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mûre Oct 2013
You were the greatest neuronal reorganization to ever happen,
of course I don't know who I am anymore.

What was plastic seems changed to stone in a gargoyle brain and beneath a microscope the shimmering glia spell out your name over and over in little green lights, fossilizing the neurons that say:

Him.

The earth has an edge. Nobody wants to fall off.

So call me Homer, because the gods themselves could not convince me my situation's a sphere there's far too much fear in this flattened plane that understands only primitive desires and just wants you near.

Everyone knows the romanced brain could be mistaken for a ******* addict's.

But perhaps if you look more closely into my eyes you will see my irises have turned stormy, that cyclones of energy are becoming patterns that scribble and scribble arcane suggestions for a new cartography. A new story. A new being.

Supplies needed:
One strong pencil.
Enough oxytocin to unlearn an addiction.

Enough optimism to overcome an affliction, my diction is code for the way you kissed me and it underlines every sentence like the way a voice rises when asking a question.

I have so many questions.

And even though the notion of who I will be when I am not you terrifies me, like Cathy and Heathcliff I will not be doomed to roam the moors, already I know there's endlessly more, and with or without you the best is yet to come. Just as they say. No, I don't know what's in store. But I think that's okay.

Turn golden, Grey Matter, light up 'til you burn.

Reboot.
Restart.
Rewire.

*Relearn.
A primitive attempt at beat poetry.
Samuel Fox Apr 2016
Trill of beak into birch. Dawn spooks
the graveyard into silence. A heart
hardens at God’s withered finger reaching
but not reached for. I trim the hedges
and the whir of ****-eater disturbs
a nest of yellow jackets into tornado,
dust devil, of translucent wings and sting.
I walk among the dead three times a week.
I am learning their language. They relearn
the mundanity of white noise above
and quietly forget, quietly forgive.
This hill is the crest on a wave of coffins,
each one a boat through the world below.
Submerged in a bloodshot morning
I listen to a woodpecker in its throes
of building a home out of the depths of bark.
In the chill, the soft fog rolling, it pecks
and it knocks. The doors to these lives
long closed, I hush. I do not believe God
will visit these grounds to reclaim his clay:
I plant flowers in it between the plots,
each name engraved of marble a blank stare.
The flash of red flushes from budding branches
and I return to work. No one answers.
I relearn the dead’s language, their silence,
relearn every day how to repair stillness.
For a friend of mine who works in a graveyard.
Allison Oct 2017
Follow the kick-drum of the heart
to the point where it’s heard loudest.
Spend ten thousand hours on the lungs:
Read the textbook on what fills us.
Dedicate a white board
to what makes us collapse.
Hold the bell lightly
to differentiate your own pulse from another’s.
Then drink, and dance, and pray,
to relearn that they’re the same.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2018
.you want to relearn the schoolyard? are you sure you want to relearn the schoolyard?! sure... we can relearn the schoolyard...  i have a theory though, and it goes along the lines of... you know those *******(s)? i have a theory... they're not exactly into smoking, or drinking... like... their female counterpart... i actually think women are afraid of young boys... for what young boys are, per se... well, given Muhammad, hyper-inflated interest in literacy... that covers the whole: illiterate prior, married to an older woman, not drinking, not smoking?! so what's your outlet?! to be an object of what... "subjects"... or to be a "subject" of what... objectifies... case in point, the nuance is interchangeable in the metaphor quadratic of wording... and no... not really... i find it hardly necessary to concern myself with making the sort if accuracy to give a metric unit basis of a centi-, or otherwise, etc.

it's sheryl crow
for ****'s sake...
it's not
           katty perry...
that debut:

was... pristine..
seminal...

sure... my feet stink...

what? what's wrong
with Cheryl Crow?!
you better be *******
with me for serious,
otherwise
i switch to: unhinged...

a change?

***** won a ******* grammy!
sure... she married
a glorious child of
the two pedals...
   who faked Paris having faked
a tourism ploy of France...

it's still Sheryl Crow though!
a trucker's daydream
of perfect head,
incubated by a mouth
of an 18 year old boy...

no... i like Alanis...
when... whatever that was that came
from a woman's mouth was...
deemed, fun...
now?

       n'ah... not really.
all i really want... that sort of **** was
fun...
now? i'm becoming more and more
bemused by the fragrance of my
socks, worn, second day to count
thoroughly...
              hand in my pocket...
right through you...

so... BIG daddy gonna come around
to save this teenage girl's cherry ***?
the kind of daddy that could never
have a beer with me?
like i'm feeling that:
while using my right hands when typing
feels like i'm using my left hand,
and vice versa?!

no! i'm not having it!
Cheryl Crow... &...
Chrissie Hynde!
            no... don't give me the *******
zig-zag argument suggesting
i'm about to see something
"better", via an X, cross-eyed...
blurry, like some reverse Freudian
fetish off Ariel, the mermaid,
blurry, under the water...

Disney princesses my ***.

head over feet...
         now... that's a song.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2018
.like i insinuated prior, the English are a people not competent in philosophy, they're the antithesis of what a people, inclined to philosophy represent... schematic, rigidity, like the German... or the frequent cafe bullshitters of the French, the English can't consecrate themselves on the altar of Sophia, they just can't... they're a people that succumbed to too much practicality, egalitarianism... no one attempts to write in Utopia, while not seeking to find Atlantis.

so the whole Greece, Troy,
Rome shuffle is about over?
i'm feeling slightly peckish
and i don't have the time...
i'm about to light the house
up using... light-bulbs...
don't you think that a name
akin to: Paul, Digit,
sounds great?!

don't get me wrong,
the English are a people bound
to other, gifts...
they can sing,
although... Aud Lang Syne
is a Pict song...
and the river-dance is pure Ire...

great sophists,
but philosophers?
they're too practical,
i'm trying to read
Sartre's being & nothingness
in English...
i simply, can't...
      it doesn't make sense...
if you gave me a copy
of the same book
in ******-speak...
i'd butcher it...
   but in English?

metaphor moment:
like catching the testicles of
a mosquito, wearing boxing
gloves...

fiddly ******...

sure... each country has its
career ambition...
russian and the romanians
and the bulgarians have
their gymnastics...
the brazilians and the germans
have their footie...

the English have their singing
and their poetry...
but philosophy?
      nope... not even close...
Oasis' wonderwall
will be remembered,
and even sang along to on
the continent...

                   but thomas more's
utopia,
or thomas hobbe's leviathan...
ever tried to read more than
twenty pages
    of joseph conrad's
         heart of darkness... ?
ever find eating porridge
equivalent to parachuting
   in terms of the level of excitement?

chill... the English have their virtues...
but the English are also
prone to call philosophy
impractical, verbiage, word salad...
because philosophy already
is an impracticality,
an impasse...
          it's supposed to be,
           it's not exactly an Ikea schematic
reading to assemble a *******
table...
             it's Picasso, cubism,
       see if you can see a cube in
the mesh of contortions of other geometric
signatures...

              the English do not do philosophy...
sorry... they don't...
whatever argument arises citing
the "need" for: "reason" and, "logic"
will not cut it for me...
reason? since God doesn't intervene...
well... the unfathomable depth of
human will... reason: the same freedom
as posited prior to: the unfathomable depth...

logic? 1 + 1 = 2...
      a + n + d | s + o = and so...
the English are barons over other traditions
of expression...
music being 1, poetry being 2...

hey, Polacks are decent at volleyball...
i'm not complaining,
it's not exactly a popular sport...

but no... no chance in hell will i read
a philosophy book in this language...
i can't, the language is already too shrapnel
for me... i need to clarify a focus
on an idea...
        language, the English language,
can't entertain the current "transcendental"
logistics of undermining the individual /
plural use of pronouns,
while also keeping a straight face
in other areas of thinking...

     i could have conceded to the whole
globalist liberalism of ideas...
but... looking at the other flank?
attacking grammar... ****... sorry...
dogma?!
                as if... i will bow down
to un-existing before my wedding with death.

that being said,
i think the English are in a dire need to relearn
their black sense of humor,
their islander sense of isolationist humor,
their: bizarre unpredictability...
  since they lost it...
             to a certain degree...
i'd say: relearn to laugh at what is,
otherwise unforgiven in other cultures...
more crass Americanism...
and... well...
                can you ever learn to
cry when experiencing beauty?
musically, that is, esp. in the musical
dimension...
                    i always hated this:
"you're laughing, but actually crying...
you're crying, but actually laughing"
inversion...
        i never came around to fathom this
"misnomer"...
          straight down...
    i'll laugh at a funeral...
            teasing death...
   but i'll cry over a decent piece of music, to boot.
Joshua Vincens Sep 2012
I truly believe that one of the reasons that the US is despised and condemned world wide is because of such views on such characteristics as: honesty, integrity, independence(this includes not thinking in a collective mindset which we do as a culture, everything is apple or windows, pepsi or cola, republican or democrat, people need to think for themselves stop claiming and just be), persistence, determination, morale, empathy, tradition/heritage, learning, chivalry, discernment, and humility.

