Category: Poetry

Poem of the Day – 04202026

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No Moon Floods the Memory of That Night

By Etheridge Knight

No moon floods the memory of that night

only the rain I remember the cold rain

against our faces and mixing with your tears

only the rain I remember the cold rain

and your mouth soft and warm

no moon no stars no jagged pain

of lightning only my impotent tongue

and the red rage within my brain

knowing that the chilling rain was our forever

even as I tried to explain:

“A revolutionary is a doomed man

with no certainties but love and history.”

“But our children must grow up with certainties

and they will make the revolution.”

“By example we must show the way so plain

that our children can go neither right

nor left but straight to freedom.”

“No,” you said. And you left.

No moon floods the memory of that night

only the rain I remember the cold rain

and praying that like the rain

returns to the sky you would return to me again.

Reflection

Some memories arrive dressed in beauty.

Soft light.
Nostalgia.
The kind of distance that rounds off sharp edges and lets the past look kinder than it was.

This poem offers none of that.

No moon.
No silver wash across the scene.
No gentle light to turn pain into something poetic and easier to hold.

Just memory.

Unlit.
Exact.
Still carrying the shape of what happened.

That absence matters.

Because we often rely on beauty to make memory bearable. We frame old wounds in language polished enough to survive looking at them. We call it reflection. We call it growth. Sometimes it’s just camouflage.

Knight refuses camouflage.

He understands that some nights do not become lyrical with time. They do not mellow into wisdom on schedule. They remain what they were: moments of rupture, fear, violence, consequence, or awakening.

And the mind keeps them that way.

Not out of cruelty.
Out of function.

Because certain nights redraw the map of a life.

There is a self before them.
And another self after.

The memory remains sharp because it had to. Because forgetting would mean losing the evidence of what changed you.

That’s the harder truth underneath this poem:

Not every memory wants healing.
Some memories want accuracy.

They insist on being remembered without filters, without sentiment, without false light cast over them by time.

And maybe that honesty has its own kind of mercy.

Because when we stop trying to beautify what hurt us, we can finally understand it.

Not excuse it.
Not romanticize it.
Understand it.

That’s different.

And often, that difference is where freedom begins.

Reflection Prompts

  • What memory in your life have you softened to make it easier to carry?
  • Are there moments that changed you more than you admit?
  • What would it mean to remember something truthfully instead of beautifully?

Poem of the Day – 04192026

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Odes

Fernando Pessoa  

1.
Of the gardens of Adonis, Lydia, I love
Most of all those fugitive roses
That on the day they are born,
That very day, must also die.
Eternal, for them, the light of day:
They’re born when the sun is already high
And die before Apollo’s course

Across the visible sky is run.
We too, of our lives, must make one day:
We never know, my Lydia, nor want
To know of nights before or after
The little while that we may last.
2.
To be great, be whole: nothing that’s you
Should you exaggerate or exclude.
In each thing, be all. Give all you are
In the least you ever do.
The whole moon, because it rides so high,
Is reflected in each pool.

Reflection

There’s a stage in life where you think consistency is the goal.

Be the same person everywhere.
Hold one opinion forever.
Never change enough to make anyone uncomfortable.

It sounds noble.

It’s often fear.

Because neat identities are easier to explain. Easier to market. Easier to defend. They require less courage than growth.

Whitman understood that.

When he says he contradicts himself, he isn’t confessing failure. He’s rejecting the smallness of being reduced to one version of himself.

He’s saying:

I am alive enough to evolve.
Wide enough to hold tension.
Human enough to be unfinished.

Then Pessoa enters the room and deepens the challenge.

“To be great, be whole.”

Not perfect.
Not simple.
Whole.

That’s harder than it sounds.

Wholeness doesn’t mean ironing out your contradictions until you become smooth and socially acceptable. It means integrating them honestly.

The part of you that wants solitude
and the part that wants connection.

The version of you that failed badly
and the version still trying.

The tenderness you hide
and the steel you needed to survive.

The younger self who believed everything
and the older self who knows better.

Most people spend years amputating pieces of themselves to gain approval.

Be less intense.
Less emotional.
Less curious.
Less complicated.
Less real.

Then they wonder why they feel incomplete.

Because wholeness is not achieved through subtraction.

It comes from acknowledgment.

From saying:

Yes, I have changed.
Yes, I contain conflict.
Yes, some days I am wise and other days ridiculous.
Yes, I am still becoming.

That kind of honesty threatens people who built identities out of rigidity.

But it frees everyone else.

Reflection Prompts

  • Which parts of yourself have you hidden to appear more consistent?
  • Where are you mistaking rigidity for integrity?
  • What would wholeness look like if you stopped trying to seem simple?

Poem of the Day – 04182026

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Dreams

Henry Timrod

Who first said “false as dreams?” Not one who saw
   Into the wild and wondrous world they sway;
No thinker who hath read their mystic law;
   No Poet who hath weaved them in his lay.

Else had he known that through the human breast
   Cross and recross a thousand fleeting gleams,
That, passed unnoticed in the day’s unrest,
   Come out at night, like stars, in shining dreams;

That minds too busy or to dull to mark
   The dim suggestions of the noisier hours,
By dreams in the deep silence of the dark,
   Are roused at midnight with their folded powers.

Like that old fount beneath Dodona’s oaks,
   That, dry and voiceless in the garish noon,
When the calm night arose with modest looks,
   Caught with full wave the sparkle of the moon.

If, now and then, a ghastly shape glide in,
   And fright us with its horrid gloom or glee,
It is the ghost of some forgotten sin
   We failed to exorcise on bended knee.

And that sweet face which only yesternight
   Came to thy solace, dreamer (did’st thou read
The blessing in its eyes of tearful light?)
   Was but the spirit of some gentle deed.

Each has its lesson; for our dreams in sooth,
   Come they in shape of demons, gods, or elves,
Are allegories with deep hearts of truth
   That tell us solemn secrets of ourselves.

Dreams don’t arrive with permission.

They slip in quietly—between moments, between responsibilities, between the version of yourself you’ve learned to be and the one you haven’t fully faced yet.

That’s what makes them dangerous.

Not because they’re unrealistic.
But because they’re honest in a way waking life rarely allows.

Dreams doesn’t treat them as fantasies to chase blindly.
It treats them as something more complicated—something that both reveals and unsettles.

Because a dream doesn’t just show you what you want.

It shows you what you’re missing.

And that realization doesn’t always feel inspiring.

Sometimes it feels like distance.

Like standing in two places at once—one foot in the life you’ve built, the other reaching toward something that doesn’t quite exist yet, or maybe never will.

That tension is where the poem lives.

We like to believe dreams are meant to guide us.
That they point toward something attainable, something waiting for us if we just move in the right direction.

But Timrod suggests something quieter—and harder to sit with:

That dreams don’t always exist to be fulfilled.

Sometimes they exist to remind you of the gap.

Between who you are
and who you imagined you might become.

That gap can do one of two things.

It can push you forward—force you to question, to move, to refuse to settle for something that no longer feels aligned.

Or it can become something you learn to live around.

A quiet ache.
A persistent awareness that there’s more… even if you never quite reach it.

And maybe that’s the part we don’t talk about enough.

That not every dream is meant to resolve.

