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Jacky Xiang Sep 2010
We are peculiar characters,
Ignite the blaze among brethren.
With simple vices of cogitors,
Beliefs, labels: stumble; fallen.

We value our semper fidelis,
Whence last your soul was caressed?
A casual stroll won't suffice,
From the abyss your heart was fetched

Above the crowd, our gaze collide,
Troubled thinkers be seeking zen.
Below the stars always beside,
Distant paths be unwritten.
Wrote this at 3am in the ****** morning on a Monday.. >_< Read and reread.. seems well constructed.
Lauramihaela Feb 2017
I thought that writing
had abandoned me;
left me forever
like a lover
in an unrequited union.

I spent evenings waiting for
it to come back,
for words to stumble into me
at the grocery store-

but alas I waited 14 long months
and I was still alone,
as I started thinking
I had found other pastimes
and met other interests.

But when the passionate
ebb and flow of words
finally returned,
I realised this old flame and I
have unwritten business to finish.
........ SUICIDE NOTE UNWRITTEN........

Go deep fade away and leave me be,
Your friendship was but sorrow to them that have long known you before now.
You've followed me way too long on forlorn road,
Right from my infant you've clinged way too well than blood to veins and bark to trees.

Leave and return no more, not in my quietude, should you  be found like lost coin in day of lack
For all we've been, We've had no pleasure but pain,
You held but dirge for all that have known you.
You were the strange story told of them,
A story so dark and scary that hearts feared to hold.

You were the solemn whisper from the cold evening wind,
Evening touched by sorrow and despair.
You have no good sound but of sorrow and pain
Your melodies count but threnody, elegy, coronach, requiem, and lament.

Go farther in million miles and be lost in seasons gone by, lest your tone resound in my solitude,
You eerie note of evil whisper and solemn sound
That sink in deep the soul and spirit.
Our union should never be spoken in words nor be told in tales of time.

For I myself shall tell no story for us, neither will I lay to heart all that we've had in time well lost.
I shall trace no more the path we once trod.
Go, sink deep far away be lost in oblivion,
You the perfect stranger long known by misery,
The solemn friend of the doomed.
drizzt Jan 2014
My pen poised above the page,
I feel the need to write.
But my thoughts and feelings I cannot fathom
And find words that feel right.

I'll ask you to imagine,
The words not written here.
Look for them between the lines I draw,
In the spaces ever bare.

You may find this ironic,
As your eyes gently roam.
While they examine each and every word,
Of this unwritten poem.
The unwritten poem is far more melancholy than this one.
Chrysta Ashlock Feb 2013
My Perfect Stranger,

I have a proposal of sorts; I want to start writing a story, in which you are my partner in crime. The crime being – living without one another. Not being sure to know if we’ll ever be apart of one another’s lives again.
Scratch that – the crime, the crime would be a lie because in truth I want to begin a story to where you are my partner in crime, yes; but you’d be my partner in crime for life. We’d commit no crimes, speak no lies, confess all truths with the bluntest honesty that could spring forth from our hearts. Enjoy every possible moment spent together, for they have become few and far apart.
This is not just a start of any typical story, but it will be the start of our story. The real story – It can’t be written, it can’t be spoken by anyone other then you and I. We’re the only ones who know how our story begins, though we’ll never truly know how it’ll end. This is a second chance, if not the first chance.

“A kiss is what tells the beginning to every story… It’s up to you where that story will lead.” –me.

The past may be the past, but we lived in that past, and the past that once was will become recognized, if it has not already. It will not be viewed harshly as it should be. Every possible thing that occurs in life does so for a reason which only fate, or as some people come to say destiny, can tell. We live to forgive and forget, though nothing is truly forgotten. We are here to make mistakes then to learn from those mistakes; if one was to never make a mistake then they’re not truly living a life well lived.

“Welcome the future with open arms; embrace it like an old friend. Learn to forgive and forget the painful memories; keep your tears at bay; have faith in yourself and others. And mostly, remember that love and trust will always be your guiding light into the darkness.” –me.

“Everything happens for a reason; don’t underestimate those reasons… You live to forgive and forget and to move along with the life you’re leading. Therefore, with that said, don’t waste time with melodrama or pity arguments. Don’t put up with people who attempt to drag you down with them. Because I can guarantee that those people; the ones who try to play you like a cheesy board game are never worth a single breath escaping your lips. Those are the ones who will never find happiness, true happiness, bliss, No, they’ll forever be lonely. Keep moving forward, look onto brighter horizons. Love the ones you hold close to your heart. Cherish your children. Lead your own life, not someone else’s, nor let any other being lead yours. Smile. Kiss. Love. Trust. Be honest with yourself and with others. It’s all worth it in the end.” –me.

Maybe our largest mistake together was making stupid decisions when we met. We made the choice to fall in love, to date, to live together and try to be happy all within a mere week of meeting. In doing so, hearts wound up broken; smashed into stardust. Trust was ripped away and friends were lost.
This time, this time will be different. I, in this beginning, will tell you of me. I will tell you everything which has occurred throughout my life, it may be the past, but my past tells a lot of who I was which has made me, well, me. I will be bluntly honest with you. I will answer every question you could possibly fathom to ask me. It’s just, I don’t know where to begin…

“The past will never cease to constantly be snipping at your heels with every step you take; it’ll always be there to remind you who you are and what paths you’ve chosen to lead you to where you are. Don’t break promises, don’t break hearts, because it’s happened before; your sometimes overwhelming past can come toppling down on you at any given moment; so be careful. There’s no one who wants to slip, fall face first, losing all consciousness into what once was.” –me.

“People change… I’ve seen friendships fall apart and relationships destroyed. It happens. Truth hurts. People lie. People cheat. Everyone destroys someone else in some way, it’s an ever going cycle of life. Live your life. Even when something unexpected comes alone, enjoy it, love it. It’s all worth it in the end. I can promise you that.” –me.

“Not everyone can read me like a story book or a torn out page of your favorite fairy tale. There’s more to me then just that. My life, better yet, my story is more complicated then most may think.
I used to be the girl that you would see walking alone down the street at night, cigarette in hand, bag in the other, all the while letting the world completely pass me by. I was the girl with the electric green nail polish and nearly enough eyeliner on my eyes to last most girls the entire year. Though all I am to most is just another pretty face.
There’s always new lives forming, coming alive, seeing this rundown movie for the very first time. Then there are also lives ending, running away from a failing life. Praying that the next world is better then the one they left in their very wake.”
–me.

Let’s begin like this; I am complicated, spontaneous, gullible, unnaturally trusting of others and a big ball of confusion at times. I care too much for others, even when they’ve chewed me up, spit me out and kicked me around in the dirt, I still care. I hand out second chances like a stranger hands children candy from his van. One would assume I would have learned my lesson of doing such nonsense, but nonetheless I continue to forgive too easily. My heart throbs when I am upset and feels as if it is going to burst wide open so all of the world can see. I have the unfortunate tendency to bottle up how I feel because my thoughts process too quickly and I become speechless because the words I am trying to speak just refuse to form into speech.

“Trust; it’s a highly important factor in ones life. I have very little for those I have met here, all except for one in which I trust completely with my life, my heart, my child… Yes, I may be very trusting, but that trust only lasts until you’ve broken it… Everyone of you thus far, besides that one person has broken my trust. So therefore those of you who broke my trust can go **** yourselves and relinquish yourselves from my life; it’ll be much better without you. And you know exactly who I’m referring to.” –me.

