"stagnancy" poems
All around me, I see endless fear.
Fear of heights, sure, fear of scuttling things
Fear of darkness, fear of bites
Fear of brightness, fear of fights.
This is the fear we can display
Because it’s little, simple, understandable.
But the fear I really fear
That we all let consume us
Is deeper,
Darker,
Cold.
It’s the fear of friendship, fear of love,
Fear of what’s ahead of us
But even more of what’s behind us
Fear to see what’s really beyond
The faces we all fake.
Fear of the unknowable
Fear of what we know
Fear of speaking out or up or for
Fear of conforming to something more
Fear to test the limits
Fear to taste the truth
Fear of what’s uncomfortable
Rather than the deception of comfort
Fear of what to do
Fear of striving for perfection
When perfection’s so unattainable.
Fear of to leave what has been known
Fear of what has been done
Fear to see past fabrication,
Fear to show the truth.
I’m talking fear of emotion
Or fear of not feeling enough
Fear of silence, but worse,
The fear of candid words.
Fear to look someone in the eye
And say, “I know you,
And I care for you.”
Fear to let someone see the darkness that comes with your light
Fear of rebelling though it’s time someone did
Fear of doing what you want and know
Because of what someone told you you should
Fear of being who you are
Because every day everyone is telling you
What to do and who to be
And what is acceptable
And what is not.
I’m talking fear of having an opinion
Because someone will shoot it down
Fear of defense or service or selflessness
Because someone won’t approve.
Fear to accept because of fear of acceptance
Fear to truly love someone
Because it’s risky,
And you never know
What someone else really feels.
I cry for the fear of
Every person who can’t be
Who they are and who can’t
Let people see them in their entirety
Because after all everyone urges
And persuades and demands and values
And idolizes and expects,
You don’t even know yourself,
Because you've been too busy
With trying to be so many different
“Someone Else"s.
I ache for this relentless fear.
I mourn the stagnancy of the condition
Of the human soul who is so afraid
To let go of fear
And BE somebody,
To do something or say something, or simply believe,
That the only thing they truly trust
Is the familiarity
Of fear itself.
That’s why fear is frightening
That’s why we should be afraid of fear
Because it stops us, cages us,
Bars us behind the façade we display
And muffles the words of our heart.
I see these things and wonder
Why can’t they change?
Why can’t this need to fear be erased
From the human condition?
And I realize it’s because everyone
Is afraid.
And I’m so afraid too.
Mar 18, 2015
Mar 18, 2015 at 12:06 AM UTC
my hands swelled
blue and purple
to match the
glassy doe-eyed
stagnancy.
I saw a pair
of cocoa
moon rocks
heavy with
music and a
queen bee trapped
in a flash
of departure.
mine and yours
one in the same
corpulent and
greased trembling
at the lips.
Aug 21, 2017
Aug 21, 2017 at 4:38 PM UTC
there is a darkness
that the silver song
of soft illusion lights
in symbolic equivalents
of images real
it is a light
brutally interrogative
magnifying with dazzling rays
the breakage
at the jagged edges of the world
and lays hostage to impersonation
that resembles fragments
of smashed oval shaped mirrors
reflecting pieces of broken
brown terracotta soldiers
and causes the eyes to hurt
with a watched inner holocaust
of disturbing coloured detonations,
implosively autonomous
given to a deceived departure
a departure from reality
given by the advocacy
of ideological rationalism
that sees three kings
with blood on their crowns
in amplified convulsions
call mustre for
disturbance, disorder, destruction
and death
as blood stains the Balkan streets
and all emotional impulse
is volatilized
and a sinister, stuporous, stagnancy
stalks the land
where sustaining minds
are subject to a brutal insensitivity
that dazzles on the edge of a spiral vertigo
it is a light
brutally interrogative
magnifying with dazzling rays
a vocabulary of incoherence
like the rancid stains of *****
that inhabit the jagged edges of the world
Apr 24, 2014
Apr 24, 2014 at 1:25 PM UTC
ponces! nancies! veritable egrets of men!
people pleasing anti-charismatic animals
philistines, every one of them,
everyone else
a curse upon their forebears and a curse upon their goings-on
terrible business, that
the world should be filled with boundary pushing eccentrics, that is progress!
a plague upon normalcy, a plague upon stagnancy
uninteresting, dying off, done
ugh!
