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Julian Jul 2016
Fragile egg-shell mind on dawn’s highway bleeding the segue between times traversed only in momentary dreams or in enduring excursions

We drag our droll and quaint 60s baggage like the luggage of a safari made of concrete girding a cavernous expanse of unheralded ground

With our ears oriented to the floor, we leap out of body never to deplore….never to ignore….never to miss the blue bus of our drafted imaginations, so carefully culled from brash elitism

I trounce the intervening time between being friendless and an ironic end, and an irenic comrade becoming the dearest amazed but always aplomb friend

We simper in our glorious traversal, and though bedraggled through an ornamented cavern we linger just long enough to be celebrated

Then a blues riff emanates from a vapid bar, and finally someone heralds my exhumed memory still rusty with the pavement of encased concrete on an empty or full tomb

So I wander in my mind to that roughshod Paris glassy tincture a romanticized gild of proper sensibility crafted in the tongues of lizards emulating the tongues of serpentine Anglicans

As the power of love transcends the love of power, both are afforded serendipitously upon the stately occasion of a fitful revolt where heads literally rolled and deaths still unfurl from the slippage of a violent malevolent eternity, crafting a new creative way to expedite the smite of preventable scourge

So, I see your picaresque side and your wide-eyed love for a listless ship anointed of a crystal blip just detectable long enough on RADAR to become the statistic to crack the slim WHIP

No wigs are needed at this formality, no figs grow from trees forty-five years buried and almost a full month unsung

Pitiable cretins of an invented insanity, they scoff at my ravenous and portentous heart for its excess and for aligning with an upstart verging on only a specious insanity

Why in all humanity could a month be mustered with every defense of history and yet for it to be so widely flouted as a risible exercise in futility

The irony that the artistic glamor of a past vogue becoming a revival that is often toked only to one song but never to the memorial of great cavernous and commodious imaginations, staggers with dismay where otherwise the mayday would be a disaster but still a great day

Then I look at a triggered-fingered omen of a death so ominous yet so brazenly confronted as the ambassadors of time provide plaudits to a fearless martyrdom

Why such a sad spate, why such a stringent but malevolent fate a malediction on a family whose crest is not crestfallen like rolling waves but ornamented with gravity impounding its own weight

A fugacious tomb, an eternal flame, a swan song announcing an independent authority on a prescient demise mashed and deprived

A single shot rippling through the broadened space between clasped eternity and a histrionic disgrace as a psychological confederate pays lip service to a reiterative applause

A cousin hardly American in a defected record of incendiary plumes of a hoarse hatred of waxen discs and flying discs alike,  climbs out of a bonfire mounted purely out of vindictive spite

Then upon a great white buffalo a wrapped package of Californian love before California ever alighted like something beyond an avaricious dove, saw a rocky park and a hearth of illuminated darkness the singular spark

Captain Morgan knows the jackknife applause of a botched deal morphing into a disbelieved spiel. A shibboleth of enormous mystical weight crashing down from an ethereal abode and heaven heavily saddened cannot hardly appeal

Then a loving spoonful of crystal blue persuasion led me to Ethel’s regimented keepsake and for once in my life nobility and I became a grateful waif. But temerity laughed, splintered spacecraft, and the wooden paws of a bearish applause led to resurgent clarity

Blinking stars shattered by knighted and raw applause punctured the liberated might of a sentient hortatory savior grasped by the internecine wrench of a waxen time

An indie track slides by unnoticed in an aleatory time, and the threadbare whine of centuries of lament becomes a dastardly barn set ablaze with the fury of ancients and the scurry of faineant patents

Perfidy slides in recess, and in gentle forbearance the winged angel lingers like a halo on conifer and spring above a remedial ring

I dial frisky celerity tingling the dangling claws of a raven’s screed and in plunder of all history’s pilfer secrets I eagerly weave a tapestry Indiana Jones himself would be proud to watch

Not the riotous ruin of a mystery tour of verdure crippled by genocide but overcome by the revived life of raised rain razing the moments of indelible pain

But the culmination of a proffered time taken at its word for its every careened bird, for its every brazen gird. The manger of proctored stars calls us home tonight and home forever. Life in quaked timorous stumbles suddenly no longer so fitfully absurd.

