Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Lauren Michaud Aug 2015
With my growth I leave behind a shell.
A casing of the world I used to thrive in.
The past is no longer inhabitable, but still usable.
I use my memories as a flotation device in the abyss that is recurring.
I rise above my past and transcend into the new crevice that is my present.
I cannot change the past as it is set in bone.
But I can make my future fit me.
I can form my own protection
layer by layer
until all my supplies of DNA paper Mache will no longer stick.
Their glue dried up, exhausted by the length of time I've spent on earth, oppressed by the pressure of the tumulting, black sea.
Waves may break on me.
My knowledge of living my shield against depression, anxiety.
My bone hard shield saves me.
I am the chambered nautilus. I am awake.
But dream I will of times beyond 36.
What lies ahead may only hurt me on the edge because to the core my skeleton is steady.
Its weight growing heavy
Can be lifted with my spirits as if before a feast.
And dragged down to the ocean floor when realized I'm a beast.
No princess in her castle, nor farm boy in his barn
Unique to who I am, and in my niche I fit.
I may blow up.
And fall down.
And spurt salty tears.
You'd never know, my loves, my dreams, my fears.
Upon first glance I am the epitome of my life.
Upon second, as confusing.
Upon third, as painful and funny.
And as irrelevant to others as I am important to myself.
Another rock in the ocean. Another pebble. Another pearl.
Not found
Not searched for
Not hidden.
Nick Stiltner Oct 2018
Home is a bus station
A byway between,
A place to rest my head
Before the next departure.

I’ve seen rain through the windows,
I’ve sat through cool midnights.
The station fills and empties,
People with their luggage arrive
And wait for the next bus out,
Standing in a line at the door.

Home is the next station,
The nearest side of the road
With a view of the stars.
It’s an x on the map,
A hazy line connecting the dots
Between me and you.

My ticket is stamped
My bag tightly packed,
And with time I’ve come to know
That where I’m truly at,
A map can never show.

Life is a bus station,
With its comings and goings
Its periods of waiting and of rushing.
Charon, the perpetually impatient,
Drives his bus into the loading bay
And checks tickets at the folding doors.
With teared eyes I wave,
At the back of a bus as it drives
Into the dreary autumn sun set,
Down the interstate and out of the city.

Life is a bus station,
The place between
Where the crooked lights are on
Through the windows they shine
a lighthouse’s winking eye to a captain
Trapped in the tumulting waves
Of a wrecking sea storm.

The bus honks at it leaves,
And we wave to the driver
Who bravely heads down the road
That we all walk down in the end
Nat Lipstadt Jan 29
Dear Patty,

I have never met a child or a poem

born to live a free verse life,
willingly submit to patrician
powdered **** cheek horror at
the unconformity of escapading,
river rafting verbal tumulting,
never awoken needy to be yoked
by syllabic laws of brutalists,
jailed by autocratic diktats of meter,
or the iron confines of lines formatted,
imprisoned, once set free, they then opine-id
prithee prithee, prithee please sir
on
my license plating,
can I whine,
write free or die


bind me not by the rigid sharpies
of executed orders, or count the numbered
breaths tween my freedom riders,
escaping with grinning faces
shouting seen-u-around, and
don't forget to say
bye bye
to the tortuous
pretense of them
haiku hi hi hooliganisms,
and the amoebic
pentameter of a
speare chuckere
who was foolishly glad to trade
the kingdom of freedom
for a besaddled horse
led around by
the reign of ruthless rules


is this crystal-a-line clear
my dear?
Jack Jenkins Dec 2016
Silhouettes of shapeless design dance upon lighted canvas walls,
As the moon totters and topples between a black hole and your heart,
Ripping apart the space-time continuum of my already fractured skull,
Spewing forward from my sanguine eyes, a rainbow of discarded harmony and abstract ink blotches.

My mind enshrined itself whilst my thoughts unraveled like a Halloween treat from its wrapper,
Slipping between the bars of the grated floor and tumulting through pipes of unsavory character,
Spilling out from portals to the unrelenting yet ultimately mortal season of water,
Untimely demises are plotted by my cranial nerves to usher in revenge and animosity.
Written 15 March 2016... a very abstract poem

— The End —