I fall in love too easily and too quickly; as you have first handily witnessed. I do intend for that to change, which, with my most recent excuse of a relationship I came to realize that it has changed. I never fell in love with him, I never had a true attachment, just annoyance. There is no excuse to why the relationship was even formed to begin with, let alone why it lasted more then a few short days. That relationship is over now, and that relationship will never get a second chance like others have.
I have changed; I’m no longer the person I once was. I still care and I still love, but I’m no longer the me I used to be. After our first run around, something switched off, or maybe even on inside me. I don’t fight, I may argue my point but it has no intentions to cause any harm. I began to communicate my feelings more, even though it seems to do no good.
I believe that everyone deserves to be happy, and I look for the good in everyone, that’s why I constantly push and try so hard, to bring out the better and happier person in those I am trying to help. And it seems to be the people I end up dating are those I subconsciously am looking to help; I am drawn to those who are in dire need of change without ever realizing so. It’s like a test I’m giving, and so far everyone has failed. I feel as if I’m here to help others, to make their lives better even though sometimes it may not seem like I’m trying to help at all; but I really am.

“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave. A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master.” – Elizabeth Gilbert

I have had many bad run-ins in this short life I have lived thus far. I became pregnant at seventeen and I was far from ready to have a child of my own; I was still a child who needed to experience more of life before bringing another life into this cruel world. In result my child was removed from my care because I fell into the hands of disastrous acts. I met the wrong people whom only drug me down farther along with them. I fought and I fought to get her back in my arms, and after a year I finally did. Though now, I look at her and I feel as if she belongs to someone else. I don’t have the bond which I should have with my daughter and no matter what I try it just won’t spark. This is a terrible confession, but it is of the truth. I catch myself more and more looking at my baby and asking myself if this is really real. Asking myself where has time gone? I missed so much of her growing up that it’s tearing me to pieces now, years later. Nothing seems to be real anymore. I need that bond between me and my child more then I need anything else, because she is my shining light in this world.

“I can’t find reality; my reality has just become a non-stop ride through hell and back. Send someone to shine a light as bright as a shooting star so I can find my way back to what my reality should be realistically.” –me.

I, myself am indeed an open book, mostly unwritten. All you ever need to do is ask me questions… Tell me of yourself – open up to me completely; because if you can tell me everything and if you can tell me everything that has been hidden, I can do the same. Be adventurous with me, be spontaneous; do things you never thought you would fathom of doing. Live with an open mind to the future; because our future could be blindingly beautiful, and then again it could also be terribly tragic. Though we will never know until we try; that’s how life works, as you’re well aware.

Though I am afraid that the beginning is coming to a slow halt; so I am asking this of you – please consider being my partner in crime, to help me continue writing our story, our fairytale. It may be the most adventurous challenge we’ll ever come across in our lifetime.
I do hope I provided a well spoken beginning, telling of some, let’s say “important” points of me and my past. Just remember, I want to find what once was lost; I want it to be found properly from both parties involved. Maybe we’ll be some of the lucky ones who’ll, one day find true blissfulness; just maybe.


Your Perfect Stranger
this is also NOT a poem... this is a letter I never sent to my "perfect stranger", my ex, the true love of my life even though I never sent it to him.
written: 7.07.12
K Mae Mar 2013
being human
just one issue
gnarled over, shoved under
left to ferment rot
seeps toxin silently throughout
one belief of darkness born
gathers strength of story
  weighted sadness magnified
response from bleak to hopeless
**yet someone dares approach
with eyes that will not close
to lift an edge of pulsing scab
and call expression forth
raw alchemy of true release
again there is the will to breathe
expand admit potential
engage once more
renew belief
in life now
script unwritten
SH Dec 2011
poetry is photography:
the photography of your soul

it begins as an observation captured in stuttering syntax:
the lens of your soul pointing towards a subject, a metaphor, a line
within you, within the world, within the two.

if vague and smudgy this image at first,
the lines rearrange themselves, the grammar settles,
and the image comes into focus - sharp and still.

as you would a camera, approach things at angles,
you flood your poetry with perspective, with self, with distance,
stamp yourself onto it, and you know it belongs as yours.

and you know you have captured that pearl in an oyster,
those millions of dying stars exploding within you,
an image of yourself.

yet, sometimes, you're out of film and however you click the shutter,
your words fall off the lines, burst into dissonance, or finds itself unwritten.
like photography, you do not expect a stable yield of inspiration.

then, with the years, you lay your poetry on a wall -
chronologically, alphabetically, thematically, or anything -
and you will step back to see a montage of your life in eloquent snapshots.

if poetry should ever be photography - then -
it would be the photography of one's soul.
It began with how I thought poetry exactly similar to photography. But as I tried to write on how poetry is like photography, I began to realise... it isn't. Photography captures the external world. Poetry captures the internal world - even if the subject is an external one.

"We see the world as we are, not as it is." - Mahatma Ghandi
Nylee Jun 2020
My best verses are never written
Nor do anyone gets to listen
They dance in my mind
every word properly bind

The words conjuring the bliss
the smallest sentences
with deepest meanings

disappear when I take out my pen

and start over a blank sheet
with one word staring back
Composed and forgotten

In dark abyss
absence of words in canvas
Cannot remake the very rhyme
The painted masterpiece
Stolen away as
Reality strikes again
.
Unique Moore Nov 2013
Sometimes I wonder .... where we went wrong...where do we find the missing lyrics to our song...? I met you so quickly....and just as such...You were gone...we still keep in touch...But somehow to me it doesn't seem like much. Deep down I still feel there is something between us could it just be an aesthetic lust? Could I be obsessing over something I should've left in the dust? I hit you up from time to time but it feels like that could never be enough. What do you need from me? Temporary insanity. Pride, ego, fear of rejection all in play. Guess I'm just waiting for the day...When you say... Hey...can we start over?
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2019
again, madness!

one eye tears, why must you return to the old familiar,
the poets prescribed, already so well covered?

why?

must. it is the only shade of my voice that persists,
all else vanity.
these are words handily eye-read, given.
all I need do is “repeat after me” somewhat well,
and fill in the blanks.
<>

he writes me, in another place, to another name, describing himself:

“I'm a charming man with a fragile patience.”

no sir, Muses order me to disagree,
you are a fragile man with a charming patience!

your fragility is a royal hallmark, embedded in every scribing,
this human indentation, always well hidden, on the underside of the wine cup, the base of the candlesticks, the inside of the wedding ring of your tying allegiance to the humbled humanity.

the charming patience is the wait time tween your visions of
the excellence of the common, the exquisites of the small,
the delights of loss and pain translated into mercurial milestones,
poems.

here I cease, for overly long praise is a river too long, no end in sight,
making great and wide just another poem.
<>

But!
he writes me, in another place, to another name, describing himself,
yet again:

”A thousand poems I don't write, but they get written
in my heart.


A thousand!
ours is the patience fragile, your innate screen that filters out

these thousand forbidden unwritten,
needs a cleaning, open the tiny apertures and release them, for we are the humans needing, for the breathing of your fragile charm.