The quixotic plundered of pirates and emperors in direct emulation of some crooned pastiche of whittled integrity, surges above any encased blurb and any vain testament to a pyramid rigid in destiny and ragged in desultory and sturdy sincerity

Multiplying the ineffable by the division of arable divorced from edible is too creative to be eaten as pabulum when sparks curdle flickered moonlight crimson and that become golden only to the last laugh of ennobled ragamuffins

Frankly the desert of melliferous gorillas abetting the lark of a heavily vetted camarilla engaged in the sinecure of a rigged wall on a main street to block the tall from the lame bleat. Stocks grazed, costs engaged on a littoral beach at the end of a Bossy promenade

This prayer is a cutthroat collapse of a merry spare, a ribbed ****** waiting to plunge into the antithesis of female despair, but sincere in its restraint that vixens courted in love aren’t courted in litigation of a wagered dare

Ambulances chase Deloreans through the desolate moon-stricken skies of a time agape with fleets of phantasmagoria on a Cliffside too wise to ever mince words or excise cries

Skulking the red-teared caverns of entombed films and lampooned tinctures on a passion vetted only for certain and utter deracinated disguise, I wallop with winged men in a single soul Armed to the Teeth with inveterate tithes to eternal internments of poached and endangered gazettes

As growth older in wizened skin bets on epithets rather than epitaphs for rinsed peace and triumphant clefts we leap above in orbit of only the bellowing nether of blown tolls and untold souls aggregating the esoteric grasp of Alexandrian tomes

The denumeration of certainty is a carousel of wonder, a splurge of time ripped asunder with majesties of paparazzi scuttled impacts a throttled iniquity of regalia’s indicted blunder frenchified but still clean with inestimable sheens

With twenty-five dollars, a dime an assist and a nickeled reiteration of currency already so personable it is divine and sublime in crazed desist I watch the embroiled natives clash in denatured violence with the warriors of a crossed repast hearkening to an old land much of ire but too much of grandstand to ultimately last

Itching for a holy field husk of peerless ties listed as rumpus and beer, a two-packed smoked by bludgeoned blokes careless in irascible sputters of a muffled doom, a Vegan becomes the author of too many sacrosanct homilies becoming defiled witchcraft brooms dead on arrival too many lionized tombs

In plaudits and the scause of an amplified “what if?” of an olfactory nightmare of petrified fog of effluvium bogged in Wade and in heat it is always clogged, sinewy libations of toasted preemptive revenge become a powerballed hog

A castle in the sky founded on Franklin but scourged of wineskins brimming with a distilled time, a swift repartee becomes the whispered ladder of saints blather becoming not rather other than a Dan Rather spatter

A door breeched by a broached inconvenience of amphigory beyond common reach, I clamber excess and whisk the lingered love into destiny beyond any word other than a beseeched preach of nothing tired but everything inspired of noble love with abundance often to teach

Fireworks of turned tides of fallow tithes to aliens beyond any conceivable bribe the bushwhacker writhes but survives Stayin' Alive without even a hint of garbled jive a 27th floor glass elevator is quite a resplendent ride

Wellsprings knowing radical rolled tides of errant dice also themselves guilty of confessional tithes to the monolith of avarice at the nooked cranny of an evaporated time we whine as the police sting the album rained with songs too lugubrious to sing but in their elegy every lonely heart has a propinquity phone of souled resonance ring

Iterative mastery of a mathematics of love, loss decay and the dross of a dental Occidental floss, the sweep of screened queues become questions of inestimable importance to foreign dues on A Horse With No Name but so consumed with fumes

A fright occultist Thriller prowls in a waylaying daylight, masquerading an innocent confection for a rescued triage of a dawn stabbed with knives in our last dying days of trembled plight

He resurrects only the wraiths of detest, squinted at by the putrefaction of summoned cardiac arrest and littered with bullets that somehow can penetrate even impregnable bullet proof vests the wrapped carcass of the mummified husk of ready despair offers itself a ghoulish and raspy prayer

Synchronized in a low roaring swathe of rollercoasters too immersive to ride, the terpsichorean obscurantism of deliberately shattered fragments becoming blurbs dismissed with hijacked deride the carnival of a summer sun becomes the ocean of limitless love becoming endless fun

We forget the drawl of the droll old tales that haunt like specters in the closet and beneath the bedridden valetudinarian of an effrontery of shackled fright, we sprawl the innumerable caverns of prophetic insight afforded by the pantheon of history enter stage left, depart stage right

And with their insight I write and write, I grasp the tusk of democracy and wage an insurrection against the doubt of plodding limitations in otherwise immaculate sight

*** and tyrannosaurus rex, of litigable offenses leading to pardonable arrests, the gated entryway of a poetic splurge leads to the demiurge of a demotic enlightenment and suddenly the frank becomes the frazzled retirement and that haunting hounding bunny transmogrified by a shattered eye averts the car crash that careens ponderous engines out of limitless twilight blue skies.

Diamond lightning in pristine skies escorts the telegraphic totems of riddled modems from distant forbearance to nescient ultimatum and suddenly all venerable personages converge on a teeming scene of a union unified by a universal dream. To become everything and yet nothing and out of light and darkness to become a beatific beam
JR Rhine Jan 2017
I broke up with God
at our favorite eatery
in our favorite booth.

