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Hawley Anne Aug 2023
I sail this ocean alone every night.
While wondering how much longer I'll fight,
to stay above water on top of the waves.  
  No sight of safety not islands or caves.
I'm alone and I'm drowning in my own despair,
please if you hear me then tell me you're there.
Reach out your hand and pull me ashore. 
I won't let it go this time, not like before.
I don't wish to stay here alone every night,
with nothing but my sorrows in this lonely moonlight.
ky Jul 2023
The winds blew north
for hundreds of days,
but one day,
the winds changed.

They started blowing south.
And everything in their path
started going south as well.
Lorraine Colon Jul 2023
O, grieving heart, cheer up and sing
Though love only stayed but a short while;
Soon you'll be drinking again from love's spring,
Forgotten will be love's cunning guile

O,  abandoned heart, dry your tears,
Crying will not bring back a lost love;
But reflect on the bliss of bygone years --
Memories are gifts from Heav'n above

O, broken heart, it's time to mend,
In due time you'll come to realize
New love may be waiting around the bend --
Be alert for blessings in disguise!

O, wounded heart, don't try to fly,
Dare not venture forth on broken wings;
Though love's warm glow fails to illume your sky,
Somewhere in the dark a bird still sings

O, mortal heart, your pain will end,
And from Life's shackles you'll be set free;
So let dead love to Heaven's throne ascend . . .
For love has its own eternity
Lorraine Colon Jun 2023
This path, overgrown with briar and brambles,
Thorns and nettles strewn in disarray;
A loathsome path of broken dreams, and yet,
Willingly I walk it each day

This path that hurts not the feet, but the heart,
Where roiling streams overflow their banks,
And burning cinders comingle with ice --
An affirmation of Life's cruel pranks!

What is it that prompts my unwavering steps?
The love that greets me at journey's end!
The ghost of a love lost so long ago
Leaps boundaries only love can transcend

What pain I endure to savor love's bliss!
On this path, blazed by temerity,
I fly past the graveyard of ill-fated  dreams
To a love that defies mortality

How weary I've grown trying to understand
Why such perfect love incurred God's wrath;
And now all that's left are the memories
That await me at the end of this path
Zywa Jun 2023
Your despair against

my hope, nose to nose, only --


a door in between.
After a rejected asylum application
Film "Die middag" ("That afternoon", 2023, Nafiss Nia)

Collection "Between where"
Lorraine Colon Jun 2023
The sun has deserted my sky,
Alas! not one beam will descend
To comfort me when chilling gales
Cause the fragile grasses to bend

And the wind seems preoccupied --
But what could it be thinking of?
I swear I heard it whispering:
"Tell me, Lady, where is your love?"

Please don't ask, but help dry my tears
Before night unfurls its cover,
Lest some rude star dares to inquire:
"O Lady, where is your lover?"

The restless moon's searching in vain
For two lovers veiled from his view;
He seeks the Lady and her love,
But tonight I walk without you

Was ours a love too beautiful,
Perhaps taunting the ire of Fate?
O, why did God exile our hearts
From Paradise and lock the gate?

Crashing thunder peals through the clouds,
The wind's moving with dauntless might;
No rainbow will follow this storm . . .
The Lady lost her love tonight
Sherenna Jun 2023
The bugs need to eat too, and I'm their wretched feast,
They are a banquet of despair, a relentless beast,
I'm caught in their grasp, entangled in their might,
As they strip away my strength, cuddling me day and night.

The bugs need to eat too, their chants so clear,
Consuming my soul, where shadows leer,
No escape from their hunger, no end in sight,
Despair, my constant mate, swallowing the light.