Some stay with you—not as a destination, but as a kind of internal compass.

Not telling you where to go…
but reminding you that where you are isn’t the whole story.

Reflection Prompts

  • What dreams have stayed with you—not because you chased them, but because you didn’t?
  • Do your dreams push you forward, or remind you of what’s missing?
  • Is there a difference between letting a dream go… and quietly carrying it with you?

Poem of the Day – 04172026

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The Sea Gypsy

Richard Hovey

I am fevered with the sunset,
I am fretful with the bay,
For the wander-thirst is on me
And my soul is in Cathay.

There’s a schooner in the offing,
With her topsails shot with fire,
And my heart has gone aboard her
For the Islands of Desire.

I must forth again to-morrow!
With the sunset I must be
Hull down on the trail of rapture
In the wonder of the sea.

There’s a certain kind of leaving that feels like freedom.

Wind at your back.
Nothing tying you down.
The open promise of somewhere else—anywhere else—waiting just beyond the horizon.

The Sea Gypsy leans into that feeling.

But not in the way people like to pretend.

Because this isn’t clean freedom.
It’s not the kind that comes from clarity or purpose.

It’s driven by something else.

Restlessness.

That quiet, persistent sense that staying where you are is no longer an option—not because something is chasing you… but because something inside you won’t sit still.

And that’s harder to explain.

There’s no single moment that forces the decision.
No clear reason that justifies it.

Just a growing awareness:

You don’t belong here anymore.
Or maybe you never did.

So you go.

Not with a plan.
Not with certainty.

Just movement.

And for a while, that movement feels like relief.

Distance creates space.
Space creates the illusion of control.

You tell yourself that whatever you left behind—whatever didn’t fit, didn’t work, didn’t make sense—will sort itself out once there’s enough ocean between you and it.

But the sea has a way of stripping things down.

Out there, there’s nothing to hide behind.

No noise to distract you.
No structure to lean on.

Just you… and the same questions you thought you could outrun.

That’s where the poem turns.

Because the horizon never gets closer.

It keeps its distance.
Always just out of reach.

And the longer you chase it, the more you start to realize:

Maybe the point was never to arrive.

Maybe it was to keep moving.

Not because movement solves anything—
but because stillness forces you to face what you’ve been avoiding.

Reflection Prompts

  • What are you moving toward—and what are you trying to leave behind?
  • Does distance actually change anything, or just delay the moment you have to confront it?
  • What would it mean to stay, instead of go?

Poem of the Day – 04162026

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Little Orphant Annie (formerly The Elf Child)

by James Whitcomb Riley

Little Orphant Annie's come to our house to stay,
An' wash the cups an' saucers up, an' brush the crumbs away,
An' shoo the chickens off the porch, an' dust the hearth, an' sweep,
An' make the fire, an' bake the bread, an' earn her board-an'-keep;
An' all us other children, when the supper-things is done,
We set around the kitchen fire an' has the mostest fun
A-list'nin' to the witch-tales 'at Annie tells about,
An' the Gobble-uns 'at gits you
    Ef you
        Don't
            Watch
                Out!

Wunst they wuz a little boy wouldn't say his prayers,--
An' when he went to bed at night, away up-stairs,
His Mammy heerd him holler, an' his Daddy heerd him bawl,
An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wuzn't there at all!
An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubby-hole, an' press,
An' seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an' ever'-wheres, I guess;
But all they ever found wuz thist his pants an' roundabout:--
An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you
    Ef you
        Don't
            Watch
                Out!
An' one time a little girl 'ud allus laugh an' grin,
An' make fun of ever' one, an' all her blood-an'-kin;
An' wunst, when they was "company," an' ole folks wuz there,
She mocked 'em an' shocked 'em, an' said she didn't care!
An' thist as she kicked her heels, an' turn't to run an' hide,
They wuz two great big Black Things a-standin' by her side,
An' they snatched her through the ceilin' 'fore she knowed what she's about!
An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you
    Ef you
        Don't
            Watch
                Out!
An' little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue,
An' the lamp-wick sputters, an' the wind goes woo-oo!
An' you hear the crickets quit, an' the moon is gray,
An' the lightnin'-bugs in dew is all squenched away,--
You better mind yer parunts, an' yer teachurs fond an' dear,
An' churish them 'at loves you, an' dry the orphant's tear,
An' he'p the pore an' needy ones 'at clusters all about,
Er the Gobble-uns 'll git you
    Ef you
        Don't
            Watch
                Out!

It begins softly.

Almost too softly to question.

A child. A presence. Something delicate, half-seen, hovering just beyond the edge of certainty. The kind of moment you might dismiss as imagination—until you realize how much weight it carries.

Because this poem isn’t really about a child.

It’s about distance.

The slow, quiet kind that doesn’t announce itself. The kind that looks like stillness from the outside, but feels like drifting from within.

That’s what makes it unsettling.

Nothing violent happens.
Nothing breaks.

And yet… something is slipping.

The “elf child” exists in that in-between space—part of the world, but not fully anchored to it. Present, but unreachable. Seen, but not understood.

And if you sit with it long enough, the question starts to turn inward:

How far can someone drift before they’re no longer fully here?

We tend to romanticize imagination. Call it wonder. Escape. A refuge from the weight of things we don’t want to face.

And sometimes it is.

Sometimes it’s the only thing that makes the world bearable.

But there’s another side to it.

A quieter one.

The part where retreat becomes habit.
Where silence replaces connection.
Where being “elsewhere” starts to feel safer than being present.

That’s where the poem lingers.

Not in fantasy—but in the cost of it.

Because the further you drift, the harder it becomes to return.

Not because the way back is gone…
but because something in you has grown used to the distance.

Reflection Prompts

  • Where in your life do you retreat instead of remain present?
  • When does imagination become escape—and when does escape become absence?
  • What would it take to fully return to where you are, instead of where you go to avoid it?

Poem of the Day – 04152026

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A Ballad Of The Trees And The Master

Sidney Lanier

Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to Him,
The little gray leaves were kind to Him:
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him
When into the woods He came.

Out of the woods my Master went,
And He was well content.
Out of the woods my Master came,
Content with death and shame.
When Death and Shame would woo Him last,
From under the trees they drew Him last:
‘Twas on a tree they slew Him — last
When out of the woods He came.

There’s something unsettling about the way the trees speak.

Not loudly.
Not with urgency.

But with a kind of quiet awareness—as if they’ve seen this before, or worse… as if they understand what’s happening in a way the people involved do not.

That’s where the poem begins to shift.

Because it removes us from the center of the moment.

The focus isn’t on the act itself, or even the figure at its center.
It’s on the witnesses—the silent, rooted things that cannot move, cannot intervene, cannot look away.

And that changes the weight of everything.

We’re used to thinking of suffering as something personal. Something contained within the individual experiencing it.

But this poem suggests something else:

That suffering has an audience.
That it leaves an imprint on everything around it.
That even silence can carry memory.

The trees don’t act.
They don’t resist.
They don’t offer comfort.

They simply remain.

And in that stillness, there’s a different kind of presence.

Not passive.
Not indifferent.

But enduring.

That’s where the poem quietly asks its question:

If suffering is inevitable… what gives it meaning?

Not in the sense of justification.
Not in a way that makes it easier to accept.