We settled into familiar creases
and asked for the usual.

My eyes lazily staring at fingers
stirring the straw around the ice cubes,
God cautiously spoke up:

“Is something wrong?”

“Nothing.” (Thinking about the dormant phone
concealing behind the lock screen
the open Facebook tab
lingering over the relationship status section.)

They silently mused over the laconic reply,
til the waitress showed up with the food.

“Thank you!” God blurted with agonizing alacrity.

I received the sustenance lifelessly
and aimlessly poked at the burgers and fries.

The waitress eyed me with vague inquisition,
popping a bubble in the gum between
big teeth, refilled my water
and pirouetted hastily.

We ate in ostensible harmony,
the silence gripping like a chokehold,
the visible anxiety and subdued resolve
settling like a stifling blanket
over the child waking
from a nightmare—

Til we couldn’t breathe,
and I ripped back the covers
and looked into the eyes
of my tormentor.

“It’s not you, it’s me.”

God, taken aback by the curt statement,
dropped their burger with shaking hands,
silently begging with wetting eyes
a greater explanation.

So I elaborated:

“It’s not you, it’s me.

For your immaculate conception
was created by human hands,

your adages rendered obsolete
by human words,

your purpose and plan for us
distorted by human nature—

I cannot hate myself any longer.

I cannot pretend to know you at all.

Who my mother and father say you are
is not who my friends think you are,
nor my teachers, my pastor,
the president, Stephen Hawking,
Muhammed, the KKK, Buddha,
the Westboro Baptist Church,
Walt Whitman, Derek Zanetti,
******,
and Billy Graham.

I am told you care who I bring into bed (and when),
and what movies I watch,
and what music I listen to—

I have not heard what you say about
child soldiers, the use of mosquitos,
or the increased destruction of the earth
which you proudly proclaimed your creation,
or the poverty and disease and famine
which has ridden so many of your children—”

God interjected,
“But you’re chosen!”

I snorted,

“You say I’m chosen
to spend eternity with you—
why me?

Why’d you pick me among
thousands, millions, billions?

I’ve been told I’m ‘chosen’
since birth
by others like me—

those with fair complexion,
blue eyes,
blonde hair,
a firm overt ****** attraction towards women,
and a great big house
with immaculate white fences
delineating their Jericho.

I’ve already fabricated eternity
here among the other ‘chosen’
and there is a world of suffering
right outside the fence
and I see them
through the window of my bedroom
every day.

Am I chosen,
if I don’t vote Republican

Am I chosen
if I am Pro-Choice

Am I chosen
if I cohabitate with my girlfriend

Am I chosen
if I never have kids

Am I chosen
if I say ‘Happy Holidays’

Am I chosen
if I don’t want public prayer in schools

Am I chosen
if I don’t want a Christian nation

Am I chosen
if I don’t repost you on my wall
or retweet your adages?

I’m tired
being the ubermensch,
for it has not brought me
happiness
and I blame you.

I will not ignore
the cries of the suffering
believing it is I
who is destined to live
in bliss.

I will not buy
Joel Osteen’s autobiography(ies).

I will not tithe
you my money
for a megachurch
when another homeless shelter
closes down.

I will not tell a woman
what to do with her body,
or a man
that he is a man
if they say they are not.

I am neither Jew nor Gentile,
and I will stand with
my brothers and sisters
of Faith and Faithlessness,

Gay and Straight,
Black and White,

and apart from these extremes
free from absolutes
the ambiguous, amorphous
nature of Humankind
which I praise.

There is much pain and suffering
in this world,
potentially preventable,
but hardly can I believe
it’s part of your plan
to save
me.

I will not be saved
if we are not
all saved—

not one will burn
for my divinity.

The gates will be open to all—
and perhaps you believe that too,
but I’ve gotten you all wrong
and that cannot change,
as long as there is
mortality, and
corruption, and
power, and
lust, and
greed.”

God whined, growing bellicose,

“It is through me that you will find eternity,
I am the one true god!
I am the God of your fallen ancestors,
it is because you have fallen short
that you need me!”

I replied, growing in confidence,

“We have all fallen short,
yes,
but we are also magnificent.

We have evolved,
we have created,
we have adapted,
we have survived.

We have built empires,
and we have destroyed them.

We have cured diseases,
and we have created them.

We have done much in your name.
We’ve done good,
and we’ve done evil—

And unfortunately it’s all about
who you ask.

Your name is a burden on the oppressed
and a weapon of the oppressor.

You are abusive, God.

You tell me you are jealous.

