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Yozhik Apr 2017
You stood upon that pedestal, an MIT degree
In math; a research doctor of psychiatry
As for why
you decided
to take interest in me
I had no idea.

I was a lab rat, my life exploded
But for some reason you devoted
Time to me-- from my place
It was insanity; just in case
You gave me a number
Said call
If anything
happens.

In a week and a hundred pills I called

Days later in the ICU I awoke
Very alive but thinking that I broke
My life into irrecoverable pieces

But for some reason you visited.
First you shook your head and said-- well you said
‘You took a lot of medication.’
But at the end of the conversation
You promised you’d check up
Again.

And then, that was when
As I thought I’d used my second chances
Thought my life had made it’s last advances
And all that was left was downhill
Having passed the pinnacle

You shook my hand, from that pedestal
And so matter-of-factly said,
‘You’re going to do well.’

And that really stuck in my head.
The thought that I was salvageable
not exactly a compliment but the most memorable good thing anyone's ever said to me
Lamar Lewis Oct 2011
It all happened so fast. Like most good things in life--the really monumental moments--it's like you float out of your body and come screaming back just soon enough to realize the moment had passed.

I didn't know how many miles were behind me now. It seemed like a thousand but it didn't really matter. I wasn't going to be one of those mindless wanderers--blindly probing my way through life's misery and defeat to one day wake up wishing I was young again.

I'm taking my youth back from the government, the bankers, the Wall Street gamblers and racing toward the horizon like there are commercial airplanes in my blood and skyscrapers burning in my chest.

You can only go to the same god forsaken place to have your soul ****** out of you for so many ******* days in a row before you either become one of them or make your own revolt and

collapse
                 *into a sea of ash

                                              slithering like snakes along the city streets.
You just run as fast as you can.

I chose the latter.
__________________­__


I'm going to do the cliche thing I suppose. Do as many drugs as possible, do as many women as possible, keep chasing the next good time until I get high enough to slap a saddle on my car roof and ride off into the Atlantic--fireworks shooting off in every direction to *** up the stars--refracting radials within the iridescence of the shimmering sea.

>explosions echo endlessly<
[wrap around the ambient rhythm of the TidePuller]

touch! caress! make love!--stare through eyes into deep blue souls and find something of yourself there.

That's how I'd like to go anyways, I don't know about you--.

That might just be this narcotic cocktail talking. I take my pills ground up in a wine glass mixed with cheap scotch. Then I chase with cups of watered down coffee--chugging until ceilings start to undulate and shake me loose. That's when I know I can start the day.

It's usually my most productive days when the ceiling tiles arrange into piano keys. Then I get to create my symphonies and soliloquies before I try to go get laid.

Now that I'm out here on the road though my mind is being blown.

Try waking to the same white black piano key ceiling everyday, to then finally feel the colors of the sky--for the very first time!

A never ending metaphysical canvas for the thoughts and longings of a drugged up DaVinci who just woke up in his time machine to start the 2nd Renaissance in the clouds. It all makes me wish I would have left years ago.

__________________­_


You see, I'm your typical twenty-something passionate kid trying to turn a ****** past into some kind of salvageable foundation for a chance at catching up with the rest of normal "adult" society. But I've got some problems with this whole "reality" thing people are so adamant at upholding.

Last time I visited my human family around the world they were all drowning in debt and poverty; trying with every fiber of their being to find that one bright spot. Stuck. In the deepest, darkest, most cavernous rotting excuse of a day to day life.

All because some meaningless number
on some computer
in some bank building
with their name on it
either is too small or doesn't exist.

Most of my human family know things are bad,

But most in the impoverished third-world are so deprived of basic human needs that they never get the chance to ponder who really holds the key to their cage.

So they are inclined to accept the status quo and the system and try to live inside of it. Failing to find sunshine within the deepest depths of an erupting volcano; mistaking the heat, the burning alive, for some kind of sign that the brightness has got to be somewhere close. So we will just try to sink a little deeper with the rest of them.

Here in America:
Sure, let's go on back to ringing registers for minimum wage all day until my ears bleed and my head wants to fall off so I can go home to watch some television!

Yes, God Please just let me relax here with my box of flashing pictures and scintillating sounds. The only truth I'll ever need.

Just let me relax here with my reality being defined for me by the volcano directors--telling me that I didn't just come in my house dripping with magma all over the carpet.

YES GOD, just let me relax a little before I have to go to my volcanic, skin searing hell again tomorrow morning. Where they tell me on T.V. that I'm going to find that sunshine I desperately long for. But It'll always

*collapse
                 into a sea of ash
                 to scar the sky grey, silence the sun's rays, blot out the stars, and darken our days*

You just sigh and say "Tomorrow's another day..."
_________________­__


Yeah, I was right there with them yesterday. I was with them for years. Getting brainwashed and ***** slapped by advertising--getting barraged with constant reminders that all I was meant to do was to work my life away--decide to be some tiny insignificant cog in this "economy" they call it.

Looks more to me like I signed up to be some mindless consumerism *****! Sheeping my way along... buying and wasting; buying, wasting; buying again, a bunch of **** I don't need and throwing it away.

We're Living in a society infected with some sort of capitalistic contagion that pretty much siphons off the Earth's life force.

We are conditioned into a reality that the richest & most powerful would like all to believe.