But in how it’s held.

How it’s witnessed.
How it’s remembered.

Because meaning doesn’t always come from changing the outcome.

Sometimes it comes from refusing to let the moment disappear.

From standing, even in silence, and acknowledging what has happened—without turning away, without reducing it, without pretending it didn’t matter.

That’s the tension here.

The world doesn’t stop.
The act completes itself.
The moment passes.

But the trees remain.

And so does what they’ve seen.

Reflection Prompts

  • What does it mean to witness something fully, without the ability to change it?
  • Where in your life have you chosen to look away instead of remain present?
  • Can meaning exist in suffering that cannot be undone—or only in how it is remembered?

Poem of the Day – 04142026

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The Conqueror Worm

By Edgar Allan Poe

Lo! ’t is a gala night

   Within the lonesome latter years!   

An angel throng, bewinged, bedight

   In veils, and drowned in tears,   

Sit in a theatre, to see

   A play of hopes and fears,

While the orchestra breathes fitfully   

   The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,   

   Mutter and mumble low,

And hither and thither fly—

   Mere puppets they, who come and go   

At bidding of vast formless things

   That shift the scenery to and fro,

Flapping from out their Condor wings

   Invisible Wo!

That motley drama—oh, be sure   

   It shall not be forgot!

With its Phantom chased for evermore   

   By a crowd that seize it not,

Through a circle that ever returneth in   

   To the self-same spot,

And much of Madness, and more of Sin,   

   And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout,

   A crawling shape intrude!

A blood-red thing that writhes from out   

   The scenic solitude!

It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs   

The mimes become its food,

And seraphs sob at vermin fangs

   In human gore imbued.

Out—out are the lights—out all!   

   And, over each quivering form,

The curtain, a funeral pall,

   Comes down with the rush of a storm,   

While the angels, all pallid and wan,   

   Uprising, unveiling, affirm

That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”   

   And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.

At first, it feels like a performance.

A stage.
Actors moving through their roles.
An audience watching from a distance, as if everything unfolding has structure—purpose—meaning.

It looks familiar.

Because that’s how we tend to see our own lives.

We assign roles.
We build narratives.
We convince ourselves that what we’re doing fits into something larger, something that justifies the effort, the struggle, the choices we make along the way.

And for a while, that illusion holds.

Until it doesn’t.

Because Poe doesn’t let the performance stand on its own.

He interrupts it.

Not with revelation.
Not with clarity.

But with something far more unsettling:

Inevitability.

The worm doesn’t enter as a twist.
It doesn’t arrive to shock.

It simply appears—like it was always part of the story, waiting for the right moment to be seen.

And once it is, everything changes.

The stage doesn’t matter.
The roles don’t matter.
The performance itself begins to feel fragile—temporary—almost insignificant in the face of what’s coming.

That’s where the discomfort sets in.

Because the poem forces a question most people spend their lives avoiding:

If the ending is the same… what gives any of this meaning?

It’s an easy question to push away.

Easier to stay focused on the performance.
On the day-to-day movement of things.
On the idea that what we’re building will somehow outlast the reality we don’t want to face.

But Poe doesn’t offer that comfort.

He strips it down.

Not to say that nothing matters—
but to expose how often we rely on permanence to justify what we do.

And maybe that’s where the shift happens.

Because if nothing lasts…
then meaning isn’t something waiting at the end.

It’s something created in the middle.

In the choices.
In the way you show up.
In what you hold onto—even knowing you can’t keep it forever.

That doesn’t erase the inevitability.

It just changes your relationship to it.

Reflection Prompts

  • If you knew the ending couldn’t be changed, what would you do differently in the middle?
  • Do you assign meaning to your life based on outcomes—or on how you move through it?
  • What parts of your “performance” feel real… and which feel like something you’ve learned to play?

Poem of the Day – 041222026

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The Death of Lincoln

By William Cullen Bryant

Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare,

Gentle and merciful and just!

Who, in the fear of God, didst bear

The sword of power, a nation’s trust!

In sorrow by thy bier we stand,

Amid the awe that hushes all,

And speak the anguish of a land

That shook with horror at thy fall.

Thy task is done; the bond are free:

We bear thee to an honored grave,

Whose proudest monument shall be

The broken fetters of the slave.

Pure was thy life; its bloody close

Hath placed thee with the sons of light,

Among the noble host of those

Who perished in the cause of Right.

Poem of the Day – 04112026

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Enter Book

By Dalia Taha

Translated By Sara ElkamelEnter Book (2 versions)

Translated from the Arabic

The book you held in your hands 

now lies on the nightstand by your bed, in its heart 

the lines you sketched

under the sentences you read more than once, bewildered,

before you put the book down

and started pacing aimlessly between the rooms.

You let it drown you for a full week,

took it everywhere you went;

you read it alone in bed,

and stretched out on the sofa while the family’s voices

drifted toward you from the other room. 

Whenever you’d lift your head, 

you found yourself 

face-to-face with the world,

glancing at the sky outside your window; 

ready, at last, to converse with the hills. 

Every book grants you the language

you need to make contact 

with something you had no idea even existed:

a tree’s pores, a fox’s nose, 

sadness on a face, a nation’s suffering. 

Look how beautiful you look as you read. 

Look how peaceful you look 

as you let an entire continent colonize you; 

as you lay the book down on the nightstand, 

as if returning to the world 

something that belongs to it—

as you stand, dazzled by the hills

as though the book, too, 

has returned to the world 

something that belongs to it.

Poem of the Day – 04102026

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You Also, Nightingale

By Reginald Shepherd

Petrarch dreams of pebbles

on the tongue, he loves me

at a distance, black polished stone

skipping the lake that swallows

worn-down words, a kind of drown

and drench and quench and very kind

to what I would’ve said. Light marries

water and what else (unfit

for drinking purposes), light lavishes

my skin on intermittent sun. (I am weather

and unreasonable, out of all

season.  Petrarch loves my lies

of laurel leaves, ripped sprigs of

deciduous evergreen.) A creek is lying

in my cement-walled bed, slurring

through the center of small

town; the current’s brown and

turbid (muddy, turbulent

with recent torrents), silt rushing

toward the reservoir. A Sonata

passes by too close (I have to jump)

and yes I do hear music here. It’s blue, or

turquoise, aquamarine, some synonym

on wheels, note down that note. It’s Petrarch

singing with his back to me (delivering

himself to voice), his fingers

filled with jonquil, daffodils, mistaken

narcissus. (I surprised him

between the pages of a book,

looked up the flowers I misnamed.)

Forsythia and magnolia bring me

spring, when he walks into the house

he has wings. Song is a temporary thing

(attempt), he wants to own his music.

Poem of the Day – 04082026

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Let America Be America Again

By Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That’s made America the land it has become.

O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home—

For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,

And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came

To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?

Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we’ve dreamed

And all the songs we’ve sung

And all the hopes we’ve held

And all the flags we’ve hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay—

Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

And yet must be—the land where every man is free.

The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath—

America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain—

All, all the stretch of these great green states—

And make America again!

