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 657° 
Indra L
Fear teaches me, sort of aimlessly.

As the resilience I wish I'd seen
A punch I’d wish I’ve been - a prey I wished I hit.

Overshadowing the dopamine I’d like to feel.

Via guilt-induced tears, effortfully building shields.
Via timeless dampening -
I’m nervously standing, brainlessly erasing.

But never has anger crossed that brain,
Never have I ever played this game.
 299° 
Left Foot Poet
it ain't easy, when you relate, restrict and delegate,
when you draw a narrow lane on a highway that says
only left footed
poets need apply
<>
it does not say
slow cars stay to the right,
only trucks,
or oddly even,
no trucks



I love seasonality,
without thickly thinking
you take a break
from the poetry writing

one day I'll figure out a way
to monetize my love poems,
publish them as Shakespeare's couple(t)s,
"new edition plus
a couple of
newfound poems!"

maybe some fools will buy some thinking Shakespeare has been, resurrected!

love grows goes hot all over and
grow slower older
and grow colder,
in between those fine
ticklish teasing moments


when the miracle of resurrection repeats itself

something is said
a gesture is made
a finger strokes the cheek,
unexpected
and it all comes
rushing back again,
overfilling
that coffee cup mug she bought
just(ice)
for you

ain't gonna check how long it's been
since last I declaimed, disclaimed,
inflamed,
these pages with an only love poem

but I do know this:
it is something I think about,
It is something I know about,
it is something I feel about
daily
even on the nothing days,
when routine takes over
I know you couldn't remember of its passage,
is the waking up and the lying down to sleep


but the poets eyes are always open his emotive secret senses,
always alert,
what's that thing they always say,

his heart just wasn't in it!
(đŸ„Žif they only knew the truth😘)
 297° 
Left Foot Poet
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


that which used to take ten minutes
now takes an hour or
two

something's that used to take an hour or
two,
now take ten minutes, give or
take,
(mostly I do the taking)

(or as the little voice whispers, the mostly
faking)

betcha you'd like to which is what
and what is which being bewitched,

I ain't spilling no beans
cause I value my insanity's privacy,
and I don't got to give that up just yet

but if you want the worst of what little I got left,
unhappily I will approach the old muse
begging me giving me something to use,
bad she turns away bad she say

"You all tricked out,
you wares worn,
ye old styles from yester last month
you been styled by
  H&M;
30 days max,
then
ring in the new, and if all sold,
or none-at-all,
too bad for you


then you gotta decide:

wear a watch
or watch the wearing
with  small
pleasures sighed,
confirming,  night-moves,
gonna
Keep On Keeping On
Living
 273° 
Jay Jelly
Flexing patterns
Slight of hand
Flattering inspiration
Fostering me
In its warmth
Soft whispers
Like a breathable oxygen
Prima ballerina
Please grace
Me with your soft sweet movements
In limbo I’ve been
Four leaf clovers
Splitting lucks running on fumes
Army of me
Loosen up your
Bark
I’m just a man
Never claimed to be a king
Creaking floors shout
Gazing walls stare
Don’T shine like silver
Castles
Of sand crumble
A devoted
Loneliness
Just had to veer
It’s ugly head in
Fragments far to relevant
Excavated as the days go
Set by step
Word by word
Masquerading in every detail
To the finest degree
Executioner
Of life latched onto my
Footsteps and wouldn’t unite me
******* MAN!!! MAYBE I EXPRESS TOO MUCH
 NAH IM HONEST I DON’T HIDE BEHIND MY DEEPEST FEELINGS!!! REAL TALK đŸ€ŻđŸ‘ŠđŸ’ŻâœïžđŸ˜Ž
 244° 
Lostling
Roses are red
And so is my blood
You made cuts romantic
But it’s not called love
I hate when it’s romanticized, like what do you mean it’s an “aesthetic”???
#sh
 224° 
Maddy
FCC and CBS not simpatico
Now do we boycott CBS because of the end of Colbert?
Very wrong Paramount and CBS!
He can"t speak the truth while Grand Orange lies?
The end of PBS because quality means nothing to them?
They want Education of any kind otber than their idea of it to end?
Spoken as an educator!
Pathetic
 206° 
Harry Gione
How can the world say
That your heart isnt for me?
I feel your love every morning
I'm resting my head on this faith
And I bet my life on your grace
 191° 
BEEZEE
Shifting realities
like favorite movies.

