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Arlene Corwin Apr 2018
Unmotivated Tears

I used to criticize
The eyes
Of those I knew
Who, at
Drops of a hat
Shed tears of ardor: God-knows-what.

Ascribing it
To vitamins and lack thereof,
Past, present and/or too much ‘love’.
Too something/something out of balance;
Nothing but a prevalence
Of yin or yang
Ganging up
On both those ducts.

Uncaring and unfeelingly –  I used to be.
Now, at eighty-three it’s me.
I may need hormone therapy.
Or is it age sagacity  -
Unmotivated tears
Based on a grasp of life’s chimere
That takes in all -
An all which makes one engineered
By tears
One must defer to.

Unmotivated Tears 4.24.2018 I Is Always You Is We; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Aging; Arlene Corwin
Marshal Gebbie May 2015
Intangibly, it cometh and goeth.
Substanceless it slips in transition from one immeasurable instant to the next. Equitable to infinite space, in terms of distance, infinite time is a concept quite alien to the finite human mind. There is no proof of existence, it is a human conception with no sensory component, an illusion and utterly immeasurable in real terms with only a human contrivance to calibrate it....(and poorly at that).
Time is the silken zephyr on which we lay our dreams and aspirations. It is the currency of deep religion and is regarded as the ultimate sword hand of God. Incorruptible and absolute it brooks no favour, seeks no fame. Irreversible in it's cold implacable, unquenchability it merely, unfeelingly.... proceeds.
M.
Tangerine Dust Oct 2011
Unexpectedly,
With the arrival of summer,
A gentle breeze caressed
Her cheeks as she breathed in
The scent of him as he stood
At the edge of her doorstep.
She laughed and smiled, unbelievingly waiting for him to disappear;
And instead, he beckoned her closer.
With temptation pounding in her person,
She cautiously stepped away from her boundaries,
And for the first time,
She left her safety after years of wariness.
It was an unforgettable summer
Starting with the first night she took
His hand underneath a blanket of shimmering stars.
And she listened as the ocean ebbed
With the sound of his heartbeats.
For she was
Swept up entirely in his summer wave.

Time wore on.
She smiled as these summer leaves turned from the
Pleasant bright green to a
Beautiful golden maple.
She was discovering something new,
Stunned at the vivacity of the autumn
But unknowingly,
Unappreciative of the true value of what
She currently possessed.
She silently followed his feet as he took the lead through this forest,
With faith that their tempos would continue to align after
This autumn season—
She would never tell him,
Of the fear she secretly masked beneath her front
For many have said nothing
Lasts forever.
As these thoughts became more frequent,
The daily smile she would give him would continue to persist.

But she discovered it was true, for
Through her attempts of positivity,
She eventually lost sight of their pleasure
As he remained completely unaware.
In the end,
Believing in her façade,
Transformed her facade
Into a reality.
Summer’s blessing became winter’s burden.
And while the harsh weather waned on,
The leaves, which had defined their beginning,
Now were dead with the flutter of bleak snow—
Obscured in the rush of the current season,
With the sight of color was lost.
She still remained outside with him, unfeelingly holding his hand,
Away from her boundaries,
But in all honesty, she felt
Detached,
Distant,
Cold.
She longed to retreat—to seek shelter within her haven
She had left during those summer months,
And return to a place where she no longer had to pretend.
Eventually,
It was in this dark time, in the absence of him
That she departed,
As she only thought of herself,
Not yet understanding the depth of his love;
The depth that would soon be lost
The depth she would soon realize existed.
For although she had retreated, she too soon regretted her rash decisions
For underneath her shallow despair,
In her lonely and closed off safety,
She discovered
What she had not seen before.