Instead of utilizing and perfecting these people of this nation and similar one's have become: prideful, dependent, drive-less, imprudent/unwise, insulting, ignorant(willfully so), objective, biased, crude, mediocre, and surface oriented.

In turn we have neglected the responsibilities we have of ourselves. This has resulted in physical, mental, and spiritual capacity regression on a mass scale. Most people have no idea what they are consuming in their daily dietary intake(I mean really know what all the ingredients are and what they do whether positive or negative). Most citizens have also become, literally and according to the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization, mentally incapable and completely inane as compared to even 15yrs ago. We have forgotten how to have a community to the point that neighbors don't know each other anymore. We have exchanged the truly important things in life like knowledge and wisdom for wealth and appearance. We have completely forgotten how to survive without the aid of water treatment, electricity, and useless objects. One of the worst of all things we have stopped doing, is being involved with our government; instead, we have put our trust in them without oversight, and this is why we have been losing our liberties. I believe, just like Benjamin Franklin stated, that any individual who sacrifices even one liberty for safety/security... deserves to have all of their liberties eradicated.

In conclusion, it is time to return our societies to ourselves. We need to relearn the truly important things in life and start living with ourselves, each other, and nature as we must to thrive. It is on us as a people to repair what generations before us, and our generations are doing; lest, I am afraid, our children and grandchildren will inherit the same ideals and expand upon them until we regress to the point that insolence, ignorance, and imprudence is the common norm... we have already begun to accept these. Open your eyes to the truth, at first it will be painful and difficult, but than you will be set free. WE THE PEOPLE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR FUTURES AND CHILDREN'S FUTURES.
Mikaila Jun 2013
They tell you it gets better.
I will tell you the truth.
I am good at telling truth
And bad at being heard.
I hear your sorrow.
I see that your blood
Trickles like tears
Like mine.
I'm telling you what they're afraid to say
Because they don't want you quitting.
Selfish little children,
Tell you your pain isn't valid,
That it will flee if you wait.
Darling, I saw it in your eyes.
I heard you break.
And I'll tell you, I wish you'd seen me.
Back when I was being told what you are.
"It'll get better, time heals all wounds."
I wish you'd seen me raw as a skinned ****,
Fresh and ready for chopping.
I wish you'd seen my eyes when my guard toppled and I was truth.
I'm telling you now,
My truth,
And I think it's yours too,
Heartbreak Girl.
They're lying to you.

Don't be discouraged, don't be sad,
You've gotten through
You're getting through
The worst.
But they like to say-
Them, they, the people who care but don't know-
They like to say it goes away like a cut scars.
We both know about that, don't we,
Heartbreak Girl?

They're lying to you.
What happens is this.
Healing happens, yes, healing
After a fashion.
But not in the way you want it to.
Healing from love is not healing from injury.
It's not a broken arm which can be set and cast and grown back
Like new
With only a little crack along the edge
Fixed with a pin or a *****,
A stitch or two,
And a pale shiny line along the place where your skin
Parted ways with the rest of you.
No, love like this,
Broken love,
Heartbreak Girl,
It doesn't heal quite right.
It's like the old man down the street
Who was shot in the war,
And they had to cut his fingers off.
Little stubs left behind,
That feel like they're whole but they don't grab like they used to.
He loses things.
Not big things, not always. Not everything. Not life.
But it's never the same after.
That is what losing a love is like.
A heartbreak isn't a break,
It's a hole.
A whole hole that means you'll never be...
Whole.

It's something you find that time doesn't treat the way they all say.
Time Heals All Wounds.
It's a true statement, in essence,
But not literally. Not in actuality.
What time lends is distance.
Takes a lot longer than you'd think-
Just ask that old man-
To learn to live without your hand.
I'm giving it to you straight,
Heartbreak Girl,
You'll live again. You'll walk again.
But you'll always have a limp.
See?

It will feel like they all lied, all that time.
A long ******* time.
Longer than you can respect yourself for taking
Over some stupid boy
Who broke your heart.
A long ******* time,
And you'll be ashamed,
But you'll just keep on
Keeping on.
And if you do that,
Heartbreak Girl,
One day you'll find you have learned
To live around your loss.
Because it's not him you miss,
I promise you that.
You think it is, but it isn't.
You miss the you that you became by loving him.
And that's a very personal loss
Deep.
Tender.
Right down to the marrow,
And it takes TIME
To even wrap your head around the damage you can do to yourself
Over somebody else.

It's like that man in the commercial
The one about quitting smoking.
Ever seen it?
He sits down trying to have his morning coffee without his cigarette
Day after day
And he can't figure it out.
Pours his cream on his pants
Dumps the sugarbowl instead of spooning it in.
Tries to drink the stuff without using the handle on the cup.
He's a mess,
Heartbreak Girl.
He's you.
He's me too.
Trying to relearn everything we used to do
With that love of ours burning in our fingers.
Love makes you an addict
Loss, a *******.
But you learn.
At the end of the commercial,
He takes a sip,
And he smiles, and I always smile too,
Because that means that if you keep going,
Inch by inch you'll take your life back from this loss.
It's dumb, but that commercial always meant a lot to me.
It was on,
Heartbreak Girl,
The days when I couldn't eat for missing her.
When every moment was made of fear
That I would see something that would tear me open and make me miss her
Make me re-realize that she was over
(And so was I.)
(The me I loved, whose ghost I still look at in the mirror behind me.)
(The me I never got to say goodbye to before she died.)

I'm giving you the facts, Heartbreak Girl.
Time isn't medicine.
It's not nepenthe.
It's just time.
Time for you to learn and grow and become stronger,
Stand up again and say,
"Okay. I lost him. I lost me.
But I will create a new life."
I won't be one of them
The people who care so much
That they lie to you that you'll be
Good as new.
You're already new,
New and old.
Damaged, wearier, a little worn around the edges of your soul.
You're mourning,
Heartbreak Girl.
Mourning the loss of an innocence you didn't know to treasure
Until you lost it.
That you are
angryscaredhurtbetrayedamazed
You will never have the chance to relinquish of your own will.

But
Heartbreak Girl
Like that man down the street with no fingers
Who learned to play his guitar a new way
Like the one in the commercial
Who took his first sip of coffee and realized he hadn't lost his mornings after all
Like me
When I held a funeral for myself in my back yard
Trying to let go of loving her
When I finally, a year and a half later,
Woke up with a smile on my face and allowed it to stick around for a while.
Like us,
You will have your day
You will make new music
You will take that sip
You will accept your loss
And find a smile
Because there is,
Heartbreak Girl,
So much to smile about
When you have lost so much.
Rewind this memoir back to my first foster home.   I’m reclining on the couch in the living room watching Superman, a whatever's-on-tv-saturday-afternoon-movie.   "Give A Little Bit" played from the soundtrack.  The Supertramp song reached out from the screen and into my own complicated teen-aged life.  Oh the words of that song blindsided me, hit me hard in the chest with a sad yearning, an emotion I had ignored forever like that elephant in the room too big to push out the door.  Because life was so hard, too hard, and lonely on and on, and the world gives only just enough that you keep breathing, but you wonder why.  Yes, please  someone  give just a little....
But at the time I hadn't known anything else and I just stuffed that overwhelming sad lonely feeling.  Too much need wears out a welcome in someone else's home.  It seemed most everyone else had family, security, some money for perhaps things like a pair of cleats to run in school track if you have the desire. Its called belonging or opportunity and I was acutely aware I wouldn't have it.

Fast forward 25 years; business for my glass art studio is rewarding.  I live in Cleveland, or what I called Purgatory.  I like the city though; I think the motto should be "Its Not That Bad."  A tough steel town, unpretentious to a fault, tenacious, it inspired the Clean Water Act because the river was so polluted it   caught   on   fire.  People who live there just don't quit, except that the biggest export is young people. The streets are eerily empty, the quiet steel mills are epic sculptures of rust.  But its not that bad.  Now they make a tasty beer called Burning River.  Sometimes they gamble on unconventional ideas because they've reached the end of status-quo.  One can even surf there, when the wind blows a Nor'easter in the fall, just before the lake freezes. The wave break is nicknamed "Sewer Pipe"; one can imagine why.

