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Joseph Yzrael Jan 2012
I am paragraphed.
Downed on dead nostalgia.
Daggers keep sway my song
Of buzzing doves and lions.
Fleets of sunken words
Tread on silent leaves.
Echoed sighs of empty pens
And woes of crumpled sheets.
Unblossom my emotions.
Let the infinite unbleed.
Words have failed me;
Paragraphed, I remain.
Made for my Literature class in 2011. Also published at Dagmay: Literary Journal of the Davao Writers Guild
(http://dagmay.kom.ph/2013/12/22/paragraphed/)
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2016
poet versus writer dialogue:
we play with words...
we don't necessarily use them,
what are you on about?
the word is there, sure,
but it's not paragraphed
nor catch phrased,
and you end up with it as both
paragraphed in journalism
and catch phrased in terms of economics,
e.g.: veneer.
for the cries of the slender ghouls thinned
further into nothing by designers,
or skid marks of vomiting
by models replaced by coat-hangers
(do a german for me,
conjugate the two words for a complex
to dysfunction dyslexia of the english tongue:
coathangers): moving in roulette fashion
so we can spare the girls anorexia:
no cat would hamburger that true for
a tonne of cheese.
AC Sayat Feb 2016
Author’s Note: Welcome to world of dreams turning into reality.

1. I always thought of becoming one of the *clouds
; how they’ll form with the other clouds different shapes and sizes. I always imagined how they’ll shade us from all the that we should’ve been feeling; how they’ll weep for the cooling sensation that we would feel. I always thought that every tear from my hard work will cool off my mind. I always dreamt of becoming a cloud; going through a cycle on and on. It seems so mysteriously wonderful. But as I seek them in the sky, it seems like, one isn’t there. Today, she’s here.

2. The sun always seemed like this hot blazing ball of gas and fire. I wish I was the sun; the center of the solar system. I wish I could always light up the world; support the moon to even brighten up the other side. But I guess I don’t need to be the sun; I found the sun. I found out that it lighted up my whole world. I found out that she is right here— beside me — always. I should’ve been burning right now but as I unravel more, the more I endure the burning sensation.

3. I always wondered what would I do if I was the wind. I wondered if I could cool off the whole atmosphere. I wonder how it feels to be mixed with different kinds of gases in the air. I wonder how it feels to be drifted apart by your own force. I want to be this need of humanity — of living species. I want to be the wind, nothing more, nothing less.

4. I always dreamt of becoming you. I want to feel how living life was in another persons perspective; how could I survive a day full of excitement and paranoia. I always wanted to feel how I’ll be acting as the sun to somebody’s life; how I’ll be the person lighting up lives. I always wondered if you were me, and if I were you. Will the wind change its direction? Will the clouds ever reverse its cycle? Will the sun set at an opposite direction? If we ever change our role in life, would we ever meet — even in our wildest dreams? I guess fate has to decide what our next step is… only fate.
Tim Mansour Oct 2020
You cut a dashing figure
between em and en and
oh, by the way

Your abbreviated smile
has me wondering what
it stands for

as I place my finger on
your ellipsis … you lead me on,
there is no doubt
I feel left out

But as we track and kern
our forms, ascending,
make ligatures to avoid
an overlap of strokes

a diphthong doth emerge
o’er our line o’ type
and what was once

paragraphed into separateness,
our thoughts juxtaposed

begins to merge
(bind in parentheses)
you’n’me make syncope

and, once the story forms,
the digraphs make shapes
with our mouths.
A poem set in the font of love.
Nigel Morgan May 2015
Day opening, the blind’s tug and lift,
there on the counterpane, cards,
a nest of gifts tied with golden thread
serrated to the touch, bowed too
with deft hands, a box when un-papered
reveals a (stone-like shell-like) form
picked from a south-facing beach
and woven round to make
(harp-like warp-like) a loom
to weave the waves play.


Holding in her small hands,
the still-to-be-given gift
(beyond all gifts this bright day)
the stroke, the brush
of fingertips on the harvest field
of a bare arm, she unbows,
pulling preciousness so close
that between themselves
a shared to and fro comes
to the very moment of joy.