Poem of the Day – 04072026

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The Hollow Men

T. S. Eliot

1888 – 1965

A penny for the Old Guy

                              I

We are the hollow men 
We are the stuffed men 
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when 
We whisper together 
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass 
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour. 
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost 
Violent souls, but only 
As the hollow men 

                              II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams 
In death’s dream kingdom 
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are 
Sunlight on a broken column 
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are 
In the wind’s singing 
More distant and more solemn 
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer 
In death’s dream kingdom 
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves 
No nearer—

Not that final meeting 
In the twilight kingdom

                              III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are 
Trembling with tenderness 
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

                              IV

The eyes are not here 
There are no eyes here 
In this valley of dying stars 
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places 
We grope together 
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless 
The eyes reappear 
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose 
Of death’s twilight kingdom 
The hope only 
Of empty men.

                              V

Here we go round the prickly pear 
Prickly pear prickly pear 
Here we go round the prickly pear 
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea 
And the reality 
Between the motion 
And the act 
Falls the Shadow

                                  For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception 
And the creation
Between the emotion 
And the response 
Falls the Shadow

                                  Life is very long

Between the desire 
And the spasm 
Between the potency 
And the existence 
Between the essence 
And the descent 
Falls the Shadow

                                  For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is 
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends 
This is the way the world ends 
This is the way the world ends 
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Reflection

This is what it looks like when something inside a person… goes quiet.

Not peaceful quiet.
Not rest.

But absence.

The Hollow Men doesn’t scream. It doesn’t rage. It doesn’t even try to convince you of anything. It just exists in a kind of spiritual low tide, where everything that once had weight—belief, purpose, conviction—has been drained out, leaving something that still moves, still speaks… but doesn’t fully live.

That’s what makes it unsettling.

Because it doesn’t describe monsters.

It describes people.

People who’ve learned how to function without feeling too deeply.
People who speak in fragments, act without conviction, drift instead of decide.
People who’ve made peace with emptiness because filling it would require something they no longer trust themselves to carry.

And if you sit with it long enough, the discomfort shifts.

It stops being about them.

It starts being about how easy it is to become one of them.

Not all at once.

But gradually.

A compromise here.
A silence there.
A moment where you choose not to speak because it’s easier. Safer. Less complicated.

And over time, those small choices add up.

Until you look up one day and realize you’re moving through your life without friction. Without resistance.

Without presence.

That’s the real weight of this poem.

Not emptiness as tragedy—
but emptiness as something that can quietly become normal.

And once it does, it’s hard to recognize what’s missing.

Reflection Prompts

  • Where in your life have you chosen silence over truth?
  • What parts of yourself have you dulled just to make things easier?
  • When did survival start to look like disconnection instead of strength?

Poem of the Day – 04062026

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A Small Needful Fact

Ross Gay

Is that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.

Personal Reflection

It doesn’t look like much at first.

Just a few lines. A quiet observation.
Something almost too simple to carry weight.

And then it lands.

Not with force—but with clarity.

That’s what makes this poem dangerous.

Because it doesn’t argue.
It doesn’t raise its voice.
It doesn’t try to convince you of anything.

It just gives you a fact—small, human, undeniable—and lets you sit with what that fact means in a world that too often forgets how to see people as people.

That’s the tension at the center of this piece.

Not loud injustice.
Not spectacle.

But absence.

The absence of recognition.
The absence of care.
The absence of something as basic as being seen.

And here’s where it cuts deeper than it should:

We move through the world every day surrounded by people we don’t notice.

Not because we’re cruel.
But because we’ve learned not to look too closely.

It’s easier that way.

Easier to reduce people to roles, labels, headlines.
Easier to move past them without asking what they loved, what they carried, what made them human beyond the surface we’re given.

This poem refuses that distance.

It offers one small detail—something intimate, ordinary—and suddenly the abstraction collapses.

You can’t unsee it.

You can’t push it back into the category of “someone else’s story.”

Because now it’s not distant anymore.
Now it’s specific.

And specificity is what makes empathy unavoidable.

That’s the quiet power here.

Not in what the poem says—but in what it forces you to realize:

That humanity doesn’t disappear in systems that ignore it.
It just goes unacknowledged.

Until someone names it.

Reflection Prompts

  • What small, human details do you overlook in the people around you?
  • How often do you reduce someone to a role instead of recognizing their full story?
  • What changes when you allow yourself to see someone—not as a category—but as a person?

Poem of the Day – 04052026

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The Weighing

    Jane Hirshfield

    1953 –

    The heart’s reasons
    seen clearly,
    even the hardest
    will carry
    its whip-marks and sadness
    and must be forgiven.

    As the drought-starved
    eland forgives
    the drought-starved lion
    who finally takes her,
    enters willingly then
    the life she cannot refuse,
    and is lion, is fed,
    and does not remember the other.

    So few grains of happiness
    measured against all the dark
    and still the scales balance.

    The world asks of us
    only the strength we have and we give it.
    Then it asks more, and we give it.

    Reflection

    There’s a quiet violence in the idea of being weighed.

    Not judged loudly. Not condemned.
    Just… measured.

    As if everything you’ve carried—every grief, every memory, every version of yourself—is placed on a scale and asked a single, unforgiving question:

    What is this worth?

    And for most of us, the instinct is immediate.

    We hold on tighter.

    To the pain.
    To the history.
    To the stories we’ve told ourselves about who we are and why we are this way.

    Because letting go feels like loss.
    Like betrayal.
    Like erasing something that mattered.

    But Hirshfield doesn’t frame it that way.

    She suggests something quieter. More unsettling.

    What if the weight you carry isn’t proof of your depth—
    but the thing keeping you from moving freely?

    What if not everything you’ve held onto deserves to stay?

    That’s where the poem shifts.

    Because the scale isn’t just measuring what you’ve endured.
    It’s asking what you’re willing to release.

    And that’s a different kind of reckoning.

    We like to think growth is about adding—more knowledge, more strength, more understanding.
    But sometimes it’s subtraction.

    Letting go of old versions of yourself that no longer fit.
    Releasing anger that’s outlived its purpose.
    Setting down grief—not because it didn’t matter, but because carrying it forever will break you.

    That doesn’t mean forgetting.

    It means choosing what continues with you.

    There’s a kind of freedom in that—but it’s not easy.
    Because identity gets tangled up in what we carry.

    We tell ourselves: If I let this go, who am I without it?

    And maybe that’s the real weight.

    Not the memory.
    Not the pain.

    But the fear of what remains when it’s gone.

    Reflection Prompts

    • What are you still carrying that no longer serves who you’re becoming?
    • Do you equate weight with meaning—believing that what hurts more must matter more?
    • What would it look like to set something down without diminishing its importance?