<>
the Muses do thee attend.
their patience neither charming or fragile,
reminding me, they too have a thousand.

a thousand other ears into which to whisper that
imperative imperial command,
and they river no delay...
the days has come when I can only write of others, this is the only shade of my voices that survives.
Vijaya Balan Jul 2018
Things happen, moments are created, faces are remembered and feelings are tightly grasped within the dry skin of our cracked hands,
Cracked hearts too maybe?
Where do we go but forward,
Remembering absent friends, lost loves, broken dreams and a hope to bury it all in that dark backyard behind our weathered but sturdy home,
We will move on, forge new paths, break new barriers, repeat a thing or two,
but oh well,
We all have some familiar cycles in our life right?
We are resilience built on the foundation of faith and belief,
We are unwritten pages, with past chapters that can fill a library, a library that none might visit,
And we will still go ahead and do everything that we want to, regardless of what anyone else ever said,
We are beings with a field of uncertainty surrounded by determination at the most unexpected moments,
Love and let go, love and cherish, love and be broken, love and not expect anything in return, love and be loved back a 1000 times,
We are the sum of billions of atoms,
We are the moments we create and the things that happen,
We are the beliefs of more than thousands of faiths in this world,
We are the tragedies of past, the conundrums of the present and the triumphs of tomorrow,
We are able,
We are capable of all of them,
We are capable and able.
Inspired by a mixed heavy week in July 2018. Death of a good friend, my 2nd year wedding anniversary, and 2nd year death anniversary of my mum. Love and death.
ryn Aug 2014
Pen
This here...my heart is a book
Sadness and hope inhabit most pages
Marred by past experiences that took
Scribbled are the ironies and broken adages

Worn pages tainted by the lowest of my days
Dark ink leave them smeared and stained Fresh ones stay crisp; free from nays
Awaiting dreams and wishes I have not gained

Silent are the pages still left unwritten
As though I have saved them for something
For future chapters yet to happen
For you to come and begin your writing

Welcome the pen that would herald a new start
Imagined it's ink to bear the flightiest notions
It would speak in volumes ensnaring the heart
It would sing a song with the sweetest of emotions

Seep in, dear ink, into my pages past and new
Seep through, dear ink, feel free to make your mark
Seep strong, dear ink, maybe you could undo
Seep true, dear ink, and bring light to the dark

But rip not the old for they forever will speak
Lessons that are learnt, strength that was bestowed
Tears that's been shed, happiness that I seek
Gloom that was braved, hope that I have sowed

Come, my heart is your book
You are the sole pen to my infinite pages
Ink are your words that would fill every nook
Eternal is the bond that would last through ages

This here...the rest of the pages are yours
Occupy them as you have in my everyday
I was saving them not knowing my course
Almost as if I knew you'd come to pen the words you'd say

A promise as sure as the sun would rise
A promise made as good as the noblest of men
My book is open to our laughs and cries
As long as you would forever remain my pen
Caytlin Rae Feb 2013
An unwritten story
That will never have words.
A sentence waiting to be spoken
That is never going to be heard.
A quick glance in your eyes,
Just as swiftly, looking away.
Talking to you every day, but
Still not knowing what to say.
Alone time together?
We’re just friends, so it’s fine.
What are you thinking?
That you want to be mine?
I hate that you say you’re imperfect,
Because you’re everything to me.
What more could I love in a person?
What is it that you can’t see?
Hearing your ridiculous laugh
Always brightens up my day.
I’m shutting out these thoughts, though,
Because they’re useless, anyway.
We’ll never be together
You’ll never feel the same.
When I’m gone in August,
You’ll probably forget my name.
Until then, I’ll catch stars in your eyes
Only when you cannot see.
I will write some rhymes and poems
About what could never be.
Leal Knowone Dec 2015
Pick up your weapon! Grab the pen.this one can't go unwritten, should I say it again?
Travis Green Aug 2018
An immense circle of thoughts was clouding
my brain in this room of reconfigured dimensions,
the spinning ceiling fan whirling into a windmill,
the ******* floors breaking into a wave of sharpened
metaphors, the expressionless curtains filled with fear
and crashing scenery, a dark hollow surface converging
in a rhythm of insane beats, imprisoned noted drumming,
disentangled sentences, shattering subjects, compressed
conjunctions and compounds accelerating into an eternity
of uncolored existences, as I stare at the isolated sky,
swollen stars diverging in a broken pattern of faded worlds,
the breathless moon sunken in a domain of interchangeable
languages, meaningless mazes, chopped consonants,
crumbling dreams, everything shifting in a sea of diminishing
whirlpools, while I drifted into a realm of uncaged thoughts,
a crushing cycle of unbalanced worlds, dizzy and senseless
paragraphs bleeding into timeless realities.  My eyes are
plummeting and shackled in drumbeating rhetoric, lost logos,
swallowed pathos, enveloped ethos, rainless cheeks, cloaked chests,
handcuffed arms, square root hips disassembling into deferred
depictions, distilled dreams, shadowed feet hardly more than a
poetic sound, a sore scrawled letter stretched in ragged angles,
stinging, helpless horizons.  I gazed at the shattered glass on
the kitchen floor, how its cracking vibration rumbled inside
my veins, how its impossible syllables blazed my soul,
the burning air around my inner being suffocating in Saturn,
vanishing in Venus, exploding on Earth, every ****** debris
splitting in horrid labyrinths, a screaming depth hidden in
disguise.  I glanced around at the broken wall where
my drunken dad fists where imprinted, the mangled wood
hanging in drugged vowels, the rotten symmetry disappearing
in chalky chambers, roughly lined hues declining without a trace,
as I reflected on the series of events that transpired, the way I
could hear the slamming door raging inside my vessel,
enflamed flaming verbs hovering in high rhymes,
hardened adjectives, destroyed derivatives, disintegrating
equations, the way his bladed feet dragged across the floor,
every reverberating step drowning the sunken space between us,
unwritten surroundings trapped in the atmosphere, confined in a
cloud of inconsolable galaxies, the raging fire stained ***** bottle
wedged between his grubby hands, as I could smell the reeking
breath sifting out of his mouth onto my monotonous flesh,
the same ruthless flow traveling in stuttering nouns, drowning
my heart in Neptune, while I listened to his blazing bloodshot
words, You are nothing without me!  You are worthless!  
You are just a filthy *****!  I wish you would die!  The rising
diction clenched every part of my frame, the way I could breathe
in the asphalt in his tasteless lips, a dying aroma that made me feel
like I was a featureless street seeping into underground dungeons, undone, a destroyed beauty shotgunned.
I wish I could write a book
It would be about me and you
It wouldn't be perfect no book is
It will have fights
And arguments
Love scene that will make your heart sing

I wish we were a song
The lyrics would be cheesy
Because the way I feel
About you is so cheesy

I wish we could last forever
Our pages and lyrics grow and grow
If we were a book
We would have a happy ending
If we were a song
We would be that cheesy happy love song

But we aren't a book or a song
So its unwritten
I don't know where it will go
Or how it will end
Im just going to let our story write its self
And hope you feel the same
Nat Lipstadt Feb 2019
a man privately asks, can you help?
you say, sure-no-hesitation

let me think on it for a day or two, he says
yet you act even before he comes back,
too late, you say, when he returns,
too late, he repeats in puzzlement,
yup, my check is in the mail,
cause one senses the need is dire plus,
plus you well recall the immutable obligation when  
a vague commitment of “just ask” was inked in a long ago message,
a poem born from/in the days when you slept in the car on the street

this vague promissory,
a more enforceable judgement in your own court of law
than any state construct or the judgmental eyes of a silenced god

word, honor, do.

thus it begins, an unwritten contract inked,
an egregious interest rate of 0% proffered and agreed,
commences a plain white envelope trickle,
a check inside, by postal mail, slowly it came,
month by month, inch by inch, Niagara Falls ^

years go by, and then comes a day,
when the accompanying check and its gift wrapped note says,
Paid In Full!

and so much for the tedious minutiae...

like kindness, I do,
Thank You and Your Welcome
are high on my list of proofs of
daily human extensions existential,