greatness can not be expected of all but at least an attempt should be made
how else will we overcome, will we build our utopia?
what use is MY struggle when others are defeated in making a move past the remote
television is for swine
rots your brain and morals
I've swell morals, just look at them
my morals reach to the moon
my morals are so swell I should run the country
my morals aren't two millenia old scriptures written by the seers of goat-tenders
my morals are modern, they are sleek and well dictated, they represent the future
my morals defy the past, my morals create new paradigms
why, you could say my morals defy all of traditionalism
and a curse upon tradition!
who ever learned from the past
history is rife with naught but sufferance
forwards is the only direction
forwards is revealed only to me
my ideals aglow with the lumine of the future
they are entrenched in idealism
me and mine, we are ideal
Jan 30, 2016
Jan 30, 2016 at 1:30 AM UTC
Last weekend,
one of your friends called me your manic pixie dream girl.
So in the movie that is my life,
I'm not even the main character,
just the quirky sidekick to my male protagonist.
And it's probably my ego speaking,
but I don't think that's right.
And I don't think that I,
of all people,
should be the one showing you the beauty of a world
that I only see in kinetic blurs and swatches,
passing by me in my free fall from this life to the next.
Because I tried once to see the world without a filter,
but its stagnancy sent me in a downward spiral
and somehow I ****** you into it--
into me.
And I don't mean to be your whirlwind woman,
destined to spit you out--disoriented--
somewhere that you've never been before,
somewhere that no map ever cared to acknowledge,
somewhere stained with my essence,
my idiosyncrasies,
and your new found head trauma.
And you're a rational guy
and I'm an on again off again rational girl
who needs a little help stilling the edges of her narrative,
who longs for a tether or a buoy
to keep her from flying off or sinking down.
So maybe if you held my shoulders to stop me from spinning,
my vision would sober up,
and I'd focus solely on your curves and your angles
as they entered my retinas,
while the rest of the world behind you
faded into blurry suggestions
to be adhered to by someone who gave a **** about them
And after you wiped the puke from your shoes,
maybe you'd see me focused in your eyes
and maybe, just maybe...
...you'd just call me your dream girl.
Dec 1, 2014
Dec 1, 2014 at 2:08 AM UTC
It was a beautiful moment
Of dissatisfaction.
One where she realized
Complacency
Does not equate
With serenity.
That stagnancy
Does not yield joy.
So she moved,
Not only her feet.
She moved mountains.
The earth quaked beneath her,
And flowers bloomed
In every crack.
And this,
She thought,
THIS is how it feels
To be alive
Nov 8, 2018
Nov 8, 2018 at 1:24 PM UTC
the dead re-materialise by the side of the roadside
they are visible as though seen through a spotlight
it is a brutally interrogative light
that magnifies these corpses
makes them resemble the fragments
of suicidal terracotta pots
it magnifies them as symbolic equivalents
of their real image
its beam dazzles broken glass on the pavement
the breakage an impersonation of their cataclysm
causing the edges of seeing to hurt
and hearing to submerge itself
in a turquoise blue aquarium in fear
as speech sounds a primitive retreat
in its atavistic echoes of inveterate distraction
there is a disorder of blood stains on the road
where all emotional impulse is volatilised
causing a wild distillation of programmed anxiety
which in a different vocabulary becomes
a figment of somebody else's imagination
causing a sinister, stuporous, stagnancy of sound
in palpitations, dropped heartbeats, nausea, headaches
and a foul change in bowel function
Dec 10, 2013
Dec 10, 2013 at 10:11 AM UTC
We hardly fit with our jagged edges
and our heavy breathing, our holes
don't even coincide. Our symmetry
is imperfect, as imperfection can be.
We can't call it home. We're too
edgy to ever do so. It doesn't even
come close to that feeling of
comfort and love. We're not in love,
nor are we friends by any means.
Hardly acquaintances. We wouldn't
lift a finger a finger to help the other
No, this isn't home, love or friendship.
Our weapons are still on us. The poison's
hidden in the secret compartments of the
rings we gifted each other. We never
believed in anything but practicality.
I specially sharpened the blades I
brought with me. I know he loaded
some 'special' bullets in his gun.
We deal like this, like rival gang leaders
It's the only thing that has remained
the same through all these years,
frighteningly comforting in it's stagnancy.