You tell me apart from you I will suffer for an eternity.

I’m scared to die, yet want to die,
because of you.

You have made life a waiting room
that is now my purgatory. It is

Hell On Earth.

So you see,
it’s not you,
it’s me—
a mere mortal
who has tried to put a face
to eternity
and it has left me
empty.

And also,
it’s me,
for I have learned to love me,
as I have expelled your self-loathing imbibition,
and the deleterious zeal
I have proclaimed
through ceaseless
trepidation
and self-flagellation—

I have learned to love me
by realizing I am not inherently evil,
that my body is not evil,
that my mind is not evil,
and, ultimately, that
there is no good
and there is no evil.

My body is beautiful,
my mind is beautiful,
this world is beautiful,
and we are destroying it
waiting for you to claim
us.

I leave you
in hopes to see you
again one day,

and perhaps you will look
different than I have
perceived or imagined,

and in fact
I certainly hope so.”

Just then the waitress strolled back up
with a servile smile:
“Dessert?”

“No, thank you,”
I smiled politely.

And with that,
I paid the check,
and took a to-go box—

walked out into the evening rain
to my car,
put on a secular song
that meant something real to me
and drove off
into the night—

feeling for the first time
free
and alive.
Valentine Mbagu Oct 2013
As October 1 approaches, HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY……………………
I have enormous tracts of land and vast volumes of water, but cannot feed myself.
So I spend $1 billion to import rice and another $2 billion on milk.
I produce rice, but don’t eat it. I have millions of cows but no milk.
I am 53, please celebrate me.
I drive the best cars in the world but have no roads,
so I crush my best brains in the caverns,
craters and crevasses they crash into daily.
I am in unending mourning, please celebrate me.
My school has no teacher and my classroom has no roof.
I take lectures through windows and live with 15 others in one room.
All my professors have gone abroad, and the rest are awaiting visas.
I am a university graduate, but I am illiterate. I want a future, please celebrate me.
Preventable diseases send me to hospitals without doctors, medicines or power.
All the nurses have gone abroad and the rest are waiting to go also.
I have the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world;
and future generations are dying before me. I am hopeless, hapless and helpless,
please celebrate me.
For democracy’s sake I stood all day on Election Day.
But before I could ink my thumb, results had been broadcast.
When I dared to speak out, silence was enthroned by bullets.
My leaders are my oppressors, and my policemen are my terrors.
I am ruled by men in mufti, but I am not a democracy.
I have no verve, no vote, no voice, please celebrate me.
My youth have no past, present nor future.
So my sons in the North have become street urchins;
and his brothers in the South have become kidnappers.
My nephews die of thirst in the Sahara and his cousins drown in the Mediterranean.
My daughters walk the streets of Lagos , Abuja and Port Harcourt;
while her sisters parade the streets of Rome and Amsterdam .
I am grief-stricken, please celebrate me.
Pen-wielding bandits have raided everything in my vaults.
They walk the land with haughty strides and fly the skies with private planes
They have looted the future of generations unborn;
and have money they cannot spend in several lifetimes,
but their brothers die of starvation. I want a kit of kindness, please celebrate me.
I can produce anything, but import everything.
So my toothpick is made in China; my toothpaste is made in South Africa;
my salt is made in Ghana; my butter is made in Ireland;
my milk is made in Holland; my shoe is made in Italy;
my vegetable oil is made in Malaysia* my biscuit is made in Indonesia;
my chocolate is made in Turkey and my table water made in France.
My taste is far-flung and foreign, please celebrate me.
My land is dead because all the trees have been cut down;
flooding kills thousands yearly because the drainages are clogged;
my fishes are dead because the oil companies dump waste in my rivers;
my communities are vanishing into the huge yawns of gully erosion, and nothing is being done.
My very existence is uncertain and I am in the deepest depths of despondence, please celebrate me.
I have genuine leather but choose to eat it.
So I spend billions of dollars to import fake leather.
I have four refineries, but prefer to import fuel,
so I waste more billions to import petrol. I have no security in my country,
but send troops to keep peace in another man’s land.
I have hundreds of dams, but no water.
So I drink ‘pure’ water that roils my innards.
I need a vision, please celebrate me.
I have a million candidates craving to enter universities,
but my dungeons can only accommodate a tenth.
I have no power, but choose to flare gas,
so my people have learnt to see in the dark and stare at the glare of Unclad flares.
I am shrouded by darkness, please celebrate me.
For my golden jubilee,
I shall spend 16 billion naira to bash around the bonfires of the banal.
So what if the majority gaze at my possessed, frenzied dance;
drenched in silent tears, as probity is enslaved in democracy’s empty cellars?
I am profligacy personified, please celebrate me.
Why can I not simply reflect and ponder?
Does my complexion cloud the colour of my character?
Does my location limit the lengths my liberty?
Does the spirit of my conviction shackle my soul
Does my mien maim the mine of my mind?
And is failure worth celebrating?
I AM NIGERIAN, PLEASE CELEBRATE ME.
I dedicate this Poem to my Country Nigeria On Her Independence Celebration.
Elisabeth Sep 2018
These shots were never taken by chance