To walk out
on the springiest day
closing the door
on house and home,
taking off to a near-
distant hill now glowing
in greens and holding above
itself a tableau of blue and white
and grey clouds bringing
cool wind to bare knees.


Never an intrusion
on nature’s ambience
(our footfall on the path,
the wind breezing
through sun-dapple trees)
your voice’s song
sings out in the crisp air.
Quite under your spell words
turn and fall like the flowers
from a blossomed pear.


Once over the river
and up the glen,
following a stream,
passing self-sheared sheep,
a gradual climb with a
view forming behind us.
Horses relaxed in fields
then galloping furiously.
Cries of curlews now,
chuckles of grouse.


Lapwing
Flop and flap wing
Tumble over bird
In the moorland
Sky turning the
Cold May wind
Over and over
No steady state
In this brisk air
Lapwing.


On to the moor
and we stop,
backs to a rock
for a baked brownie treat -
coffee and cake and a vista of valleys.
Alone in the sunshine
we celebrate her success
(with smiles and a kiss)
of this chocolate confection
(a high 9.6 on the outdoor scale).


This empty place
so full of sky,
so rich in views
across and over and
down to folding valleys,
then up to far far-distant hills.
Stopped by a circle  
of twelve standing stones,
cold fingers reach
for a warm hand.


A stanza-ed stone
straddling a stream,
a paragraphed poem
breaking the unbroken thread
where water unbinds
and hangs at the waterfall face.

Pleased to be found
(and after a trek)
this stanza-ed stone
at Backstone Beck.
Shawn Dec 2010
you gotta hold onto summer nights,
luscious trees glistening in bright moonlight,
paints a picture like,
things wont ever get better,
letters typed, can't ever describe
just how live
you feel, with a breath of that air,
and how quickly that free breath fades...
as time invades, once again,
warm embraces end,
soon after they begin,
temporary at best, temporary at worst,
i can't be the first to know this!
i notice, that the summer gets shorter each year,
and the fear that i won't live up to,
set expectations,
leads to hesitation, to start taking life
serious, but fear it just...
seems to paralyze, as i realize,
that this is all that there is,
and i can't describe what i want to do
with myself, i mean... i don't want to be stuck
on a shelf, i just... can't be looked over,
this must be the reason why we cant stay sober,
in life, death is always over our shoulders,
just waiting to take summer nights,
and luscious trees glistening in moonlight,
try as i might, they fade quicker
each year, but i refuse to be a short
paragraphed obituary. and i refuse to be
one of those forgotten many.
i refuse to let all that i have in this head
go to waste without changing the lives
of those misled.
i refuse to let summer nights just go to waste
on pointless *****-drinking, what was i thinking?
i refuse to let mind-numbing 9 to fives
allow me to forget the fact that i am alive,
and i can change the world,
and that i can make my obituary
front. page. news.
i refuse.
Copyright SMK, 2004.
Shadow Paradox Aug 2015
-Flip thru my pages...-


-

{Reach into my bones}

-

Feel my unborn world of humanity

The golden pansophy

Holding together the marrow

Nerves sending signals to a brain

That constantly feed on meaty morals

Rainbow veins pulsing gifted murals

Bounded in a book made out of human skin

Teardrops glued to each page

Tells a story of manic glories

Paragraphed with an insane biography

-

{Touch my soul}

-

Feel your fingertips

Vibrate

From the sorrow within

The urgency

The depression

The hidden plea

-

{Look into my mermaid eyes}

-

Drown in my dreams

Which the fairytale people

Help me create

Those goals I want to complete

But were forgotten

Like buried photographs

In a dusty attic

-

{Now flip thru my hearts folio}

-

Flip

Until you’ve reached the end

Have you guessed it?

Have you?