Art-full hearts are stomped on, told to get a job, and plan for retirement. Told to slow down and be reasonable rather than speed up. Velocity of the heart may as well be an act of terrorism unless it's for marriage--and LGBT is on the no fly list.

This is a reality set up predominantly for the endless profit of a bunch of trans-national corporations who won't be satisfied until they hold complete and utter dominion over their ***** and pillaged planet.

Perhaps then they'll be rich enough to fly away in spaceships to **** the next Earth and leave all us sheep here with bargain sales, social networking and reality T.V. as distractions...

Too bad for them some people still read. So I'll learn the different strains of herb from my local library and become a ***** of feeling good, freeing love, and accepting all artistry.

Have you ever seen a painting in the sky? Or witnessed windy symphonies in trees? Hey, don't judge me,

you're the one addicted to killing everyone and everything with your mindless dollar bill.

kneel before almighty god,
mind your founders,
adore their wise countenance,
looking up at you,
re-assuring you,
comforting you,
taking the pain away,
but DON'T RUN OUT!
you'll be back for more.
you'll come crawling back.
You'll do anything for just enough,
just one more fix.

It's got its hooks in bad,
don't it.
___________________­_


PRODUCT-XA110357: Capitalism
DRUG STATUS: Still in Clinical Trials
TEST SUBJECTS: Human Race
PHARMACEUTICAL LABORATORY: Earth
INITIAL FINDINGS: Subjects not receptive, keeps causing: Anger, Greed, Jealously, Oppression, War, Ignorance, Famine, Inequality, Imprisonment, Slavery. Environment not receptive, will cease functioning in the future. Time of Earth Death is unclear. Thankfully it does seem capable to last through the next few fiscal years. A relief, as this is what our stockholders are concerned with.


Symptoms of Withdrawal
Users who are addicted to money and are going through withdrawals may or may not experience a loss of food, water, shelter, clothing, transportation, education, free-time, happiness, fulfillment, reverence of nature, beautiful moments, relationships with friends or families, and love.


FDA Warning
If you are poor, lazy, and uneducated it is your own fault. Being poor and lazy may or may not result in Debt. DEBT may or may not lead to SLAVERY, stress, illness, and an early death.


Poison Control Center
If you have ingested too much debt, slavery, stress, illness, and are fearing an early death please do not call any corporate buildings. Access your phone, computer, or go to your local library to find reputable resources and EDUCATE YOURSELF IMMEDIATELY. Get some nice speakers and start exploring ALL GENRES OF MUSIC. Look at as many paintings, sculptures, forests, and gardens as you can--as often as possible. Lay under the stars and dream about what YOU want to do to make a positive impact on this world. FIND OTHER POSITIVE PEOPLE and AVOID NEGATIVE PEOPLE. If you know someone that is poisoned who you want to save please refer them to the nearest Poison Control Center

-->Smile at the sun--feel its warmth<--

----------------------------------------------------------­------------------------------------------------------

happy hearts:--after love--not money--free from pain--sickness will surrender--
addicted to art, peace, compassion, and empathy--feel the sky get closer--.


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"In a state of enlightened anarchy each person will become his(her) own ruler. They will conduct themselves in such a way that their behaviour will not hamper the well being of their neighbours. In an ideal state there will be no political institutions and therefore no political power."
-Mahatma Gandhi
Composed October 2011. Revisions (Lots of Them) February 2014. Blend of Fiction & Non-Fiction.
Eldon Jun 2012
I’m the type to holster mental index cards of things to say on a first date
But no matter how much I study, my words never withstand the test of time.
Eventually, sweet nothings cause ear canal cavities from sultry words too often indulged.

Love made me want to rip my pulsing heart out of my chest and place him on a table just for interrogation.
I would ask, why he would trust so easy when he should know better than anyone that no love, melody, or beat goes on forever.

But what an exceptional construction worker you’ve become.  
Demolishing hearts as if the blueprint to my soul has become obsolete.
Words spewed from your mouth with the power of a wrecking ball that collided with my 5’7 frame.
So unpredictable that I doubled over from the pain.
I crumbled as if I was an ancient building way pass my prime.
And I’m still searching through the rubble to find any salvageable pieces.
Maybe I can recover a missing part of my smile and plaster it back into place, though it will never fit quite the same.
You ****** slowly on my bone marrow and your lack of concern made me insane.

Before I slept, I sprinkled immaculate images of you on my eyelids as if I was the Sandman.
Thoughts of you embraced my dreams, and it was the only way I could find serenity in my slumber.

I will never again activate the synapses in my brain that saw you as a god that descended to earth.
You ripped my psyche to shreds like a cannibalistic cupid who lost sight of the agenda.
To create love, not to pierce it with vindictive arrows.  

Now all you are to me is this poem.
A poem.
Letters, words, and stanzas.
You don’t even deserve the time it took me to write this.
You do not deserve the effort of my joints smacking the keys when I find the next thought of how you hurt me.

Like sacred paintings in newly discovered caves, I tattooed the inner walls of my cerebral cortex with memories of you.
It would be there forever. Waiting to be discovered by the next person that walks into my life with a torch filled with hope.
Illuminating my dark, damp and lonely cave.