Paid in Full,
now rests at the top of the list

let me be blunt, the thrill of being a party
to a deal with no handshake, just coated in the
honorable words waterproof sealant,
with a person I likely may never meet,
made me so better assured of whom many claim I am,  
a mathematical proof revered and kept mind inscribed,
it was an aspirational ****, an unforeseen monthly blunt,
the best feeling good smile,
a kick in the pants about what really matters

being paid twice over and me,
getting by far,
the humanity confirmation,
the better half of the deal

write too often of honor,
and yet, will instinctual do again,
again overpowering my rays of will,
for there is no deflection, only reflection

for the glorious riches gifted and received,
without compare
the return on my honorable investment the best ever


oh brotherhood, oh brotherhood,
I am paid in the currency coined from brotherhood...
^ from a Laurel and Hardy routine
yup, true story
"This above all: to thine ownself be true"
which denies the escape
of being false to any human.”
SM Feb 2014
The ink spills on the page
and I know
these words are hard to come by
Pooling to the rim
my unwritten words lay
unable to keep on the page
unable to say to you
what must be heard
The wind picks up
calling out my fears
I will never know where you are
or If my name
holds any purpose
in your world
or mine
The ink falls over the page
and so do I

I guess this is goodbye.
heather leather Feb 2016
his name was surprise. as in surprise i could find it
within me to love someone so much that their smile was
engraved into my mind at 3:02 pm when i was mindlessly
staring at a window that reflected a world i did not
find any beauty in. the overwhelming desire i had to not
only love but to be loved was so staggering that it shocked
me; i know because i can still hear my mother's yell as i
dropped a glass plate on the floor when i realized that
i had allowed myself yet again to fall into another person.
my mother said i was lucky that i didn't cut myself with the
glass but all i was thinking of was the contagious laugh i
knew you would utter when i told you this story.
[you did laugh by the way, your chest rumbled and your cheeks
were so red they reminded me of wine on a white dress;
you put your hand over your mouth to cover the slightest gap
you had between your two front teeth and the happiness
on your face set my veins on fire]
i say that i fell into you and not that i fell in love because i
do not believe it is possible to fall into something so
deep and electrifying and morose and survive. i do not believe
it is possible to fall into love as if it were an ocean and it
wouldn't swallow you whole; as if love was some kind creature
that let you swim in the whirlpool it inevitably created. as if
someone could possibly fall into love and not drown as it
mercilessly threw you screaming, begging to be saved. i do not
believe in falling in love because i do not think i could ever be
one of those lucky people who are washed up survivors of
hurricanes so frightening and beautiful you chase it without
knowing why. i am disastrous enough to drop glass plates on
floors to see you smile but not cataclysmic enough to stay while you
try and do the same for me. so when i told you months later that
i was irrevocably captivated by the dimples of your smile and
you furrowed your eyebrows curiously, trying to figure out how to
let me down gently, i already knew the words you were going
to say. we joke about it now, it seems to be an unwritten rule that
you will ignore the wince on my face when you talk about your
new girl and that i will ignore the fact that your favorite of my poems
are the untitled ones written about you. i say that i do not miss your
arms around my waist anymore and it's true, your hugs have become
quick and reluctant so that you do not give me any false hope. but
there isn't any hope left that hasn't been dried by bitter insecutity
and a stubborn need of mine to move on.  i don't miss the way
your endless mood swings affected my day and
i don't miss the way you used to call out my name, joyfully and
excitedly  i have simply forgotten about old conversations
and unfulfilled promises and i have a feeling you have as well.

[forgive me though, your name still slips from the ink of my
pen onto this secondhand journal from time to time. simply for
the sake of writing.]


(h.l.)
thoughts?
A New Year is dawning.
A blank page is unwritten on.
A new song is yet to be sung.
It is time to move forward.
It is time to make straight paths for my feet,
with my eyes fixed on the Light.
It is time to run the race set before me,
and forget what lies behind.
It is time to shake off the chains that bind.

A New Year is dawning.
A blank page is unwritten on.
A new song is yet to be sung.
It is time to receive forgiveness for the past.
It is time to forgive,
and let go of the loss.
It is time to trust.
It is time to rest.
Time for joy.
Time to move into my purpose.
Time to be strong and courageous.

A New Year is dawning.
A blank page is unwritten on.
A new song is yet to be sung.
A new season of my life with God.
Has begun.

(edited)
Inspired by Phil. 3:12-14, Holy Bible
Sophia Feb 2013
you write vignettes out of the ashes of your cigarettes

and your body burns up like a building

the looks you give me leave paper cuts on my flesh

and your slightest glance will skin my knees

like a withering flower i will die in february air

smothered by the lingering smoke of unwritten prose

when words rip from your chest like new year’s explosions

i kiss your lips and tell you to write them down
Rhianecdote Jan 2015
Spotted you from that afro hair as I waited for you at the bottom of the stairs thinking we'd have a good chill today cause you avoided me yesterday but from the look on your face, that staring into space I knew what was coming, even thought about making a joke about it as we shuffled our way to the park, but this was no game, no pack of cards, hands in your pocket waiting to sit on this bench.

" I don't feel like I'm in a Relationship"
Took the words right out of my mouth so there was no need for me to speak, even in the silence my heart beat weak, till it was broken by this guy sat next to us acting commentator and referee, giving name to these strangers as they played a basketball match behind you and me. You took note and stared up, half laughed and smiled at me and I did too cause it was funny. A moment back to being care free, when we were at our best, making jokes and being silly. Return to silence pulled us from the reverie as you averted eyes again, thinking this wasn't a time for jokes but seriously I wish we were waiting to play in that match instead of sitting on this bench about to become unattached.

This too was a no contact sport , me on one side you on the other as we wrestled with what to say to each other. Eye contact replaced with sigh contact as you fought your thoughts that longed to form words out of fear you couldn't retract or take them back once spoken.

But I needed to know! So you see those hench guys playing basketball? I'd get them to come pin you down until you told me, thump you as you dump me, threats empty. But in the end you told me
" I still don't know If this is the right thing to, I don't wanna confuse you"
But it was too late for that. It could be so frustrating, indecision was your play thing, used to be endearing now you choose to be decisive end nearing.
"You're amazing" a statement that just added to the labyrinth as I realised this was inescapable I would have ran away if I was able, but I remained stable.
"Don't feel you have to spare my feelings" And I really meant it, but i also knew without hesitation you always would. Said you wished you'd met me later, funny thing time. When we met you said you'd wish you'd met me sooner but better late than never. On my birthday said my 22 years had led us to this cross roads together, but now we cross paths like we never met,  some days I wonder if we ever did.

Even though a big part of me was breaking inside, it's sad that even now I don't know if it was heart or pride as I stayed sitting by your side. Swore I could see the ghosts of us walking past the park, Sat there and zoned out recalling the first day we walked this way in the dark. You'd stayed late after college with my friends and me. Remember feeling happy that you got on with them so effortlessly, each of you teasing me. Think you stayed just to see me. Stole your hat and ran down this street, gave it to my friend to hide, had a mini water fight, got to the station and gave you a hug that I didn't think would end when we said goodbye; but not this time.

Delayed the walk away because I knew it would be the last time we'd freeze time and see each other; said this aloud ,asked if there was somebody else cause that's what all girls do right?  Stared me straight in the eye and said
"There's nobody. Are you asking cause everyone asks that?"
"No, I asked for me" said somewhat aggressively the most honest I'd been with you for weeks. Shook your head and looked down despairingly "I made you think there were other girls, I can't believe..."

I don't know if they were tears forming in your eyes or why they were there, I only ever thought I saw you cry once, heard the sobs in your bathroom and when you came out I didn't know how to comfort you just like now, said this out loud. Cause there were no tears to be found in my eyes, not yet anyway, cut off by pride. But as I got up and walked away, half hoping for that cliche "come back I've made a mistake!"
These eyes gave way to sobs I wish you'd seen so you would know that I wasn't cold or mean , that this had meant something to me beyond words...