I biked with a club there; cycling part of my life-blood.  Life was pretty good, blessed with measures of contentment and happiness and family, even through so many challenges.  Except I'm stuck pedaling a trainer in the basement most of the long winter.  It was during an endless, gray February that I was inspired by an idea: a Velodrome.  Its one of those banked tracks people in America only see during the Olympics.  Cover it, and people could have a bicycle park all year-round with palm trees in the winter, in Cleveland.  Its a blast of a sport with serious American heritage.  A velodrome is a place where all a kid has to do is show up and with enough heart he or she can make it to the Olympics.  They wouldn't need money, just 100% heart.  It would be the kind of opportunity I didn't have when I was a kid.

So I decided to take on the responsibility to build one... not to be afraid of the price tag, or how to do it, or let a label like "disabled veteran with a head injury" daunt me.  I figured my role was to get the project started and motivate others to do other parts.  I decided not to discuss my shortcomings, introduce myself with that label, or use it as a disclaimer.   As many times as I wished I had a chalkboard sign around my neck saying, Please excuse the mess, I had to tell myself it was not an excuse.
There would need to be many others; but the fact that I knew only a dozen people on the planet didn't stop me either.  Two people inspired me.  Kyle MacDonald had a dream to barter a paper clip for something better, trading that for something else, anything else, until he had a house.  I thought I could start with an old laptop, a couple thousand dollars, and my idea. I'd work to leverage each bit of progress, not knowing what they were yet.  Thats how anything gets done, right?  Erik Weihenmayer is a blind alpine mountain climber, conquering even Everest.  He didn’t let anyone convince him what he couldn’t do, and didn’t let impairments keep him from his goal.  He didn't let blindness, the fact that he couldn't see the top as well as others, make the goal any less enjoyable for himself.  Also, there’s no way he could have done it without help.

There are no business plans for a Velodrome or someone else would have built more of them already.  I'm good at figuring things out, what with having to relearn things all the time.  I don't quit because that has never seemed to be an option.  Resourcefulness is my middle name, having to put my life back together every year or so.  Certainly the project was eccentric but as an artist I've never really cared about what others thought.  I certainly didn't have a reputation for sanity to maintain.  Professionally, I’ve had experience with so many factors of development: from paperwork at the back end as a Project Assistant, to designing it as a Mechanical Drafter, to constructing it as a Steel Detailer.  I understood this project.

Every time I discovered something needed to be done, I'd figure out how to do it.  I took an online tutorial and put together a website, attended communication seminars for better speaking skills, learned how to recruit a Board of Directors, took classes for fundraising, won a few grants, and started a non-profit.  I had to buy a couple of suits for meetings.  I kept hoping someone who knew what they were doing would take over, but that never seemed to materialize.  What I thought would be a few months turned into several hard years of work, learning new things on the fly like politics, business etiquette, computer programs, how to understand and write financials and business plans for stadiums.

It felt like cramming for finals, taking exams for classes I never attended.  I didn’t just burn my candle on both ends, I was torching it in the middle too.  Every challenge I had ever gone through seemed like it was a preparation for this one.  Many times I wondered if it was all for nothing; so many dead ends and frustrations and years where the project was barely on life-support.  Mistakes and wrong turns making people mad, losing faith in me.  Would it ever really happen?  I kept imagining what my bike wheels would look like under my handlebars as if I was ridiing on the track, listening to the same particular songs on my ipod for motivation.

A small tangent here, a digression back to the fifth grade and my favorite teacher.  He was about as tall as his students.  Mr.A (our nickname for Mr. Anderson) was a barrel-chested little person but I didn't notice it till years later because he was so cool.  He was the first teacher, the first person actually, who encouraged me to be myself.  I was a little kid, a couple years advanced and bright enough to be skipped again.  Tthat would have been ridiculous since I was already too small.  I would get my work done early in class, and he would let me spend time doing whatever, encouraging my creativity.  I distinctly remember making little scale models of parks out of construction paper.  I would start by making a rectangular tray, and then fill it in with ponds, benches, and oval or figure-8 tracks for bicycles, elevated roller-coaster paths for walking.  It was my way of creating a whimsical place that felt good in my difficult life.  No lie, I was building bicycle tracks when I was 9.  That memory faded away until I was several years into the actual Velodrome project, trying create a light-hearted park on the edge of a ghetto.  This was my life's ultimate Art Project; made with wood, steel, and tenacity.  It made me wonder about a life's purpose... still just a what if... but cruel if there wasn't anything to it.

There is a necessary role for the dreamer.  Visionaries help to break status quo, introduce new solutions.  Sorting through the banal with unique perspective, the random is reassembled into intriguing newness.  What is creative nature?  Is it obsession to improve things, the need for approval, resourcefulness within limits, or perspective outside boundaries?   Is it tenacity to the point of obsession, focus to the point of selfishness?  

Thankfully, a few devoted people did take over after a few years and worked hard to raise the serious money.  In 2012, Phase 1 of the Cleveland Velodrome opened to the public.  Presently they are raising funds for Phase 2 to cover it.   By chance I was there the day the track was finished and got a chance to ride it.  All I wanted to do was one thing: listen to those songs on my ipod and see my wheels under the handlebars on the track... in reality.  I didn't want to race or be recognized at some celebration.  I just wanted to ride a few laps, happy just to have a role in building it.  In less than a year there are already training programs, youth cycling classes, and teams competing.  Through community grants and volunteers, its all free to anyone under 18.  

Not to be forgotten, some thanks should go to one supportive teacher who helped a scrappy kid dream.    Schools measure math and science so valuable, for good reason.  But this favors one brain’s side of thinking.  Initiating and working for the construction of an urban renewal project and improving a neighborhood is traceable to the exact same idea assembled with clumsy school scissors, white glue, and construction paper, during 5th grade free time.

I can't wait to hear the news of some tough kid from East Cleveland getting to the Olympics.
Osiris Jul 2013
In the heavens was written the mandate for the oldest child of the Sun and the Sea.

She the princess, oh nobly born, the oldest of three, was the model for the universe for elegance and wisdom of compassion as the philosopher child.

As she suckled on her mother, the volition of the sea, the philosopher child embraced the light of her father's wisdom as a vessel of beauty that all across all lands and in heaven adored to see.

As a gift of divine creation, the philosopher child, as written, taking form, a sage for humanity, was intended for she. The princess of innocence also loved her little sister and brother with the tenderness that is so special as she.

Upon reaching the age of wonder, her father fashioned a chariot for her to ride, so that where ever she were to travel, she could stand on ethics and scruples and not false pride. Her mother gave her horses the spirit of her volition so to pull their child across many unknown tides where on the chariot their child would be safe from contempt, dismay, envy and lost lives.

The philosopher child crossed the lands of question, where deep in its valley of many masks, politicians made laws of convenience, allowing one to wear many as one could, impromptu, they could choose to decide. She saw, that there, things could be fashioned for popularity where the vital balance of nature, being ignored, was foolishly thought not to reside.

But where ever she traveled, her father as the Sun, her mother the sea, felt safe that their daughter the sage as the philosopher child would learn the cost for compassion, and as wisdom would fill her heart so to eventually bless humanity with its redemption, with her kindness that was deep inside.

One day the princess arrived at the dark forest where the midst was thick and deep.  Creatures started to show from everywhere and reached out to hail her arrival. They said - please step down off your chariot, so to join us, as up there you are so far way and hard for us all to see as we are so low to the ground where the earth barely allows us to be.

In the kindness of her heart of compassion, trusting when she did, they then replied, that you are no better than me. The foxes chuckled in grin as making her feel as if she had to apologize for being the philosopher child. They stole her chariot and wasted her horses who cried out in fear in their terror; but yet not to be heard over all the panacea and glamour afforded in the foxes swift tide. The foxes insisted that their familiarity with her was not a contemptible form of their false pride.

In making her way across treacherous lands, she wondered deep in the dark forest wishing to make peace with all. But each who she met could only offer her the blindness of their limitations and deceit where calling it truth and where she, if to wish acceptance, was not given a choice to decide.

This tore into her father’s heart, as being the Sun he could barley shine as years of this went by. His beautiful philosopher child had suffered the evils of pedestrian false pride. The child’s mother, being the sea, wept as wanting once again to offer to suckle her with the vital elixir of life the way it use to be.

But the creatures of the dark forest, as ruthless as they were crafted to be,  had already poisoned her with the devils blood, as it hardened her veins unless she continue to drink just to have a peaceful blur of the memories in her mind’s eye. This is while many after taking what they wished from her would then cast easily her aside.