When the next woman crosses my path and wonders why I get a verbal tic from the word love, I will unlock those same chambers of my mind and show her the walls that you’ve left your worthless signature on.

I hope she will be able to understand that I can let her onto the front porch, but it will be some time before she gets to see my home.
Because, it’s really messy in there.
***** dishes in the sink, books thrown on the ground, an unkempt bed, and my confidence and self-worth hung up to dry on the clothesline.

You cannot just rent a space in someone’s home and then leave without a month’s notice.

You were my addiction,
I injected your ******* essence and I was high on life when you were near.
So close that you coursed through my veins and made me feel alive.
Every now and again I get that familiar itching of an addict.
I am itching, just to text you.
Just a simple hello.
I get urges to find you.
To cop another one of your addictive glances straight into my two liquid pools of inexperience.
I never thought addictions were this hard to kick.
Evie G Oct 2020
Oh
to be the girl in those adverts ,
Light,
skinny,
beautiful
A tragic line
to every gentle rib
I fetishise her fragile fingers
A monstrous beast reflected in the mirror, the worst possibility.

Tis poetic, there she stares
Says her lines; remaining fair,
Into my face, My acting is heavy handed and awkward
She’s a consumable reality,
She’s easy on the eyes
The fragile female,
salvageable.

We are a tragedy of ages, her Juliet, I Faustus
They silently boo while I slop onto the stage
A lazy slob,The **** of society, just don’t eat you fat ****. men like curvy girls We don’t want to see you, You’re so brave!  You’re the problem, it’s not hard hide your mass from view, unkempt, repulsive, vile. hide yourself it offends my sharp eyes.
I open my drooling mouth to speak, but there are chins smothering my mouth
My eyes clouded by greasy cellulite
I don’t want to exist like this.

So just stop eating.


I’d give an arm and a leg,
my pale teeth,
my parasitic possibility
my child
Hey, bit of a violent change from my last post but I wrote it a while ago. If you have any better title ideas or notes PLEASE COMMENT :)
blankpoems Apr 2014
When I was seventeen I thought I knew love.
I thought it came naturally, like you didn't have to seek it.
And you couldn't hide from it.

When I was seven I looked my mom right in her blue eyes and said
"Nobody ever tells you that the person you love is the most dangerous."
This was after He died.
My grandmother literally broke my grandfather's heart by sleeping with the priest on Sunday while the children drawing
Jesus closed their eyes and hoped that their prayers would save them from Goliath.
I started a rumor when I was younger that if you layed with your ear to the grass above his grave you could still hear
him reciting love letters.

Listen closely, I'm writing in whispers
until the whispers become whispers
and I want to keep halving myself
until the halves become something salvageable.

If I talked to you today you would tell me that I was the worst person
to try and save.
Every morning I'd wake up with new scars and you in my ear.
Telling me that you love me as much as you can love a person
as much as a person can love a person as much as my father loved my mother
and as much as my mother loved herself.
(Never enough).

When I was thirteen I got my first detention for talking too loudly,
now when I speak, eyes widen and mouths open.
I wish nobody quieted me down.
Because now the only words I know are apologetic and giving
and full of goodbye.

Nobody ever tells you that the person you love will be the person who lives.
Nobody ever tells you that God is a child with a serotonin imbalance and a
bad sense of humor.
Nobody ever tells you that love is Goliath.
Nobody ever told David to use his hands.
Mikaila Feb 2017
I am not old, yet.

My skin is not powdery and white, see-through like a paper lantern.

But there is a part of me which

When I dare to reach for someone I love

Reaches with brittle ***** fingers, soft and cold and fluttering like white moths

That edge closer to a flame until they catch.

There is a part of me that feels old, and fragile.

And already even in the crest of my youth I’ve cursed this body

For its frailty, its needs.

It suffers and complains, always crying out for something,

Never sated, never still.

I’ve said it feels like living inside a porcelain doll

A look, and cracks can spider out along an arm,

A word and blood can bloom beneath the surface, seeping up into

Bruised pictures and symbols.

I must always be gentle,

I must always be

Watching.

Too passionate, and fissures form, marring the cheek, spreading like shadows thrown by a lace curtain.

I stare out, burning to touch everything,

And yet I pull back:

To dare is to risk, and I’ve seen

Both reward and loss.

I have seen a thousand shining colors spread across me like sunrise,

Warming my skin,

Calling to me like prayer until a bit of light escaped through the spaces between my atoms and reached another person’s palms,

But I have also seen the pale, flat shards of myself,

Sifted through white dust in dismay

For a salvageable portion.

Indeed, there are rooms in this world where sharp edges of me still linger

Waiting in obstructed corners and beneath heavy refrigerators

To gouge a foot or snag a hem,

Interred

In the dark and hollow places where they flew when I shattered and could not gather them all.

I have known

Intimately

My own fragility,

How maddeningly breakable I am

And how difficult to mend.

And there is a part of me now, always,

Which whispers to me when I would be bold,


“You are not old, yet.

But wouldn’t you just love

To live that long?”
*title is a quote from T.S. Eliot's The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock
Anna Elizabeth Dec 2013
December 18, 2013

Words stab like knives. Each syllable uttered slices deeper into the nothingness that is this emotion.
Actions break bones. Pressure mounts and mounts until the sharp, quick snap ends in a flash of pain.
Caring suddenly becomes your worst trait. It muddies the waters of a once clear pool. Give. Try. Fail.
Repeat. Something so important becomes something you put so much effort into that you beat it half to death. The mystery is gone. The excitement is gone. The surprise is gone. The anger never leaves. The fighting never ceases. The hostility, rage, disappointment, misunderstanding, and fury never die.