There was a time yours meant a lot to me, but now they run over and over in my mind on repeat, haunting me. like a hit and run driver, tax disk empty. Is that what all those deep words filling up my glass were? Empty. Cruel how words last centuries.

We used to speak a lot, everyday. I wish I could say it was my receptions fault, look into the air and blame sky and satellites that I couldn't lay in bed and wish you goodnight but that's a lie. Truth is we'd drifted and I don't know if any form of communication could have fixed it.

Cause that girl you told me you think you should stop speaking to well you never did, saw her photo pop up on your messages, though I wasn't looking for it. The day I came to ask you if you were happy in this relationship. Do you know how hard that was for me? Potentially putting us in jeopardy by getting too deep. Held my hand as you ran through all possibility such was your constant diplomacy as reassurance was steadily being replaced with insecurity. But I guess jealous is what jealous sees...green. With all that constant unease this Gut couldnt be interrupted, cause I knew that this was coming for weeks. But I guess jealous is what jealous did...nothing. Brushed it under the carpet, until it took me apart bit by bit, left a bitter taste in my mouth that's why I spit.

Like that day i made a joke about faking it relentlessly tore into you till you saw right through it, said it didn't sound like a joke any more and if that's how I was gonna be you didn't wanna see me
"cause that's stress"
"do you think I'm stress?"
" not usually"
That really got to me. That made me angry that you had the cheek to say that to me, when all I wanted to do was see you that week. Cause we didn't speak like we used to, message you one day be lucky to get a reply in the next two, you know by the end I didn't even feel that I could ring you. Such was my complex about being clingy, exasperated by your distance and that gutsy unease but mainly because I'd replaced honesty with words spoken passive aggressively, turned into that girl I never wanted to be.

But it stemmed from care. I didn't think you could handle it without care. Remember how I used to trace lines across your back and brush your hair?  I didn't wanna upset you, so instead I upset me kept it inside until it did seep out, cause I didn't trust you and you could see I wasn't happy. Even now it cuts me deep to think you might have lied to me. But don't think that I don't see it stemmed from care. I don't think you thought I could handle it without care. Remember how you used to hold me in your arms and stroke my hair? Cause I do. That's what makes it hard to accept that that something was no longer there. Missing in action, loving look replaced with a blank stare. And now I'm left to fill in the spaces.

Did our relationship remind you of another? Make you miss somebody else? Did it not live up to your ideals? Got you caught up in a moment and then you couldn't back track cause you felt trapped by the kinda girl I am, the one that's down for you, the one that was down so now finds it hard to get back up.
"I love your company"
I think I made you happy briefly but now I wonder why you were with me? For comfort, a rebound, a *** thing? I don't know if the attraction was just distraction or the real thing. Was it cause you were lonely, escapism "a moment of imperturbability" when you caught a glimpse of me sleeping? Cause I didn't know what you wanted, and neither did you but it turned out to be that it wasn't me.

And that's why breaking up was the right thing to do. I wasn't ready either. You know I started getting paranoid about things that never used to bother me, like how I didn't have that black gyal *****. And slowly about other girls as I wondered if they were part of an ego trip, or the next best thing, thought about how we first got talking, how we were getting close and I wasn't aware you was with someone till you were having problems. Was you now having the same conversation about me with someone ?

I just think of all those conversations about our end and all the dodgy moments where it seemed you didn't want it to be known we were together, almost play pretend
"didn't know you were doing a thing?!"
"ahh its just a fling"
Those sly digs at me that I stopped finding  funny and started taking personally cause they sounded more like truths than jokes to me. Pushing me away indirectly but deliberately, your arm not resting on me when we last watched a movie, calling me by my first name instead of "***" All indications that we were done. All indications so I feel dumb. All those alarm bells, those preparations back to "friend" marking our end. But in the end all of that is just part of the bigger pic as you got to know me better than most and ended it, preferred me as a stranger so estranged is where I sit. Bench Warmer the perfect fit. Was I bench warmer till you found your perfect fit?

But maybe I don't give you enough credit, maybe in upset I misinterpret a lot of it. I don't know and though it kills me to say it I think we both liked the idea of a relationship but in the end our actuality stopped living up to it. But the promise we held in some of the moments we shared are hard to forget.

Late night gallavants, me backing out of pranks, singing in the street, you attempting to teach me how to cook and eat healthily, making first date brownies, chin ups in the car park, quoting me back word for word on something I'd said, it showed you listened, you could be so sweet and considerate, watching all those movies, the deep conversations, you looking after me when I was sick, snuggling up to you, biting your lip, taking your dog for a walk, that cute face he'd pull so we'd fuss over him, (I swear I love that dog) all the playfighting, me showing off and falling in a water fountain, all the banter and laughing, stealing a Boris bike and riding through the city streets at night I swear a lot of those were the best days of my life.

What was to follow, not so much.
You know when we ended I found myself in a counsellors room again, cause I never really did well with ends. It's why ellipsis is my favourite punctuation mark, I remember when you used to say
"I see through those dots"
Well I hope I do and this doesn't hold up indefinitely, now I actually hope for an ending, ironically.

Last thing I said to you was sorry an unwritten apology in a hug. Ask me why I did it I shrug. Cause I'm not sure what I was apologising for in that moment. I was a bit tipsy, at our friends get together when I shouldn't be , had only been a few weeks since our bench press talk but surely Someone who cared woulda made sure that I got back alright, but you didn't that night. I suppose I had just told you that I didn't want any contact with you and I needed space. Maybe you didn't feel it was your place. Maybe the message I sent to our mutual friend got through , you saw it and you didnt feel you needed too. See how I still explain things away for you? Like when you never came to my friends BBQ, left me alone in a group of couples asking after you. And a lot of the times after I have these thoughts about you I feel guilty, cause they don't match up with the person I see you to be, hence my apology.

I'm sorry if my sense of humour proved too crude for you at times , how I'd misjudge it and get too loud in a crowd, calling you a ***** in front of your boys for not asking me out. Telling people about us, not gaining your trust, losing my innocence to you too soon smothering our spark in lust. Sorry for how I'd stay in silence when I wanted to shout, stopped giving you an open account of how i was feeling so you couldn't figure me out. For not having the strength to remain your friend, nor the courage to bring the end to us sooner, for catching you unaware at this shindig now. Sorry I didn't live up to your first love or help heal your heartbreak and that I couldn't be that happy girl you first met at lunch break all the time, the insecurity that constantly chimed. That I proved too much for you.
Not accepting that you wasn't feelin it sooner and that you felt trapped.
I'm sorry that I couldn't be there for you like I wanted to and now I'm jealous that somebody else is the one to look after you.
That I didn't show the qualities that meant that you would let me in, joking I was a lesbian. Sorry I expected too much, you were young just turned 19, sorry if that sounds patronising. I'm sorry if you're ever feeling alone or down, if you felt I didn't understand. But most of all I'm sorry that I compromised my honesty, honestly for that I'm truly sorry.

And as I'm being honest I might as well say the 4th of May was our anniversary when I said I wouldn't remember I lied. Just like on that day when I said we'll just see how it goes, I lied. Of course I hoped it'd go steady, but in the end you were just a Boy on a bench I walked away from cause he wasn't ready...
you were just a Boy on a bench I walked away from cause he couldn't love me.

