"passivity" poems
I am no longer the
Steady thrum of heartbeats
When issues against women are
Comically displayed on televisions.
Like there's something to
Laugh, guffaw, snicker, snort--
Tell you what, I can name a little
Too many synonymous words
And I can slap them all to your face, too.
I am no longer a suppressed voice,
Unable to tell you and all the other people
That as a girl (and a woman, later),
I have the right to be here.
I have the same rights to life,
To be alive, to be secure,
To have a good life!
And yet, you, who calls yourself a
Man of power, tells me,
"You are nothing."
I am angry with the absurdity
Of it all. Men continuing to abuse,
Women constantly cowering down--
Why are you so intent on showing power
When you are not God?
Why are you so afraid of fighting
For yourself?
I am seething with rage
For those who refuse to accept
Feminism just for the reason
That they do not want to be labeled--
Well, guess what? They have already
Shoved you underneath Weak and Submissive.
Who taught you that you are born
To impress men?
Who taught you that you only exist
To please them?
I will not have any of that ****
I am a person of my own.
I am a human being, with rights.
And I AM FIGHTING to have
The same rights as you do.
Whoever told you that that's
Never gonna happen, can shove it up
Their *****
I will not sit still on my chair while
The next police officer
Asks "Well, what were you wearing?"
To the next **** victim.
You and I both know that is not
The issue here.
No girl should hung their head in shame
That they got touched without consent.
It's not their fault! No one
Deserves to be *****
And no, it's not snuggling, for you who
Even thought **** jokes on t-shirts
Are funny. It's not.
I am for Gender Equality.
For both men and women,
Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender,
To be treated with equal respect.
With equal opportunities.
With equality.
With no judgment.
Why must you counter that?
Look, I've been sitting in that same chair
For too long while issues spread and get
Larger like the plague.
I thought, let them handle it.
I thought, a small voice would be of no help.
But when did sitting down and staring
Get people somewhere?
When did any of passivity help us?
We already have everything to lose
So why not fight?
Bruce Banner told the other avengers
The secret of Hulk.
And I tell you the same:
Get angry.
Smash inequality.
I will always be right behind you.
Sep 27, 2014
Sep 27, 2014 at 2:42 AM UTC
The dictatorship of our state is profound in its mass propaganda, where the discernment of individuals seeps into an eternal chasm of self-sacrifice on the altar of political conformity.
Let us actively withstand the passivity of our conventional hypocrisy as we engage with this ontological sleepwalk through sinister passageways of presumed social advancement.
In our age of grandiose moralistic eclecticism where imperatives abound, I burn incense and contemplate the cosmopolitan artificiality which lavishes abundant gifts upon our self-opinion.
Criminality is the result of discovery.
So, oh thorn in my flesh, cover those rancid corpses by the veil of popularity, gain and pleasure.
Subconscious social conditioning is the scourge of lustful appearance, don’t you think?
Mar 17, 2014
Mar 17, 2014 at 10:23 PM UTC
I live constantly between reality and Illusion.
I don’t know where ends or begins the other.
What’s reality? Isn't illusion part of reality?
Or is reality part of illusion? But what’s illusion after all?
Between thin lines,
I see the shore of those broken ideas.
Along the springs of my heart,
I see flows against tides.
Where do I belong?
What do I seek?
It is me or does everything seem blurry?
I am a capital energy of this passivity place.
I am real. Am I?
Aug 2, 2015
Aug 2, 2015 at 12:00 PM UTC
I was the architect of my own fall.
It had been easier to open my hands helplessly
than to clench fists against bullet-scarred walls.
Transgression: naivety in passivity.
Penance: the loss of trust
that I could shine with my own pure light.
I withdrew, leaving behind the space I had carved.
I hid, healing myself in silence,
for in that place, dreams were safer.
Hunger remained hunger,
longing remained longing.
I chose to carry guilt myself
rather than admit that I had been broken:
the stubbornness of a frayed razor
that could not cut through the page.