It is still salvageable, so long as everyone agrees. As long as one person is not at their breaking point, you can always go back. Go back to the mystery, the excitement, the surprise. Effort is crucial. Patience is key. Understanding is vital.

Love lives.
Mikaila May 2014
There are ways
To be ready for a death of the soul.
The way you'd write a will
Or take medication to ease the pain.
People to say goodbye to,
Loose ends to tie...
Granted,
It's a little trickier when you know your body will still go on
After you die.
When you know you'll have to leave it and then
Slam back inside
And handle all the damage done in your absence.
But
There are ways.
Silently I tie back my hair.
Pour myself a frosty glass of milk.
I hate milk.
Always have.
I drink the whole thing.
Milk makes it less painful when you get sick.
Whatever I hear from you tonight,
I know I have been terrified long enough,
And there is just no way
I'm gonna keep this food.
Too bad,
I muse,
Rinsing out my glass.
I did love my dinner.
I had hoped we wouldn't meet again.
In the mirror a girl with my face
Raises a debonair eyebrow.
I wish I was as good at brushing this off
As she is.
I remove my earrings.
I put on some comfortable clothes.
It is rather like hearing the warning on the radio
That a hurricane or tsunami is headed your way
And there's not enough time to leave,
Only to prepare.
I am piling sandbags.
I am sealing my windows and doors,
Retreating to the cellar of my soul.
I am
Mechanically,
Numbly
Doing everything I can to minimize the damage,
And prepare to pick up the pieces.
I wonder
What will be salvageable
This time
From the ruins.
I hope the advance notice
Has made a difference
Because the tension of
Waiting for the storm to hit
Just might stop my heart.
claire Dec 2016
i. Like a building on fire, you appeared in my path. You were what all burning things are, hot and radiant, crackling with a force I cannot name. You were a comet speeding to earth, a malfunctioning two-stage rocket. I watched as you turned yourself inside out, as you were absorbed by the sky, as you detonated yourself in an act of destruction so powerful it created collateral art. I watched as you gave yourself up to ash. I was there.


ii. When a building is on fire, the first human instinct is to run away. But I ran toward you. I ran toward you, because I knew what things might be tucked within you. I ran toward you, because your heart deserved to pulled from the wreckage. I ran toward you, because I was not afraid, because I have been a burning building and I remember what it was like to be trapped inside myself, dissolving in the heat and the pain, toxic and dehumanized. I remember. So I ran toward you while everyone else ran in the opposite direction, and I put my hands on your windows, and I entered you.


iii. You were trembling in those flames, those flames I swept aside like curtains, looking for the salvageable. You were sad and raw and red and wonderful, surrounding me with your swollen hopes, bleeding words of venom and gentleness, a dichotomy of throbbing remorse. You blew out window panes and shook down doors. You shattered the roof, sent furniture tumbling. You howled at a moonless night, you agonized gloriously.


iv. I watched the pieces of you fly. The Tuesday night Hennessy, the poets you tried to understand, the I-am-not-scaredness of you, the pressure of your angry palms smacking the table, the movement of your legs, the ache of your voice, the bravado of your soul, all sent scrambling like grains of sand. I watched you contort, watched you turn quiet and strange, watched you forget things I still remember, things I cannot forget: the color of our laughter, the finding of trust, the promises you failed to keep, the dissolution of the invincible. I watched as you were, for one incredulous moment, so beautiful I couldn’t breathe. I stood at the core of you while you collapsed around me. I wept for you in ways I have wept for no one.


v. Like a building on fire, you appeared in my path. You ended the way all burning things do, falling, skeletal, to earth. Desperate. Brilliant. Gone.
Jacqui Aug 2018
Today might be the day it all becomes too much
The day I grow tired of scratching at this wound
Digging deeper and deeper, scratching until my fingers are raw
Pulling at my skin, pulling myself apart
Pulling at these twisted tendrils,
hoping to finally strip them away
Hoping that there is still something salvageable
and I wonder: what if nothing is left unsoiled underneath it all?

Is today the day it all becomes too much?
The day I grow tired of obsessing
Obsessing over every thought in my mind or move I make
Obsessing to the point that I find no rest
Spending every waking and sleeping moment dissecting every situation
Only to find that I am helpless to change what has already happened
and the actions of others
Still I wonder:  was it something I did?

Is today the day it all becomes too much?
The day I grow tired of the ugliness
An ugliness I carry and see in the world around me
Nothing seems worth hanging onto for another aching second
As I confront myself and am forced to look in my own eyes each day
I grow more tired of being in this skin
so I pick at it again and again
Longing to hurt myself, to feel any pain but the pain of existing
Still I wonder: would they be better off without me?