As a great dragon her father took form to swoop down from the heavens, when she could find no longer any quarter, so as to lead her to the great tree.

Here he said is the tree of life, where the archetypes as the branches and leaves you can relearn to see. Care for the matriarch as she has always loved you; respect this sacred ground and as a place of refuge, you can always return to, to rest, protected and safe from the world that still must be redeemed as you learn to rebalance the flow of your chi.

A little time past as all seemed to be relieved that the princess was now safe from treacherous beings,. But then on a clouded day a toad then did come by. Costumed as a monk with the guise of truth, sincerity and purity, he said - you are very pretty and do you remember me? We had met some time ago, but I have been away up till now  where some others must go. But explanations of my absence need not be.

He made her laugh. He made her feel light hearted as saying, lean on me. Forget all else, as all you need to see is just me. Whatever you wish to say, need not worry as I will fill in the words for you; and if you need to lie to get by, just remember that you can rationalize it as why should you really care why. In this way you can be as care free as me he did say, and I will teach you cunning facades, as there is really no upside in truth, and especially when you do not want to pay when you only want just to get by. Praise Buddha as I say to fools, as then they let me just slip by.

I will show you how in my own way in how I adore you. I will put pictures of you everywhere for all to see. I will hail how great you are and that you actually belong to, and then make sure to associate you for the legitimacy of me.  

We will have a future you and me, the way I had with others before, but as I have hollowed their souls, and with no longer their money, they have become to bore me.

But rest assured, you are different, and you are special in being brand new. For this we can have a future, but you will need to pay for it now, as currently I am a pulpier in practicing as being my own form of monk. But once I was rich as I can easily claim that again someday I could be. Perhaps Iwill pay you back then, but let’s see.

But you need not question anything I say, but just drink the devils elixir regardless if it blackens your veins. Then magically I will appear as that special prince for your eyes in their blur will to see.  Do not question me, as in handing your fate so cheaply to over, I am the only one to now approve of thee.

That tree of life, he said, must be really nice.  I hear the matriarch is a brittle as can be. Perhaps she will crack before too long where then you will give it all to me. I have stayed here and there, and now as your prince should you not offer me this place to now reside.  After all it is yours isn’t it, and you should express your rights. Do not worry as pettiness is acceptable way of life, and I want to carve that tree in the vain image of me.  Sacred what, family who, roots of you?  All this means nothing to suit the convenience of me. You should not regard these things as being as important to you as me.

Cast everything that had meant something to you before aside. It is now time for you to make all the room for me. I will give you everything you need, so don't worry. As I promised before to others, as long as you seem novel and new you will be able to laugh every day. This is the happiness which you can count on from me.  

The philosopher child’s mother did weep in seeing this toad to claim to be a prince.  Her tears as the sea awoke the child’s  father once again.   As the winged dragon he then swooped down once more from the heavens. With fury in his eyes he said, they who trespass these sacred grounds, the fire of my breath will incinerate. No mediocrity will pass unto these sacred grounds. This you can be assured, that in awakening my fury, your life then will mean little to me.  

Deep down inside, although wishing to ignore a pulsing tone, the princess being the philosopher child could in her dreams hear as she slept her soul speak - what has happened to thee?  Oh nobly born have you forsaken everything in life that heaven has written for you to be. Be fooled not by the toad of warts, as he can only be a prince of fools and not worthy of thee. Have the courage and strength to come back to the divine and shimmering form that you use to be.

Have faith as you can be the great sage, the elegant thinker where your beauty is assured. True princes will then kneel one after another to offer their hand in marriage to thee.

Make no excuse, as all can wait except for the matriarch for thee,  and be 49 days in solitude with your loving father and mother as the transformation of thee.  

Be removed from the trash that has subjected thee. Eight of these days are first required to free you from the devils blood. This is so your heart once again can start pumping again the true spirit of volition that your mother had meant for thee. Use the remaining of the days for your rest, repose, solace and contemplation where in the land of no demands no pressure is put on thee. You can face your mirrors so once again to recognize the cherished roots that compose thee.

Oh nobly born fear not and come into the light of wisdom of your loving father who in his tender love has untangled your matted snarls of your life before.  

Allow the volition of spirit of your mother to once again suckle thee. In this time, in self reflection then you can become reborn again, and transformed, the philosopher child, as divine in being, to bless humanity in the scripture you write that the heavens will then publish for thee.  

All across the earth will gather then to be blessed by the warmth of the shimmering light of thee.  Great princes that are destined to be great kings, who, in having searched before everywhere, they  will know then where to find thee.
JL Smith Aug 2018
Tonight, my tires traced the highway
I pulled over after missing my exit
Sidelined, I sat there
As the breeze through my window
Raised the hairs along my skin
And at once, it hit me
In that moment
Fear overcame bravery
Maybe you broke me
And there's no self-help book
To relearn how to let someone love me

© JL Smith
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2016
<>

Every summer, I relearn a new language.
Every winter, it departs for warmer climes,
Its charms and naked arms,
Its own alphabet,
Clean forget.

Multi-lingual in the summer's peculiar
One language, one aleph bet,
With a mega-millions of dialects,
Know them all, cold,
know them all, hot.

I speak Woman.

Summer is soft, shapely, sweet,
Clean, bare, lush in a sparse way,
And Woman is spoken thusly.

There are no harsh sounds,
Guttural exclamations, nein!

I speak Woman.

There is no ugly in the summer.
Ugly being an ugly word.  
It cannot exist in an atmosphere of
Sun, greenery, sand, carefree days,
vacations, no school, no ways
Is there ugliness in any woman of the summer?

You could take this writ many places.
Most of them wrong,
So sputtering sexist or other labeling words,
Makes you ugly and wrong.

Could not give a good *******,
In the summer of 2013,
There should be no ugly, no prejudice.

In any summer,,
There should be no ugly, no prejudice at all.

Long past my primal,
I still speak Woman
With almost perfect fluency,
Au naturel,
Naturellement, à la française.

Gym clothes, denim short shorts, yoga pants gone mad,
A-line skirts swishing in the breeze,
High, god, so high the heels,
Flats clip clopping, flips flip flopping,
Stilettos making love craters,
All over my heart, like a surgeon doing good work.

It is the bare arms and the fluorescent, mint stripe hints of
Summer Cleavage, the short skirts,
Body hugging one piece fabrics,
stretching from here to down there
That do not hint.

The shoulder strap of the underthings,
Asking, commanding me to
Wonder where these paths lead...

Even the light shoulder wrap,
Casual over bare shoulders slung,
A late night elegance that mocks me,
Like gift wrapping over a
Smile demure, a teasing blindfold...

All these say:

Write us poetry in our very own tongue of
Woman.

Will oblige.

I curve with curve of the *****,
Invert geometry of the S arc of the waist,
Mystifying, how it is the designed place
For my hands to grasp, never failing...never letting me fall

The crayola musical colors of flesh variations,
Boggle the senses...
How can
Tan and pale,
Dark and Light
Have so many
Symphonic variations?

Adagio, slow and leisurely, a pas de deux
For two eyes, following ******* by eyes sparkling,
Timpani crashing heart and thunderous pulse quickening,
Violin heart crying out, joyous wailing need and desire sparking.

Just as Byron wrote:

"Music arose with its voluptuous swell,"

Yeah, just swell,
a voluptuous sea swell.

Well,
Enough.

My eloquence is a poor instrument to portray my
Fluency.

Early May man glorious loves life,
Late July, sadder man,
Knowing  the summer foliage colors will soon, fall-fade,
Come August, my vocabulary, already diminishing.

But
Never forget
how to say in the language of Woman, this:

Without you,
I am nothing,
With you,
I am more than everything.


Tho I can no longer say it well,
It is is still true and
Beyond belief.

My one true language of love
In a world gone mad.


August 2013 ~ July 2016 - May 2017
First posted here on August 22, 2013
Edited July, 2016, May 2017
themotionless May 2014
Can we start over?
Can we be strangers again?
Let me introduce myself
We can laugh and talk
And relearn what we already know
And come up with new inside jokes
And create new memories
And give each other
A second chance.
Omnis Atrum Sep 2013
A lachrymose ebullition,
unable to be muffled by its producer,
is postulated idiosyncratic,
and erupts behind locked doors of each abode.  

Remembrance trailing each hastily inhaled sob
of each adolescent informed of responsibility,
and of how appearances are more important
than actualities,
but not the stones it chains to their feet,
nor how they must repress sentiment.

If the building blocks of Stonehenge
were to frolic and wriggle voluntarily,
what force would fight the gravity
always pressing downwards on those below,
from collapsing the entire structure?