I was the builder of my suffering
by my own will, seeing the glow in others.
I was warm water,
shimmering in a thousand drops.
The world didn’t end.
The sun stayed, the wind still blew,
and the trees stretched out their arms to me.
Everything that came after was easier,
no longer hurting so much.
I am sitting on a bench in the gold-red park,
watching the leaves, watching this life,
which, in my mind, was different months ago.
But this time I take my face in my hands,
with tenderness to myself,
rebuilding my home, my place.
I know I always deserved it.
Sep 27, 2025
Sep 27, 2025 at 3:29 PM UTC
Not sure why
I ever expect anything else
but I always manage to feel let down;
I know what I want
and I do nothing to get it except complain when I don't.
I know that I want to be happy
and what do I do?
I be sad, and afraid
and not very happy at all.
And why?
Because I have bugs in my brain that just love to make my life uncomfortable
and as unfullfilling as possible.
I want to be free and what do I do?
I become a slave to everyone and everything so that I am no longer me
but an image of passivity and repressed desires.
If I were free,
I would scream from the top of a building my opinions
and kiss that freaking stupid boy
and then do terribly explicit activities with him,
but none of that can happen
until I can accept myself and reject the possibility of disappointment.
May 20, 2012
May 20, 2012 at 12:55 AM UTC
Society is powerful.
It is mash-up of ignorance and fear
Everyone assuming the other knows more
Terrified of being outed
But they all know nothing and they bounce their nothingness off of one another and call them “ideas”
We’ve become a people so lazy that we no longer need to think for ourselves
We read headlines & let the suits do the rest
Letting their bias become ours
Letting their agenda become ours
Who can speak for the people if the people don’t speak?
My glasses didn’t use to be this rose-colored
It’s funny what blood will do to things.
Society is powerful.
We all recognize we shouldn’t be ruled by it, so we go to bed cursing it
but the glimmer catches our eye just we drift off
And I wake up kissing the ring.
Sep 10, 2020
Sep 10, 2020 at 12:35 AM UTC
The jagged rocks flow through the air like daggers laced with the most toxic of poisons. Adverted eyes avoid the abyss of spewing lava for fear of being burned. Those in the path of destruction, they are the unluckiest of victims. Monosyllabic stones of hopelessness find their way to the scarred skin, bloodying the bloodied, breaking the broken. The volcanoes are worthy of repugnant titles, sharp like their tongues or decaying like their souls. The victims should run, should cry, should lash out against the lava, protect themselves. But everyone says that if you choose to live at the bottom of a volcanic body, you are already dead. The lava will only harden you, despite attempts to remain cool in your passivity. Lava burns, and no amount of composure or preparation can protect you from the overwhelming presence of hatred and intolerance; the hating fire fueled only by oxygen.
Oct 6, 2013
Oct 6, 2013 at 7:02 PM UTC
Horatio Alger is whispering his stories in my sleeping ear
painting me as a lowly street urchin
who conquers adversities and moral wildernesses
with only my wit, determination, and guts
and he is painting me as a phoenix of the new world
rising from ashes of banality and
the naturalized familial trappings of my past
a dirt road in the socioeconomic desert
carved out with care by the hands of forefathers I will never know
but Mr. Alger died a long while ago
and the sun inevitably rises
shattering the stained glass story of my rags turned riches
now the big men upstairs
jot me down as numbers on a chart
of consumption trends of millennials
Go to college
they say
make something of yourself
they say
you are all too entitled
they say
What went wrong
they say without a hint of contradiction
I am not equipped to say if the story of humanity
is a cycle or a downwards spiral
I am not equipped to say
that it is the job of every generation
to ensure that they clear the debris
from the path of their progeny
but I say it anyway
everybody want’s a trophy
because we were raised to believe that
everybody deserves a trophy
In the same breath they expect us
to take the puritanical mantle of the breadwinner
the frayed saddle of the noble western outlaw
the lethally honed sword of the entrepreneur
the martyr making cross of the socially conscious family man
and then wonder why we so willingly
give ourselves over to the currents
of apathy and passivity and masochistic narcissism
giving us guns and bullets with no idea how to shoot them
so instead we turn them into sculptures of modern art
and scream to the empty heavens
for just a hint of recognition
I can’t decide if history will forget us
or memorize the lyrics of our collective heart beats
but I have decided
to wake up from my American Dream
have decided
to forge my own reality
Jun 18, 2014
Jun 18, 2014 at 2:37 PM UTC
Honor. Valor. Dignity. Love.