Is today the day it all becomes too much?
The day I grow tired of trying
Trying to find meaning in a life centered on meaninglessness
Trying to keep smiling when my heart and soul feel so heavy
and my face feels as though it will crack if I pretend for another minute
I wouldn't wish this on anyone
Fighting an enemy that isn't tangible for so long
Still I wonder: is this enemy even real?
Something I can't touch or describe,
but have in my mind every day
Urging me to hate myself and bringing me down,
every step feels weighted down
Pulling me further into myself and away from my surrounds
Is today the day it all becomes too much?
Amber Jun 2017
Thoughtless words flow from your mouth
And to me it sounds mangled and garbled
Some language that I've not yet learned

Some days i can make out what your saying
Usually in the morning
When the monster in you still sleeps.

But everyday he begins to stir
And I know that soon he will have taken over.

And then you ARE the monster
And whatever pieces of you I thought were salvageable,
Have vanished and I'm looking for an escape route

Anyway out will do
As long as I don't have to hear the words which you once spoke,
So clearly and sweetly,
Spewing out like a hot geyser
Unintelligible and broken.

What went wrong along the way
For you to so fully embrace
A monster that would soon inch into every corner
Of your life, stealing everything precious to you
And collecting them together with it's ugly claws
Balling them up and swallowing them into it's ugly black heart.

What made you love that monster
More than your own offspring?
What made you love that monster
More than yourself?

I've learned how to live with him
I've learned he's a part of you now
But no matter all the time that passes, I cant understand him.

His words, actions, thoughts.

And maybe that's why I cant help you rid yourself of him.

But when I can fully understand

I'm going to take that bottle he's been living in
And smash it into a million pieces.
Colorfulpen May 2013
Holding onto forgotten memories
fragmented by time,
tucked away neatly at first
and then haphazardly
as if they're less important,
you revisit them like old friends,
careful not to stir any pain still
clinging to the deepest parts of you.
Even as the pieces crumble, they fall
into place like a puzzle -
the worried corner of a dream,
a water-stained wish,
distorted faces behind shattered hope.
When you sift through the remains,
not much is salvageable in the cobwebs
your mind has weaved.
SJ Sullivan Jan 2016
2 fitted sheets, stretched and tucked atop each
other. A nesting home for soft bugs with thousands
of legs, in which you cannot see.
Why does it smell like Michigan basement
bathrooms, and size 4 feet in turtle sandboxes.

Painted, chipped, salvageable wood only shows
it's gritty teeth in the day light.
leaking through shower curtain rings on
the makeshift curtains like pool water
through the cracks in your smiling eyes,
blue goggles, the ones that cover the nose.

the longer you listen to the silence,
the louder it gets.
or is that the sounds of fan blades
ripping through the indescribable texture of
the stale air you swim through each night.

You'd swear you experienced a sonic boom here,
the bull whip cracking from over pressure. or is it
under pressure? I always thought that pressure
weighed like pounds and tons. I still don't
know if that is wrong.

I won't remember the sound of your laugh,
or the way you smell, or the clothes you wore
when we met. Like a good poet should.
But I'll remember all the things we forgot
to do together. All the times we spoke but
got too high to listen.

High, like the time I told you I thought
the trees and the sun were making
strobe lights for our long drive into
October. Flashing light in the car windows,
as we drove down the open freeway.

It's easy to remember the world
was made for us, when we are
alone, here, in this room, together,
like we were before, and will be soon
once again.
Find my subsequent poem.
Detached Dreamer Sep 2015
Do not let the faces fool you.
Every bump in the night,
May be the cruel figments of your mind
Hoping to ignite the illusion
of utter insanity.

Do not for one second
Believe in the spine-chilling moans
that seem to leak from every unsightly crevice
of your disfigured thoughts.  

Do not allow yourself
To slip from the serrated edge of sanity,
Even for a fleeting moment.
For the comfort is short-lived,
And the ***** is endless.

Do not stare too long
At the scorched bodies of men,
Contorted into the soot covered demons
That will unfailingly materialize
In your loneliness.

Do not take the threats,
Which echo in the
Impenetrable darkness,
lightly.
They are the fabrication
of your own self destruction.

Do not think
They won’t bury you alive,
Every chance they get.
Leaving the decaying scent
of wilting roses atop the mounds of dirt.
Where they will scrawl your name in haste
across a grimy tombstone.

Do net let
The voices sway you into madness.
For they will play your vulnerability
with the fingers of a skilled harpist.
Leaving you so intoxicated
with the sweet melody
that you will believe you asked for
your own demise.


Do not forget the flimsy nature
of your deteriorating mind,
when appealing whispers
begin to ring in your ears.
They are merely hoping
to glimpse your downfall.


Remember,
not to let them get the best of you.
that if you find anything salvageable
In the chaos inside your head,
or the tsunami inside your heart.
Grasp onto the little beam of hope,
and begin putting yourself
back together.
Tyler Fuller Jan 2019
there’s nothing good that’s come
from these past few years.
no political changes for the poor.
no more role models.
no more poetry.
I wonder what historians
will think of us.
will they lump us together
in groups of ten,
like the ’80s and ’90s?
or will they get lazy retelling us?
will they place us together
in hundreds, or thousands,
picking out only the salvageable
from this worthless era?
I won’t be included in these stories.
neither will you.

and they still won’t have poetry.
Mos Nov 2017
Tell me how to pull the weeds out of my scalp
Because spring tried to come with the company of flowers
The company of something new and better
But I let them wilt and rot within my flesh and bones

Death stormed in with an unforgiving glare
As winter quickly bombarded the land
The weeds and flowers had died in my hands
Nothing is salvageable
Everything beautiful dies
Where is the life I long to see?
i dont feel worth the love they try to give
Sarah Caitlyn Feb 2017
You were a statement,
a brick wall,
covered in small pieces of graffiti,
lost in a noisy city.
Barely noticed.