Without convenience to focus on sentiment
the neglected portion of our humanity
congeals until it can no longer be contained,
until it metastasizes from heart to brain.

Until the bulldozer rolls through you without resistance,
to create a more scenic landscape,
or else,
a multistoried parking garage for others to leave
their possessions they do not require at the moment.

Inaudible to distracted passers-by
wrapped up in their causeries,
of the scores of their preferent Colosseum teams,
or else,
sensational stories relayed by jovial faces
from the teleprompter directly to their subconscious.

This outburst,
anticipated to reverberate only within the confines
of the relative safety of this shelter,
until the sound waves of each echo
slowly
lose
momentum.

Who could be expected to hear each cog,
slowly being worn down,
while hidden within a working machine?

When those that convince the populace
that their lament will be heard and mended
urgently cram currency into their ear canals
when their position has allowed their own
muffled cries to cease.

This begs a question from the masses.
A question, muffled, and without words.
Each raised hand stretched upwards
as the inattentive teacher ignores,
causes another hand to reach skyward.

This populace never intended for their own
whimpers to be heard,
not heard, but heeded.
While the torment of their tear filled convulsions
bulldozes through them,
not heeded, but auscultated.

Yet, these proceedings were never attended.

Not even by those same
that attempt to muffle their own ebullition
within the sound-proofed walls of the shelters
that they conceal themselves in.

Each, alone, quietly succumbs to the pressures
of waiting out
jovial sentiment with uncomfortable contentment.
Waiting,
to not exhale each murmur,
but to consume the promises they are fed
by those same whose ears are plugged with green,
until the protecting walls grow bars
and all are provided with solitary confinement.

Until it is only logic that guides the thought
that each is truly and irreversibly alone.

Until all are singled out in their struggles,
until they are uncomfortable recognizing
that they exist.

Until, separately, each attempts to smooth
their worn edges,
as to not break down the machine.
To hide the nicks that they have endured
lest they should cause,
a momentary lapse,
in productivity.

Each gear is further deformed
by this bending and contorting,
as the fear of protest causes them
to endure the pressure of warping
to try to fit a position
that they were not molded for.

Until they believe that unrepressed sentiment
has been made illegal,
and that unmuffled voices
will only cause more harm.

Yet, there are those that hear,
and heed,
and auscultate,
each muffled cry.
Each weeping convulsion,
and the pressure caused by keeping them in.

For those,
each turn they make within the machine,
is made with the sole purpose
of removing mufflers.

Until each muffled sentiment is uninhibited,
moved by the tsunami of a zeitgeist,
and ascends toward the empyrean.
Until each cultural center covered by a filter
inverts the filter's position
to collect sentiment from the base,
and send the congealed, concentrated,
neglect of humanity to the precipice.

Each syllable combining with the next,
working in unison,
as those that participate in primal dances,
to take a new form.

Not even those that release this unmuffled sentiment
know the form this conglomeration will adopt,
but it will move from one coast to the next.
A tidal wave of tears that will push
from one corner of humanity to the next,
until we again understand that it is acceptable
to feel our pain in unison.

So that we can begin to make progress
on the alterations that are necessary to the machine.
So that we are once again able to produce something,
besides awkward struggle.
So that we can stand on the highest precipice
of every unmuffled sentiment,
with unimpeded hope that one day we may relearn how
to hear, and heed, and auscultate,
happiness in unison.
Eliana Dec 2013
I sit here, at the edge of my bed
Stooped over my feet for these long minutes
As I make butterfly knots of the laces
Pulling loops, in and out
Dust rises as the cords relearn their ductility
My tugging leaves friction burns on my hands

My combat boots have missed my feet
I wish the same could be said in reverse
But though I luxuriate in the sheer strength of them
Their weight does not lend my legs vitality
For they do not belong to me
My combat boots are yours

I rise and take my first step
The heavy sound makes me turn my head in search
Though I know I will not find you
As I find my stride, my feet swing easier
And I feel the impact against my ribs
Where once combat boots had broken them

I walk on, meeting soldiers on the way
I see their boots dragging them onward, downward
You are calling them to you
My feet pull me towards the chasm
And death, where you await me
Your smile a broken promise of forever

I yearn to break into a run
I know not which direction; escape or reunion
But still my boots weigh on my steps
And I cannot fly, for flying is escape
If I wanted to flee from you
I would not be wearing combat boots
Diane K Pak Nov 2021
Someone was told me that the sounds of our friendship was the adventures of a lifetime.

It wasn’t until I unlearn the possibilities of wrestling with today’s truth and lies.

Becoming a wreck in the ship was like becoming ooh hey and now it’s time to walked away without saying our goodbyes in time and let it dies down and fly.

My heart had to relearn of our hidden secrets which relies on an unseen, understanding, and uncompromising situationships.

The real reality wasn’t accelerating the acceptance of what it could’ve been if we were to ace of what we’re to ready to face it.

It was actually facing of what are the ways of what we’re dealing of our ourselves in tiny pieces.
#e
When I was young,
fairy tails filled my head.
And I could be a lost boy,
Fighting captain hook.
I was never the princess.  

When I was young,
Playing was all I did,
but I climbed up trees,
and splashed in streams,
never touching Barbie dolls.

I was a boy back then.
It wasn’t till I grew,
that I became a lost boy.
Was it when the boys stop playing with me?
Was that when I broke inside?

Lost in a world,
In a world not made for lost boys.
So I let them put makeup on me.
I let them buy me dresses.
I pretend to fancy other boys.

Lost my true self,
But hints of him were there.
He was smart and
He was brave,
He was imbedded within her.

But as he grew,
She saw him,
She heard him calling her.
Save me, find me.
We are a lost boy.

I am a lost boy,
but its not pirates I’m fighting.
I’m fighting to be just a boy.
One who is a boy,
No matter what they say.

I am a lost boy.
One who is reclaiming what they took.
Reclaiming my body.
I must relearn to be a boy.
Just a boy.

This lost boy cut his hair,
hides his *******.
He stands tall and proud.
Because he knows,
He is a boy.

I am a boy.
It doesn’t matter what you say.
I know what I am.
So I will return from Neverland,
And wave goodbye to my lost boy
Inspired by the song - Lost Boy by Ruth B
Alyanne Cooper Jun 2014
The plan was
(Perfect)
To grow up,
(Ideal)
Find love,
(Dreamy)
Settle down,
(Hopeful)
Have kids,
(Heartwarming)
Grow old,
(Long-term)
Still love,
(Perfect)
Die happy.

But life happens and
Plans become
(Unexpected)
Survive,
(Guarded)
Rebuild,
(Solitary)
Relearn,
(Stressful)
Reconstruct,  
(Sacrificing)
Revitalize,
(Inspiring)
Thrive,
(Satisfying)
Live.
gwen Sep 2014
breathing underwater has become a learned activity

those that you know but you never grasp fully

and if you do not hold it properly

it will

s
      l
              i  
                 p

from your grasp,

t
                                u
            m
             ­            b
l
                                             i
                   n
g

back to the arid land

that is my chest.


*

everyday I relearn the art

of breathing underwater

some days are more successful than others

others I drown in my relentless tears

others still, I succumb to the numbness in my leaded limbs

following blindly the static in my vision
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2016
i started smoking cigarettes
with my ex fiancé (olé!),
after i started smoking ****,
aged 21,
i was so anti smoke
that i remember my tobacco stink
clothes being aired
after a night out at the disco (ha ha,
oldie, discotheque quack -
albeit disco tech', not disco phi reek
of sweat and elongating cheese limp
limbs doing the dance of pharaonic
irony to banana ram boom bomb la la lamb),
so i moved to the quickie of all addictions,
as one jazz fem soul said:
a cigarette is the most satisfying dissatisfaction,
in a span of five minutes...
so i see the young poets mention coffee...
where's the cigarette though?
oh right, you left it at the gym, on the treadmill
along with don quixote? i bet.
so i started smoking aged 21...
vocally i went from angelic soprano
among the mule smog thickening over cities
to a personal base baritone of a personalised
exhaust engine...
but when i reached the reach of the rhapsodic
thespian choking on his own ***** of
un-originality i started sounding like darth vader
playing the didgeridoo -
i know the smokers' cough tuberculosis,
but lack of nicotine does that,
and active ingredient missing, head spinning
carousel of carbon monoxide...
as they say... take in the carbohydrates...
off the top of my head nietzsche said:
god is dead... yep... true that, esp. now...
and the replacement? diet...
centimetres of calorie intake:
drain the fat from yoghurt and fix it up
with sugar tax...
you do that while i relearn brushing
my teeth, once a day,
with a pea sized dollop of fluoride paste,
~20 seconds of brush and rinsing,
my teeth don't look like worthy of
twice a year visit to the dentist to get the nicotine
stains off my mandible bones - clean as norwegian
rain... shame the beetles didn't write a song
about norwegian rain of acid, export from
old coal england on the industrial complex
pacified without a warring-industrial complex just yet,
awaiting u.s.a.
otherwise it's a compositional irony,
i like walt whitman, i do, i like ****-****** literature,
but then walter becomes pompous bombastic
when writing about a *******: the damnation
of all homosexuals: i.e. writing about prostitutes -
spare the details of your identity... tell me
the parts where you squeezed the orange out
into goose pimpled juice.
nic Sep 2012
there will come a day
when father time will grow
jealous of us and
the fireflies will
turn off their glow