Honor. Valor. Dignity. Love.
Three things amaze me
Four I do not understand
An eagle in the sky
A snake on a rock
A ship on the high seas
And the way of a man with a young woman
Honor. Valor. Dignity. Love.
I will always take the fall, I say
And I won't push back when you push me away
I will take the flack of a full frontal attack
And I will turn the other cheek when you slap me across the face
But I will not be known as meek!
For to be meek is to be mild
And to be mild is to be tasteless, flavorless, and vile
Devoid of passion
Crawling with passivity
Embodying all that is apathy but trying to pass it off as some kind of charity
If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you for even sinners do that well,
Try loving the ones you'd rather see burning in hell
BUT IT CANNOT BE DONE
If you agree say aye,
I, think you're just too afraid to try
Well blessed are the meek,
for the will inherit the earth
Blessed are the peacemakers
for they will be called children of God
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me
But I'll be tossin' temple tables and chasin' people out with whips and cables
If they say my God is not able
For a city built on a hill cannot be hidden
And a man under God cannot be smitten
So I claim the love and grace in which I have been placed
And I claim the calling into which I am falling
And when the enemy comes a calling
I raise my sword in the air and boldly declare
DEVIL THIS HEART HAS NO ROOM FOR YOU TO SPARE
FOR MY GOD IS SO GREAT IT'S NOT EVEN FAIR
SO PACK UP YOUR TRICKS AND TEMPTATIONS AND TOYS
FOR GOD HAS MADE A MAN OUT OF THIS FRAIL LITTLE BOY
He said YOU are the salt of the earth but if the salt loses its saltiness it is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot
So I take hold of love and grace
And I proclaim the name of the one holding me firmly in place
I lay waste to the lies replaced by fear in mine enemies eyes
And lift my hands up high
Honor. Valor. Dignity. Love.
Surely I am only a brute, not a man
I do not have human understanding
I have not learned wisdom
Nor have I attained to the knowledge of the Holy One
But I know I have found the truth.
And I will not let go.
Jan 24, 2013
Jan 24, 2013 at 10:42 PM UTC
"YOU SHALL NOT PASS"
lord of the rings fanatics, typical
Somehow controlling thousands of people turned us all into Gandalf
I guarded the food, you two the door
Most people don't tell you how healthy it is to assert yourself,
They crave passivity, fear aggression
Assertion doesn't mean aggression
Patriarchal society
How good it feels to stand tall
Huge like a mountain, wise like a wizard
If we are Gandalf you're the ring
I hope you get thrown into the pits of Mordor
Sep 30, 2014
Sep 30, 2014 at 12:50 AM UTC
Run your fingers
softly
Down my spine,
Trace the contours of my rib cage piano,
The cracks in the ivory white keys
That are my shattered, fragmented bones;
The way your trembling lips
Danced across the ballroom of my porcelain wrist
One two three
Two two three
Across my subtly scarred corpse,
Waltzing rhythm
faltering
With each drag of your kiss,
Leeching sadness as a blade with blood,
purifying,
somehow.
Yet your lips had learnt to love the sad side
of me;
Fallen from cliffs of scars to waves of crashing blood,
as simply as one may fall asleep;
A wingless butterfly,
falling helplessly in love.