Love intertwines
with robust beauty,
wrapping him tightly
in vines of earth’s presence.

Divine intervention
from a woman’s connection.

Within a snow globe
beneath the stars,
she lays slowly
as he wraps his arms
around her.

Tightly,
she will fall asleep—
cosmic love
confessing
that life
is a dream.
Dec 2 2020
 184° 
pitch black god8
I.      the smell of sad

odorless colorless like *****, similar familiar sidewinder effects,
musty invasive, it has no specificity, no locale centrale, well closeted,
saddling sadding, in place, plain sighted better to toy our lives,
pervades persists, worse lingers, impervious to sprays
and even everyone’s good literature (even Will S’s),
good wishes good intentions and mood prayers
to the nearest lay god
on duty at the spiritual emergency room on weekends,
still stink

don’t think that this poem is for you; solely for the writer,
your doppelgĂ€nger ******, your mirror’s inside hiding out place,
I,
who has your sadness smell into my skin cells creepily crept
waft woof and warp wet weft-woven
into the sad receptacles hidden in my
head’s cubbies and the palms of my tree hands-covering face

there are cures so wonderful and inexpensive but unavailable
at the local Rite Aid, though they are the right aid recoverable,
so closer than close, so close that the internist
cannot prescribe them because he must inject himself first
because the live bacteria in the antidote can **** all

this odor lays down bamboo-strong roots;
to eradicate you must dig down deep,
six feet perhaps more, with heavy earth moving equipment,
uproot at the source, follow sad always all-the-way down and the root
great god gone,
but the saddest truth
stench odor yet present
 183° 
badwords
There was a time I wandered through your garden,

starving.

And you—each of you—offered yourselves

as fruit swollen with promise.

I reached for you with cracked hands,

bit in with blind hunger,

and called the bitterness flavor.



You were beautiful.

God, you were beautiful.

But so is nightshade,

so is the blossom that blooms on the mouth of a grave.

Your sweetness was lacquered in arsenic,

your nectar dripped with need.

You tasted of almosts

and if-onlys

and don’t-you-dares

disguised as love.



I swallowed you whole.



Thank you for that.



Truly.

Because I needed the poison.

I needed to tremble.

I needed to wake at 3 a.m.

with my gut twisted into questions,

my lips still red from the lie.



You see,

each of you grew in soil watered by my self-doubt.

You thrived on my silence,

my contortion,

my careful pruning of self

to fit the shape of your hunger.



I tended you like a fool tends a ****,

thinking it would blossom into medicine.

But you were never sustenance.

You were spectacle.

And I—

I was the banquet host,

laying myself out

course after course,

watching you feast

and ask what else I had to offer.



No more.



The garden is closed now.



I’ve uprooted every vine

that once climbed my spine like a lover.

I’ve tilled the rot,

turned the decay into compost,

and from it—

from it—

a single fig tree has risen.

Quiet. Modest.

But true.



She feeds me.

Not with frenzy,

but with fullness.

Not with hunger,

but with presence.

Her fruit doesn’t burn.

It lingers.



So to each bitter harvest:

Thank you.

Thank you for sickening me.

For seducing me.

For starving me so thoroughly

that when love finally arrived,

I could taste it—

and know it was real.



You were never the feast.

You were the lesson.



And I am no longer hungry.



— Formerly Yours,

Now Fed
 155° 
vik
(    )

      > where drifts the self?

frore strath
  where stalkers
drip their sultry rest
  and our shoulders
thaw
  into
the moor of dumb ”Earth”;

  > where do the ARROWS lead?

   to the soft cortĂšge of gut
  slunk in eve’s
inferring weave;
  often whit’s
threnode
  where bre^th ignores its end

       > what stirs now?

  wearing the guise of lack
   [...]
ego, and
a patch of moss in sombre ”snow”
  lurching
beyond limbs,
  beyond need

       > when loosens time?

  the night clasps
 thin as the sigh of origin
  and i
(and we)
  one sunken, shallow leaf;
  do not rise /
do not recall

       > none beside?

  only the dreary,
  detailed fatigue
  of being
  unmade, unmade...
  