when the diamonds
wont seem so precious
and all the joys
of this world will
seem foolish and low
and i will have to
let you go
dear mama

sometimes i make you laugh
just to hear the joys
youve stopped showing
on your face

to breath your
attempts to cough up
your worries and drown
in my love

to watch you unfold
at the ends and
sease to be held in
at your seams

there will come a day
when everything
i have ever said to you
will flutter off like a thousand
butterflies in a storm
and my actions
will weigh heavier
than the 98 pounds
they've made of me
dear mama

i know i wont be able
to hold your stare
for as long youve held
my hand but im hoping
the seconds i've been given
havent already carved
a gourge in your daylight
since you recieved
me in place of a son

instead of building
a doll house of regrets
i vow to keep the
reality of your name true

wont glorify the time
you tried to spill
yourself in the wind
with the barrel of a
police issued gloc
because the shock
of your babies moving away
too much of a trigger

bet i let the ringing
of unfired suicide rounds
bounce off every new york city
sidewalk slab i've chased
in an attempt to
run from myself

when i left you
know that i held
the crotchet needles
you made my baby blanket
with in my chest
had the day
of your second stroke
in my heart

and the only way
i could release them was to
shed my skin under the chin
of a brooklyn boarding house
so dont frown at the anatomy
of a new york city skyline
just know it offered
the shoulders i needed
at that moment

when father time
grew jealous of us
and the fireflies turned
off their glow
i grew a light of my own
dear mama

something happened
between me watching you
relearn how to walk
around the same time
i learned to
double knot my tennis shoes

when everyone assumed
my ignorance was bliss
and let the brilliance
in your bones become
as black as night
without ever noticing
i was afraid of the dark

what have these years
done to us?
to make me bloom
in the bright of day
while baking the stalk
that is you
i cant stand to watch
you wither
wont you shine too
dear mama
Emma Brigham Sep 2018
One month from today could be
your birthday.
In one month we could meet each other
for the first time.
Maybe in one month
I will be on all fours like an animal
and I’ll scream you into the world
and you’ll stop being just a dream.
You are a product of me,
within me.
You are mine
You are not mine
You will always be mine.
Through ripened flesh
and viscera you will unfold,
purple and milky,
bursting through a darkness,
limbs released into your father’s arms,
squeezed and wrinkled,
bright with pain,
having to relearn what it means
to be alive.
T Zanahary Dec 2012
Stuck in this burning nightscape
knees replacing feet as
trees combine protection
and inevitable regression
to some beast's detection,
it's a call of mayday
to belay
the nights bereaved.

I missed the days
when fathers lay silent
in their posturing prose,
I missed the day
when fathers play, silent
in their organized rows.
I missed the day
when time took its lull
and silently stood still.

Now it's dropping me
in hallowed peace,
sacred work
left taming beasts.
And women need
their reason to seethe
last thought as
I'm lacking
air to breath.

Too bad I see
that vacuum piece,
or else I'd let
you ****** me.
But now they've named it
Suicide,
this fading high
on which I ride,
leaving this world
to ensure
I get
the girl,
leaving this life
tattooed with knives,
blades too dull for her taste,
to provide the tears she's cried.

And tears become oceans
growing from puddles
to seize hold of perception,
I'm stuck riding through motions,
salt water potions
growing devotion,
single drop notions
exposing the quotient
that U plus i equals,
but the answer's
chosen a different formulation,
and me and you
are dividing all we have
so we don't have to remove
our individuality any longer,
so we are an individual
duality no longer,
so I have to hold back
this duality no longer,
and my mental reins
no longer deal with the strain
of convincing you I'm another.
It seems as though the Sun's daughter
couldn't stand me any stronger.

The troubled nature of
how we'd come to be a
singularity was the very story
holding my prosperity,
from death to life,
I brought naught strife
but adventure, just matters
on what perspective you use.
And my third eye prism
made it seem as though
the Moon's daughter
found a life with
a demigod a bother.

Life had gotten boring riding the backs of these gluttons,
so she thought it about time to release the dogs
and left me hounded by a mind forgetting all the swine,
left The Year of the Rat with its hands tied firm 'gainst its back

Now she's singing in Spanish
of past lives' damages,
using dialects unfamiliar
and languages unheld,
words not understood
but meaning seeping through,

so I take away
to let her relapse,
releasing thought patterns
to comprehension of all but her
and the language which makes dreams.
Sleeping,
let her switch back
to those dreams which make the words we use,
the dreams which make the words we abuse,
dreams which make the worlds we peruse
to relearn languages.

We're screaming at each other again
birthing hatred from ideals left on skin,
and I let her draw with knife's edge,
still dull as memory serves its purpose,
from that swelling source named inspiration.
I left here to let her this hedge,
separating us through this break
I can't go back to giving in,
I can't relapse to my begin.

Too far gone
we're born in mangers
and to this day
gifted by strangers
gold borne of silver, china
topped by the latest craze.
But you are missing the noose
floating alongside sheepskin hangers
as we're falling from the rafters
they helped us hang from.
morgan Dec 2013
can we start over?
can we be strangers again?
let me introduce myself
we can laugh and talk
and relearn what we already know
and come up with new inside jokes
and create new memories
and give each other
another chance

((mg))
Àŧùl May 2013
As you study zoology further you will come to relearn that veins bring blood back to the lungs,
Across the kingdom animalia & a few others including Aves & Reptilia, Mammalia & Chordata,
From lungs the re-oxygenated blood is re-pumped around the body by our rhythmic heartbeats.

In my body it's a bit different I guess, yes it's different!

Your name has crept up my veins and I just feel your Kreepy name sounding with every heartbeat.

:)
My HP Poem #241
©Atul Kaushal
india Jan 2014
let me tell you something i’ve come to realize over the short span of my lifetime and every day relearn over and again. people are all the same. at the end of the day, when the doors are closed and lights turn off. we are all humans searching and wondering and messing up every second. it isn’t just this generation. it isn’t just you. humans have been doing it since the beginning and will keep doing it. it’s in our nature. we all are insecure and trying too hard to fit it. we do it as children. looking up to someone and trying to be like them. we get so caught up in worrying about other people’s thoughts about us. no one takes a moment to imagine the person next to them feels the exact same. we compare and contrast our skin tones and body sizes. trying to squeeze into a one size fits all mold. who told us that person you are trying to be is better than who you are. most of the time no one has to. we take it upon ourselves to pick out flaws. we cover it the best we can. hoping no one will look to close. we never let anyone in. we shut out any light that might show our mistakes. we are all afraid of not being wanted. so we pretend we don’t care at all. we are all hoping for someone to come charging in and break down every barrier. but with everyone waiting, nobody is doing. immobilized by fear of being rejected. we play it safe. anyone who is too comfortable in their own skin is labeled. annoying. obnoxious. vain. brash. egoistical. stuck up. only by jealously for those who have what we don’t. we are all running in this cycle that we can’t stop. wanting to be confident, hoping someone will show us our beauty, hating those who realize they are. we want, hope and hate. sometimes our whole lives. just like the deluded thought of ideal beauty, we have an ideal person. that person who’ve been waiting on to make everything better. well i have a news flash. you don’t have to wait for this person. no the very person who is going to change you into the masterpiece who’ve always wanted to be is here. they’ve been waiting a long time for you to realize it too. that ideal person is you. yes you could roll your eyes or shake your head in annoyance. but the only person who knows every wall you built up, every flaw you keep concealed is yourself. you’ve wrested with self-imagine too long now. it doesn’t matter if someone told you how beautiful you were every day. would you believe them. would you smile and brush it off. it wouldn’t matter how many people or how many times. if you don’t believe it yourself. don’t give up now and think it will never happen. it can and it will. with one nice thought about yourself at a time. one nice thought about others too. you will find happiness when others are happy. you can slowly show the things you’ve hidden away. it will be hard. but it’s a mountain you’re climbing and you’re reaching the top. don’t be afraid to smile at ones who don’t at you. surprisingly one day they might have the guts to smile back too. little by little you are taking down the walls and in the process others will start to notice. stay unfazed by the whispers or stares. people are always jealous by what they don’t have and you got it. you have something they don’t have. an ideal person. you have become your own.