For, perhaps, love is what allows the wings to grow,
Perhaps, love is the seed of the destruction of free-fall;
Love destroys love.
The way you destroy me,
I destroy me.
And so you leech the sadness you fell in love with,
My ecstasy seeping from your mere presence,
A flower rising from the cracks of a grave,
As your love rots with the bones below --
The ivory white ribcage
c r a c k e d
Like the shattered keys
of a grand piano,
Haunting music
hanged
by its own happy heartstrings,
Cruel love,
You ripped apart the fragmented bones,
Leaving only minor keys;
The passivity of the stars,
matched only by you,
by the silence
of your harmony
to my saddened melody;
the silence, radiating
from the shadowed cracks of my
ribcage piano.
And so you took away my sadness
And so I was no longer who you loved
And so you slowly sought to shatter me,
No longer able to taint my beautiful sadness,
With your trembling
beautiful
lips.
j.s.
May 15, 2014
May 15, 2014 at 7:11 AM UTC
From Chicago to Atlanta on the 5:45
I contemplate the fragility of being alive
I sit on the wing with a view of great breadth
While I dream about life and wonder of death
The sun has just set, the moon kisses the sky
And the atmosphere echoes its exhaling sigh
As darkness sets in, the graduation emerges
So I, in the sky, view its majesty in surges
The window is a frame of the moon as a crescent
And I spot a town way down, like a queen to her peasant
There is life, there is motion, there is somewhere to be
There is conflict, there are problems, and then there is me
I snap out of passivity like a casual thought
To locate the flight attendant complementary cart
Since her mobile vending machine is a couple rows down
I return to pensivity and stare at the ground
The tail lights of cars pulse when my true focus starts
As if they were red blood cells exiting the heart
There is a conversation I over hear from 27 E
The girl has dreams of studying alone in Italy
The man has a daughter and he rocks in his seat
They talk like old friends even though they just meet
There are young men in the Navy, and business folks
There is an air of community, peanuts, and hope
As my ears pop constantly and we climb higher
I think of my future and to what I aspire
And I wonder if there's anyone I'll see here again
Close and far away strangers, a view from a plane
Feb 10, 2016
Feb 10, 2016 at 11:16 PM UTC
What is it that stops us from questioning
the scaffolding of our reality?
Why aren't more of us solipsists?
Shouldn't we all be like those
delusional violent ones?
They see no reason
to think the world exists
outside their heads
Therefore their thoughts influence
their reality more and more
All of our thoughts
influence the reality
We sense to a varying degree
unique to each of us
But do we really all, for the most part
believe some ho-hum passivity?
Oh, what pressures magnetize our brains
Mar 29, 2017
Mar 29, 2017 at 6:52 AM UTC
I waste so much time
My brain left on idle
No parties or fine wine
This waste is suicidal
The death of productivity
The death of all ambition
My time spent in passivity
Hating my lack of volition
Hating this immovable fear
The terror of abject failure
Screams "wait another year!"
And that terror is my tailor
For it crafts my every endeavor
I am not lazy nor am I weak
But the future is the bearer
And the harbinger of defeat
Oct 12, 2015
Oct 12, 2015 at 5:29 PM UTC
Day-dreams and Night-dreams
Work as well as wet-dreams.
We need be alert,
Be awakened from our sleep-walking passivity.
Arise.
Pick-up ourselves,
And be woke with humanity;
Rub away the sleep in our eyes.
Jan 8, 2022
Jan 8, 2022 at 11:41 AM UTC
I think the saddest part is that a part of me still wants to forgive you
A part of me is still carrying a torch for the man you once were
The man you could be again
But you and I both know how you feel about change
You and I both know how you feel about me
You say that you love me
The words drip from your mouth like honey
Sticky sweet and sickening
This is not love
And it hasn't been for quite some time
This is obsession, this is infatuation, this is lust
You don't miss me, you miss how willing I was to take off my clothes
To open myself up to you, bare my body and soul to you
Primal and disgusting and everything you wanted
You miss my passivity
My fear of the word "no"
My fear of disappointing you
You tell me I've changed
You don't recognize that you are the one who changed me
You set this house of my heart ablaze and I have risen from the ashes
I am no longer what I once was, not anymore
Jun 29, 2018
Jun 29, 2018 at 2:23 PM UTC
"Between an uncontrolled escalation and passivity, there is a demanding road of responsibility that we must follow."