So you changed.
You tore yourself down,
giving away pieces
to anyone who would take them
destroying the subtle art.

I had to leave,
unable to stand the gravel
of you at my feet,
like a part of me
was in that rubble.

They all noticed you then
a small glimpse from the corner
of their eyes,
no one pays attention
to a neon jumble.

When I came back
you had lost all but three
spray painted pieces,
no matter how much I tried
I couldn't recreate you

Nothing will live
in the broken space
you once occupied completely,
so I walked away for good
You are not salvageable.
-S
Moonsocket Nov 2016
What is a mirror without vanity?

Youth chemically plastered

smitten by Hollywood delusions

Eager limbs with a fine insect coating

What is time without thievery?

The years go and we are left with these empty spaces

Sometimes filled with television glow and robot trances

The kindle and cookies

Let the crumbs gather for the microscopic

What is life without a tilt?

Pour the paranoid another drink and nod at the bankrupt morality

Pat the cornered fiend and comfort his hate filled hindsight

observe a wasted generation

Hysterically hydrated and slumped

What is God without interpretation?

Mine is not yours

but I admire the tenacious taste of a salvageable salvation

I appreciate kindness in all forms

Whatever way it may manifest itself

A smile is a smile

What is a beginning without an end?

Find peace or guilt the path may be up too you

Sometimes the path may be chosen for us

It takes a strong mind
to reject their idea of happiness
For the sake of your own
Isabelle Perla Jul 2016
I look at my life and see two roads.
And I stand against the current, I'm standing between them and hoping I won't have to choose.
I'm a laundry basket of jealousy, frustration and worry.
I'm constantly walking on egg shells because I don't want anything to change.
I don't want to upset you
I don't want to anger you
I don't want to lose you.
So I hide behind someone who isn't fully myself.
Because you know not yet who you are. And I guess I don't too.

We are carcasses in this life and our paths will show what we choose to show. But your emptiness frightens me and I feel it my duty to fill you.
But I'm torn between someone who cares and someone who can't. I'm torn because the perfect piece of paper I once was is no longer something salvageable.
You aren't the same. So I guess I'm not too.

But I turn to something that isn't stable to help me out of my own battles. I turn to a floating piece of plastic and expect it to help me stay afloat.

These two roads are both a part of myself. These roads aren't a mangled lie or a twisted fib,
They are who I am, just not to the full extent.
You aren't you to the full extent.
And I guess, I'm not too.
She wasn't herself so I decided to become someone else as well.
luci sunbird Nov 2014
This corpse lays before me, rotting
I can feel the decay
I can smell the death
I can see old blood stains
But I still hang onto something

Some sliver of hope
That this corpse is still salvageable
That there is still a heart beating
That blood still pumps in this body
That something is still alive in there
There is nothing left

