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Cristin H Aug 2013
Forgetting is…

Forgetting is being told you've had two birthdays, for the fourth time,

Talk about a surprise party.

Forgetting is calling a number that has been disconnected for nearly three years and still expecting an answer.

Can I leave a message?

Forgetting is family portraits with a stranger in each one whom you cannot help but miss.

They say you have his smile.

Forgetting is not being able to close your eyes for longer than 8 seconds without thinking yourself 800 miles away.

How did I get here?

Forgetting is waking up from nightmares 7 times a night,

Right into another one.

Forgetting is the feeling of walking into a room and not remembering what you came for,

All the time.

Forgetting is wondering why the words "I love you" sit perched on your lips ready to take off,

When they have nowhere to land.

Forgetting is coming to in a room you don't recognize and slowly realizing that it's yours.

Welcome home.


Trying to remember is...  

Trying to remember is running face first into a brick wall that you used to know was there,

Didn't you?

Trying to remember is riding a bike up a hill without any pedals.

Remember that time?

Trying to remember is being waterboarded in a bucket of question marks and memory fragments.

How do you feel?

Trying to remember is looking back at what you had written only moments before and being convinced that someone is in your house

And they have your handwriting.

Who's there?

Remembering is…

Something I've forgotten.
ZWS May 2014
Do you want to tell me that everything will be fine?
That my home away from home will always shine, and when I go home everything will be as simple as these ******* rhymes? (fine)
As optimistic as I'd like to be, the truth is that home isn't always full of laughs and good times
It's a feeling that I would imagine a sunset experiences when it bleeds through the lines
Like a waterboarded painting leaking over the sides
Because even a home is a home when a parrot in the corner of a crowded cage cries and confides
When the people inside it's broken record of a mind, are filled with resentment, angst, love, and lies

Because even a home is a home when I find myself arguing with a parrot all day,  you see,
Home feels like home because you cared to stay
Because you would sit there and listen to her tell you that she's scared all day

And you'd stay to wake up to a parrot singing gunshots
And it's arguments about the same 'ol lot
And you'd listen to it whine after its fought
With the invisible man that took his life because of the gang green rot
I miss the sounds you made, and I still hear them everyday
Pragya Chawla Apr 2016
in pealing season, she is a girl of lousy ingrowth
she is an unkempt corner; kitchen sink. legs pulled like knives. phone call her curled tendons; isolation in
grit and fibril      
she is women with wings. this is how we stymie the rapunzel. we carve the ugly into her. we teach her to wear skin like saran. skin like punishment
                        cut-coin the rumpelstiltskin. how she is  wound and string, paper-doll; bird-in-a-box
how we wring the juice of her on washcloth. hung upturned from the ceiling fang; plucked and feathered
like apology. cherry-picked; veins like mikado. how it is dark and she is blind-bat wind-warriors; waterboarded with no hands
upturning the paper boats of her in every follicle; how the flipswitch insecurity eats her like pickle. in a storm
she is neither nor tongue nor limb
just breast, bone, the weight of mirrors
how we jettison when the grief is heavy. abandon. thick, empty abandon.
alone in grit-cusps when the monsoon has eaten into the white, wispy mortuary. dark in hallways; yet pale and slender. she is beautiful.
we lift her ribbed corpse off the shoreline.
we unload the offering like red carpet;
this is how we wrap her in white and weary-eyed
translucent. how unavoidable we become when we are the last hope. crippled. when we look hope in the eye. askance. how she will beg you to look at her with the heart in the honey-jar; torso in tourniquet
how the walls are ripped in shades of askance. how we look away.

how us, walls, look away.
how, us, walls, askance.
how we drip of askance; how the pink flesh and cherry-limb slips like matchstick on brushfire
how there is purple and primrose and bruise
there are some spots on the floor where it still reeks purple and yellow and bruise
how we are
               lousy
                         ingrowth
here.  how we
                                                              ­   try
to
pluck
                             and *erase
Anais Vionet Mar 2022
It’s a Monday. Capitalism and school have given Mondays a bad rap and we need to take it back. That would require a movement of some sort, too much, I suppose, with a WAR on.

I have the jitters. This morning was, well, Monday and I had a midterm - sort of. So it would’ve been irresponsible for me to take the time to straighten my room - I’m nothing if not responsible. But Peter’s here. It’s his first glimpse of my room and it’s a mess.
“There’s an underlying order” I assure him.
“There always is,” says mr. physics.

Anna had taken a (photo) burst of us - the modern equivalent of those childhood, cartoon flicker-books - to celebrate his first visit to our immaculate suite. Now she’s screen-sharing them on the huge common room TV. “You’re cute,” He says.
“Hurray for me, hooray for that,” I reply, “But I was thinking YOU’RE cute,” I say as I snuggle closer to him on the couch.
“We all love the sound of compliments slapping together,” Leong says, sarcastically.
“Find a communist,” I suggested to Leong, “they all study philosophy, I think.”
“You come into MY house..,” Leong begins.
“You come into MY house..,” I responded.
“You come into MY house..,” Anna says from the kitchen.
“You come into MY house..,” Sophy yells from her room. This could go on all night.

“The four reactions,” Peter says.
“He’s starting to talk physics again!” Anna says, narrowing her eyes on him, like a cat catching sight of a squirrel. Leong, yawns excessively, “Ugh! Make him stop,”
“All the forces that we experience every day..,” Peter begins. At first, I moaned as if I’d been told I was about to be waterboarded. Then I take action, rolling over and climbing on top of him, messing his hair and beginning to tickle him, “There must have be an off switch somewhere!” I exclaim.