-Dominique de Villepin
If I had a nickel-plated
anything, I'd eat it
and tell everyone
I'm a robot.
If I had a head full
of wires, I'd roll my
eyes and say
They're called cords.
If I had a crate of screws
and nails, this town would
have a lot more to worry
about.
If I had the bones of a
tiger, I would miss my
stripes every time.
Tripp'd on the tripwire.
Feb 7, 2012
Feb 7, 2012 at 4:33 AM UTC
I foster an incremental relation to the cosmos, enticed regularly by its indefiniteness and appeal.
Its evolutions, innate behaviors, and formidable sciences are recompense for earth’s meager discrepancies.
I often engage in the caprice to dismount much dissatisfaction by the constancy of riveting celestial events.
These beings possess no artificiality.
Its prophetic order, ornate and stupendous architectural facets have allowed a crescendo of dispositional hysteria.
Prosaic imprecations are deduced from its auxiliary wherewithal.
There is no contrition in immersing in enthrallment nor is there fickleness in trust.
Magnificent bodies orbit in finesse and probability, achieving universality and control.
Though these incitements are exponentially cheering, my origin is but connoted in despondency.
Usurpers and ill-suited vandals proliferated by the intemperance of the Ptolemaic discipline.
Rustics, miscreants and idle minds misdirected by less virtuous planetary derision.
My cognitive severity asserted by ominous consummation.
Oh how these preponderant truths confine me unfortunate.
Soliloquy is but an affliction amidst this era of anachronistic reign.
Grandiose passivity is intolerable at this time.
I plan to dichotomize my adamant fate from precepts and conditions anew.
The deposition of malfeasant kings will be sought.
Ploys I have already configured; propagation is near to instigation.
I will exhort my ascent to prime eminence.
The stars will sanction me to a rightful end.
Sep 1, 2014
Sep 1, 2014 at 8:49 AM UTC
Where marinated in our murky past
have we found justification for the travesties we do,
build prisons where our prejudice lasts,
and allow its prisoners to fester as they stew
I have felt this heat.
The flame which boils in the toils of others,
whose oils lick embers into wildfire.
And we fall back into the Dark Ages.
where minds who place burden on those with different skin
slink flicking flint to fire, raising from the earth
the walls we have spent decades taking apart one brick at a time.
one brick at a time,
comment by comment,
each passing moment
condone it.
ignore it.
passivity pays the builders of this monument.
who see no wrecking ***** to stop them.
passivity, fills the pockets of the petty
coin by coin collecting courage to speak
outwardly outrageous
slurred hate speech contagious
barbary amounts its fortress from our silence,
one brick at a time.
I have seen the origins of intolerance,
holding together the cinder blocks of utterance
all the moments we should have said something and didn't.
In my selfish silence I see senselessness slip past my snares.
In my hush I hear hate harrow the ventricles of hearts much weaker
than the speaker.
Loathing left untended like
loose mountain snow
will like an avalanche gain strength
in movement.
To you,
the architects of abhorrence
the creators of execration
I plead: lay down your urban dictionaries.
Know that you lay a foundation
whose structure will build up,
but whose existence will tear down.
To you,
those who watch the construction
and stare in silence sufferance,
know that although no sweat has fallen,
and no aid has been laid by your hand,
That this malicious monument is as much yours
as it is theirs, through your willingness to watch it go up
one brick at a time.
