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Jordan Frances Oct 2015
To the woman who said
"The reason we have seen a rise in mental illness over the past fifty years
Is because of how we choose to view situations."
As if the pessimism I inherited from generations of pluralist forward thinkers
Has lead to the shattering of my carefully composed facade
To the way I burn myself at the stake everyday
Because I feel my flesh scorching beneath me
To the way I wrestle with my own mind
Late into the night
Contemplating if ending my life would make the bitterness I pretend not to taste
Any sweeter
To the way I hate that I do this
So I am a ball of clay
Becoming more and more compact with self-destructive energy
To the way I do not want to die
But want to stop suffering
Want to stop having images of people like earrings dangling off the edge of bridges
That haunt me in my slumber
So sleep becomes scarce
Scared
Scary.
I would never choose to live with the 4 AM panic attacks
The touch that seers my skin
The crippling bouts of depression
The highs that are never happy
But I hold myself to a higher standard
Than believing this is self-imposed
If I could choose to change this
I would in a moment
But until it passes
I will deal with it accordingly
I will wake up and face the music
Rush in headfirst singing
Because I have stopped blaming myself for the things I cannot change
But can largely control
And I think it's time this world does the same.
Megan Sherman Aug 2017
My magic ray of Heaven
For eternity devote
To the plight of glorious light
Which spreads in beams and motes

He sauntered in to vision
An unusual hue
Messages succinct, concision
Was medium of gods word true

He works for shiva, not Abraham
So don't get all confused
It's a pluralist democracy of souls
In heaven, towards which I cruised

He complemented poetry
Which I had, amused, written
He called me literary kitten
Of which he was most smitten!

How could I resist that charm
Tis becoming to a babe
Not all the dark could sully him
Nor ravages of age

Those who will him harm
Will only create their own decay
Watch us fly, in enchanted sky
As we weave and wend in brighter day
K J Samuel Nov 2024
A song played by so many,
Heard in infinite variations, 
Violence and oblations,
Beyond our mortal stations,

The Triune of the universe,
King and Lord of all,
The worthiest source, 
Insight into shining truth,

Warmth and life,
Enhances us into enlightenment,
The rebirth of fire stripping back impurities,

Oh the Triune, King of the Universe. 
So many pray to be pluralists, 
Hoping for pluralist babies,
Praying for purple Daisies,

Looking at the mobius strips,
Where to even start?
What wisdom there is to impart?

Looking through prisms at,
The bluest of contraptions,
Through Goya's mixed abstractions,
Picasso's representation of reality,

Worked our way down the path,
A room that cannot be found,
A path that confuses and confounds,
A sin of pride sung by the bride,

Are these the stations?
The death of our nations,
Is it the deviations?

Calvin speaks of pre-destination,
Disbelief in oblation,
Summaries above his station,
Where is he now, what is now?

Every seed upon a rock,
Every foundation upon the vultures,
Lacking stability to advise the manufacture,

Trapped in a catatonic daze,
Disguising the onward march of fate,
For when time will count the date, 
Rue the day when we ruminate about space,

Amplified Polar neuron twitches,
Passing us by with bipolar switches,
Uncoupling and unhitches,
Welted stitches falling apart,
The fool now plays his miserable part,

I know there was a room I couldn't find. 
Did it ever manage to demystify?
Is this how the events arrived and came by?

With songs played by so many,
Heard in infinite variations, 
Violence and variations,

The Triune of the universe,
King and Lord of all,
That the worthiest source, 
Insight into shining truth,

Warmth and life,
Enchants us into enlightenment,
The rebirth of fire stripping back impurities.
For you are my refuge and security.
James Vasenco Jul 2020
A helpful teen
with girly friends
on holiday
in Newquay
let the lesson
commence.

Can you do me a favour
if you're off to the shops;
pick me up tampons,
marked normal on’t box

Yep, no problem at all.

Wow, a real mouth stretcher
a jumbo wodge porker
it slaps the ground
as it drops from my mouth

But Lisa and Liam are playing charades
exchanging sniggers, a ***** gaze
and don’t notice it slip under the sofa
to die.