That I am

The beginning and the end

A forbidden book

Made out of human skin

-
Shedding paragraphed tears from the ears
Heard through the speakers makes ya weaker
See I be the realist of the dons last of the Mohicans
Yeah and still searching for a record deal?
Naw I'll stick to the street appeal code of the real
Nine goes to the grill of an adversary who thrills
In this game it's **** or be killed unplanned wills
Its hard to breath when ya fish gills got blood spills
My aim is to a trill ain't having no
bills
My tracks lay massacre worse than the
Beginning of
America expeditions foes still
wishin'
As I'm dishin' out the hardest rhymes crime
Made easily once the microphone receives me
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2016
what i learned today:

a. when people treat you cruelly,
    turn all your compassion
    that's left in you
    on beings that are more likely
    to understand it,
    those beings we degraded
    our language on by citing
    their tongues of onomatopoeia;
    animals.
    it will make you better off,
    not having a care for giving
    compassion unto fellow man,
    apathy, the sweet porcelain
    dome where children shelter under
    and provide the only basis
    for a like-for-like exercise of compassion.

b. re-felting the roof of the shed with my father,
    today, in the crisp saturday day,
    making cinnamon coffee,
    watching the imaginary leash on my cat
    the ginger punk maine **** quarus
    keeping an eye on us on the shed roof
    will ignite more in me
    than these charcoal mathematically rigid
    imprints on the colour of surrender.
    oh i've surrendered, all the spare time imaginable
    on an activity that wants people
    to bleed, but who can only offer
    ideals and easily falsifiable wants,
   who would march in a battlefield backwards.

c. in the english-speaking world, only two strands
   of books exist to a respectable popularity,
   fiction and autobiography, technically fiction & fiction,
   since all autobiographies do is write a fiction
   for us caught in the present: what life was like,
   what life isn't like back then now, what life
   will never be for us to rekindle it to a suitable
   reminiscence in the future - never a non-fictional
   account of what life is like now, always
   a non-fictional account of what life was like
   back then.

d. back when poetry was sung in the queen's parlour,
     or when she bathed in milk,
     but not when it was missing she took
     to the harrowing beast, the queen bathory
     and bargained against bathing in milk instead in
     ****** blood, when poetry was used as a welcome
     distraction for those with much ado about nothing
     of the leisurely time of crowned spare time,
     when poetry was not supposed to entertain a crowd
     but high eminence it mattered,
     for indeed the philosophical critique is adequate,
     sooner a playwright entertain a crowd
     with weird constrictions on only male-actors
     in tutus and corsets and wigs that a single
     voice, with no actors but shadowy personae in one
     body will entertain a crowd...
     but odd that because poetry lost favour in places
     of high eminence of crowned leisurely time
     deserving poetic narrative spoken than sung
     with the lyre to accompany, when this happened
     the crowd eminence joined the mob, reduced itself
     to full attire and prune gesticulations of tightened
     cheek for show of noble pride, among the rabble,
     it chose the public slaughter of art for the eyes
     to be gauged in the notably sized crowd
     rather than the luxury of a personal space,
     naked, bathed, as the art of poetry is, naked,
     even in terms of paragraphed punctuation,
     nakedness of the technique... to have replaced it
     by fully in corset and jewelled among the rabble,
     watching the weird and wonderful restrictions
     that gave us transvestites... indeed... what eminence,
     amongst the mob
.
Esther May 2015
I’ve seen too many empty words
On papers covered with text
Like rows of parallel lines and
I’m painfully waiting for them to converge;
Feeling like a hopeless dreamer in a reality
Where intelligence is measured by the
Amount of white space you can cover
With a brush, but no paint.

And I wonder how you can speak with all your might
And still not be heard,
Am I simply not choosing the right words?

Maybe this rhyme wasn’t timed
Just right
For your head to ignite
With all the fury that spins inside of me
Like tornados of dirt in an open space
Where there is so much potential
But no one is there to observe,

How I can sometimes form images
Out of reckless stanzas of
Sounds that bounce just right
In the pits of my mind.

But these metaphors and similes
Don’t seem to put smiles on the faces
Of academics sitting up high,
On chairs of published journals
And research that stomps on your behind,
Until you realise you can never measure up
To their size.

But, I still twirl around in circles sometimes,
Collecting debris of those
Who have been misheard and
Misinterpreted as
Deadly villains in stereotypical stories,
Where their side of the story
Is simplified into scenes of disturbance.