       >  â–
🍂
 153° 
Nat Lipstadt
Stumbling into ancient scripts, authored a decades plus ago,
ago being a modifier of time quantities, minute or large, unspecific
without an objective adjective additive, that faucets a stream of an interlocutory elocution of a batter of rooted emotional histories,
but not histrionics

fanciful words for dredged up memories, acute, but tarnished,
powered yet worn by a cousin of ago, a/k/a,
age
and yet
renews as of,

at this very second, as if it were a first, a tumult of visions, swelling of remembrances, embodied scars, and I weep anew but not
for me, as much for the resonating simpatico souls with whom
they even  now vibrate with resonance of the immediacy of
If not now, When?

Aside: The exterior environment is noisy wet pelting of thunderstorms and ****** sheets of bulleting rain, piercing projectiles, but I am safe in the sunroom, sadly happy my dog is no longer here to shiver and tremble, cuddle and be soothed by steady stroking

But I am here, wrestling with this dredging operation, digging up
tons of sand that require dumping, and I ask, inquire, beg:

Who will take this detritus off my hands, once more, now uncovered,
now recovered, the soil is already soaked and can absorb no more,
the soul is already soaked and can absorb no more, the weakened
heart, damaged and occluded, suffer cannot bare twice the

outrageous misfortune

of unbared recollections, twice, or thrice, and I feel myself drowning in revisiting pain, **** **** ****, these old poems, not nuggets, but boulders dropping from night skies, shot from a pitching machine, without letup, piercing of agonies that once ago  
freshly desecrated and decorated my basic training in humanity.

Enough whining:
I wrote those poems to
eject out those pains,
and I write this now, once more,
to realize that so so many still face
uncertain and unrelenting similarities,
doing their own sums,
and I wish them easing,
strength to compose and
thereby dispose of
the ineloquent
and eloquent
words of staining suffering


3:30am
Thur
July 10
2025
 151° 
Stephen Leacock
You can be a student a teacher or in the military.

Conducting helping to assist for the better tomorrow.

Painting a picture skuplting a tag with a military hat of care.

Focusing on developments and aiding tomorrow with care.

Artificial intelligence development and cybersecurity to share.

New tokenize applications to be capitalize and to care.

Helping to fix a puzzle to solve and share
New developments of virtual worlds simulated and of a.g.i intelligence with the virtual share.

25 and 40 percent share investment growth into this care
The golden card of Einstein's care
Family with hands that offers charity because they care.

The bond of ideas centralization care
Microsoft and family that cares
Birth child in cybersecurity a.i inventions of new empire of the trusted care
The red bird and numbers that permutates the travel care.

The shift in timeline with good news only to challenge and to care.

Helping to build a new innovative student challenge with care
Global assistance with care

The world with a heart that truly shares and cares.

The eagle eye with hands that shares.

You might be a soar looser but they care.
 148° 
TOD HOWARD HAWKS
I've read with one half of one eye
my whole life. I'm 80 now. I was diagnosed
when I was 28 by a renown ophthamologist
in Tulsa to have congenital monocular vision.
He said, "Tod, I'm surprised you can read a
book, let alone get through college." But I
did graduate from Columbia College, Columbia
University. and before that, from Phillips
Andover Academy. How did I do this?
I spent twice as much time reading
as my classmates. I did well at both schools.
To boot, I was one of 15 elected by my 700
classmates to lead Commencement Procession.
 130° 
Marwan Baytie
My granddaughter and me
the best artists to ever be!
We make, we write, we draw wild things,
So strange and bold, with scribbled wings.
We paint the sun with purple glue,
And give the moon a mohawk too.
We turn the clouds into mashed potatoes,
And make giraffes wear sweet pink halos.
You might look once and raise your brow,
“Is that a dragon... or a cow?”
But we just laugh and say with glee:
“You don’t see it? That’s on you, not me!”
We’re the best and no need to boast
Of silliness, we make the most.
So when you see our crazy art,
Know it's made with love and heart.
 122° 
hannah
you told me you could never be a poet
but
my eyes are like cats eye marbles
and
im a reminder of flower fields
at night
fireflies dancing between
strands of grass
and
dandelions
you used to write me poetry
with verses of
"i love you"
and
"see you tomorrow"
but
you told me you could never be a poet
 117° 
Amisha priya
Walking
In
Moon light
Is
Lovely
Walking
In
Sunlight
Is
Dovely
Enjoying
Lovely-dovely moments
With you......
                                                 - Amisha priya
 109° 
Zywa
To be made pregnant

for love and not for a man --


who's just taking you.
Novel "Alles verandert" ("Everything changes", 2015, Kristien Hemmerechts), chapter 9

Collection "Loves Tricks Gains Pains in the 10s"
 104° 
Vazago d Vile
Stand before your mirror.
Look yourself in the eye.
Don’t blink.
Don’t flinch.