It doesn't even come close to companionship.
It's definition lies somewhere between
hatred, addiction and need. Quiet intimacy
will prevail between us and anyone who walks in,
feels like they're intruding on something a bit
more private and clandestine. Though no one
notices, our spines don't relax even once.
Aug 6, 2012
Aug 6, 2012 at 7:48 AM UTC
IF MEN WERE GOD
Man are dexterous in cunning ways,
Aiming in jeopardizing just like the serpent
Full with autocracy
And fear not he God.
Man the trickish being ever created.
If men were to be God
The fish would stink, creatures will seek
And many will cease.
If men were to be God
the moon will turn day and the day will turn night
Injustice will become right.
And crises will become plight.
If men were to be God.
The iota of truth dismissed
And the heart of men will be so deep.
For our breath will be sold for
If men were to be God,
Door will be locked for the bold ones
For stagnancy will go on
Were truth struggles and lies goes on.
If men were to be God.
justice will be seek for
injustice will be of favour,
And The poor will labour from.
If men were to be God
War will be regarded as play
rain will be regarded as cain
And the stars shall be denied of the sky.
If men were to be God
Goodness will be be paid with wickedness
Earth will be desolate,tyranny will be seen as the best form of government.
Where a man decide the hope of all without confirmemt.
INKED BY
AKINOLA JOSEPH &OBAWE STEPHEN.
May 31, 2019
May 31, 2019 at 9:07 AM UTC
I want to free fall into the Mariana Trench.
I want to watch the world become darker and darker till light is not in the dictionary.
Forms of life will become less distinguishable with every meter.
Motel rooms and apartments litter the crevice's walls-"low" income housing-
Soup kitchens begin to occur less frequently-
Replacing them are drug houses and grimy gas stations with metal bars for windows.
Every creature notices my existence.
They dart their eyes just too much,
And I know they suspect that I came here to sleep. To be at peace with myself again.
To watch them, to hear them, to wander them.
In my mind, seconds melt like ice cream cones in July.
Minutes cut through the silence unnoticeably.
Time slips underneath me as the rug is pulled out from my feet and over my eyes,
And it covers my mind.
I remember nothing of past events,
They told me to leave all behind.
As the day grows darker into nothing but here and now,
My skin turns blue. I am the ocean in this divide of magnetic silence.
I am the fish who struggle to find meaning for themselves.
I am time which does not exist here.
I am the water whose stagnancy sinks me deeper into earth and beings of past eons.
My hair becomes the nutrients, the seaweed and algae that provide for the citizens of this primitive paradise.
My eyes are now seashells which house these forgotten creatures.
My arms stretch out towards surface and harden into coral shoots, but my mind is rooted into sea floor basalt and sand.
I will never leave.
An eel approaches me.
He welcomes me with a warm embrace too far up my body.
Not an under-the-arms hug,
A beating, lively hug around the neck.
It takes my breath away,
And so I cannot help but gasp with excitement,
And I find my peace.
Aug 14, 2014
Aug 14, 2014 at 8:57 PM UTC
I found a spoon in my garden.
Could you even call this a garden?
The planters are all full of
pine needles and stagnancy.
Even the bench I'm sitting on
is rotting and covered in ants.
Anyway this spoon was barely visible
among the dead leaves and dog ****
Not rusty, save for the edges that had been
knicked by a lawn mower at some time
and then bent perfectly
down the
middle.
A memory of playing superheroes
disrupts my study.
Someone was trying to prove their
strength by bending it
"with their mind".
Eventually we tired of our
mind's lack of capabilities
and used brute force to
bend the dreaded spoon
but the celebration was nonetheless
sweet after being able to bend
our mother's cutlery.
Back then the garden was tended.
My mother put us to work
and my
"secret garden" was born partly
out of my imagination and
a lack of reality.
My mother called one plant
"lamb's ear" and I didn't
argue because it was the softest
thing I had ever felt or ever will feel.
Did she make that name up?
Surely, she wouldn't lie to me.
And now that lamb's ear, like
everything else is covered in
a thick, itchy layer of pine straw
and stagnancy. To let the plants
even begin to heal from their
prolonged exposure to cold,
mistifying darkness I would have
to scratch through the
allergy-inducing tentacles.