But in truth you weren't just a Boy on a bench at all.
**You were my best friend.
Dang! It's a long one, in the words of my year 7 English teacher Mr Winter's " I didn't ask for your life story!" Well I guess this is sorta. If this seems all over the place it's because it is. Its been an ever evolving piece in my search for peace over the past few months since my first break up. It's proven to be quite cathartic to be honest.
There's many story's of us depending on the day and this serves to include them all. Truth is in my search for understanding and acceptance many emotions have been felt. And I've come to realise that the pair aren't mutually exclusive.
Nigel Morgan May 2015
In a distant land, far beyond the time we know now, there lived an ancient people who knew in their bones of a past outside memory. Things happened over and over; as day became night night became day, spring followed winter, summer followed spring, autumn followed summer and then, and then as autumn came, at least the well-known ordered days passed full of preparation for the transhumance, that great movement of flocks and herds from the summer mountains to the winter pastures. But in the great oak woods of this region the leaves seemed reluctant to fall. Even after the first frosts when the trees glimmered with rime as the sun rose. Even when winter’s cousin, the great wind from the west, ravaged the conical roofs of the shepherds’ huts. The leaves did not fall.

For Lucila, searching for leaves as she climbed each day higher and higher through the parched undergrowth under the most ancient oaks, there were only acorns, slews of acorns at her feet. There were no leaves, or rather no leaves that might be gathered as newly fallen. Only the faint husks of leaves of the previous autumn, leaves of provenance already gathered before she left the mountains last year for the winter plains, leaves she had placed into her deep sleeves, into her voluminous apron, into the large pockets of her vlaterz, the ornate felt jacket of the married woman.

Since her childhood she had picked and pocketed these oaken leaves, felt their thin, veined, patterned forms, felt, followed, caressed them between her finger tips. It was as though her pockets were full of the hands of children, seven-fingered hands, stroking her fingers with their pointed tips when her fingers were pocketed.

She would find private places to lay out her gathered leaves. She wanted none to know or touch or speak of these her children of the oak forest. She had waited all summer, as she had done since a child, watching them bud and grow on the branch, and then, with the frosts and winds of autumn, fall, fall, fall to the ground, but best of all fall into her small hands, every leaf there to be caught, fallen into the bowl of her cupped hands. And for every leaf caught, a wish.

Her autumn days became full of wishes. She would lie awake on her straw mattress after Mikas had risen for the night milking, that time when the rustling bells of the goats had no accompaniment from the birds. She would assemble her lists of wishes, wishes ready for leaves not yet fallen into the bowl of her cupped hands. May the toes of my baby be perfectly formed? May his hair fall straight without a single curl? May I know only the pain I can bear when he comes? May the mother of Mikas love this child?

As the fine autumn days moved towards the feast day of St Anolysius, the traditional day of departure of the winter transhumance, there was, this season, an unspoken tension present in the still, dry air. Already preparations were being made for the long journey to the winter plains. There was soon to be a wedding now three days away, of the Phatos boy to the Tamosel girl. The boy was from an adjoining summer pasture and had travelled during the summer months with an itinerant uncle, a pedlar of sorts and beggar of repute. So he had seen something of the world beyond those of the herds and flocks can expect to see. He was rightly-made and fit to marry, although, of course, the girl was to be well-kept secret until the day itself.

Lucila remembered those wedding days, her wedding days, those anxious days of waiting when encased in her finery, in her seemingly impenetrable and voluminous wedding clothes she had remained all but hidden from view. While around her the revelling came and went, the drunkenness, the feasting, the riotous eruptions of noise and movement, the sudden visitations of relatives she did not know, the fierce instructions of women who spoke to her now as a woman no longer a young girl or a dear child, women she knew as silent, shy and respectful who were now loud and lewd, who told her things she could hardly believe, what a man might do, what a man might be, what a woman had to suffer - all these things happening at the same time. And then her soon-to-be husband’s drunk-beyond-reason friends had carried off the basket with her trousseau and dressed themselves riotously in her finest embroidered blouses, her intricate layered skirts, her petticoats, even the nightdress deemed the one to be worn when eventually, after three days revelry, she would be visited by a man, now more goat than man, sodden with drink, insensible to what little she understood as human passion beyond the coupling of goats. Of course Semisar had prepared the bright blood for the bridesbed sheet, the necessary evidence, and as Mikas lay sprawled unconscious at the foot of the marriage bed she had allowed herself to be dishevelled, to feign the aftermath of the act he was supposed to have committed upon her. That would, she knew, come later . . .

It was then, in those terrible days and after, she took comfort from her silent, private stitching into leaves, the darning of acorns, the spinning of skeins of goats’ wool she would walnut-dye and weave around stones and pieces of glass. She would bring together leaves bound into tiny books, volumes containing for her a language of leaves, the signs and symbols of nature she had named, that only she knew. She could not read the words of the priest’s book but was fluent in the script of veins and ribs and patterning that every leaf owned. When autumn came she could hardly move a step for picking up a fallen leaf, reading its story, learning of its history. But this autumn now, at the time of leaf fall, the fall of the leaf did not happen and those leaves of last year at her feet were ready to disintegrate at her touch. She was filled with dread. She knew she could not leave the mountains without a collection of leaves to stitch and weave through the shorter days and long, long winter nights. She had imagined sharing with her infant child this language she had learnt, had stitched into her daily life.

It was Semisar of course, who voiced it first. Semisar, the self-appointed weather ears and horizon eyes of the community, who followed her into the woods, who had forced Lucila against a tree holding one broad arm and her body’s weight like a bar from which Lucila could not escape, and with the other arm and hand rifled the broad pockets of Lucila’s apron. Semisar tossed the delicate chicken bone needles to the ground, unravelled the bobbins of walnut-stained yarn, crumpled the delicately folded and stitched, but yet to be finished, constructions of leaves . . . And spewed forth a torrent of terrible words. Already the men knew that the lack of leaf fall was peculiar only to the woods above and around their village. Over the other side of the mountain Telgatho had said this was not so. Was Lucila a Magnelz? Perhaps a Cutvlael? This baby she carried, a girl of course, was already making evil. Semisar placed her hand over and around the ripe hard form of the unborn child, feeling for its shape, its elbows and knees, the spine. And from there, with a vicelike grip on the wrist, Semisar dragged Lucila up and far into the woods to where the mountain with its caves and rocks touched the last trees, and from there to the cave where she seemed to know Lucila’s treasures lay, her treasures from childhood. Semisar would destroy everything, then the leaves would surely fall.

When Lucila did not return to prepare the evening meal Mikas was to learn all. Should he leave her be? He had been told women had these times of strange behaviour before childbirth. The wedding of the Phatos boy was almost upon them and the young men were already behaving like goats before the rut. The festive candles and tinselled wedding crowns had been fetched from the nearest town two days ride distant, the decoration of the tiny mountain basilica and the accommodation for the priest was in hand. The women were busy with the making of sweets and treats to be thrown at the wedding pair by guests and well-wishers. Later, the same women would prepare the dough for the millstones of bread that would be baked in the stone ovens. The men had already chosen the finest lambs to spit-roast for the feast.

She will return, Semisar had said after waiting by the fold where Mikas flocks, now gathered from the heights, awaited their journey south. All will be well, Mikas, never fear. The infant, a girl, may not last its birth, Semisar warned, but seeing the shocked face of Mikas, explained a still-birth might be providential for all. Know this time will pass, she said, and you can still be blessed with many sons. We are forever in the hands of the spirit, she said, leaving without the customary salutation of farewell.
                                               
However different the lives of man and woman may by tradition and circumstance become, those who share the ways and rites of marriage are inextricably linked by fate’s own hand and purpose. Mikas has come to know his once-bride, the child become woman in his clumsy embrace, the girl of perhaps fifteen summers fulfilling now his mother’s previous role, who speaks little but watches and listens, is unfailingly attentive to his needs and demands, and who now carries his child ( it can only be a boy), carries this boy high in her womb and with a confidence his family has already remarked upon.