She sprinted outside into the melting cold,
And called out his name as patches of green formed around her haven.
She hiked to the edge of the forest,
And climbed several mountains before finding him.
Out of breath, she screamed to grab his attention.
In response, he apathetically turned around, slowly recognizing
That she was present;
Unthinking and anxious,
She looked into his eyes for one last time,
Foolishly searching for their depth
And the beauty of color he presented her last summer.
Instead of emitting a sheltering, gentle breeze
He looked upon her coldly.
And instead of beckoning her closer
He told her to leave from his sight.
As the impact of his voice resounded within her,
She felt something deep within her break.
As she hurriedly returned to her shelter, slamming the door shut,
She shattered into unrecognizable glass splinters
That splayed among the wood of her room,
Encasing her pain inside of her walls for months.

She no longer noticed the shift of the seasons.
Her blinds stayed closed and door shut, as she
Continued to drown in the reality of his words.
She pathetically remained within her enclosure
As strangers knocked on her door with heartfelt concern;
She told them to leave, like he told her. And yet,
They still earnestly pounded on the barrier, persisting. Out of a whim,
She decided to open up—hoping his eyes would greet her.

Instead,
Light pierced her vision as her door swung open
And for a moment, the colors were hard to make out
As the blaze settled, the roots of summer took its place.
And she realized, it was the
Rebirth and Renew
Of Summer.
In that instant,
She was no longer a slave to the past,
For now she realized
The independence she had shunned was actually
A chance to explore this unknown present.
She broke free from her monotonous state and
Bolted from the door,
Enthusiastic to experience something new.
But in reality,
Once again,
Locked into the seasons’ continuous cycle.
new to poetry.. let me know if it's alright
Juju Oct 2017
Sometimes you expect more of someone,
Because you
Would do that much.
And it hurts to realise
That you don’t have:

A rope to grasp,
A wall to lean on.

That you walk on a floor,
Whose tiles unfeelingly dissolve,
Letting you fall into the abyss,
With no rope to grasp.

That the one that haddock your turns to wind,
Letting you lose your balance,
With no wall to lean on.

An emptiness so vast,
Barley contained,
Held within a fist of flesh,
Pulsing with despair.
Jordon Jones Nov 2011
It falls.
Beautifully,
  Finally,
   It falls.
    Delicately,
     Unfeelingly,
      It falls.
       Slowly,
        Gracefully,
         It falls.
RMatheson Jun 2015
All the things, unsaid.
The thoughts, unsaid
behind a blue light lcd
staring into the white space
I do not fill with the:

I miss you so much and it hurts
I so very much enjoyed our time together
And maybe I'm over emotional
And maybe my vision is blurred
But I hurt when you aren't here
And I hate this machine
I've become.

And I worry she tore all my veins out
replaced them with wires, unfeelingly
pumping signals to this lead heart,
just gears and steam.