They were of anger taken under sunshine

This smoke can oh so muddle your view of the truth

They use smoke of their own to hide their intentions



But the truth can be seen rolling by, glinting red

The weapon of black turns their eyes white 

One shines with tears; the other dull and *****

The greedy man hides the youth of all seventeen



It could have been stopped

And the young could continue

This is preventable

But he continues to enable



His smiles are swamp green

His words are shiny gold

But he hides it all behind his suit of blue
I wrote this right after the shooting in Florida actually happened and poured all of my anger, sadness and fear into it.
Stark Nov 2018
All but still
Wheat wavering in the distance, shivering in anticipation
Animals hide away, tucked in the safety of hideaways, holes, and orifices
Humans crouch underground, waiting
Hours pass
A lone alarm shouts across the land
"This is an emergency. I repeat, an emergency warning"
So loud that those below, closer to hell than ever before, clutch their ears
For they are ringing from the vibrant sound waves stretching across the fields
A slight change in wind directions
A little bit of motion
Begins the devastation

A lone inverted triangle appears
Seemingly hovering, inches above the ground
Circling its prey, before it gorges itself
Endless cyclic motions, vacuuming everything in its path
Houses, barns, plants fly
Tugged from the attraction to the ground to the sky
Engulfed by the tornado
That winds down a path of destruction

On a whirlwind high
Drunk off of its power
Invoking pain for no reason, except that it can
Land ripped to shreds
Houses taken and tossed miles and miles away
Barns slingshotted across the American countryside
And the deaths
Oh the deaths

Those who thought they could wait it out
Survive again once more
Those who tried to chase the twister
Mesmerized by its hypnotic dance
Those who were in the wrong place at the wrong time
Oblivious to their preventable fate

When the humans emerged
From their underground bunker
They found a land left ruined
Wiped blank of human development
With that they shed tears
Watering the fertile lands
As the tornado wrecked havoc
It brought a rebirth
A chance to start again fresh
tornadoes and their destructive power.
matt Dec 2014
The cave of hate. The fire in my chest. Its god forsaken name is stress. it tries to escape through tears or fists. holes in the wall and tear soaked sheets are all that exist. a razor in hand tears like sand. its an endless desert that I’m lost in. and I’ve ran out of water two days in. pill bottle of meds an unknown prescription. swallowed one after another like it will make her come back. a gun in a box, its already cocked ready to go off. blood soaked knuckles from fights with walls and the victor is unclear. intentions unclear motives unknown all thats known it came from a broken home. the bystanders minds were blown some more than others some there heads were blown asunder. Panic attacks back to back and its there own mind thats on attack. alone in the dark they feel without a heart because they have been pierced with the dark dart of hate. can’t stand the wait unbearable anticipation anxiety relentless pain feeling endless or thought to be without, can’t scream or shout for fear of being kicked out. pain is with out a doubt that much is true. but an out stretched hand could prevent this. a friend could prevent this soul from destruction these lives saved all because someone stayed when mentioned.
Thomas Newlove Jul 2015
If one hundred and forty characters were all that's left to send help and save the world, I probably shouldn't have spent them writing this.
Wren Djinn Rain Oct 2015
I say I'm
not looking
for love but
I'm looking
I'm catching
cold glances
from eyes filled
with the weight of
sorrow been cast in gold
My purposeful fingers
reach up for money from
the gutters, this,
is just what I'm told.
Enter my ears,
enter my eyes,
enter my skin,
into my lungs.
I'm not breathing
oxygen if I exhale
byproduct. I'm out
of luck, won't press it.
I'm out of reason in
speech. Beyond
preventable death.
Regret, turned to
malice. Chest
compression. I
could have been
a good person.
What value in gold,
if I have you?
Mike Essig Apr 2015
Forget the school children
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Or the 1,000,000 dead in Vietnam;
60,000 dead in Iraq;
30,000 and rising in Afghanistan.

How many by our proxies
in El Salvador, Nicaragua,
Guatemala, Chile?

Forget the millions dead
in nameless civil wars
or of preventable
poverty and disease
in various hell-holes
around the globe.

The rest of the world
may be sorry,
but not shocked:
they have come to know
the smiling murderers
we have become.

