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Dee Sep 2013
I don't write as much or
read as much as I did
in between classes and on
busses or under the bed
at three a.m. with light from
those glow-in-the-dark spoons
out of cereal boxes.

I forgot what it's like to
say i love you to family
and friends and they forgot,
too, around the time dad
stopped smoking and we
lost the house to a gambling
addiction -- they don't know
I know.

I missed the class on making
decisions and holding my
ground and learning to love
myself in that way that
the important people love
me.

I wasted time on drugs and
empty wants, promises--
ruined parts of me I see
on bookshelves and in
B flats on sheet music.
I sleep, I dream;
I tread softly, and I steal
the words better suited to
someone else but I missed
the class on expression, too.

Students and bosses and ones I met
for a moment on the street
laugh and it's always at me,
even when it's not; even when I hide in
plain sight, shoulders hunched, head
down, reciting
Yeats or Siken under my breath
like some mantra of
people with bigger, more
painful, beautiful pasts.
RandleFunk Apr 2022
Intwined in sweat soaked
fev’rish delusion
A rav’nous serpent
coiling illusion
An ouroboros
slurps its slith’ring self
The prism lies fissured
’neath a cracked ice shelf
where flaws like veins branch
blood of dark gods flow
a heaven lost in smoke
nothing good here grows
Atlas underground
sinews straining stiff
auguries of beasts ablaze -
Spare a pity for what if
Moncrieff Dec 2024
The ones I love and care so dear,
    To those I haven't seen all year,
I cannot see them smile or cry,
    Do not remember our last goodbye,
I cannot hear them laugh nor sing,
    Honest hindsight; I could not bring.

I try so hard to force the brain,
    To conjure visioned love again,
Mirage I see; though do not grasp,
    Reflections fade into the last.
Met face-to-face; we're both alone,
    Who stands before me; now unknown.

What I would give for just a taste,
    To hear their voice; to see their face,
To give them love and watch them grow,
    To see them now; they would not know,
For I can't cherish them, don't they see,
    None will endure to memory.

— The End —