Apr 5, 2015
Apr 5, 2015 at 11:46 AM UTC
cradle your head in your hands
as every barbed whisper in your head
echoes until it's thunder wreaks havoc
you are a jarring lance against the wall
while the buzzing breath of the world rolls
**you are not here
you were never here**
you can only pray,
only only only
wish you weren't
but you cannot just will yourself to die
with the fierce passivity that comes with nirvana
because you know that
while you can still convince yourself
there's something better in the future
barely
but barely is something still
even though presently
you are on a slab and you were Romeo
who believed he died alone, on the top
you are on a table dissected
metaphorically flayed and made raw
by the seeming death of passion, a lack of someone in your bed tonight,
and the slipped hand that pulled off your skin and made the feelings of the feelings that wound.
Sep 2, 2013
Sep 2, 2013 at 2:12 AM UTC
Time? It is but an attempt to measure the immeasurable
A cruel trick to plant seeds of fear and doubt
Into the souls of the ignorant and gullible
The god(s) do not favor the the meek
How could they relate to passivity
When action and reaction are the means
By which creation is established?
Why do you sit, begging at the altar
Rejecting what you are?
Were you not told you are a reflection
A beam of light refracted from the source?
What if all creators just sat there hoping, praying
For others to do their work?
Where would you be then?
You ask for favors without sacrificing your sweat
Your blood, your tears
And you expect in return something other
Than a hearty laugh and vicious rebuke?
You are a pathetic **** ant, human.
Granted power you refuse to wield
Why would we trouble ourselves to serve you?
We've already given all that there IS!
Aug 3, 2014
Aug 3, 2014 at 8:57 AM UTC
Dark heavens
slapped my state
of blues today.
the sky was grey
and green, and
seething in between.
it spat cold rocks
on me and made
me see alacrity,
defeat my sheets
of drenched
passivity,
refreshingly.
Apr 8, 2015
Apr 8, 2015 at 8:27 AM UTC
i spend my days lying down, motionless
for hours, staring at this too familiar ceiling
i spend my days doing nothing, brought by
a crippling inability to speak what I mean
or do what I wish (on things that matter
most to myself)
i spend my days reacting to your slightest movement,
with a doll's passivity bordering on disgusting
i spend my days being a mere watcher, a witness
to the wonder of how beauty grows
you are a sight to behold
and it must be such joy to be held
but i'd rather spend my days lying down, motionless
trying **** hard to dream of you
(but only nightmares come through)
Jan 9, 2016
Jan 9, 2016 at 9:14 PM UTC
No late fees.
Low interest.
Borrowed money,
on loan, on their time.
Credit to the blue collar
workers who pays their bills
on time.
Save minimum wage or
incur a fine.
To keep big business profitable,
they must nickel and dime.
People are in the practice
of pinching pennies,
with hopes of avoiding
suited enemies.
Prosperity and posterity
is now a foreign concept,
or spoken in a different language.
The idea of it is sent overseas,
as third world countries
receive a taste of a marketable life.
Some assembly required.
Passivity admired.
Independence goes in the vault.
Lock and key.
Land of the fee.
Well, free with an
additional purchase
or the start of a new account.
Better to have you accounted for.
Better to put all of their eggs in one basket.
A basket that is fashioned
in another country.
For a country
that is going to hell,
and can't afford
the casket.
Apr 23, 2013
Apr 23, 2013 at 6:16 PM UTC
My skin, shoulders and forehead
vibrate in place
as thoughts of relation cross my mind
Passivity, neutrality, rationality
used to work to keep me sane
but have been, as of late, laid off
in influence of these aggressive,
opinionated,
economic hands and lips
that I find myself seasonally at odds with
I've come to resent spending my youth
staring at the back of student's heads
knowing their skull's restriction
I find it likely the root of this resentment
is an undeserving self honor
inappropriate for this economy's well being
I dare not interfere
just reemploy
Jan 30, 2013
Jan 30, 2013 at 7:40 PM UTC