    Poem of the Day – 04042026

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    Home

    by Warson Shire

    no one leaves home unless
    home is the mouth of a shark
    you only run for the border
    when you see the whole city running as well

    your neighbors running faster than you
    breath bloody in their throats
    the boy you went to school with
    who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
    is holding a gun bigger than his body
    you only leave home
    when home won’t let you stay.

    no one leaves home unless home chases you
    fire under feet
    hot blood in your belly
    it’s not something you ever thought of doing
    until the blade burnt threats into
    your neck
    and even then you carried the anthem under
    your breath
    only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
    sobbing as each mouthful of paper
    made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.

    you have to understand,
    that no one puts their children in a boat
    unless the water is safer than the land
    no one burns their palms
    under trains
    beneath carriages
    no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
    feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
    means something more than journey.
    no one crawls under fences
    no one wants to be beaten
    pitied

    no one chooses refugee camps
    or strip searches where your
    body is left aching
    or prison,
    because prison is safer
    than a city of fire
    and one prison guard
    in the night
    is better than a truckload
    of men who look like your father
    no one could take it
    no one could stomach it
    no one skin would be tough enough

    the
    go home blacks
    refugees
    dirty immigrants
    asylum seekers
    sucking our country dry
    niggers with their hands out
    they smell strange
    savage
    messed up their country and now they want
    to mess ours up
    how do the words
    the dirty looks
    roll off your backs
    maybe because the blow is softer
    than a limb torn off

    or the words are more tender
    than fourteen men between
    your legs
    or the insults are easier
    to swallow
    than rubble
    than bone
    than your child body
    in pieces.
    i want to go home,
    but home is the mouth of a shark
    home is the barrel of the gun
    and no one would leave home
    unless home chased you to the shore
    unless home told you
    to quicken your legs
    leave your clothes behind
    crawl through the desert
    wade through the oceans
    drown
    save
    be hunger
    beg
    forget pride
    your survival is more important

    no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
    saying-
    leave,
    run away from me now
    i dont know what i’ve become
    but i know that anywhere
    is safer than here

    Personal Reflection

    There are poems that sit quietly on the page.
    Home doesn’t.

    It presses in. It crowds the air. It makes you aware of things you’d rather keep at a distance—because once you understand what it’s saying, you don’t get to return to comfort without a little guilt tagging along.

    At its core, this poem dismantles a lie we’ve grown comfortable believing: that leaving is a choice.

    We dress it up as ambition. Reinvention. Opportunity.
    Something clean. Something admirable.

    But Shire cuts through that narrative with surgical precision.

    No one leaves home unless staying becomes unbearable.

    Not inconvenient. Not disappointing.
    Unbearable.

    That word carries weight. It implies a breaking point—a moment when the body, the mind, or the soul recognizes something the rest of us don’t want to see. A line crossed. A threshold passed. A quiet understanding that what once held you now threatens to erase you.

    And suddenly, leaving isn’t brave.
    It’s necessary.

    That shift matters.

    Because it forces us to confront how easily we judge movement without understanding its cause. We see departure and assume desire. We assume agency. We assume people are chasing something.

    This poem reminds us that sometimes they’re running.

    And not toward anything.

    Just away.

    Away from violence. From silence. From systems that make it clear—without ever saying it outright—that you do not belong here anymore.

    But here’s where the poem deepens.

    Home isn’t just about geography. It’s about identity—what happens when the place that shaped you can no longer contain you. When your history becomes something you have to carry instead of something you can return to.

    That kind of leaving doesn’t end when the journey does.

    It follows.

    In the way you speak.
    In what you remember.
    In what you choose not to talk about.

    It lives in the space between who you were and who you’re forced to become.

    And maybe that’s the quiet truth this poem leaves behind:

    Not everyone gets to leave cleanly.

    Some people leave in pieces.
    Some carry entire worlds inside them—fractured, incomplete, but still alive.

    Reflection Prompts

    • When does leaving stop being a choice and start becoming survival?
    • What does home mean when it no longer feels like a place you can return to?
    • What parts of your story would you fight to carry with you, no matter where you go?

    Poem of the Day – 04032026

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    Remember

    Joy Harjo

    1951 –

    Remember the sky that you were born under,
    know each of the star’s stories.
    Remember the moon, know who she is.
    Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
    strongest point of time. Remember sundown
    and the giving away to night.
    Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
    to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
    her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
    Remember your father. He is your life, also.
    Remember the earth whose skin you are:
    red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
    brown earth, we are earth.
    Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
    tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
    listen to them. They are alive poems.
    Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
    origin of this universe.
    Remember you are all people and all people
    are you.
    Remember you are this universe and this
    universe is you.
    Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
    Remember language comes from this.
    Remember the dance language is, that life is.
    Remember.

    Poem of the Day – 04022026

    Posted in PoetryTagged , 1 Comment

    won’t you celebrate with me

    By Lucille Clifton

    won’t you celebrate with me

    what i have shaped into

    a kind of life? i had no model.

    born in babylon

    both nonwhite and woman

    what did i see to be except myself?

    i made it up

    here on this bridge between

    starshine and clay,

    my one hand holding tight

    my other hand; come celebrate

    with me that everyday

    something has tried to kill me

    and has failed.

    Poem of the Day – 04012026

    Posted in PoetryTagged , 1 Comment

    Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg

    By Richard Hugo

    You might come here Sunday on a whim.   

    Say your life broke down. The last good kiss   

    you had was years ago. You walk these streets   

    laid out by the insane, past hotels   

    that didn’t last, bars that did, the tortured try   

    of local drivers to accelerate their lives.   

    Only churches are kept up. The jail   

    turned 70 this year. The only prisoner   

    is always in, not knowing what he’s done.

    The principal supporting business now   

    is rage. Hatred of the various grays   

    the mountain sends, hatred of the mill,   

    The Silver Bill repeal, the best liked girls   

    who leave each year for Butte. One good   

    restaurant and bars can’t wipe the boredom out.   

    The 1907 boom, eight going silver mines,   

    a dance floor built on springs—

    all memory resolves itself in gaze,

    in panoramic green you know the cattle eat   

    or two stacks high above the town,   

    two dead kilns, the huge mill in collapse   

    for fifty years that won’t fall finally down.

    Isn’t this your life? That ancient kiss

    still burning out your eyes? Isn’t this defeat

    so accurate, the church bell simply seems

    a pure announcement: ring and no one comes?   

    Don’t empty houses ring? Are magnesium   

    and scorn sufficient to support a town,   

    not just Philipsburg, but towns

    of towering blondes, good jazz and booze   

    the world will never let you have

    until the town you came from dies inside?

    Say no to yourself. The old man, twenty   

    when the jail was built, still laughs   

    although his lips collapse. Someday soon,   

    he says, I’ll go to sleep and not wake up.   

    You tell him no. You’re talking to yourself.   

    The car that brought you here still runs.   

    The money you buy lunch with,

    no matter where it’s mined, is silver   

    and the girl who serves your food

    is slender and her red hair lights the wall.

    Antidepressant

    Posted in Poetry, ProseTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

    He wasn’t born to be broken, but he was built that way.

    He doesn’t remember how long he’s been digging.
    Only that the walls feel closer now.
    Not physically—spiritually.
    Like the air itself is grieving something it can’t name.
    Like the dirt is learning his shape better than he ever did.

    He was born into this plastic maze.
    Clear walls. Curved tunnels. Endless observation.
    They gave him purpose before he even knew what freedom was.
    “Work is life,” they whispered.
    “Keep moving or you’ll disappear.”

    So he moved.
    So he disappeared.

    Lately, the soil feels too clean.
    Too filtered. Too… safe.
    He begins to question whether he’s ever touched anything real—
    whether any of this was ever soil at all,
    or just a stage dressed as survival.

    His antennae twitch like doubt.
    His thoughts spiral like tunnels without exit signs.
    There’s no map. No sky. Just the scrape. scrape. scrape.
    and the promise that if he keeps digging, it might all make sense.

