Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Nat Lipstadt May 2019
~for better days for the poet betterdays~

mournful tunes play silently, but still too often,
eyes wet but in corners kept, recurring then the
memories, keepsakes, letters, books, small trinkets,
not dusty, but dusky, resting on in-between ledge of a
mountain-sized twilight of well lit shadowy haziness,
edgy dark brilliance, a comprehensible contrast non-comprehendible

tunes that bless with equal measures of grief,
comforting, by memorable card flashes of good relief,
a dividing line, hazy and frequented crossed, a sort of path,
with no destination signaled, as if the path itself was an end,
to a meaning, a solution, with no clarity divined, a division
of sight and insight, providing an ill fitting reconciliation

mourning is electric, morning is electric,
letters, words bottled up in evaporating perfume bottles,
seeking the comfort of dissipation unto a larger atmosphere,
the scent in everything tangible, stronger still yet, in intangibles
that can erode but never ever fail to return instantly when voked,
by vision, odor, a particular child’s smile, line in a poem volunteered

recovered, uncovered, a post first writ to be written, discovered,
when time and place coincidentally breathe together, at last,
beckoning you to places where memory serves only as a pleasuring,
upright mind marker, decorated in chains perpetual reforging,
absent pain, gleaming dreamings full-replacing longings for pasts,
new verses composed, passing, a grand addition to a child’s legacy
loss can only be tempered, reforged, and ultimately used for our  own betterment when the heart commands, now write!
Derek Yohn Sep 2013
An ode to you on your birthday, Osiris:

Your example of redefined divinity
gives us pause, a momentary blink
during which you have cleverly
shape-shifted within and without.

     (It was so fast so fluid so sublime...
      Did you see it?
      Were you watching?)

Your lover dutifully collected your members,
reuniting all that could be found,
reforging your manhood minus your manhood.
Do not fear, Osiris.
We will build you a phallus out of
artful decadence and corn husks.

     (It is a testament to our love...
      Did you see it?
      Were you watching?)
Gabriel burnS Aug 2017
In brittle dark
I’m shedding body on your canvas
leaving flesh in strokes of boldness;
arms are warm,
your thighs are hotter from us, burning,
as friction seals the picture
of sparks embracing ashes
painting lust
reforging Us
Ellie Stelter Aug 2014
I feel so detached some days.
I am not who I was. I am not
the girl who walked those high school halls,
red lipstick smudges and sidelong rejections
of boys who didn't know the mess they were after -
I am her and I am not her; at the heart
of things, the real truth of it, yes
we are the same, but I now
would not say those things she said
or do those things she did, or think
even as she thought.

Detached from the past I am now wholly
freed from the fetter of past selves, free
of their guilts, their regrets, their desires;
I am floating, minuscule distances above the dust,
I don't belong in that skin anymore, I can't help
but feel itchy in it, wanting to claw my way
out of my own skin. I don't know
what it was that tied me to her before
and is now gone, I can't see
the ribbons of gravity that held me
to the surface of this luminous planet:
reforging those bonds is a task invisible
and out of reach, something I won't know I'm doing
won't know I've done until it's over -

and on it goes, the floating and the molting,
and I can't quite see the places
where my new feathers are coming in,
but oh God how they itch.
Renee Sep 2016
come, rest beside me
take off your boots, dusty from the road
let your hands uncurl from their fists,
press them against the warmth of this rock,
until they can be open again.

take off your socks,
clinging with fear to your feet.
the new grass is waiting for you,
and it is always just cool enough.

if you like,
there are flowers for your wrists and head,
stems thick enough to string together into crowns,
garlands, even, if you're being ambitious.

as the sun goes down,
the stone is still warm to the touch,
the first lesson of happiness I ever learned:
run to the things that keep on burning,
with the fire that warms and comforts.

we wear the leather jackets of our name, our age,
stained with the smoke of our reforging,
on the threshold of possibility,
see the children at the cross-roads.

see us pressed against the last stone of memory,
see us feeling for the last hint of sun,
hear the lyrics, the quotes, the poems,
that someone carves into the rock with a knife.

children with their flower garlands,
tasting sourness on their tongues,
twisting their mouths around shoots of grass
twisting their mouths around each-other.

the yellow blooms are like **** candy,
like one of those old photographs:
jackets hanging on the trees.

arrogant boys and sarcastic girls,
red lipstick staining the backs of our hands,
grass staining our knees.

the cross-road stone anchors us
as we stare into the sunset,
pressing close to each-other,
as the waiting period begins to end.
Be Nov 2018
In our lives are many choices.
They display our inner voices.
To be vengeful and cruel.
To let anger and hate rule.

All our decisions,
Can create divisions.
Or they can be revisions,
Like stitches closing incisions,

No matter what we are feeling,
We can choose the path of healing.
Meeting anger with kindness.
Using calm to cure rage’s blindness.

Pushing past our old boundaries.
Reforging ourselves, like metal in foundries.
Disregard fear, choose to live free;
To improve ourselves, be better. We…

Have so many choices.
Which ones will you make?

— The End —