Now everyone’s screaming and laughing, “Ok, Ok, I give up.” he says, then he pins my arms to my sides at my elbows - but before he can swing me off of him, I lean in and plant a sloppy wet lick on the side of his face. “H-Hey!” he says, wincing like someone avoiding a wild puppy. He was all askew by the time he swung me off onto the couch and fixed me with a concentration that suggested that nothing else mattered. Time seemed to stop and that moment was the first time I thought about kissing him.

Over his left shoulder Anna vibe checks me by making a moony love-face  - throwing in several puckery kisses. I’ve never seen myself in action, but a sharp, stinging sense of recognition told me that her impersonation was more accurate than not - and I snapped out of it. “What are we doing for dinner?” I asked, and the tension broke.
BLT word of the day challenge: askew: "out of line" or "not straight."
tm Jun 2018
a withered husband,
failed by life
tells me the story
that keeps him
up at night-

thrown in jail
for showing his face
in a white neighbourhood
after light

while he was being
waterboarded for
his tardiness, his
wife was being
sodemised by
men in uniforms,
trashing their shack
and leaving her with a
child with blue eyes

-he was left with
ptsd and an infant
that was birthed
out of a crime

he now awaits for an
apocalyptic flood
to take him out of his
grief knowing that the
love of his life went
through hell knowing
he could’ve protected
her from such demise

he now screams to
the sky asking his
cancer-freed rib and
his adopted son
who left him in this
prison - where is
his rope or knife.

-t.m
The Jolteon Jul 2015
How many ppl
My age would rather
Jump than swim
How many ppl
How many backdoor deals
Does it take
To rip apart the fabric
Of your society
How many ppl my age
Are fiscally waterboarded
Would rather be boarded up
Than on the outside
Watching everyone get bled dry
Life's a Beach Sep 2015
Your information is recycled
Layers of stereotype driven crap
Fed down through the ages

All that changes is the pixels

Caricature faces are blown up like balloons
And handed to all those who seem a tad different
******
Freak
Idiot

**** them

Humanity swimming through a swimming pool
of their own *****, each new swallow
Has less truth than the last

We swim in circles
Complaining
Drinking
Never thinking beyond the box
Which is now our home,
Swimmers longing to roam are pushed below the
water line, being waterboarded
Traditions hoarded
While research is squandered

Grabbing hands take only that which pleases them
Ignore all reason

Tis the season to be ******* stupid.
MST Sep 2014
I cannot get anything down.
I squeeze and suffocate,
choke the words out,
waterboarded with books,
until there is some water in this ******* drought.
Blame it for the lack of ingenuity,
for the life-long ambiguity,
how I cannot get my message out,
no matter how much I scream and shout.
The more I write the brighter I burn,
but like a fire I go out,
forgetting everything that I learn,
lost in the smoldering embers of doubt.
Lawrence Hall Mar 2018
Dentistry is being
Waterboarded by Morlocks
Who keep saying “Relax”
Jennifer Weiss May 2014
I am stuck.
Been reaching towards the world forever but they laugh, "What a schmuck."
How did we all end up here?
Staring in the mirror like it has answers, alone in my house of Dies Drear.
I got better, but then I got worse.
Fixating on things that mean nothing, "Why that dude drive a hearse?"
Why do I feel so rehearsed?
Why does this feel like the same verse?
Because I am not even my self when I am at my worst.

I keep praying for better answers,
Keep praying that I find someone else to fall in love with, bad track record with cancers.
I keep praying he'll actually call.
Ten days past and more and more I feel like I'm being waterboarded under a waterfall.
I have no reason at all,
As to why I should wait around, must be the impending scent of fall.
Yes I have been crushed and broken
murdered and blown to bits
have been tortured
and treated like ****

I did ride the world of dragons
broke all the rules of causality
never to die never to rest
as I'm the master of death

Been to hell and back
waterboarded on a rack
had my mind ****** up
even drank from the devil's cup

My deaths have numbers
to date ten thousand and fifty-six
this new one will be soon
as I have the date finely fixed


By Christos Andreas Kouris aka NeonSolaris
Ryan O'Leary Mar 22
Mind mill turns

concepts recycle


syllabled spokes

   reverberate


cogitating cogs

       reflect


        axles

   accentuate


  introspection

waterboarded.
Ryan O'Leary Sep 29
.   Oh that but my life’s
    turbulent wake, that
    crease of self harm,
    sealed, and calmed
    to a sea of tranquility.

    Oh for the wisdom of
    hindsight and not red
    rag the winds with my
    sails arrogance, filled
    with an invisible enemy.

    Oh but for this tacking
    course I charted, never
    yielding or conceding to
    forces of nature greater
    than all my persistence.

    My genuflecting bow has
    been keel hauled in surf,
    my decks waterboarded
    yet I refused to let go my
    feeble grip of the tiller.

    A stern faced insistence
    without a moral compass
    to guide me, still, I search
    for that elusive tranquility,
    on the island I left, and lost!
Ryan O'Leary Sep 28
.   Oh that but my life’s
    turbulent wake, that
    crease of self harm,
    sealed, and calmed
    to a sea of tranquility.

    Oh for the wisdom of
    hindsight and not red
    rag the winds with my
    sails of arrogance, filled
    with an invisible enemy.

    Oh but for this tacking
    course I charted, never
    yielding or conceding to
    forces of nature greater
    than all my persistence.

    My genuflecting bow has
    been keel hauled in surf,
    my decks waterboarded
    yet I refused to let go my
    feeble grip of the tiller.

    A stern faced insistence
    without a moral compass
    to guide me, still, I search
    for that elusive tranquility,
    on the island I left, and lost!

— The End —