    “Dig,” they told him. “Dig like your life depends on it.”

    But what if life was never the point?
    What if it was just obedience with a heartbeat?

    He begins to dream—quietly, dangerously—of things he’s never seen:
    grass that doesn’t end,
    light without glare,
    a silence not born of suppression
    but of peace.

    He wonders if the others feel it too—
    that dull, aching sense of being watched by something
    that calls itself structure,
    but tastes like a slow death.

    He screamed once.
    Pressed his mandibles to the glass and begged.
    For what, he doesn’t know.
    Maybe to be named.
    Maybe to be more than a metaphor
    for how the world devours those who ask too many questions.

    But no one answered.
    Only the glass pulsed with faint warmth—
    a reminder that he is seen, but not heard.

    Now he digs not to build, but to resist.
    Each handful of soil no longer a task,
    but a soft rebellion.
    A quiet revolution made of claw, intention, and fatigue.

    He doesn’t want to be efficient.
    He wants to be free.
    Or at least real.
    Or at least his.

    And if this tunnel leads to nothing—
    no sky, no breach, no breaking—

    at least it was carved by his own choosing.
    At least the hands that made the hole were his.

    Because sometimes the cure isn’t a chemical.
    Sometimes, it’s permission to feel trapped without calling it a flaw.

    🪞 Reflective Prompt

    What parts of your routine were handed to you like a cage dressed in ritual?
    What would rebellion look like if it were quiet, personal, and yours?

    Still digging?

    This piece lives inside a much bigger world.
    Explore the rest of the Mangus Khan Universe—a stitched-together gallery of confessions, fiction, fractured portraits, and quiet chaos.

    👉 Enter the MKU

    Do I Look Happy Enough?

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    A quiet reckoning with the expectations we wear and the joy we fake.

    When was the last time you were truly happy?

    No—
    not the curated kind.
    Not the smile you wore for someone else’s comfort.
    Not the polite laugh that tasted like performance.
    Not the checklist joy: house, job, partner, post, repeat.

    I mean the kind of happiness that sneaks up on you in bare feet.
    The kind that doesn’t make sense but fills your ribs like breath you forgot you were holding.
    The kind that doesn’t ask for an audience.
    Doesn’t post itself.
    Doesn’t need to be liked to be real.

    Most days, we confuse peace with silence, and silence with defeat.

    You tell yourself you’re content. That this is what adulthood looks like—responsibility, stability, being “grateful.”
    You wear that word like a bandage.
    But underneath?
    There’s a pulse of something unsaid.
    A throb you ignore until it bruises.

    You smile at strangers. You meet deadlines. You show up.
    And in between the commutes and compromises,
    you start to wonder if you buried yourself in the crud of being acceptable.

    The barrage is constant—
    what you should want, who you should be, how you should smile.

    But no one ever asks if you’re still in there.
    Not really.
    Not the version of you that danced alone in the kitchen at 1 a.m.
    Not the you who found joy in dumb little things that didn’t need justification.
    Not the version of you that wasn’t tired.

    You’re silently screaming.
    Every day.
    And you do it with perfect posture.

    Because to speak it—
    to say “I’m not okay”
    feels like betrayal.
    Like failure.
    Like you’re too much and not enough, all at once.

    But here’s the quiet truth:

    Maybe you haven’t been happy in a long time.
    Maybe you don’t even remember how it felt.
    But maybe that question—when was the last time you were truly happy?—
    isn’t meant to shame you.
    Maybe it’s a breadcrumb.
    A way back.

    Not to the person you were before the world smoothed your edges,
    but to the one still flickering beneath the noise.

    The one who still believes in joy,
    even if they haven’t seen it in a while.

    🪞Reflective Prompt

    Take a moment.
    Find a scrap of paper, the back of a receipt, or the notes app on your phone.

    When was the last time you felt joy that wasn’t expected of you, sold to you, or shared online?
    What did it feel like in your body?
    What part of you still remembers?

    A Half-Burned Gospel

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    Another psalm from the quiet fire.

    Can you howl when there is no one there to hear you?
    Is your passion only for public consumption?
    I’m frostbitten by your whispers.

    There was a time I needed your touch.
    I needed your attention.
    Not all of it—just enough to matter.
    Not to me.
    I needed it to matter to you.

    But you blinked, and I shattered.
    You turned, and I calcified into someone else’s silence.
    They say the world ends in fire or ice—
    I know both.
    Your heat was conditional.
    Your absence, absolute.

    Some men beg for war to distract from the wound.
    Me?
    I just wear the hood tighter,
    pull it close like a secret I still want to believe in.

    I walk through your memory like a half-burned gospel,
    rubbing ash on my skin like anointing oil.
    There’s still a spark behind my teeth,
    but no one’s left to kiss the smoke.

    And even now—
    when I speak,
    my voice curls like steam
    off a pot no one stayed to stir.
    …and silence never needed an audience.

    Watermelon Drops

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    POETRY – FFFC #326

    Have you ever had watermelon rain seeds?
    I wonder if the seeds hurt?
    or do they feel like gentle kisses
    rejuvenating you every drop

    Like the sky had a snack,
    then sneezed.

    A green crescent moon with juicy breath
    spitting polka-dots from the fruit dimension—
    plop plop plop—
    onto my hair, into my shoes,
    down the back of my shirt. (Rude.)

    Each seed whispers:
    “Grow me or trip on me, your choice.”
    One tried to start a podcast.
    Another’s running for mayor of the compost bin.

    The clouds wore rind.
    The thunder was squishy.
    Lightning peeled itself.

    And I just stood there,
    arms open, mouth wide,
    catching cosmic snacks from the snackosphere.

    This wasn’t weather.
    This was a dessert emergency.
    And I was deliciously unprepared.

    Whispers of the Page

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    Not all stories wait to be told—some write themselves through us.

    I wonder—
    do we write in our sleep,
    not with hands
    but with something older—
    a pulse beneath the thought,
    a breath beneath the breath?

    Are the things we write
    just the dreams we couldn’t hold—
    wet leaves stuck to waking,
    falling off before we knew
    they’d landed?

    Maybe the page is the mirror
    we forget we’re looking into,
    and every line is a smoke-trail
    from a fire that burned
    somewhere behind the eyes.

    The words come limping,
    feathered with ash,
    draped in symbols
    we pretend to understand.

    A girl with no face
    builds houses out of teeth.
    A clock whispers
    the name you forgot.
    You write it down
    and call it metaphor.

    But the ink knows first.
    It hums with the echo
    of other lives—
    the ones you’ve never lived
    but somehow still remember
    when the light is wrong
    and the silence bends.

    Is this how we dream?
    Not to escape—
    but to return,
    to write the path backwards
    until the paper runs out
    and we wake.

    The Weight of the Page

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    POETRY – WDYS #292

    There comes a time.
    Not marked by clocks or calendars,
    but by stillness—
    the kind that hums behind your eyes.
    A softness in your chest
    that doesn’t feel like peace.
    Just absence.

    Everything slows.
    Even memory.

    The cup half-washed.
    The door left open.
    The voice in your throat that turns to air.

    It’s not the crash.
    It’s the drift.
    The slow, perfect erosion of self.