I am a machine, not a man.
I am efficient
I am strong
I am unfeeling
And I destroy everything
I touch.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
it truly only exists in english-speaking societies...
after spending 3 weeks in poland,
god bless the pine woods and the number
of birch trees... and the -18°C temperatures -
   i can't but feel this aura of insanity hanging
over any western society...
        it's this languishing in people censoring
each other in a vocabulary battlefield -
               it's this persistent need to censor yourself
when the word best used, is deemed by others
to hurt their ears... as if i were standing over them,
with a drill to their ear, or
    a raven claw about to gauge out their eyes...
         i never understood it, but it's happening
in western society...
no wonder society stands firm with the lynch mob of
Ełk... it wasn't a scene from Nice,
nor that bloodbath in Paris...
                       a toll of only one soul, stabbed
in a kekab shop...
      Islam will be hardly welcome in Poland:
you need a very ridiculous version of catholicism,
as is the case, from where i reside.
                    there was no candlelight vigil...
there were only his contemporaries
    lynching the poor Tunisian...
            his shop was destroyed...
and a few other, innocent people got smacked in the gob:
like the 21 year old's death: for no reason:
  just to fill in the rubric.
                       the hashtag from Poland circa
December 16th? #wolne media...
            apparently the media were no longer welcome
in the sejm...
    i just can't tell you anything grand about that,
i was watching it from a public television set,
in a cafe drinking strong coffee...
      while four Ukranian women were eating chicken
and other eastern european delicacies...
waiting for their coach to Kiev...
                   and that pauper making a sandwitch in
the bus-station...  no butter: a slice of ham
slapped into two slices of bread...
        and god: that frost below zero...
finally i could breath air! free from African and
Arabian pathogens... like they say:
bacteria, viruses and parasitic lifeforms require
heat... you get cryogenic treatment in Siberia...
    for a long time: i felt ethnically completely...
mind you: it snowed in England today,
   but it was a teasing type of snow...
  it's practically not there anymore...
                         why did i write certain ''poems''
invoking racial slurs? at the frustration of being
dislodged from whiskey,
and the keyboard...
                       i rather throw enough negativity
into a blank canvas than a punch on someone...
       but it's there: citizen versus citizen and how
we are to speak, so unfeelingly: so un-freely...
                          and the curse of having that nagging
justification for what we said while exhaling
      helium...
                       i am, however, after something more
serious... namely why there are only two diacritical
marks in the english language, and they are closely-proximated,
on the ι (iota) and the j... and nowhere else!
               it's a bit too tad presumptious that these
letters received the treatment for accent-prone recipient
mandates...
                                  english has so many examples
it deviates from when diacritical rules are invoked...
     tri-                 tripple           try  and              tip -
   random, i know...
                         but given the ι, there is no reason why
a dot above it should be the sole incissor...
     why doesn't í exist? yes: the acute iota?
                             much concerning the
lost trill of the Ar...
                                              and if i were to rewrite the
alphabet, you'd have clear beginnings,
   and even clearer borrowing to put the masculine
sound last, as in the case of Ar...
     so to borrow from the periodic table...
a...    be... ç.... (so s ***** off)
                     deed...                 e...
                         ef (e minor, F needs e to exist as distinct,
but because of f being at the back, beginning with e,
     we'll not count it as an autonomous letter)...
              gee....
                                ­                             aye-chitty-chitty h...
                        laughter knows no alphabet...
ah forget this... it's getting muddled!
  the greeks used original names to encapsulate phonetic
units, apart from η (eta), μ (mu), ν (nu), ξ (xi), π (pi),
  ρ (rho), τ (tau... hence no taoists),
                            φ χ ψ (phi, chi, psi) -
question, why not pha cha psa?
          evidently vowels were used to stabilise
  the consonant grounding, but you could have used
other vowels to stabilise the sounds φ χ ψ -
  evidently the h when coupled to a p or a t is only an F...
     but in Greek that's future: not effigy.
        thank god i took to chemistry at some point in my life...
i can fiddle with these curiosities...
           Latin has exhausted its musicology...
it's no longer an alphabet that might give us a mozart,
or some poor castrato choir...
     and from chemistry, is has to name certain
letters nouns...
       like omicron or omega... being names
more than mere sounds designated the o & ω symbols...
latin will not sing anymore for us...
   we need to strenghten the alphabet recitation...
  some letters can remain simple,
but others have to involve an: o into omicron rigidity...
  or an ω into an omega mystique...
     which translates into quick-speaking and slang...
and i don't know: 3 weeks without the internet...
strenghtened by being sober... and actually being able
to read a book of 400 pages by kraszewski...
      and i come back,
   i wish someone on the periphery of London have
         the same European experience as i had in my native
soil...  a strange experience of a monochromatic society...
       western people my age had to resort
to the internet...
                           it's so less exhausting...
                             you start to think about going fishing,
rather than shouting your point of view into
   a dajjal-eye of a video channel...
                                                 i've only been back from
a mono-cultural society, and i didn't even think about
  drinking my loyal share of whiskey...
      it's so so exhausting, beginning with learning words
in order to later censor them...
                          and yes, i wish i could go back...
      i would have been a third-generation metalworks
worker... but globalisation happened...  
                    mm hmm... what am i doing here?
       well, i'm certaintly not thinking about it...
                          england has become exhausting,
using english has also become exhausting...
      no wonder i started listening to finnish folk bands...
   i need a ******* breather.
Ann Nicole Oct 2017
Time is stopped and there is a heart on pause pressed into my shoulder. Like a boulder drawing breaths, his lips are on my neck and his hands are in my pocket. A heart shaped locket takes his place as his plane flies and my heart flutters then lies still like time is paused. All I can do is heave into the hollowed porcelain as my heart clanks like hail against the window of my ribs and I want to drive but the storm is too heavy, like it’s winter and I won’t make it home for Christmas in this blizzard.
I draw his face into the stark white canvas with my brush and it may not match the picture, but it matches my memory as my hand stands still and I want to kiss the still-wet green of his eyes. Each step I take is heavy, like the gravity on saturn has taken me over and it feels like I’m walking without time, as his laugh does not echo the halls. Deserted walls and glass coated floors, fallen pictures from slammed doors, swept to the side with unfeelingly cut feet. Isn’t it neat to be numb to most everything and most everyone?
Friends all pretend saying how I feel should be the song I sing to let the halls ring and fill the silences of my hell. They know all too well they are just acting silly, trying to prevent my grey sorrows from clouding my home the way it will. And it will, whether they interrupt my clouds with their poorly painted rainbows or not. Bared feet trip and a heart beat skips repeatedly against the hard wood floor that is pressed against a face that feels like mine. I know the news before they come; I’m not dumb. Yet it is hard to pretend to such prestigious people that everything in this house is fine.
Men as tall as skyscrapers, dressed as sharply as a new pair of scissors, clip the tips of my fingers to ice cold shreds with a typed out letter and a whispered apology. Like any sorry is going to take my broken heart and tie all of the dead pieces together. Life is paused as I remember the tear that swam in his eyes but didn’t fall. The tear that glided back into his ducts and didn’t survive to prove he’d yearn for me in the lengthening midnights. As though he would have rather been more man than lover and our good bye could be easily cut short. His letters were tear stained and curt, stopped short and sweet so many months ago that I knew then, what I definitely know now, in my heart.
I can’t stop the slam of the door, the noise that falls before it hits my ears as men shocked with the electricity of my energy leap about an inch off the cemented porch. My heart pounds and I can feel myself chasing a target unknown that just grows in my mind’s eyes. I feel as though my friends are spies and if I don’t move fast enough, they’ll destroy my plans and convince me that anything besides what my hammering heart wants will be more valuable. As if there are canons going off, my feet race across the hard wood floors and I know one thing.
I miss him.
But I’ll see him soon.
Matterhorn Apr 2019
I dread the sunrise each morning.

