile when I even see his name...
He is my friend
whom I love....
More then he will ever understand...
I just hope and pray for his happiness...
Jan 12, 2013
Jan 12, 2013 at 10:45 PM UTC
I know it!
It has to be me.
I must show you the hard truth.
Nobody else has the obligation to teach you.
It is my responsibility to do it.
I know you're going to hate me for this.
I even comprehend it.
My only hope is that you’ll soon understand.
Loving you obliges me.
I will be like nobody has been.
Not helping you continue the broad path you take.
Closing the door when you least expect it.
Locking myself out of your life,the price I am willing to pay.
It’s steep, but worth every day I pray.
You will hate me and I understand.
My only hope is that the day will come soon and you’ll understand.
I must scold you.
Loving you obliges me.
Aug 10, 2018
Aug 10, 2018 at 2:56 AM UTC
You just cannot deny,
A fallen pain in the eyes of hunger,
One that hurts you to look at,
But feel the truth in you,
The uplifting peace in feeding a child of the streets,
You're what not to him, just feel that.
I've thought for long,
That there wasn't a greater sorrow,
Than to see a dream murdered not once but twice,
But now I've somehow come to realize,
There ain't simpler happiness, than to feel,
Having someone to share those tears in my eyes.
Forsaken were those, I feel,
With no guardian or angel,
To watch over their tiny feet;
But bravery it is, and rewardedly so,
To depend & survive,
On the benevolence of the world,
That so kindly obliges.
To not be loved back, or simply unloved,
Isn't fair, ethereal or humane,
Undoubtedly so..
But to finally be able to heal,
And live on,
Is a miracle in itself.
Apr 25, 2015
Apr 25, 2015 at 6:28 AM UTC
There is no merriment in our legend
a disparate history obliges,
like dust clouds we succumb
to a threadbare desert caravan.
Once we encountered happiness it outshone
even the azure skies
but recklessly we back slid
into the vested nothingness.
We sated on Alpha
her eagerness was renown
but the locusts came yonder
and with Bet famished
scorned with the wind.
Mar 3, 2014
Mar 3, 2014 at 2:39 PM UTC
revealed through the abstract construct of self
is the veiled luminosity
of the divine expression
known by the conscious mind as "God"
Through the narratives told and song of the olden days
are the secrets
we are seeking of human existence
the curiosity that drives, strives and obliges us
through our creation of tools, science and rationality
re-imagined by empirical objectivity
of the modern mind.
Feb 23, 2014
Feb 23, 2014 at 2:30 AM UTC
my mother traded her body for a future tense. my mother gave her flesh as ransom for a life cancer held captive. it wants what makes her woman. she obliges. she holds her body the way she has known it one last time and i can see the halls filling up with water. my eyes are losing their salt as her wounds seem to be finding it. she finds pain and it finds her worthy. i don't know what god finds her a landscape worthy of deserting but it calls her chest exodus. her body, so full of blood and bread and water and wine and everything else that makes her a covenant. her body, a body of water, of hydrogen and oxygen and intention and breath and everything else that makes her alive. my mother is alive, past, present, and future tense.
Jul 7, 2016
Jul 7, 2016 at 10:02 PM UTC
Why can’t we do this
Why am I not allowed to love
Why would I never get your kiss
Why would you never love?
Come on now, they love you they say
Put you in your social place only to stay
Stay there until you find him there
A person that knows and will care
But
Why can’t I fall in love with another
How is me, blushing, such a bother
What obliges me to not want a touch
Or a kiss or a caress or such?
Stop it, they tell me
This is not how it’s meant to be
You know your status and how you look
You know he picks up girls rather than a book
But
Here I stand, my own team
Trying to fight for love
Trying to fulfill my dream.
Nov 27, 2011
Nov 27, 2011 at 4:51 PM UTC
I left work. Rode my bike home, but don't romanticize it- don't feel left out. The ground in this city is uneven and the rush of anxious minutes escapes no one- ticking fuel for everyone's consistent commutes.
Especially on a bicycle; no one ever sees you. So I ride quickly to keep pace and avoid my self-imposed sympathies for holding everyone up.
A quick shot down gradient asphalt teaches you that riding your bike to work carries with it a perpetually aching *** A living classroom experience that an object in motion, will continue in motion until an object of equal or greater motion inhibits it.
The streets are stationery and they rule, godlessly. So, just don't romanticize what it is you think I am doing here.
I had nothing to do. I laid on my roof shirtless and let the sun mistake me for one of its feline Maenads. On days like today, it's hard to not worship beauty. Or the feeling of heat. Eyes shut, I imagine writing- at one point I imagined writing this.
It sounded better then.
A helicopter files parallel to the horizon.
I think of a police state and what a sunny day in them must feel like. I think of the constants; of fear & the times in life spent missing the mark.. My thoughts interact like the clouds above my closed mind. Meeting briefly and passing ways with parts of them missing, yet with new formations attached.
I come to- from a lucid daze. The neighbor two row homes down is now on his roof, but it's a deck- a place where you can welcome other people.