Ask the question
you fear the most.

If you dare to listen,
truth won’t lie.
Some truths don’t come from others — they come when you finally stop lying to yourself. This is not an accusation. It’s a mirror.
 102° 
somedumbbitch
...Sometimes,
I think about it.

En pointe,
mid-plié,

a paper crane,
luckless,
having sprouted,
its lead-weighted wings.

A brief moment, spent,
turning,
somersaulting, in mid-air;

matter, meaningless,
yet, in perfect suspension...
faithless,
in a state,
of suspended belief...

...I want to know,
what it means to be happy, but...
maybe I'm not meant, to be?

The wind, brushes my lips,
and cheeks,
in a flurry, of harried kisses.

My toes, grip the railing
as if it were a springboard,
perched,
over the great well, of eternity,

and then release.

I fling myself,
skyward.

A paper crane,
with no legs, or feet;
the sudden lapse,
in the law, of earthly gravity

deceiving me--

leading me into thinking,
that I have achieved, flight...

but the engine dies,
and I leapfrog, into

untenable
darkness.
Thinking isn't doing. A thought is not an action. This is not meant to register as encouragement. Many people have a fear of falling, a fear of heights.
(AjoutĂ©e dans l'Édition des Souscripteurs de 1849.)

Que l'on soit homme ou Dieu, tout génie est martyre :
Du supplice plus **** on baise l'instrument ;
L'homme adore la croix oĂč sa victime expire,
Et du cachot du Tasse enchĂąsse le ciment.

Prison du Tasse ici, de Galilée à Rome,
Échafaud de Sidney, bĂ»chers, croix ou tombeaux,
Ah ! vous donnez le droit de bien mépriser l'homme,
Qui veut que Dieu l'éclaire, et qui hait ses flambeaux !

Grand parmi les petits, libre chez les serviles,
Si le génie expire, il l'a bien mérité ;
Car nous dressons partout aux portes de nos villes
Ces gibets de la gloire et de la vérité.

**** de nous amollir, que ce sort nous retrempe !
Sachons le prix du don, mais ouvrons notre main.
Nos pleurs et notre sang son l'huile de la lampe
Que Dieu nous fait porter devant le genre humain !
My Writer's and Artist's Year Book
knows me well.
It knows what I want to write
and where I want to send it.

So why - oh why -
does it stay obstinately closed
as I sit  and wait
for inspiration ...?
Guess most writers and poets have been there ...
 93° 
ismail
i’m tired of writing these poems
tired of chasing the right words
for a feeling that never wanted to be named

tired that nothing i write
comes close to the way it felt
to love you
and lose you
and still carry it all

no stanza, no line,
no late night whisper into the void
has ever been enough

the love i have for you
deserves more than language
and yet
language is all i have
 82° 
Olivia Williams
Hello!
It’s me again. :)

I am leaving for VACATION!!
Literally tomorrow (Friday, jul 18).
And I won’t be back until next week!
I’m seeing my dad’s family up north in cabins for the week!
And going on the e-foils :).   :).      
Anyways!
Love you all and your support!
I’ll always be here
Forever and always
To infinity and beyond
I will be back
(Im going to go have fun now.  :)

-Olivia.  :)
I LOVE SMILY FACES :).   !!!!   :)
 80° 
Jay Jelly
SHARE YOUR FAITH
When you give God thanks for what He's done, especially in the middle of chaos, it's not just gratitude
—it's a declaration of faith.
NOTHING COULD BE TRUER!!! 🙏
 77° 
eliana
Be brave.
You already are.
Look at what you've made it through.
The wounds of your past have healed.
The seemingly endless chapter has ended,
And those bruises have faded.
The battle, you survived,
And you are still here.
Be brave.
this poem  is about my battle scars. I hope it gives the people who have cut or are still cutting inspiration
 74° 
SG Holter
I

She exits herself on the
Sofa. Blanket, dog, and bits
Of a poem on a pad of paper

On the table, like a half-eaten
Piece of homework.
Shades of wine on her sleeping

Lips. Exits herself; space-walks
Outside that frame of mind she's
Been expected to hang herself

On the wall within; she knows
There is more.
There has to be more.