The bugs need to eat too, as they burrow in my mind,
Feeding on my thoughts, leaving sanity behind,
Their hunger knows no bounds, their presence ever near,
Gobbling up my very being, filling me with fear.
Derrick Jones May 2023
I never felt ok
I never felt not ok
I found a way

I swam backwards, against the grain and granted my pain the grace to keep me sane while feeling so outside my brain that novocaine and Kurt Cobaine could barely find the vein of comfortably numb I need to stay inside my lane

Like Bane I was born in the dark and somehow I found a spark, the light at the end of the tunnel if the tunnel was more like a pit
It’s amazing how much perspective matters when you’re inside of it
The gravity overwhelms me when I’m at the helm, but sometimes I can get my feet in the air and my head on the ground and vertical seems a little more horizontal this time around
Perhaps that’s the trick
A trick of the light
A way to finally fight
A way to come undone from holding so **** tight

Let loose but still in boundaries, that’s what I always had to do because true freedom confounds me
I don’t know what to do when I feel so blue that even pure O2 couldn’t bring back a normal hue
Suffocating and ice skating cold as ice maybe that’s why 11 minutes won’t suffice, I’m the ice man with my ice plan maybe a cold bath will clean the blood from my hands
I can’t stand a headstand ‘cause the feeling of being free has always escaped me, locked in the trunk like Stan, and surrender sounds so sweet until I feel the pain that hides behind the sweet release
How much pain have I endured and how many people have I cured without ever helping myself
Too many to be sure
Healer heal thyself but I’m the biggest hypocrite on the shelf
Mental health or mental wealth I never know I just show myself the way of zen and keep on diving in
Sometimes it’s healing that sends me reeling, sometimes it’s joy that transcends feeling
Keeling over from either I choose neither, I want to be numb but something inside me tells me that’s dumb, don’t succumb, don’t just *** but be the sum of all the pain and like the rain fall back to earth find rebirth and recycle through the trees and the clouds no longer shrouds but part of being pure bright seeing without fleeing perfect being without me-ing am I leaping to conclusions or transcending my delusions I don’t know I’m just here spitting typing fire words for myself in thirds

Me myself and I
I always wonder why
Myself and Me can’t get on the same team but who is the wonderer when my attention wanders
One under the other I discover it’s a self collapsing doll, turtles all the way down after all
Stop and stall when I will but I still find a thrill from the jagged little pill of self-knowledge that I hate to acknowledge
I get to the ledge and say no way, not today, I can’t take the leap I’m too afraid
That’s why I stayed, alone in the dark for so long
Trapped in the pit of my despair
No one there
Maybe they were but I didn’t let them in
I didn’t let them see my sin I sent them away and prayed that someone without judgment might one day help me see the gray
I don’t know how else to convey that this black and white mentality is insanity and calamity and the only thing that ever made sense to me
I want to change, I want to be the man that I sometimes can see
But sometimes he is blurry for the tears
Blurrier still for all my fears
Blurrier yet again for all the years
So many that I let slip by and now I finally find the strength to try

To be the light at the end of the tunnel, the top of the pit
To be the hole and the funnel, gas finally lit
An explosion that propels me onward and upward
I am not throwing away my shot
I will not run away and hide
Finding a reason for these tears I’ve cried
Pit or tunnel, I’m no longer inside
One final thought for me to confide:
Aiming toward the sky is the best thing that I’ve ever tried
Thank you for being. If you would like to see more of my poetry, essays, and other writings, check out my blog on Medium: https://medium.com/words-ideas-thoughts
Lorraine Colon Apr 2023
What cruel force keeps lovers apart --
Why must each tread a separate path?
Preordained they should never meet . . .
What arbiter inflicts such wrath?  

Two lives hurled into misery,
Two hearts nailed to the same cross;
Never to savor  love's banquet,
They're condemned to feed off life's dross

Spring faintly smiled on these two hearts
As dreams absorbed their youthful hours;
Although  nurtured like tender plants
They yielded naught but withered flowers

Each new day held a ray of Hope,
Dispelling  impatience and doubt;
They kept watch as the flame burned bright . . .
Till finally, their tears put it out

Two hearts dying slow painful deaths,
Each cloaked in its own crimson shroud;
One heart dies, crying silently,
The other sobs its pain aloud

Two lonely hearts ever dreaming
They might stroll Love's Garden one day;
Now resigned, they no longer dream --
Sadly, on Death's threshold they lay

So come forth and ring the death knell --
Come lay your bouquets at their feet;
Mourn if you will such tragedies
While asking  "Why didn't they meet?"
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