After their wedding he had often returned home to Lucila at the time of the sun’s zenith when it is customary for the village women to seek the shade of their huts and sleep. It was an unwritten rite due to a newly-wed husband to feign the sudden need for a forgotten tool or seek to examine a sick animal in the home fold. After several fruitless visits when he found their hut empty he timed his visit earlier to see her black-scarfed figure disappear into the oak woods.  He followed her secretively, and had observed her seated beneath an ancient warrior of a tree, had watched over her intricate making. Furthermore and later he came to know where she hid the results of this often fevered stitching of things from nature’s store and stash, though an supernatural fear forbade him to enter the cleft between rocks into which she would disappear. He began to know how times and turns of the days affected her actions, but had left her be. She would usually return bright-eyed and with a quiet wonder, of what he did not know, but she carried something back within her that gave her a peculiar peace and beauty. It seemed akin to the well-being Mikas knew from handling a fine ewe from his flock . . .

And she would sometimes allow herself to be handled thus. She let him place his hands over her in that joyful ownership and command of a man whose life is wholly bound up with flocks and herds and the well-being of the female species. He would come from the evening watch with the ever-constant count of his flock still on his lips, and by a mixture of accident and stealth touch her wholly-clothed body, sometimes needing his fingers into the thick wool of her stockings, stroking the chestnut silken hairs that he found above her bare wrists, marvelling at her small hands with their perfect nails. He knew from the ribaldry of men that women were trained from childhood to display to men as little as possible of their intimate selves. But alone and apart all day on a remote hillside, alone save for several hundred sheep, brought to Mikas in his solitary state wild and conjured thoughts of feminine spirits, unencumbered by clothes, brighter and more various than any night-time dream. And he had succumbed to the pleasure of such thoughts times beyond reason, finding himself imagining Lucila as he knew she was unlikely ever to allow herself to be. But even in the single winter and summer of their life together there had been moments of surprise and revelation, and accompanied by these precious thoughts he went in search of her in the darkness of a three-quarter moon, into the stillness of the night-time wood.

Ah Lucilla. We might think that after the scourge of Semisar, the physical outrage of her baby’s forced examination, and finally the destruction of her treasures, this child-wife herself with child would be desolate with grief at what had come about. She had not been forced to follow Semisar into the small cave where wrapped in woven blankets her treasures lay between the thinnest sheets of impure and rejected parchment gleaned surreptitiously after shearing, but holding each and every treasure distinct and detached. There was enough light for Semisar to pause in wonder at the intricate constructions, bright with the aura of extreme fragility owned by many of the smaller makings. And not just the leaves of the oak were here, but of the mastic, the walnut, the flaky-barked strawberry and its smoothed barked cousin. There were leaves and sheaves of bark from lowland trees of the winter sojourn, there were dried fruits mysteriously arranged, constructions of acorns threaded with the dark madder-red yarn, even acorns cracked and damaged from their tree fall had been ‘mended’ with thread.

Semisar was to open some of the tiny books of leaved pages where she witnessed a form of writing she did not recognise (she could not read but had seen the priest’s writing and the print of the holy books). This she wondered at, as surely Lucila had only the education of the home? Such symbols must belong to the spirit world. Another sign that Lucila had infringed order and disturbed custom. It would take but a matter of minutes to turn such makings into little more than a layer of dust on the floor.

With her bare hands Semisar ground together these elaborate confections, these lovingly-made conjunctions of needle’s art with nature’s purpose and accidental beauty. She ground them together until they were dust.

When Semisar returned into the pale afternoon light it seemed Lucila had remained as she had been left: motionless, and without expression. If Semisar had known the phenomenon of shock, Lucila was in that condition. But, in the manner of a woman preparing to grieve for the dead she had removed her black scarf and unwound the long dark chestnut plaits that flowed down her back. But there were no tears. only a dumb silence but for the heavy exhalation of breath. It seemed that she looked beyond Semisar into the world of spirits invoking perhaps their aid, their comfort.

What happened had neither invoked sadness nor grief. It was as if it had been ordained in the elusive pattern of things. It felt like the clearing of the summer hut before the final departure for the long journey to the winter world. The hut, Lucila had been taught, was to be left spotless, every item put in its rightful place ready to be taken up again on the return to the summer life, exactly as if it had been undisturbed by absence . Not a crumb would remain before the rugs and coverings were rolled and removed, summer clothes hard washed and tightly mended, to be folded then wrapped between sprigs of aromatic herbs.

Lucila would go now and collect her precious but scattered needles from beneath the ancient oak. She would begin again - only to make and embroider garments for her daughter. It was as though, despite this ‘loss’, she had retained within her physical self the memory of every stitch driven into nature’s fabric.

Suddenly Lucila remembered that saints’ day which had sanctioned a winter’s walk with her mother, a day when her eyes had been drawn to a world of patterns and objects at her feet: the damaged acorn, the fractured leaf, the broken berried branch, the wisp of wool left impaled upon a stub of thorns. She had been five, maybe six summers old. She had already known the comforting action of the needle’s press again the felted cloth, but then, as if impelled by some force quite outside herself, had ‘borrowed’ one of her mother’s needles and begun her odyssey of darning, mending, stitching, enduring her mother’s censure - a waste of good thread, little one - until her skill became obvious and one of delight, but a private delight her mother hid from all and sundry, and then pressed upon her ‘proper’ work with needle and thread. But the damage had been done, the dye cast. She became nature’s needle slave and quartered those personal but often invisible
There's a poem in my head unwritten
a phrase that lurks just out of sight
a snow covered field that hides a kitten
afraid to cry
its fur of white

there's a sadness in my soul uncertain
of which direction it should take
a play without a stage, the curtain
drawn and black as the deepest lake

there's a landscape in my mind untold
where thought is new as each setting Sun
where dreams are washed in light of gold
and words like children run
Sean Hunt May 2016
I need to stop being me
There’s somebody else
That I want to be
I spend nearly all of my time
Thinking of me
Thinking of mine
I seem to be stuck
In this unwritten rhyme
Since beginningless time

Sean Hunt  May 2016
Nancy E Tracy Mar 2015
Gentle ballerina dance
dance your way around the world
with bold precision dance
with graceful arms unfurled

Tip toe to the passion of the tune
whirling, leaping maelstrom of romance

existential exercise of poetry unwritten
fluttering, a butterfly of souls unduly smitten
with love of life and dignity stirred all up into one
resounding splash of destiny
the last breath of a swan
for my world traveled, ballerina friend Marilyn on her birthday.
Oh cursed soul,
that you be,
something I dont even believe,
In, but in pain filled ignorance,
I lack the eloquency  to describe,
Even a little bit accurately,
This hateful being,
This lie of a perception, I cannot wake from,
A matrix, a coded line, I find myself,
Stuck in,
The suffering of a thousand lives and worlds,
Reaching out to you, reading this,
Lying, lying, as if the words mean,
Anything, anything, No!
Yet then, I always realize circling back,
To the histories invented by past selves,
hence, influencing who I am now,
the dark corners I look forward to in the future,
The lack of resposibility, The blissful youth,
Mixed with the pain of wisdom,
And the teachings and overview,
Of going off a cliff, only to jump back on,
And run off again,
Yet, then, again I find myself looking,
In my heart at the gun, the gun of release,
Oh that I dare say,
all humans should seek.
Crazy, crazy, John,
You are crazy you say,
Aye, aye, as all we are,
Sanity is insane,
Reason is,
2+2=4, Because.
I am the because. I am the order.
I am the chaos, that puts that electron there,
And your synapses connecting there,
Oh I'm the breath you take,
Before that **** and ***,
You faked,
Little one, little one,
I am much older now in lives
Than years, I consume throwing myself away,
The self, the soul, the non existence,
Oh it is existing and it wont leave me,
And all this because,
I saw her kissing that man,
On the cheek.
Alas, that is the bane of every God and Demon,
Since nephlium, To love a human,
A mortal, the code in the matrix,
The variables for the x,
That turns your reason and logic,
Into guess work and soulbreak,
I drone on,
Where is the end,
That is the point! Dr. Seuess,
Take your money back, I know the places I will go,
Oh I've seen it now for a while, and boy do I fear,
The blank page, the unwritten line,
The truth that I've been trying to hide,
From who?
I've lived long enough.
I would like to die.
Marshal Gebbie Sep 2015
Touching the moment, this delicate moment
Touching the face with its’ sad falling tear,
Softly aware that strange feelings surround us
Cloyingly close with their aura of fear.
Fear of a mantle of misunderstanding
Fear of uncertainty choked in forlorn,
Cloaked in thick prejudice clad by constriction
All drowned in a sea of wet ignorance borne.