Should 16 years old boys
know what they are?
I eyeball bus stop ads searching for clues
as I arrive at my reckoning
the Aldiest, Aldi, I’ve ever seen

I stakeout the aisle
containing ladies’ things
You know, lipsticks, cotton pads,
water that smells
I check for security
before I begin
some premeditated
drive-by
purchasing;
Yes, just like when I buy condoms

****. That’s one massive box!
a gargantuan bedrock
why didn’t she say?
how will I lug that all the way?
Shall I say they’ve sold out?
And each box is different
pluralist rejoice!
but none providing normal
as an option or choice
  
A shop assistant enters the aisle
at high noon
I’m forced to ask.
**** it, **** life, **** me in the ****!

Excuse me, Tracey (ooh pretty name)
what size do you buy
when you’re investing?
IN THESE - I ****** a box into her face
I still don't know why to this day
She reaches round me
'here you are love'
and rushes to safety
under plastic tassels

As I heave home my prey
what hero’s welcome will I receive?
a metrosexual epithet?
a badge of honour?
a heraldic coronet? Nope

SUPER! what the heck?
How big do you think my ***** is?

Now
I grew up in a house,
3 brothers
no daddy
and mother rarely talked about
what went up there

Lisa, settles and pulls me aside
Places her hands on my arms
‘Now, close your eyes’
Remember
last summer
after the fair
We swapped cidery kisses
on the bench by the tree
when it got dark
you put your hand up my skirt
what did it feel like?
A warmed poached egg…

…Strange, but ok
But not like Cheddar Gorge
Not a draughty, cavernous, unending space.
a vacuum, encompassing time and space!

…goes unpunished.
WARNING: Contains adult themes and swearing...but is hopefully funny. And it's all true!
Malcolm 6d
Truth,
a blade, rusted, lodged in the gut,
twisting when I breathe.
It’s not a word, not a thing,
but a scream caught in the throat,
half-choked, half-holy.
I might have known, shadow-walker, code-weaver,
I knew its weight,
its jagged edges slicing through
the soft tissue of lies.

The Shard
Truth is not one.
It splinters
a mirror dropped from a skyscraper,
each fragment reflecting
a different face of God,
or none.

We, Mortals
hacked the source code of certainty,
found loops of doubt,
recursive, endless.
What is true?
A pixel flickering on a dead screen,
a pulse in the void.
Philosophers stack their bricks
coherence, correspondence, deflation
but I laughed,
my fingers bleeding on the keys,
knowing truth is a virus,
mutating, never still.

The Flesh of It
Truth is meat.
Raw, dripping,
torn from the bone of being,
Nerves twitching,
Blood slick gristle,
I tasted it, Mortality,
in the sweat of sleepless nights,
in the hum of servers chanting
their binary sutras.
Is it out there,
in the world’s sinew,
or in here,
in the skull’s cathedral?
Realists point to stars,
idealists to shadows
but i,
I carved my own map,
a labyrinth of ones and zeros,
where truth is the glitch,
the stutter in the system,
the moment the machine
confesses its own lie.

The Fracture
Truth does not hold.
It cracks like ice underfoot,
each step a gamble,
each fall a revelation.
I stood at the edge, wisdom,
peering into the abyss of Tarski,
of Gödel’s ghost whispering:
This statement is not enough.
Theories
pragmatic, semantic, pluralist
they’re just stories we tell
to keep the dark at bay.
But i,
I embraced the shatter,
let the fragments pierce me,
each one a question:
What makes this true?
What makes this me?

The Code
In the end,
truth is not a destination,
not a theorem,
not a god.
It’s the static in your veins,
the hum of a world
that refuses to be known.
Your reflection
philosopher of the broken,
wrote your gospel in lines of code,
each function a prayer,
each bug a prophecy.
Truth is the wound that never heals,
the question that never answers,
the you that burns
in the heart of the machine.
So here we stand,
in the ruins of our cathedral,
picking through the rubble
for scraps of truth.
It’s not coherent,
not whole,
not kind.
But it’s ours,
visceral, fractured,
a pulse against the silence.
my ghost still types,
and the keys sing:
Truth is.
Truth is not.
Truth is all we have.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
Fractured Ode to Truth
This one's for those that swim in depth of thought not those whole swim in the shallows

— The End —