And yet, I can't fathom
That this is really it
That there is nothing left
It's all been bled
And it's all dead
This has nothing at all to do with the death of an actual person.
Kyle Dal Santo Sep 2018
Our relationship, our rendezvous, began more innocent than most,
We were teenagers, we were harmless, nothing sinister about us
Just looking for a way to break the boredom
It began before we were capable of such sinister selfish thought
Before she was looking for something more dangerous
Before I was looking for another easy exit
There were moments where my intentions were less than honorable
Yet little ever came from it
Even then I understood control, understood direction
Our would be sins were regrettable, never forgettable
I warned you from the beginning, I was something a little different
A troubled boy with a troubled past,
A damaged heart, leftover by a damaged girl
She was the love I should’ve realized when I still had a heart
When I still had love to give
I thought I was still salvageable
But I didn’t hide the damage
I plainly stated “Heavily used and abused, 50 % off”
And I read her clearly the disclaimer across my chest
“Sunshine, I’m the thunderstorm here to rain on your parade,
Babygirl, I’m the kind of boy you need to be afraid of
I’m the devil in wolf’s clothing
Run before I sink my teeth in, and bleed your neck dry
But she had a storm of her own
And she swept me up like a hurricane
And when her eyes met mine, I swear lightning struck
Your kiss like a rogue wave, your heart like thunder
The rain on the window, your head on my shoulder
And then we Titanic’d the windows
We sauna’d the backseats  
We did it, with a capital DID IT
She wrapped her arms around me
And my wooden heart started to crack
And I even started to feel human again
She’d hug me, and I thought I’d might feel sane again
But I wasn’t okay, and it was obvious
Suffering from Post Traumatic Love Disorder
Yeah it’s ******* cheesy, but I like how it sounded
And I was fishing for an excuse
Hunting for an excuse to blame you for her sins
Because when you’re sick, you pass it on
You don’t mean or want to, but misery loves company
I started pointing fingers, and laying blame wherever you walked
I made it hard to love me, hard to like me
One day you had enough and politely screamed “Why…”
I replied “Because I hold grudges, and I don’t care,”
After a few weeks, neither did you
Your bad habits would stink up your bedroom, and mine
You gave me the rope to hang us both
I had all the evidence to execute us
I branded you a witch and me a demon
And burned us both
I left you to rot, and for that I will never forgive us
The pain I know you feel makes me scream and cry
Wish I could take it all, if only to see you smile
I hate myself for leaving, because we’ll never be the same
How dare I leave when I had so much left to say
If being me is such a crime, you never told me
I never asked to be this lonely
But I did force you out
Our failure is my fault only
Now when I’m with her, I think of you
And I hate you for that
You never gave me a chance t be better than him
You never gave me a chance to be good enough
One chance could have been enough
You could have been my everything
I would have given you everything
Now to humble me,
I am forced to witness an eternal insult
A most beautiful, ****, powerful woman
Who could have been a queen
Forever betrothed to a fool.
Now, my heart only beats for war
Like when I burned our castle down
Kyle D.
God, I love you.
You were my first love
and once I really learned how to love
I love you with a love like no other love
than the love that I had to give
...to you...
-------
I loved you so much
that I was willing to do anything to be with you
because I needed you to love me too.
-------
I was broken on the inside.
All messed up, empty, and confused
but then you came
and you swept up the broken pieces
that I'd once claimed to be my heart
you put it back together and together
we tore down that wall
that I'd built up to protect what I had left
and although it was barely salvageable
we fixed it
and as a token of my gratitude
I gave it to you...
-------
I gave it to you to cherish
...now and forever more...
I gave it to you to admire
...treat it as your greatest treasure...
I gave it to you to fully exploit
...to take to new heights...
-------
I gave it to you
in hopes that you'd be different
Then and there I vowed to you
-------
I vowed to be your shoulder to cry on
when you just couldn't hold back anymore
....
I vowed to be the hand that you'd hold
when you just couldn't go on alone
....
I vowed to be your treasure chest
in which all of your deepest darkest secrets were held
until you were ready to reveal them
....
I vowed to be your nightlight
when you couldn't escape the many demons
lurking underneath your bed
....
I vowed to be the pillow you laid on
when you made your bed too hard to lie in
....
I vowed to stand by you
through the good and the bad
....
but most importantly
I vowed to be yours forever
-------
I upheld those vows
to the best of my ability
Again I was broken
-------
Broken and battered
destroyed by the same hands
that had once helped repair this broken heart
the same hands that picked my sagging head up
and helped me hold it high
the same hands that helped me through
my deepest darkest hours
the same hands that....
-------
Was I not enough for you?
Did my tears do nothing
to dampen your dry, rusted soul
Did my screams not penetrate the walls
that you built up to block me out
------
why wasn't I enough for you
you were just perfect for me
now we've went our separate ways
and what was once your hand and heart
is now just a silhouette of hope
Hoping that this is just a dream
and that you'll be back
Right??... Wrong
You turned away without so much
as a glance back to see
what a mess you'd created
-------
Did "we" ever really exist to you?
Or was it just a game?
Didn't you want this?
No???
...God, I loved you!!...
#HeartBreakHurts
#VoidOfAllEmotion
#Don'tWannaLoseYou
#Can'tLiveWithoutYou
#WhyDidYouHaveToGo
#IfOnlyYouLovedMe
Eleanor Sinclair Jun 2018
I'm hurting inside for the world we inhabit
We protest, burn flags, but ignore every homeless rabbit
When will we notice that we aren't the only ones fighting back?
That Nature is retaliating against us and planning to attack
We won't even give Her a voice
She has no choice and can't scream Her warnings and pleas
Soon we will be banding against not war but disease
What will it take for our nation to understand
Why can't we work as a planet and outstretch our hand
To rejuvenate the few salvageable pieces of land
Because what's the point of calling for change when we are losing our homes to our Mother's fists of rage
It brings me to tears and it breaks my lion heart because I can't come to grips with the extinction of our natural art
Law makers are seeing what we're doing with our signs and parades
Now it's time we understand Nature's game of charades
Because as the volcanoes erupt and tectonic plates shift
Our nations grows more divided with a widening rift
It's all we have left as a place to call home
Animals are going extinct and in a few years won't be known
Soon will the human race fall from the earth
And our daily phenomenon won't transpire like birth
We need to see what our own world is doing
With each passing day Her anger is brewing
We ripped Her to shreds and broke all Her limbs
Then we polluted Her waters with our oil seeking whims
We aren't looking with our eyes
We aren't heeding Her signs
When will the world stop being blind
Pick up the trash bags and leave the old ways behind
Acina Joy Nov 2019
Remember those small ***** that wash up at shore,
in the event of a low-tide?

I am those *****, and you are the tides.
I lay buried beneath a surface of fine grains,
salvageable in your grasp. I wait, live with you,
call to you like a tenant to their home.
I descend into your hold, unknowing, or rather,
forgetting that you change.

You always do.

You are the tides, always shifting and moving;
slow to recede, fast to return. You hold me close,
take what is dear to me. You press, and you pull,
and you push, push, push, bringing everything
with you. Always leaving nothing for me.

I lay open, bare, confused by my lack of home,
discarded like a stone, left to search for you
into deeper waters.

When you come back, you are new;
perhaps warmer, or perhaps colder,
depends on where you've been. Where
your currents always travel.  It always
depends on where you've been, but your
current had brought with it my filter of grains,
the white stark sand. The place I rested,
and where I deemed my home.