Push them out of the way.
Dig up the dead, dry earth,
plant new seeds and tend to them
arduously--all while wondering
why couldn't my family just
take care of what they had?
but then I notice this spoon.
I've gotten carried away again
and now I forgot to write about
what I meant to write about in
the first place.
It's not healthy to let things rust.
Jul 14, 2012
Jul 14, 2012 at 11:25 PM UTC
*I feel like river water.
And I don’t belong to stagnancy,
yet I’m caught in a lake.
•••
*I’m destined
to move silt and sediment.
And overturn
submerged pebbles
so they won’t see
the green of moss.
I’m meant to surge
and eat into banks
so I could be split -
to make more of me...
My reach would extend
far and wide -
like scraggly fingers
grabbing at the
face of the earth.
My energy channelling
through careless forks
and into slimmer branches.*
•••
My soul is river water....
And my heart renounces
the throne to idleness.
Yet I am,
but a lake.*
Jan 17, 2018
Jan 17, 2018 at 9:47 AM UTC
Memories of the North Sea
sift in like sand kernels
on a fast, frigid tide:
events that transpired outside
the confines of rhyme,
unfolding exactly
as they were meant to.
Never before had I seen
so many shades of gray;
the overcast, monochromatic splendor
was awe-inspiring,
instead of being bleak and bleary.
___
The smell of salt and seaweed
awakes something dormant and eternal,
deep within me.
I have a surging desire
to flush stagnancy from my blood—
salty blood and water
come together in a communion
of distant relations and movements.
Beside me, a flash of bright red
digs in the sand; my child
is wearing the only vibrant colour
to be seen for many kilometres.
The colour matches her
enthusiasm and energy,
as she moves from one spot to the next
like a dancing flame;
reflected, a fire glows from my eyes.
Unknowingly, I had dressed
in the same colours of the sky and sea,
blending into the scenery
like a chameleon:
an illusion thicker than the clouds;
an illusion of stone
for me to melt and reinvent
at the spinning speed of thought.
I watch my daughter
drink the seascape with a smile of wonder;
it's her first time visiting an ocean.
With our pants rolled up to the knee,
we wade through waves,
and collect stones and shells.
She knows the chameleon
who walks alongside her in the frothy surf.
Observing seabirds cover the steep cliffs
of the island located further out,
in a blanket of black and white feathers,
I wonder if people onshore
only see a solitary dash of red out here,
or if the chameleon
is more noticeable than I had thought.
2012 North Sea Remix
December 17th, 2012
Dec 18, 2012
Dec 18, 2012 at 4:50 PM UTC
sent forth on a path of destruction,
the prince of war is parading
through orange tides of
burning torches—
the funeral rites of
the dead king.
the engine of entropy spits out little
agents of chaos like bees from a hive.
they will sow
in time for the harvest
and when the sun rises to adorn
their naked, furry bodies
with golden dew,
they will shiver
in the remnants
of every dead star
before this one ends again.
a banshee from the ages
arrives as a missile of
determined suffering
set to detonate in close
proximity to the loose reins
of my forgotten destiny.
she wears a crown of roses
and embraces me with
her thorns
in the realm of Nature’s
loveless fawn—
a birthed, forgotten creature
gilded in silver linings
only to melt at
the feet of
God’s love.
I have cried rivers of tears
for people that have left
and all it does is drown
the land in a flood
of never memories
that keep me
isolated in stagnancy.
the wet magic in my
blood is vaporizing from
my fingertips now,
the crackle of split
lightning spins through
my skyless eyes.
abbreviated life spans
chunked into pieces
of lives I never wanted to
live, yet helped form
me.
I see violence in the periphery—
muted and out of
focus.
oil-spitting broken android
smashing through houses
looking for his heart
before powering
down.
“I am clipped,”
she whispers.
*“my wings don't lift me
anymore.
I am a trophy in a
cage.
I am atrophy in a
cage.
singing about the world
beyond these bars.
set me free—
I see the
window!
my flight feathers
will grow back
and I will leave you—
yes,
but I might return
and sing
to you about
that world beyond
the window.
I am not yours
to keep—
set me free!”*
she commanded my heart,
so I did—
I set her free.
and she flew away
into the world
and left me
with a parting gift—
an open window
and a devastating song of silence
that echoes in my ribcage forever.