20 dead of madness
in Connecticut
and the US wallows
in drivel, kitsch,
hollow words,
self-pity, and
media frenzy.

A little arrogance here?

Oh, we love our kids,
(just no one else's),
so let's put black ribbons
on our cars
and call that enough.

Again, the culture
of selfishness, greed,
shallowness
and patriotic stupidity
rears its
predictable head.

No country that murders
the world's children
with a shrug
should be surprised
when that violence
turns inward.

"I am Vishnu
Destroyer of worlds
My name is Death"

You can't have it
both ways.

"We must love one another
or die."

   mce
Quotes: The Upanishads via J. Robert Oppenheimer and W. H. Auden.
Zero Nine Nov 2017
I say I'm
not looking
for love but
I'm looking
I'm catching
cold glances
from eyes filled
with the weight of
sorrow been cast in gold
My purposeful fingers
reach up for money from
the gutters, this,
is just what I'm told.
Enter my ears,
enter my eyes,
enter my skin,
into my lungs.
I'm not breathing
oxygen if I exhale
byproduct. I'm out
of luck, won't press it.
I'm out of reason in
speech. Beyond
preventable death.
Regret, turned to
malice. Chest
compression. I
could have been
a good person.
What value in gold,
if I have you?
icarus Oct 2015
Sometimes it feels like I’m looking a stranger or maybe even a ghost in my mirror. Dark eyes with no sparkle stare back at me and part of me wonders when I started looking like a corpse. Meals get skipped more often than I actually eat and my body starts feeling like it’s made of glass that people keep breaking while she tries her hardest to put me back together. And when I get sick, because it always happens, it’s like my bones rattle as I shiver and each cough feels like my throat is being torn apart from the inside out and after each fit I try to be surprised that there’s no blood. When I’m asked about medical history I have to tell them I don’t know because I really don’t. I’m so stupidly afraid of getting some preventable but hereditary disease because I never knew it was in my genes. I find myself turning the same words over and over in my head while I lay in bed every night: they didn’t want you and they didn’t love you and it’s your fault. It’s gotten to the point where I believe the lies my anxiety-ridden subconscious tells me. The logical part of me knows the lies aren’t true but how do you console yourself in those lonely hours when you’re alone and no one can hear you cry yourself to sleep? Six nights a week it’s all fitful sleep and when I wake up I’m still so exhausted it takes everything I have just to haul myself out of bed to take the pill that makes it so I can just barely scrape by during school and even then it’s not good enough so I find myself failing and then I realize I just don’t care anymore. There is no in between for me, I can’t just kinda care it’s all or nothing and ninety nine percent of the time it’s nothing so I lose myself in my video games and ignore the screaming in the back of my skull that tells me to get up and do something productive with my life but I just can’t. It’s not that I don’t want to try it’s that I physically cannot make myself care enough to do anything and it’s almost like I can ******* feel my muscles begin to atrophy.
Diverseman2020 Jan 2010
As the crew cheers on my death
I'm thrown out to sea
While having an achor tied to my feet
Falling into the depths
Losing each breath
As I swallow the sea
Lifelessly closing my eyes
A recurrence
Flash in front of me
Days before sailing away
Another heart beat strikes
To the lovely Paula Etta
She was married with kids
Our lusting last till dusk
Spoiled by the appearance of her husband
Words were hardly any
Violence was preventable
To plead my innocence
Judgement was merciless
Sinking underneath the ocean
As I arrange
A burial of plunder
By fools who discovered me
One day I was in the rural areas of Turkana County,
walking up and down perfidiously ,
in a style of  the devil when visiting
Job  the son of Amos in the land of Uz,
It was in fact in the Northern region of the County
near a town known as Small Spain,
it is bushy and full of wild animals,
i was  on assignment by a certain NGO,
to give food,*******,drugs and clothes
to the dwellers  of this desert region,
All over a sudden I pumbed into a riff-raff
of  peasants, wearing scrofulously lugubrious faces,
one of them , a young man was on the ground
reeling in pain from the snake-bite,
he had been biten by a deadly desert snake,
A yellow Mamba in fact, it left its fangs in his muscle,
it was pathetic and sorriest, as there was no clinic nearby,
the nearest hospital was one thousand miles away,
and  you know,there is no road,no vehicle nor bicycle,
no horses nor water boats, only Carmel,,donkey and goats,
were there plus few emaciated native cows,
Luckily enough a white man  who stayed nearby,
surfaced from nowhere, he also owns a small aero-plane,
He spoke Italian,Spanish,Swahili and Greek like a native,