*i.c.d
if you read this whole thing, bless you.
Céline Oct 2014
Can we start all over again?

Let me introduce myself.

We can laugh and talk,
We can fall into desperate curiosity of one another
Again
Relearn what we already know
And give each other
a second chance.
vail joven Aug 2016
to the first girl i loved;

it still pains me to refer to you as that - the girl i loved first. i feel like so much pain lies in a single phrase; it's such a thing of the past yet there's something so infinite about it

there are so many things i wish i knew from the start like how a simple string of words like the first ones of this letter could hollow me out even more,

like how the pain of you leaving me was so indescribable yet so vivid and striking,

like how love can be so fulfilling yet be so incredibly, indefinitely, and intensely emptying,

like how hard it is to relearn how to sleep, and that when i do learn it, relearn the art of not dreaming about you,

however, i felt like there was something so inevitable about us that it was too obvious to ignore

there is no denying that between two lovers, there will always be one who ends up giving too much, emptying themselves to fill the other, the one who ends up loving more

i knew from the start that i was going to be the one who ended up losing my heart to a girl who wouldn't let me into hers

i'm sorry i expected, i'm sorry i gave you something you never really wanted

__

to you;

i'm sorry that i can't bring myself to reply to your letters

it's not that i'm selfish or that i'm ignoring you; i just don't want to inflict you more pain when pain was all i ever gave to you

it is true, i guess, that you loved me more but i'm sorry you're left with that mindset. i wish i could tell you that one day, you'd find your equilibrium and that i'm sorry it wasn't me.
Emily K Fisk Jan 2017
Read more.
Words are the map fragments of wisdom you need to navigate your way in a world constantly sending you searching for that which you don’t yet have a name.

Write more.
And don’t keep it to yourself.  Your voice deserves to be heard too so scream in cursive and whisper in all CAPS, bleed through paper and heal through the spines of notebooks
you’re spiraling onto something, breathe in commas and step over periods because you’re not over
you’re the most beautiful run-on sentence

paint more.
You’re an artist whose perspective warrants an audience,
so leave cerulean fingerprint traces in your titanium touches,
mix gesso with mars and be alizarin against charcoal

stand out. And stand up.

Find adventure in the every day.  Skydive through small talk, zip line through steps up stairs without an end,
life is the ellipses in silences your eyes seek to make stories,

explore.
This world. People. This city you’ve landed yourself and take calculated risks.

Tiptoe through moshpits and stomp through meadows.
Cartwheel into concrete conversations headfirst eyes wide open,

be vulnerable, to those who deserve to see the rawest parts of you.
And leave the ones who’d rather exploit them behind

leave others’ opinions behind.  Let them be the ones collecting dust.
You are stronger than you’ll ever know and ten-fold what they’d ever expect.

So let them guess.
Be the question mark in the corner they can’t place.

Your story is complicated.  But that makes you interesting.
What doesn’t challenge you doesn’t change you and you’ve been challenged each and every day

you get out of bed and speak when so easily you could’ve lost your voice the night you lost your body.
It took you some time and a few nameless faces to claim it again and you’re still working out what that means,
you’ve always had your own way
but all the ****** assault pamphlets name this normal.

[For once it’s a label you don’t detest.]

So this year be normal if you so choose, but also be weird.
Be loud, not small, be confident, and not sorry.
Take up space.
You deserve to.

You are Woman and you are Strong.

Push, but don’t ever shove.
Love unapologetically and fiercely.
But don’t force what a boy is not willing to give.

Find someone who will pay your heart the same attention he does your body.
Scratch that,
find yourself.

Read your body’s brail, your chapters of goosebumps, and play chess with checkers across your skin.
Unlearn and relearn and unlearn and learn to remember you are enough and it is your turn.

Look in the mirror and accept the pieces looking back are in progress.

Keep writing.

Watch the moon make way for the sun. Be brighter than both.
Let your irises draw constellations across galaxies unwritten.
Move so far forward, you stop having a reason to look back.

Forgive that which you cannot change.
You’ll make more mistakes, scrape more knees and trip on chainlink chokers, your jewelry limbs you haven’t yet untangled.
But forgive yourself.

Kiss the boy. Kiss the girl. Kiss no one.
Live in the present tense and with future declaratives.
Appreciate the thousands of little moments still looking to be made yours. Make them yours.

You are worth all the struggle.  Don’t forget.

Be kind but don’t rewind.  
Stay authentic even when you don’t make sense and your words aren’t oil enough to separate

paddle through the waves eyes closed if you have to,
the salt may burn your scars and you may lose your bearings, but keep going.
Maybe this is the year you’re going to learn to swim.
in progress because aren't we all unfinished
Jeremy Betts Feb 2018
All I know is monsters
All I see is a cold world that gets darker as the *** stir's
The future blurs to a point its so obscure it's not yours
Can't seem to stop words from causing me to go backwards
Maybe I need to go back and relearn like toddlers in diapers
There's no cures
All the fibers of my being are withering away like dead flowers
Retreating like cowards
The more I try the worse I fail, a living hell, crunch the numbers
I've done the math, a chalk board full of blunders
Nightmares occurring with my eyes wide shut
It's more then a rut
A candidate to win? Nope, I have a losing ballot
No safety blanket and no bright colors on my pallet
Hollow and cryptic
Revisit the past like I'm stuck to it with a rivet
This isn't just unfortunate it's inadequate
Chew off my arm to be free or just cannibalistic
Can I even resist it?
This dark army that I have enlisted
For to long happy never even existed
And you wonder why I tend go ballistic...
Man, **** this ****!

©2018
Jeremy Betts Feb 2018
You already know I could twist your mind like sprite did with a lemon and lime
And all it would take is the right line and the wickedest rhyme to pull you from the time you thought you were doing just fine
But nope, now you're lost in a reality as dark as mine, no shine, just grime
A slime you can't rinse off, you'll wince as you feel it intertwine and become part of your spine
An evil design, your whole being now redefined
By then it's to late to hit stop and you can't rewind, the seeds already been planted down  deep inside
Any bit of good has died, drowned out by a vicious, unnatural high tide
That there, that's the evil carnival ride
I've spied on those deepest fears that you've tried to hide
Oh how you've tried and tried to hide proof of their existence but you've lied
And you can't do that to me I'm afraid, no reason thought that you should be afraid
However, I already know that you are, I've followed the trail that you've laid
Small fears leading to large fears, some riddled with the tears you've made
The years that have strayed, the thoughts that stayed, leaving you to feel betrayed and to your dismay, here I am holdin' 'em in your face, like a winning *****
Ooooh how fear can cut deeper then the sharpest blade and aid in the all out raid
A massacre masquerade brought by a frayed being formally thought to be slayed
No blockade can keep me out when I've already seen inside, peeked through the blinds
I've seen the outlines, seen what you keep in the deepest confines, in the darkest corners it hides
A little whisper here, a short memory there is all it takes, so quickly it reminds
And draws clear lines in the sand, come to the dark side and find that it's nice over here, you may even enjoy the ride
But it looks like your little ***** have shriveled up and dried like cow hide
Left with only a plan that life denied...and your pride
But that will only provide a cockeyed stride derived from never seeing an upside
So learn to say **** it and avoid that toxified landslide
Stand here alongside me and get your mind clarified
Create your own chaos, inject a little  genocide
Post up curbside or on a hillside to watch the world burn
I know you've yearned for this your whole life, well now, it's your turn
Your life has been a pattern so let's break the mold and never return
Let me be your lantern to guide you away from the molten hot iron
Don't concern yourself with this trend, a path that's so modern
Society needs the savage people to return, don't be so ******' stubborn
Let's relearn these trates and earn your spot in history before you reach the urn
Just a little shift in alliance, embrace defiance and use it as guidance
You've taken the licks now break the silence, it's your turn for violence
What do you mean it doesn't make sense? Don't show your ignorance
Frozen in a defeated stance shooting me a confused, wide eyed glance
**** yo, now's your chance to stand in the inzone doing your own victory dance
Stumbling upon me this very moment I can gerentee wasn't by chance
No coincidence, something this life altering isn't happenstance
I'm here to shake you out of your trance and show you a new entrance
Here, I'll even hold the door open, all you have to do is walk through and advance
Come oooon, you want it back, I can see it, cut the act, I don't believe it
Grow a sack, you're gonna need it, but since you lack you won't achieve it
Look, I can't force you to do ****, that I'll admit
But only a nit wit would look at what I've laid out and not grab hold of it
Just try it out a bit and if you don't feel it we can turn it back lickidy-split
I'm gonna be honest, I can promise that until you try it I'm not fittin' to quit
People that know me woud say that I'm a stubborn ****

But I don't walk through.
I ignore the swift, slick little voice. It's not new.
There has been a few times I did, one or two....
Right, one or two dozen maybe and if I only knew.
If I only knew in the long run what those decisions would do...
I guess I would have nothing to write, nothing to say to you

©2018
Hana Mar 2013
That day I had to relearn how to breathe again,
Differently; I had to know what it was like before you,
What it’s like to carry a freshly cut wound;
Delicate; everywhere with me.