II

She has to be more.
Like so many writers, she falls
Asleep working. Sometimes

Works to fall asleep.
Digging her way through
Herself, mining for words,

Hacking away at painful pasts,
Gathering emerald experiences.  
Diamond doubts and ruby

Regrets all fuel her poetry.
And she reads, spotlight kissed;  
Audience adored,

Goosebump summoning; hairs
On arms and necks stand up as
She whispers directly to me.

About me. Because of me.
In front of everybody.
To music, and I've brought a box

Of pins, and between each of her
Every word, I drop one. And I
Swear to the gods, you can hear

Them all. Like the unsteady
Ticking of a clock too cool to
Care.

III

Poetry jewelry; set with stones
From her innermost. Chips of
Gold from her heart melted

Down to a key pendant she
Holds in her hand; chain dangling,
Eyes closed, forehead resting

Against a door she knows it is
Time to open. Key in one hand,
Pen in the other,

She
Enters
Herself.
 71° 
Shang
dear future me,

i don’t really know why I’m writing,
except maybe I hope you're still listening.
today she left.
and I don’t know if she’s ever coming back.
she smelled like smoke and sweet things
and something sharp I couldn’t name.

she said she’d be back soon.
grandma hugged me so tight,
I thought maybe she was saying goodbye for her.
but I smiled anyway.
because I still had that kind of hope.
the kind that doesn’t know better yet.

I feel something inside me trying to curl up and disappear.
but there’s another part of me
the part that wants to yell,
to make someone come back,
to ask, “was I not enough to stay for?”

I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
sometimes I laugh too hard just so I don’t cry.
sometimes I pretend I don’t care so no one asks.
but I do care.
I care a lot.

please don’t forget me.
don’t become so strong you stop feeling.
don’t cover me up with silence and call it healing.

whoever you are now,
i hope you still remember the sound of her leaving.
because it’s the only proof I have that I was here.

love,
me
i can't get enough of your stares
as if they want to leave me in ruins
by eating my flesh and bones

i can't get enough of your stares
as if they want to undress me
without you ever touching me
This poem is part of my Velvet Coffin poetry series.
 63° 
Blue Sapphire
Don't call me back
consider me dead
if it helps you forget.

I am not coming back
I live in the shadows now
far away from your heart's reach.
I have created walls
you cannot breach.
 58° 
lizie
i hide the cuts
and call it healing.
i smile enough
to look like feeling.

i bled to feel,
then felt too much.
so now i flinch
at even touch.

no big event,
no cry for aid.
just pain, then choice,
then steel, then blade.

the scars are thin,
but memory lingers.
i still see red
between my fingers.

they call it pain,
i call it mine.
i earned the blood,
i crossed the line.
 55° 
Christian Platts
Standing proud from your lofty heights
Head heavy rich with medicine.
No more breathing in the sunshine.
Sat in your water filled coffin.
Bleeding your charisma your truth.
Contorting in search of the light.
You show me the grace of your fall.
What do you see o’golden lens?
What do you reflect back to me?
 52° 
TOD HOWARD HAWKS
I'll be dying soon.
Follow me in love.
You are made of love,
Follow me. We all are
made of love. Be one
with God. Become one
with God--no form, no
beginning, no end. God
is love, follow me in love.
Only enlightenment is all you'll know.
I'll be dying soon. We all will be
dying soon. Become one with
God. Become love infinitely.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS
 51° 
alia
life used to taste like sugar
now it’s just
something i chew to get by.

I smile like it’s scripted,
pause like there’s a laugh track,
but no one's laughing.

sometimes I look in the mirror
and wonder
if this is the real scene
or just a deleted one.

everyone’s moving,
and I’m stuck
editing myself
for a world that never hits “save.”

am I healing
or just hiding better?

I guess life isn’t a villain,
just a really bad friend.
but i keep texting it anyway.
Inspired by the Eternal Sunshine Album by Ariana Grande
 51° 
CE Uptain
Poets write poems
They think and think
Pickup their pens, it’s over
I' sure this is not haiku, at least it's short and to the point. We poets are a funny bunch.
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