Where stand the rational reaching for reason?
How seek the humble in searching for more?
****** not the javelin of angers’ contrition
In weighing this moment, I humbly implore.

For thus sits the fabric of deep understanding
Thus lies the tantric of feelings unspoke,
Thus the true substance of one to another
Uttered in wisdom through words best unwrote.

M.
30 September 2015
EDWARD PEREZ Nov 2017
The Unwritten Father

Easy and passive, like rolling hills of green.
Sprouting favorable wine over the course of time.
Plain as snow, as a beam of light filtered through a window pane.
Silence lazily shadows in a strange delight.
Kindness untouched, feelings unearthed.
Laughter escapes the pitter patter of the lost and found.

The brush of innocence and words of joy;
The eyes to the window, the depths of its trust.
The curious nature and all it’s fuss.

To have love and to have loved, It crushes and expands.
As fate would have, like faith, it demands.
I miss the days of her long blonde hair,
The pouty lips and that angry stare.
The nights and days and her bouncing carefree steps.

There is no love that will ever compare
To that of a child whose love was so rare.
I’ll mis her all my days and she will never know
How this unwritten father loves her so.
AfterImage Sep 2016
There is nothing beautiful that came to be without effort. Even the flowers had to push through the dirt to show its face to the sun.

Invisible words
Smeared on the walls
Visibly the ink disappeared
Written space haunts
t Dec 2014
I want to tell you our story.
I want you to see it.
I want you hear it.
I want you to taste it, touch it, sense it.

I want you to feel what I feel.
Feel the happiness, the love
but also the pain and agony you've given me.

I want to tell you this story because you have no idea, because I've never told you how I feel.

I've left whatever our story could have been- Unwritten.
~
April 2023
HP Poet: Sarita Aditya Verma
Age: 47
Country: India

Question 1: We are so happy you could be a part of this, Sarita. Tell us how long have you been writing poetry, and for how long have you been a member of Hello Poetry?

Sarita Aditya Verma: "I have been writing for the last six years (19th October 2016), that was the first time ever I wrote to express myself. I have been a member and have posting here at Hello Poetry since December 2016. This is the only place where I share my words, sometimes a copy of the same with friends who are willing to read. Hello Poetry has been my sacred space, I feel blessed to be here."


Question 2: What inspires you? (In other words, how does poetry happen for you).

Sarita Aditya Verma: "Nature has inspired me forever, be it rain, sunshine, trees or the blooming flowers. The length and breadth of vivid times and emotions. I usually write about the experiences in life, as I lightly observe around. Sometimes it could be a photograph, a painting or even my morning walk. In general, the geometry of life and the rainbow that shines. That’s how poetry happens to me."


Question 3: What does poetry mean to you?

Sarita Aditya Verma: "Poetry is one of the best experiences in my life. It has given me a sense of belonging, a space which is totally mine, brought in a lot of clarity, and words have set me free. 'Sometimes poetry, mostly life, unwritten quotes destiny shall write'- is what I believe in."


Question 4: Who are your favorite poets?

Sarita Aditya Verma: "I have been a science student, and haven’t had much exposure to literature/poetry in my graduation years. So it would be unfair to quote any of the greats here! Robert Frost and Mark Twain are the ones whose works I have enjoyed reading in school. The rest, most of my reading and learning experience, has been at Hello Poetry - from the many great poets and poetesses who share their wonderful work here, and I am grateful for that."


Question 5: What other interests do you have?

Sarita Aditya Verma: "One of my other interests is photography, I love the geometry of the subject- it’s all about angles and curves, and right moments to capture. I am drawn to nature and street photography. I am still into the process of exploring and acquiring the skills. I also enjoy listening to upbeat music :)"


Carlo C. Gomez: “Thank you so much, Sarita! We are really excited to add you to this spotlight series.”

Sarita Aditya Verma: "Thank you so much Carlo, for interviewing me here. I truly enjoyed the questions and am eager to know about and read from other contributors at Hello Poetry :)"



Again thank you everyone here at HP for taking the time to read this. We hope you enjoyed getting to know Sarita a little bit better.
– Carlo C. Gomez (aka Mr. Timetable)

We will post Spotlight #3 in May!
~
Below are Sarita's favorite poems of hers and links to each one:

Bonding Free:
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2943925/bonding-free/

The Words:
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2704113/the-words/

Boundless Love:
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2367490/boundless-love/

MastMaula:
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2442476/mastmaula/

My Dear Poetry:
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2331828/my-dear-poetry/

Recycle:
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2028389/recycle/

Sharing the links to some of my older poems, hope you like them :)

Thanks and regards,
Sarita 🙏
Logan Robertson Nov 2017
Her orchards I often dream,
buries of my eye,
lost in my fairy book
of beaten pages,
of sunken tears and of mind.
I kept turning the pages, racing,
racing,
looking for her,
between the lines,
now gone,
gone ... are those
lovely high hanging trees,
elegant and so berried,
swaying and smiling,
her,
her saintly smile,
haunting,
yet shadowing me forever
in my mind.
Each page turned, a sad tear falls
deep and deeper,
for the pages are blank.
Her absence ferreting out
blackness,
skeletons and silhouettes,
the pages turning,
weeping ...
my heart pains
for the book of love
unwritten and unfinished.
The wishing well of ink unspent.
Her essence forever corked
from my heart ...
I now lay arrest,
peas in a pod,
aberration and distortion,
for
lovely those high hanging trees,
elegant and so berried,
gone.
Sullenly the music plays
to a different song.
Indelible was happenstance,
our chance encounter,
a special one at that,
puzzlement lays a longer shadow
... of why she walked,
without any words.

Logan Robertson

11/09/17
Leila Valencia Feb 2015
A timber night in a dark way can't stay for long
plowed down, scorched down  - must be torn down
kings of city pipes, dusty concrete heirlooms, read a bible to sleep

Wake in the morning, sun rays shine through dust ridden books
Morals, condoned in heart shaped smoke clouds

Greed's arms will swell rejecting midnights' hiss' "Where will they live?"
'Sirrrrrrrr' 'Homeeee'...... Floating like gas particles, words lost.
A stand alone will die to unknown prosperity
ropes straggle helpless branches
Clenching their last breathes, the weeping skies sit silently

Hateful hateful hunger, feeding the bodies thirst

Our midnight Cowboy song goes: Manufactured green, leaving scorched earth barren, unwritten torch, unseen

For we saw what we wanted to.

— The End —