Aug 24, 2025
Aug 24, 2025 at 9:49 AM UTC
You feel like
A ghastly mist, crawling up my toes
Touching frozen ground as you wrap
The soles of my feet in pasty white.
You feel like
Wet hair seeping through every thread
Of a pillowcase where you rest your head
Cold, warm, cold, warm—uncomfortable.
You feel like
Sore eyes from screens too bright
As you type in bold, black thoughts
A manifesto of the conflicts within.
You feel like
A room with no light, air, and sounds
Stagnancy echoing—the streaks, the blowing, the ringing
Were all dampened, washed out, unheard of.
You feel like
The sudden flash of blindness in the sky
Overlapping the deepest violets with such crisp tear
And they, too, tear as well.
You feel like
An intrusive intrusion of an intruder
An interlude to all the things you've done
An intermission to the tango that has just begun.
You feel like
A stale yet warm yet ugly yet comforting embrace
I wrap around you just to seep in every inch
Of what only you could offer.
You feel like
The last beginning of the endgame
The enshrouding entrance of what is to come
The naked piece of the puzzle
I have yet to grasp fully
You feel like
Bitter goodbyes
Unfiltered eyes
And crimson skies.
Sep 17, 2021
Sep 17, 2021 at 1:21 PM UTC
Everywhere, you don't need to choose to acknowledge it
Creating a subsequent opulence of
unanswered questions fulfilled,
pedestals gazed upon;
Securely sit our ideas of the world.
Non-conjunct actions leave words to be all that there is.
Influence gone, static amidst the change,
Stagnancy.
Sep 4, 2012
Sep 4, 2012 at 2:42 AM UTC
Cold rain pelting on my skin,
city lights reflected in the wet black tar of
a road almost too narrow for the cars racing by -
all this I saw last when you were standing by my side,
feeling the nighttime city live and breathe around us
as we watched people scurry by and call for taxis in the cold.
It has never felt lonely to me before, I never saw
how isolated you are in a city when you're standing in its heart,
watching the blood pump through veins around you
and yet not moving, stagnancy amidst torrents.
A neon light flickers across the street from me
and I am ripped out of my dream to realise
you are not with me this time.
I see you in every street lamp;
around every corner I expect to see your face
to face only myself in the mirror of a dark shop window.
My face looks unexpectedly hollow,
my shape unfamiliar without you next to it,
and I wonder when my life became about you.
I do not belong here, into this city where
lights gleam bright even in the darkest hours
and sirens scream agony all night long.
I am from a different world, one where
dogs run free across wide fields and along rivers
and the air smells of fresh-cut grass in spring.
I am from a world where nobody locks their door
and stone-and-wood houses are made to live in,
not concrete boxes where numbers rule lives.
All this was once foreign to me, and is again;
I do not belong with the neon lights and cinemas,
the glass facades and cold black tar,
I do not belong with the flashing ads and loud sirens,
the people who don't smile as they walk by.
All these things remind me of you.
I was one of them, one of the souls that made up this city
but I cannot live in it when you are not here.
I do not belong here anymore,
among the thousand lights that remind me of your eyes
and the constant noise that sounds like your breath.
All this reminds me too much of you.
Feb 8, 2016
Feb 8, 2016 at 6:21 PM UTC
you didn't kiss me.
tonight I didn't taste your lips
but I felt the longing
as speedball ink dripped.
I planted smiley faces forever on your wrist
the same day I assumed
I'd never be more than
five minutes on your ****
though a speck or two
of your tattoo
was out of place,
we accepted it with open arms
because we are two that can relate.
we were sewn closer with each dot
and thought
and your ungrinded ***
shout it out loud that we aren't moving too fast
because stagnancy too has been
proven to crash.
both of us
were trying not to stray
from our own yard
but laying there together
we looked like the continents did
before they drifted apart.
Jun 23, 2016
Jun 23, 2016 at 2:38 AM UTC
We scuffed across the wide sidewalks, 3 AM *****
persuading us the dim-lit bridge wouldn’t fall away beneath
our curiosity to see the university’s emptiness, content
in August’s stagnancy. I tried to picture thousands of strangers
walking different paths to reach their point B,
but soon we stepped off yellow-toned brick and I saw hippies
laying on the ground outside a pub, smoking joints.