so I don't knew which country of Europe he came from,
he picked the snake bite victim to his home,
he asked me to come along
we boarded his plane to Kitale,
where we have a government hospital,
We flew across the hills of Turkana land ,
thousand and thousands of miles,
it was i, the white man  and snake bitten man,
three strangers on one another in the aeroplane,
Bound strongly by human love beyond identity,
Our patient began getting worse and worse
In fact  he had began getting dull and motionless,
we landed in Kitale, the white man bought a taxi,
we rushed to the hospital, all us panting frenetically,
we got at the hospital found nurses having lunch,
they were slow and relaxed, as if death is their dish,
the African nurse who came was all but un-started,
she began asking  for the age and the  tribe,
The tribe of our snake bitten friend,
She also asked for where he works,
And where he often goes to clinic,
worst of  all, she asked where he goes to church
she again demanded for seven hundred shillings,
the white man gave her the money,I was broke as usual,
He gave her a bank note of  one thousand shillings
she declined , she instead  wanted loose money
she ordered us to look for her the  loose money
before  she could begin treating our friend,
before we got the loose money  our friend died
of heavy poisoning of the blood, snake bite
He roared like a bull in the slaughter house,
on his painfully preventable death,
the white man was very disappointed
the white man wept, he went back to his plane.
In a similar stretch with a case of  a referral hospital
in Eldoret, also another town in Kenya, it is big,
it is called Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital,
it has the largest cancer management unit,
in the whole of east and central Africa
from Congo to Seychelles is the only one,
it was build by tax payers money,
but local politics as influenced it otherwise,
workers and Nurses are substantially locals,
in fact from one clan, now they speak strangely,
patients from alien clan are never treated,
they must bribe to be treated,
if not you  go back sick and eat your tribe,
or if you are introduced by a local politician,
you be lucky to be treated your cervical cancer,
they charge medical fees exorbitantly,
but once you pay no doctor will come,
in fact patients who are admitted for in-patient,
rarely come out  alive, if they are one hundred,
eighty of them will die,twenty will go home,
only to come back after a while and then die,
out of this despair another white man from Germany,
has established a modern hospital , just nearby the referral,
it offers absolutely free cancer treatment services
as Africans keep on facilitating death of their own kin,
Blessed be the womb that gave birth to a European.
evie marie Oct 2018
Women are not allowed to be angry.
We are taught to be quiet, easy, pretty.
We cannot yell, because that does not make us beautiful.
We are taught to be delicate, dainty, soft.
We are not allowed to be angry.
1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted before they graduate college.
60% of the world's malnourished population are women.
830 women die from preventable causes due to pregnancy or childbirth.
We are not allowed to be angry.
Women earn 77 cents to every dollar a man makes.
62 million girls are denied educational around the world.
4 out of 5 victims of human trafficking are girls.
Female genital mutilation affects 300 million girls worldwide.
5 African American women die from breast cancer each day.
We are not allowed to be angry.
Our president mocked a ****** assault survivor on live television.
Our country elected a ****** abuser to the Senate.
63% of **** cases go under reported.
We are not allowed to be angry.
Women of color are stereotyped as angry without even opening their mouths.
Women of native descent are 3 times more likely to be sexually abused in their lifetime.
We are not allowed to be angry.
We are not allowed to be angry when we hear classmates talk about how they were sexually assaulted and no one cared,
tears streaming down her face. She was 16.
We get told to "calm down, you're being dramatic" by people we thought we could trust, people we love.
We are mocked for our passion, for our apathy, for our triumphs and for our failures.
Feminism has become a ***** word.
But it is the only way,
the only way,
we can gain our equality, our freedom.
I don't want to be terrified of being alone at night.
I don't want to watch what I say around a group of men.
I don't want to feel scrutinized in every article of clothing I wear.
I don't want to be sexualized for having *******.
I don't want to be scared of being alone with a boy at a party.
I don't want to be called angry when I speak up for my rights.
We are not allowed to be angry.
But we are.
We are angry.
Nicole Potter Oct 2013
Flow freely into the minds that hate
        Some things go wrong
How long must we wait?
        Until we all get along