That day I had to relearn to walk again,
Straight, without checking any recent messages
Not tripping upon a memory stricken in midday
Seeing everything around me through new eyes;
that somehow everything does not relate to what you like and how you were.
Relearning how to be me again.
To stop from having to ask about you.
Refrain myself from caring and worrying.
To learn how to manage my time better,
to fill the living void inside of me,
Realizing that as from today..
You are not a part of me.

That day I had to remind myself that sugar did not make my coffee sweeter.
That coffee has always been bitter.
That day I had to remind myself that the day was longer;
That the ticks of the clocks were slower.

That day was a miraculous rebirth of a new entity
A new mind, a new set of rules and priorities
You became the change in me;
As I was the change in you.
And I shall give you that part of me,
That part who gave herself to you.
You can have her.
Though she might not retain in your mind much long.
You ought to know that she still has a profound respect towards you.
Elizabethanne Nov 2020
-
you relearn coming home

-

You find out how it tastes different
From when you were a little girl
(It’s far less rust tinged these days)

You name everything inside of you
anger or shame
So you never have to look to closely at the hurt
(It's mostly pretending you are something other than empty)

You relearn steady in chaos
you can still patch up
****** gaping holes with shaking hands
Lies leave your mouth faster
Than anyone has time to get the safety off

You relearn two faced
that one you never really let go of
it feels the same as it always did
Like a party trick you could never stop preforming
because it isn’t one
You know liar
The game is you are almost always
Telling a truth



-  What does learning to come home mean; why is it the first place you learn to run from
Joseph Childress Nov 2010
Nyx
Dark sheets
Of night
Cover the sky
Preparing
The world for sleep
Pray
On the lord our souls to keep
Prey
On the lower, sold the sheep
To beasts
Lost shepherd
Of the weak
Heard the herd
Is preferred rare
We’re a rarity
In despair
The air answers all my prayers

Silently
Whispers to me

.just, don‘t fall asleep.

It always speaks
Quietly
Morse code
Cold remorse
It wont ****
But instead instills
A breeze that peaks
Over the window sill
I stand still
Feel the chills
It fills the ceil
Creates a seal…
The wind stays
To make me stay
Awake

It captured fate
Encapsulates
Then decapitates
What’s ahead
The future… evaporates
I gave away
Tomorrow’s day
Just to stay
Up

I Reached the skies
Left the life
And can’t relearn
How to return

To sleep…
In Greek mythology, Nyx was the primordial goddess of the night. A shadowy figure, Nyx stood at or near the beginning of creation, and was the mother of personified gods such as Hypnos (sleep) and Thánatos (death).
rsc Apr 2015
An uneasy knowing:
Hand on the doorknob,
Intuition hinting at what's
Through the keyhole.

Excuse me, while I
Make my way back to the womb
And coalesce into an egg once more.

I must relearn everything I was ever taught.

I must rethink everything I ever thought.

"My soul shall not be bought,"
Is a declaration not an "Oh, I ought to."
Tangled in some narrative, stuck like glue;
Convention is convention
Regardless of where it's acted out,
Chugging a cheap beer or slinging back a stout.

Let the wild eyed lemurs out!

Femurs shriek ****** ******,
Shin splits from sprinting to get coffee creamer.

Benz,
Bentley,
or
Beamer?

Out of place in small town USA,
But the monster makes itself the new normal.
Wear jeans to the semi-formal, but
The after party is her call.

To make the future or **** it all?
Is life an experiment or a free for all?
Is it neither? Is it nothing at all?

Squeezing the eyes out of a stress ball,
Touch pleasing thighs as the curtains draw...

Ka-caw! Ka-caw!
I am, I am a triumphant toucan!
Flapping wings flowing fluttery alchemy,
Making circles out of straight lines,
Crafting stories out of blank mind.

It comes in time, I guess,
The mess of me cleaning itself up gradually
Only to regress under sea level again
And again, becoming a canyon,
The slow deposition, the bearer of men.

Redheaded and clucking mother hen
Drinking hot water, honey, and lemon,
Patronizing old explorers like Magellan.

Tune into the past, oh sugar sweet one,
Inflicting beatings with flagellum,
Stealing treats and eating them,
Mountain peaks and chewing gum.

Puh-*** puh-***-***!
Our heads make good drums,
And our bleating makes good melodies.

Can you teach me the song of the trees?
Can we at least save the bees?

Nectarine mornings and small, knobby knees..
Mommy, please, put my hair in pig tails!
Pick up the worms off the sidewalk,
Watch out for the snails.

Lay me down into a hay bale;
I'll send you snail mail from
My heavenly little hell.

What's that smell;
My baby blanket or an ex-boyfriend
Lingering underneath my nose hairs?
In smoking scents do memories construct their lairs.

Do I have a care?
Do I have to care?
Is it a curse to be aware?
Is it a curse to think that, to dare?

Something fragile hangs in the air.

Teeth grind, sweaty night mares,
Water and oil, oh! What a pair.

Fingers uncoil from around your neck:
Slender ghostly feelers beckoning,

"Come destroy yourself with me."

Cast my body out to sea,
Playing saccharine melodies, but
Send my soul out separately.
Anon C Jan 2013
and when I were to return home
would you recognize the thing before you
long ago much confidence held
but now the years have eroded me down my friend
not that I am saying it is a bad thing
I rather like it if you ask
but I know you see a skeleton
an echo of a joyous soul past
I may look worn thin but really I swear...
I like myself
I just cannot open up the way I used to
and I cannot say or do the things I used to
so when you ask what is wrong
the reply would be nothing
but that I am not the same one I was six years ago
so learn to relearn me
and accept that if a friend in me you truly do find
that you will accept this phenomenon
Moving home soon. My friends will all wonder if something is wrong with me.
AP Mar 2015
A balloon cast astray by the wavering hand of a child
Who wishes to know the latex orb filled with helium can fly
But in the moment of segregation between the tips of his small fingers and the floating object's delicate string
He discovers regret for the first time in his short life
The feeling that will haunt him far past his young years and into adulthood
Yet, it's only in these latter years of his life
That he'll also discover he is envious of his abilities as a boy
For he could let go then, easier than ever
And today, he is forced to grasp his wife's bony fingers with a wrinkled hand of his own
As today, the only delicate strings in life are the wires and tubes that travel through her
In this moment he realizes he must travel back in time
To relearn how to release his balloon
As he wishes for nothing more than to let her fly in peace
But he doesn't possess the strength to watch her float away
A story of a man from his childhood, then into his late adulthood, as he realize's how children who can let go of balloons possess the most courage. He must let his dying wife pass, but he doesn't possess a child's ability to let go anymore.
Malachi Filius Oct 2012
We're all on the path
to self discovery
whether we're aware of it or not

Each day
brings forth
new lessons, new teachers, new light

It's up to us whether we
learn our lessons and pass our tests

and

It's up to us whether
we relearn the same lesson
again and again and again
disillusioned and hopeless

Alas!
there is no need to search anymore
for the "Guru"
the all knowing, all wise teacher of teachers

Every person, rock, tree and sea
that you see and pass by
has within them the knowledge
that you seek

You too, young, lost soul, are a Guru
blindly following your own path
influencing all that you encounter
teaching others
with open ears and eyes
all they need to know
about themselves,
the universe,
life,
unaware or not

A teacher you are

A Guru.
Àŧùl May 2019
I dislike referring to it as my accident,
'Cause of so many reasons and losses,
I just can't stop resenting the accident.

I lost my memory & I'm still fighting,
'Cause I first had to relearn speaking,
I retrain my legs – train for balancing.

The brain injuries even made me forget how to swim,
I miss swimming elegantly for long time stretches,
It's not something anyone would usually forget.
My HP Poem #1742
©Atul Kaushal

— The End —