The breeze begs my hair for attention; it obliges itself across my face. I breathe in.
I go inside. Lie down in the warm security of my bed. Breathe in its comfort, it's unforgiving acceptance. But it's too beautiful of a day to waste (aren't they all). I sigh.
Grab a pen, my notebook, a countless refill of still water.
I return.
To my mind's abode with its offering of a grounded bird's eye view.
I begin.
Jan 16, 2015
Jan 16, 2015 at 10:51 PM UTC
Alone at last in the dead of night,
he reaches for her under their threadbare existence
with one clammy hand.
She dutifully obliges.
Alone at last in the dead of night,
the girl is sound asleep;
the tiara is still askew on her head
after the day’s rabid celebration.
Alone at the last at the dead of night,
the boy takes the unrelenting road
out of the town.
And towards new adventures.
Alone at last at the dead of night,
the dog sheds its skin
and howls at the moon.
Oct 9, 2017
Oct 9, 2017 at 1:08 AM UTC
The rain hangs pregnant in the air
I pray the storm down on my skin
Wind whips like vine into my eyes
Grass shivers, dancing to the time
Of the downpour to come.
"Wash away that day, those tears-"
I beg- the sky obliges, wild
With thunder, shattering and white;
Lightning sends forked tongues screaming down
To kiss the earth he’s missed so long.
The heavens, sudden rip apart
Down comes a sea in hues blue-grey
Great awful shadows dance above
Shrouded in banks of mist and haze
I close my eyes and waterfalls
To bring life back in to me.
I shriek and the sound of my joy
Is swallowed by the clouds
A song the rain sings back to me
Raised to the heavens tenfold.
Sep 12, 2018
Sep 12, 2018 at 11:13 AM UTC
Sunday afternoon under sleepy film of cloudcover
in this, the most well-policed
(safe, they say)
town in these Unitedly Individuist States of
Solitude-
cry out for something to do,
give me something to DO,
i say
but even the bars and singular coffee shop are closed on the lord's day
here
and so a lazy afternoon on the back porch with the weekend wine leftovers in glass, in hand
watching the cats dream,
themselves even too lazy to chase the busy squirrels
who alone are energized
and chat their politics of nut-gathering
to the bluejays who nod kindly,
(nobility obliges)
but silently know all the tricks
'cause they're expert buriers of peanuts
themselves and have got nothin' to learn,
but nothing to do either,
'cept listen.
I hear the music of their conversation
and assure you, friends,
that this poem is garbage
by comparison.
Apr 3, 2016
Apr 3, 2016 at 4:38 PM UTC
Just another hit she begs and her cruel master obliges
May 15, 2016
May 15, 2016 at 3:31 PM UTC
Once upon a time
You were important.
Once upon a time
They were inquisitive.
They listened.
They asked.
They were fascinated and marvelled
By your stories of the past,
Neglected by fault of ignorance
Sought for through awe-inspiring curiosity.
They believed you possessed
Wisdom and experience,
Knowledge of the otherwise
Unknown.
They gathered around you,
Or perhaps beside you
And in front of a fire
Begging you to speak
Drooling over your words.
You were their entertainment
Like pirates, they wanted you to hand over
Your treasures
Like sharks, they devoured your essence
Like vessels, they slowly disappeared
Surfing away on a web
You never saw, barely know
Or comprehend.
Your services are no longer required
They found a new friend
They call Google,
One followed by a hundred zeros.
You cannot bit that
You do not stand a chance.
Here is where the story gets better
They invented rules for words
The code is political correctness.
It obliges them to pretend,
To respect you
By continuously finding
New flattering definitions for you.
By now, you are not even “old” anymore
You have lost the right to
Your lifetime achievements award.
You are just “older” than someone else is.
“Older” enough to retire
With honours.
They have finally decided
To acknowledge
Your inevitable infirmity.
They are offering you a new perspective
Awarding you with a one-way ticket
Free ride
To your beautiful new home,
So that you can rest.
A well-deserved rest.
You are simply démodé.
The stories you carry
Are of no interest anymore.
Memories are written
Tombstones too.
They are gazing at the future
Drooling over the fantastic
Possibilities.
The book they are reading,
You are not in.
Treasures of the eldest
Buried at sea
Rest assure you will be retrieved,
When a pressing sense of bleakness
Accompanied by devastating guilt,
Will bring them back to you
Compelling them to ask once again
“Please tell us stories of the past”.
May 22, 2017
May 22, 2017 at 4:30 AM UTC
By Jennifersoter Ezewi
This is a country we live in: a country that is quick to imitate the foreign soil without considering its environment.
This is a country we live in: a country that imitates without checking if the time is right.
This is a country we live in: a country whose banking sector obliges its customers to adopt a verification system without adequate security.
This is a country we live in: a country that is quick to start an elephant project without completion.
This is a country we live in: a country that has a lot to learn about maintenance.
This is the country we live in: the country that considers the rich before the poor.
This is the country we live in: the country that swims in abundance yet, lives in penury.
Feb 15, 2019
Feb 15, 2019 at 8:45 AM UTC