Flow freely into the minds that hate
        Cannot make change without comprehension.
All this misfortune we still create,
        Causing harm, taking lives and misdirecting tension.

Flow freely into the minds that hate
         These false institutions keep the system 'balanced'
Using us all as free pawns and bait,
         Somehow ensuring each breath is silenced.

Flow freely into the minds that hate
        Take a step forward and scream for losses
Too many to count, all preventable, just the selfish human gait.
        Look around, open eyes wide shut, who are the real bosses?

Flow freely into the minds that hate.
        All this time spent reading, analyzing, just wasted away
Just a creative excuse, all it's done is placate
        Talk about humanity, pleading for 'other', yet in the system they fade today.

Flow freely into the minds that hate
        We're not playing with plastic, metal, or things intangible
Each person has life, agency and a Heart Beat to relate.
       Must halt before time runs out, before humanity becomes a true cannibal.

Flow freely into the minds that hate
        Cannot understand without delving within
Must step up, do anything to motivate
       Do not step back, embrace what is foreign

Flow freely into the minds that hate
        Must acknowledge; accept it has existence.
Ignorance is not Fate.
      Just hold on, one more push, all that is needed is constant persistence.

Flow freely into the minds that hate
        Flow freely into the minds that hate
                Flow freely into the minds that hate.

**Oct 2, 2013
Naman Bagaria May 2014
Deceit slithers across the vessel

embracing the stench

of the "would-be carcass".

A feast bestowed by

the imminent descent

awaits to serve

the new peasant king,

whose realm

is as torrid

as the desires

that demand

his presence there.



His eternity

now rubbernecks

the obscene art

which subsists

only by gulping

feverishly on

delicious torments

and  mourns

to witness the

silent testimony

of the sullied design

and  preventable death.
I desire the things
        which will destroy me in the end.  - Sylvia Plath.
nick armbrister Apr 2020
Amy
What they did to Amy
Wasn't so nice
Cut up by the destroyer's props
Killed, murdered?, by the Royal Navy
They killed poor little Amy
Who was freezing to death
In the cold water
The Thames Estuary is frigid in winter
Poor Amy had to bail out
Her plane was in trouble
Don't worry little lady
The navy will rescue you
Picked up by the Senior Service
Given a tot of *** and a blanket
It was never ever to be
The destroyer hit a sand bank
They tried to free the ship
It was too late for Amy
They spotted the girl in the sea
But revving the ship's engines finished her
Poor Amy was pulled into the props
Cut apart by like fish meat
A sailor saw this happen
He ran to the bridge and shouted
They shouted at him
Get out of Officer's Country
Do not speak to us like that again
Thus died Amy Johnson
Her death covered up by the navy
The government lied to her relatives and public
A British national heroine perished
Her death was preventable
The lies were unwarranted
Someone must be held accountable
I've seen her blue biplane
In the Manchester museum
It's called Jason
I bet it misses dear Amy
Murdered and lost at sea
New Dawn 2971
Nick Armbrister and other authors/poets/writers
fdg Sep 2014
please don't look at me (look at me more)
I will never believe you when you say I am your favorite
(I know too well the cruelty of this world
because I have been that cruel)
I have built my happiness into yours
I've put my smile in the palm of your hand and I'll let you punch walls
with my lips still inside your clenched fist
and none of it is preventable or your fault.
People are made to break things,
and I'm pretty sure you are in my life
to be the first one to break my heart.

So please do it,
break my heart,
but leave it shattered
the way a vase shatters when a girl throws it against a wall
the way you sometimes shatter our silence with sweet words
like "you're so beautiful"
Morgan Elizabeth Aug 2014
What is love?
perhaps it is the way you remind someone to wear their seatbelt
or the manner in which you address someone you miss
or a small gesture to show them you care
such as delivering flowers
or lunch
or perhaps even
preparing a picnic?

or maybe love is shown in keeping a secret?
in holding a hand
or buying a soda
a hug
a kiss
a tender, understanding touch
a prayer of protection when departure is inevitable

But the perfect love is shown in the true Son of God
who died to save us
on a tree in the shape of a cross
his blood was bled
his tears were shed
His back torn
his heart worn
all for people who did not love him in return
unconditional
not preventable
non-deserving
never ending
everlasting
love

This man died on a tree
Because of this love
that He showed me
I can, in return, love
Julia Mae Dec 2016
today i discovered that the rates for suicide are higher than those for homicides. people want to **** themselves more than they desire to **** another. there are homicidal maniacs running amok - hellbent on ending another human life. while the number of individuals who are hellbent on ending the only life they possess, excels.
death is everywhere, and unending. and inevitable. yet preventable.
i paused and felt heavy inside of my heart, the millions of lives that were taken on their own free will.
Prose.
Claire Oct 2015
leave the jagged ground exposed,
I’d rather not admit
that these wounds are self-inflicted;
rather not say that this thing is expired.
let me trip over everything preventable
to prevent myself
from overthinking.
I’d rather not be the one to have epiphanies;
rather not be the first to sign my own grave
because I’m not as naive as I’d like to be.
I wish I’d rather be different,
frowning upon stereotypes and pigeonholes.
I wish I pursued my wants
with little hesitation
and cried out my condolences at every funeral.
I’d rather lack so much composure,
because when one’s breath is so
windless,
breathing is hard to do.

and I wish that bothered me.
written accompanied by the song "Fourth of July" by Sufjan Stevens.

— The End —