Even darkness,
My oldest friend,
Abandons me each day
To fend for myself
In the world, naked, exposed,
Alone and unprepared.

They reach out to me,
A warm,
Welcoming embrace,
Tentacles licking at my stiff heart strings,
Striking up a tune
More melancholy than a funeral dirge.

I can't help but to fall into a trance;
They whirl me around
And I easily keep step
With their back-and-forth dance,
Slipping and sliding
On angry tears mixed with mucus.

Finally, I've had enough of the dance...
I push away the monsters,
Hurling sticks and stones
And laughing coldly, unfeelingly
As they hiss in surprised pain;
Tentacles recoil.

And I retreat back to my hole.
© Ethan M. Pfahning 2019
Sumera Saleem Apr 2017
The frailty of our will
shades fears to enter
the bright circle of life
through shabby doors of rectitude
displaying the prints of explanations
Markers of memories,
There is the rub that razes out the present,
Haze off the moments to appear,
Weighing upon tense life
Direct talk turns
its slumbering colours in smoke screen.
Troubling tabs actively open new grounds
of history with no past,
cover the clauses of cares unfeelingly
pauses whisper like songs sinking in dreams.
Though separation blurs
in blinking lights, phonie talks,
Sprawled in hands to mouth or ear to lips,
distance always fixes its roots
in untouchable finery of night.
waiting adds up nothing but anguish,
dividing its sentences into slippery sand
Battering invariably a hope inside us
with swerves of thoughts;
waiting stands no clock

— The End —