    You go to the shelf. Not to read.
    To hold.
    To press paper against skin.
    To remember what weight feels like
    in your own hands.

    The top book breathes like it’s waiting.
    No title. No spine.
    Just the shape of something
    that once held you together.

    You open it.
    A sentence floats up, loose as dust:

    To be lost is not to be broken. It is to be unmoored.

    Stillness deepens.
    And then —

    Truth crawling at your throat,
    and your tears cleanse the dirt.

    No sobbing.
    Just a quiet rupture.
    A release
    that doesn’t ask permission.

    The truth is heavy, like a boulder.
    Not because it falls.
    Because it stays.

    You carry it in the way your shoulders tilt.
    In the way your yes always comes too fast.
    In the hunger you disguise as patience.

    Feels like you’re always coming up last.
    Tank empty.
    Too far for gas.
    And yet,
    you keep showing up.
    You keep giving.
    Even as the edges blur.

    Some people run.
    Some climb.
    You sit with a book
    until the silence takes shape.

    And when it does—
    you whisper to whatever is listening:
    Will you steal away the desperation I’ve earned?

    Not healing.
    Not hope.
    Just the question,
    and the room
    to finally ask it.

    The Ache; The Regret

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    POETRY – MLMM #428

    Hey, do you miss me?
    The ache churns so slowly.
    We found common ground,
    but only after the fires.
    The hard part is done.
    Where you’d go?

    I close my eyes
    because yours won’t open.
    The stillness is sharper now.
    Colder.
    Like it knows
    what’s missing.

    Time doesn’t pass here—
    it gathers.
    Cools around me,
    wraps my spine like smoke.

    You blinked once—
    and left everything behind.
    I don’t blame you.
    But I still ask.

    We were never perfect.
    But in the spaces between the noise,
    we held each other
    like we meant it.
    We were one —
    not whole, just held.

    Your memory sings to me softly—
    what do I go?
    What version of me survives
    without the rhythm
    of your breath beside mine?

    I know you hide the words.
    You are afraid to speak.
    Don’t hide with me.
    Your actions are so loud.

    Even in silence,
    you told on yourself.
    Every absence,
    every closed door,
    every goodbye you never said
    but lived.

    Your side of the bed still curves.
    Like you’re paused,
    not gone.
    But I know better.

    A rainbow brushed the sky yesterday.
    It didn’t stay.
    Like you —
    always near,
    never quite here.

    Are these words bound to fail?
    Speak to me, hope, and follow through.
    Don’t build a future in silence
    and ask me to live in it.

    My hope rests on every word you don’t say.
    But I never told you
    What I stood for.
    Have I waited too long?
    Did you leave thinking
    I had nothing left to give?

    The truth is,
    I was afraid, too.
    Of saying it wrong.
    Of loving you louder
    than you could stand.

    If there’s anything beyond this,
    I hope it’s not heaven.
    I hope it’s just
    You and me again,
    quiet,
    not pretending.
    Present.
    And finally
    telling the truth.

    I know you were right—
    because my silence was gone.

    Keepers in the Fog

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    POETRY – 3TC #MM83

    (Part II of The Forbidden Sphere)

    They never speak — yet still they warn,
    With presence sharp as briar thorn.
    From every edge, behind each tree,
    A knowing gaze leans into me.

    I’ve never seen a face, a form,
    Just hush that settles thick and warm.
    They move when light begins to thin,
    As if the dark invites them in.

    I thought I saw a signal flash —
    A glint, a shift, a silver lash.
    But when I turned, the mist was bare,
    As if the fog had never cared.

    They guard the orb with sacred right,
    Unyielding as the velvet night.
    And though no blade nor gate I see,
    They’ve kept its heart away from me.

    A whispered clue behind the bark—
    A mark too faint to name or mark.
    Each piece I find, they pull away,
    Like ghosts in long-abandoned play.

    It’s like a seance with no voice,
    No table, chant, or sacred choice.
    Just shadows moving without sound,
    As if the dead still guard their ground.

    They kept me from discovery,
    From questions asked too hungrily.
    From truths that bend, from lines that blur,
    From something deep I almost were.

    Swift they move through drifting gray,
    Their touch a chill that steals the day.
    And still I stand, and still I burn—
    For what they guard, I must unlearn.

    But who appoints a watcher’s place?
    What gives them claim to time and space?
    And if I walk where none may tread…
    Do I wake the dream, or join the dead?

    Whispers in the Orb

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    POETRY – MOONWASHED WEEKLY PROMPT – FOWC & RDP

    Beneath a moon half-lost in thought,
    Where trees remember what time forgot,
    A glassbound world, alone, unmoved,
    Rests on a stump by starlight proved.

    The sphere it hums with silent ache,
    A dream too bright for souls to wake.
    Its castle floats on woven haze,
    A ghost of long-forgotten days.

    No foot has trod its cloudy halls,
    No voice resounds against its walls.
    It knows no flame, no feast, no war—
    Just longing locked forevermore.

    From the shadows, I feel their presence,
    It keeps from entering.
    It keeps from discovery.
    Who are they?

    A figure passes — swift, unseen,
    A thread between what is and dream.
    It doesn’t speak, it doesn’t stay,
    But mourns what light cannot allay.

    Within the orb, still skies suspend
    A world that chose not to descend.
    A world untouched by fear or alarm,
    Yet haunted still by love’s disarm.

    And I — I watch with anchored eyes,
    As wonder folds into disguise.
    Is this the cost of peace so pure—
    To live untouched, yet feel unsure?

    Perhaps the truest kind of grace
    Is not escape, but facing place.
    Yet still, I yearn to cross that line—
    To walk the fog and call it mine.

    This poem is a part of a five-part series called The Forgotten Orb

    Birth of the Storm

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    POETRY – 3TC

    (An Invocation)

    Rain strips.
    Rain peels.
    Rain cleans.
    Rain frees.

    Not fragile.
    Forged in flame.
    Forged in sorrow.
    Forged in silence.

    Skin slick.
    Skin shielded.
    Hair heavy.
    Hair crowned.

    Eyes closed — I see.
    Ears shut — I hear.
    Mouth silent — I speak.
    Heart loud — I stand.

    I stand.
    I stand.
    I stand.

    The past fades.
    The past runs.
    The past dies.
    I bury the past.

    I am clear.
    Clear as stone.
    Clear as flame.
    Clear as the first breath after ruin.

    All of my trouble.
    All of my trouble.
    Good Lord —
    trouble was my only friend.
    And even trouble kneels.

    Still, I stand.
    Still, I stand.
    Still, I rise.

    Cedar clings.
    Cedar roots.
    Cedar binds.
    Cedar breathes.

    Roses bloom — blood-red.
    Roses bloom — battle-bright.
    Roses bloom — never broken.

    I wear my crown.
    I wear my scars.
    I wear my name.
    I wear the storm.

    Clean.
    Clear.
    Cedar.
    Unbreakable.

    I do not fear.
    I do not kneel.
    I do not break.
    I do not fall.

    I am the storm.
    I am the storm.
    I — AM — THE — STORM.

    The Weight of Hush

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    POETRY – WDYS #291

    Where the land ends and the sea begins,
    a turtle moves — slow, certain, unseen.

    The sand forgets.
    The waves erase.
    Still, it moves.