I dance around manipulation
Ushering words I’ve gathered along the way
Until it amounts to a mangled creation
One that would make Frankenstein
Smile in admiration;
Until the story is turned upside down
And then all the way around.

I’ve seen too many bland sentences
In essays that we’re told to embrace,
When these chunks of information cannot hold themselves up
Without a thick spine of paragraphed meaning
And meticulously referenced supporting points-
Of relevance.
And you always sit there wondering
What the hell counts as relevant?
When there are thousands of combinations
Making up thousands of words that have yet
To grace our impatience.

I am still waiting,
Knees bouncing and hands drumming
Trying to piece together symphonies
In silent lectures about everything

And sometimes I think it might amount to nothing;
If I can’t make it interesting,
Interesting enough for me to want to weave it into
My natural disaster of a technique,
And call it a piece of myself;
A work of poetry.
edited for a spoken poetry thingy
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2018
the ****** obvious,
   or what's a cascade,
    otherwise the:
   standing stark naked -
which really depends
on whether done
    during the night,
        or during the day...
it's still a matter
                       for
  cognitive exhibitionism:
albeit there is no
argument for this behaviour
when the "right"
doesn't agree to heave out
a pointer in the dimension
of marxism:
as, there is a social darwinism;
   easy to cascade down
images of marx, lenin, stalin...
but who's to market
the off-shoot
               genesis darwin?
               - how did i come to
write poetry?
         i could never believe
in the "claustrophobia"
    of a paragraphed narrative...
and funny that...
       for all the phobias
that exist in reality but with
no "abstract" extension...
   there's but one irrational love...
fear of spiders, fear of
   congested spaces,
                but only one
       -philia...
                 a ******* rainbow of
phobias,
      but a spear-head's worth
of "love"...
               i've felt better
caressed by a winter wind than
a woman's hand...
   with that expression,
what is "necessarily" objective
equivalent?
             i've felt a winter wind
caress me better than a woman's
hand...
         maybe due to
the fact that a nurse in a hospital
tried to **** me from
what i heard via screaming
with a hernia and a port-wine
stain... or what's
                the revision of cain's...
mark.
                   it's still a rainbow
of phobias, a whole *******
dictionary of artefacts,
        but only one irrationality
on the opposite side of
the spectrum...
           mind you:
       given the cosmopolitan
  attitude of encompassing
all of humanity, at all times in
all spaces... that's ******
impressive...
           a woman can
   be allowed an exponential
number of phobias,
   while a man
          is "allowed" but one
antithesis of phobia...
         even in baseball you
get three strikes.
                i have to call for
mythology to make sense of this,
unlike the graeae (sisters)...
       it's the case of
the Siamese: phobie & philias...
    and let the modern
man keep his washington
            d.c. obelisk,
his emoji and hieroglyphs.
The risk of failing to **** myself
Keeps me from attempting at all.

I mean, I have before.
I have fully committed with
Paragraphed and signed goodbyes
And tears that flowed seemingly flowed up,
up
up      
towards the ceiling instead of down my flushed cheeks
So weightless
almost

free.

But, alas,
I didn't die.
No one found out.
So it practically never happened.
Who knows, maybe it was just a figment of my
****** up
imagination.

After attempting so many times I learned that I wouldn't be able to go in a drug-induced, quiet, peaceful sleep.
I would have to do something more drastic.
Something that would draw attention.
Something that they would find out.

And, if I fail, as I had all those times before,
then I don't think I'll be able to live through seeing their
faces painted with disappointment
and pity;
hear their cries,
their lectures,
their self-help talk,
their meaningless affirmations,
the beep-beep-beep-beep
of the hospital
as I lie limp
and useless
and empty
and alive,
and dead.

It would drive me absolutely insane.
But then again,
I suppose I already am.
Derek DM Apr 2020
In a wisp
In a way
we come together

we stray

An ethereal run
is our bond,
fortune's fun
is our song

Yet in words
and in strokes
fill paragraphed
hopes

Ends of the days
harrowing ways
Keep drawing us in
together, not fitting in

We set forth
in service of love
aloft
in the mud

Never together
Never apart.

— The End —