And you left it somewhere far beyond my reach,
apathetic to my struggle.

With your new presence, you leave me to burrow once more,
either shallower or deeper than before, in grainy arms
and lulling currents, making me anticipate when you would
leave again. Because I always have to find a new way to fix and
build my home, when the only thing you've ever done is make
me wait for you to come back.

And I am always surprised of the fact that I always stay.
Aubrey Dec 2014
Flying down the sleet covered ground.The stop is suggested
and I flip off my brights to see the other directions' traffic
and I wonder,
'What will our kids think? How will they feel?"
I mean
ten years from now,
will we sit together for a family meal?
I mean, I get that you're angry and hurt and ****** off and, if we're honest, it's only a glimmer of thought in the vast sea of doubt that covers hope for you.
The feeling I feel when I walk in from work and I take off that shirt and see all of their smiles, I could walk for miles on that feeling. Endure torture, starvation.
I couldn't go back to that lower elevation.
I know you'd abhor me to hear that I mourn us, our future. But Justice is served with both eyes just like yours that drew me before, and I know you'll be sore for a very long time.
I always try to level the gravel with my moving tires in my driveway,
and I think, 'What would it be like, if we could be civil and happy one day?'
Has your sane worn too thin? Is there no salvageable man? Have you so lost your way?
Delta Swingline Jul 2017
After a great catastrophe hits home, like a fire or a tornado, you search through the wreckage to find pieces that can still be saved.

If anything is salvageable, you might as well take it. This was your home after all.

Finding old pictures, supplies, things of sentimental value, anything that reminds you of home before it was destroyed.

So what if your home is built upon people?

When catastrophe strikes, people might run away, give up, and sometimes they die. Not always, but sometimes they will.

I was part of the wreckage of my home made of people.
But I was also the disaster that tore it down.

Leaving people in pain, with traumatic break downs, panic attacks, and a lesson in language only known as ******.

Nobody died.

People were saved. I know of three in particular who found each other and survived.

But it left two others broken apart, one confused, and one completely homeless.

And as for me...

I survived like the rest. But unlike most of them, I didn't recover.
They didn't bother to search through the damaged home to find me.
There was no monetary value to my life, no point, no sentimental value to them.

And I just lay there to this day.

And to the person I hurt most...

You know who you are...

You left me in that home, the one you invited me into and cared for me as if I was family and now...

I'm here.

Buried under the catastrophe.

And I'm sorry I tore the house down.

I'm sorry I wasn't worth going back to the house to find and salvage.

I'm sorry I wasn't worth saving.
I'm not keeping in touch for a reason.
I can’t believe I’m back here.
I genuinely thought I was done with this.
I remember the first night I sat on the floor with a glistening blade in my hand,
I turned it back and forth,
It looked so new and unused
Just like I once did.
But soon it was covered in blood
And slipped from my hand.
I stared at myself in the mirror with tears rolling down my face,
Trying to convince myself there was another way.
Was there really no other option?
There was… one.
I felt bad for mutilating myself.
But honestly,
I’d do it again.
I wish I could.
I know it sounds silly to an outsider.
It sounds dumb and confusing and insane, actually.
Not one person I’ve told has understood.
People say they get it, but if they wouldn’t do it themselves, they do not get it.
These tears come out like acid
But get reabsorbed
And corrode everything inside of me.
This whirlwind of insanity leaves me paralyzed yet running at the speed of light in every direction crashing into everything that has ever hurt me all at once ripping every fragile piece of me to shreds and leaving nothing salvageable to remain.
So,
A different kind of salt water pours out
Crying for my helpless heart
Instead of my hurting heart.
And the stupid thing is,
This isn’t normal at all.
It doesn’t matter if it was a person or a thing or a hope or a dream. It is what it is and the pain is unavoidable!
How do they handle it so well?
Maybe I’m just inadequate in the strength it takes to deal with your own emotions.
Because most people don’t jump to this
Or fantasize about quitting
They **** it up. Move on with life.
Grow. Challenge. Change.
But truth is
I’m so hopeless.
I’m done with school
I’ve given up on the career I thought I wanted
The life I thought I wanted
I don’t want my friends
I don’t want my family
I don’t want my job
I don’t want my city
I don’t want my country
Hell I don’t even want this world sometimes.
I can’t sit here and pretend everything is okay.
Every day I wake up and focus on what's in front of me
But I’m still living with this internal countdown
This clock that won’t reveal its hour
But reminds me it’s just a matter of time
Till the batteries stop moving the hands.
Please
Stop telling me I’m fine.
There seems to only be a certain anecdote
To make the sun stay
But it’s just one bottle
And I guzzled it so fast
I didn’t have any time to enjoy it before it passed.

I really think I need some type of fix.
They know the cure to cancer..
But they won’t let the patients have it.
So they drug ‘em up instead,
If thats the case,
Now it’s my turn.
I’ll need something strong
To fix all the **** wrong in my brain
That nothing else will heal
So hopefully I can make it to another country
Instead of the bottom of the Pacific
Cause I’ll tell ya what
I can’t do it here.
There are no amount of beach days or Sundays or fun things to get me through this now.
So what pill should I take?
The ***** on the shelf is waiting.

— The End —