One woman with hip-length dreads, her face as wrinkled
as crumpled love letters hidden behind my dresser, pointed
and said, You’ll forget yourself some day.
Months later, I blinked awake in the tank as dawn crept
through my cell bars, quietly, like the disappointment on my birthdays
or Mom’s sighs when she browsed the mail for child support checks
never sent by my train-wreck, truck deck loving old man
who ****** me off when I mistook him for that self-righteous cop
hell-bent on teaching me a lesson of respect.
He had that patronizing presence, and it blinded me with magma
rage I felt in my arms, through my knuckles, right to his rib cage.
I still don’t remember the way back to that dingy pub.
Mar 4, 2015
Mar 4, 2015 at 6:06 PM UTC
Stagnancy living
in colorless morning.
sunflower sunshine disconsolate
the rooster sings
eulogies and clamored verses
ringing alarm bells in cockcrow
cough drone weary eyes
dew-tied memories of
reverie weepy
aching legs and chest pains
cotton cozied pills crashing
underneath plastic caps
prescription taps
Tylenol Benzedrine
relapse body thinning
cities wearing
ergonomic tragedies
encircling business quarter
daffodil rooftops
steady rain descending onto
varnished sidewalks.
Addicts pirouette dazzled the
hazed-minds dreaming of
Aprils and consistent harmonious
ecstasy visions stampeded
by the brickwork flickered with
lamplight demons overcast this illusory Babylon
trembling flesh retreats into the shadows it came
and nightmares remain similar to days before and after.
Recycled horrors lightning flash abhorrent death
whether they be wearing black suits or black robes
scythe or satchel the wide eyes scour gaunt alleys
for fixes to fix the monotonous life bewitched
with false material variety anxiety deity
Desecration City express way to depression
oppressed people hide away in simultaneous acts of
camouflaging fireballs
spiraling into decadence.
Diamond days few and far between
communal woe reverberates through skins
and skeletons in opening of top story windows
during Winter. Despite the fragrance chaos,
pandemic paranoia,
extinguishing elation,
All bodies continue to be
alone.
Mar 19, 2015
Mar 19, 2015 at 8:47 PM UTC
We're just connecting the dots of past encounters,
hanging on to what you know
and what's become far too familiar over time.
We include one another in our stagnancy and time may as well stand still.
We're all servants to a master bent on our destruction,
we bow our heads and say "jump how high?"
This isn't a right, it's a responsibility.
I'm just a sheep, but I've got a little fight in me.
A tired dog, but I've still got some bite in me.
So here's to the degradation of the pride we'd built
Do they only stand by ignorance? Is that their happy state,
The proof of their obedience and their faith?
I swear to God this is a comedy.
The cruelest joke I've never told,
but in my head, it never gets old.
We allow the crimes against ourselves,
so how can we complain?
We're the source of our own pain, so even though
I've found a place to rest my head,
I still can't sleep.
I still can't sleep at night.
The delusions are setting in,
but I still can't sleep at night.
No dreams will come, I lay and weep
I still can't sleep, I still can't sleep...
May 25, 2013
May 25, 2013 at 6:13 PM UTC
Building ourselves is no easy task;
We must rip off our masks.
Only then can we construct,
Only then can we obstruct.
If you flow down the river,
Your soul will shiver,
As you never grasp your potential,
Which for happiness is essential.
Stand alone, be obtrusive,
Oppose those whom are abusive.
Find yourself, find your convictions,
Throw off stagnancy the addiction.
Feb 3, 2016
Feb 3, 2016 at 9:54 PM UTC
Milk-stone tiling, with some
figure-hugging brown
and Castleton's ceiling pervading;
cement works, cement works,
on my mind.
The shroud of Christ's teachings
is left in damp upon the soap-fused wall.
Fan beating in aggressive pleasure,
it staves off stagnancy,
instead cleaning all humidity
with purity of essence.
Cleansed, cleansed,
the soaps are tinted in poisonous colours,
lethal toad and paradise mountain,
you scale all levels of disappointment,
to leave in want of better investment.
As in all politics, each day I intend
to settle my doubts in your cleansing augment,
of all that is pure, and all without grime,
from the stubborn North wind,
that freezes bells before chime.
Jan 22, 2014
Jan 22, 2014 at 10:11 PM UTC