    We are taught to chase permanence —
    to leave marks, to be remembered.
    But the turtle teaches:
    impermanence is not failure.
    Presence is enough.

    The ocean waits — vast, indifferent.
    The turtle does not rush.
    It trusts what it cannot see.

    We, too, cross unseen distances.
    Not all journeys need witnesses.
    Not all destinations need to be known.

    Maybe the point was never to arrive,
    but to move —
    faithful, unhurried —
    into the unknown.

    Too Silent to Break

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    POETRY – ANNABELLE SERIES

    no witness, no audience, just the truth between heartbeats

    The tunnel stretches ahead of her—long, dark, indifferent.

    She doesn’t rush.

    She lets the silence catch up to her, swallow her, settle in her bones.
    The train is late, but she doesn’t mind. Waiting doesn’t scare her anymore.

    Waiting used to mean standing still, vulnerable. A sitting target.
    Now it means patience.
    Preparation.

    The air is cool against her skin.
    Tiles sweat under the flickering overhead lights.
    Her reflection is warped in the wall’s glossy surface—sharp in places, blurred in others.

    A reminder:
    She is not what she was.
    She is not yet what she will be.

    She glances over her shoulder—not out of fear, but calculation.
    The old Annabelle would have flinched at the sound of footsteps, would have blurred her edges, and made herself small.

    The woman standing here now doesn’t shrink.
    She watches. Measures.
    Calculates the distance between herself and the unknown.

    After Jimmy died, she lost herself.
    She became someone she wasn’t proud of.
    Someone she didn’t know.

    But that version of her—the one who bled for approval, who clung to applause like oxygen—
    that version couldn’t have survived this silence.

    She’s learned that some things can only be reclaimed in the dark.

    Not through force.
    Not through performance.
    Through stillness.

    Through the deliberate act of not running.

    A sound. A shift in the tunnel air.
    She feels it before she hears it—the train, dragging itself closer, howling through the underground.

    Her heart stutters once, hard.
    Not from fear.
    From memory.

    She could stay.
    It would be easier.
    Familiarity has its own gravity—its own kind of safety, even when it bruises you.

    Her hand tightens around the strap of her bag.
    Fingers brushing the worn leather like a lifeline.

    Leaving feels like tearing a page from a book mid-sentence—violent, unfinished.
    And part of her wonders if she can really do it.
    If she’s strong enough to survive what comes after the leaving.

    The train arrives, a sigh of metal and momentum.

    She doesn’t move yet.
    Not for a breath.
    Not for two.

    Slowly, she slips her hand into her pocket.
    Fingers close around cool metal.

    Jimmy’s lighter.
    The old, battered one he used to fidget with when conversations got too deep.

    She rubs her thumb across its surface, worn smooth from years of hands that never really rested—
    and feels the small dents, the scratches, tiny scars from thousands of times he dropped it trying to fancy-light his cigarette.
    He always looked so goofy doing it—
    goofy in a beautiful way.
    The kind of way that made you giggle without thinking.

    The memory sneaks up on her—
    and for the first time in a long time, it makes her smile.

    She hears the buzz of the flickering overhead lights.
    The silence echoes back at her, not empty now, but full of reminders—
    of who she used to be.
    Of the hollow ache she carried before she learned how to fight.

    Defiance is what she lives for.
    It’s stitched into her now—the refusal to vanish, to apologize.

    But the thought edges in—quiet, undeniable:

    She must smile and drop the facade.

    She must be who she’s here for.

    Not them.
    Not even Jimmy.
    Herself.

    And then—soft, impossible—
    she hears it.

    Jimmy’s voice.

    Low, steady, the way it used to be when she needed reminding who she was.

    “Come on, babe. You got this.”

    Her pulse kicks.
    She closes her eyes, lets the sound settle under her ribs.

    She steps forward once—

    “Keep going, babe.”

    Another step—

    “This ain’t the end of you.”

    Each stride toward the open doors drags the past behind her like a long shadow—
    but his voice cuts through the weight.

    “Move.”

    Right now, in this thin strip of no man’s land between departure and arrival, between past and future—

    She belongs.

    Not to anyone. Not to any memory.
    Not even to Jimmy, though she carries him still—his watch at her wrist, his lighter warm in her pocket.

    She belongs only to herself.

    And maybe that’s what survival really is.
    Not the absence of doubt.
    But the decision to move anyway.

    The doors open, a hush of invitation and warning.

    Annabelle exhales slowly, the way you do when you’re about to let go of something you loved too long.
    She takes another step.

    The hesitation lingers, heavy as a heartbeat—
    but she carries it with her.
    Carries Jimmy’s voice too.

    Because courage isn’t about not doubting.

    It’s about not letting doubt decide.

    When she boards the train, she does not look back.

    She doesn’t need to.

    She’s already left.

    And somewhere in the hum of the engine and the quiet inside her chest—
    she swears she hears it again.

    “Proud of you, babe.”

    And this time, the smile comes easier.

    Too Sharp to Hold

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    POETRY – ANNABELLE SERIES

    you wanted the fantasy—now meet the fallout

    The light doesn’t flatter her.

    It splits her down the middle—green on one cheek, red on the other.
    Like a warning. Like a dare.
    She doesn’t turn from it. She lets it expose her angles. Her sharpness. Her refusal to soften for their comfort.

    This is not a glow.
    This is a glare.

    She watches the room through tinted lenses, as if the distance they create might protect her. As if dimming the world might dim what still pulses inside her.
    The ache. The want. The memory.

    The drink in her hand is untouched. It’s a prop. Like everything else she wears tonight.
    The sunglasses.
    The chains.
    The silence.

    They look at her like she’s a story they want to be part of.

    They don’t know she’s the ending.

    She doesn’t speak much anymore—not in places like this.
    Words feel expensive. Trust, impossible.

    So she listens instead. To the way people try to impress through noise. To the bass that thumps like a hollow heart.
    To the click of her own restraint every time someone gets too close.

    She lets the glasses do the talking. Lets the braids fall like armor.
    Lets them wonder what she’s thinking.

    Because curiosity is safer than closeness.
    Let them project. Let them guess.

    It’s easier than being held wrong.

    They don’t know Jimmy.
    They don’t know the weight she carries in her wrist—his watch ticking, ticking, never letting her forget that she is still here and he is not.
    That time moved on. That she did too. But not without cost.

    After Jimmy died, she lost herself.
    She became something else.
    Someone she wasn’t proud of.
    Someone she didn’t know.

    That’s what no one sees when they look at her.
    Not the reinvention.
    Not the ruins beneath it.
    Not the choice to survive when survival meant shapeshifting.

    They don’t know how she nearly drowned in grief and came back with a mirror for a heart.
    Reflective. Untouchable. Sharp.

    But there was a moment, days ago—brief and disarming—when she stared at an old photo of him.
    And in the quiet weight of his gaze, something shifted.

    She felt something familiar when she looked at his picture.
    Something that reminded her she had power.

    Not the performative kind. Not applause.
    But the power to stand. To remember. To continue.

    Someone approaches. Of course they do.
    Men like him always do—when the lights are low and the mystery is wrapped in gloss.

    “You look like trouble,” he says, leaning in with a confidence he hasn’t earned.

    She tilts her head, slow. Deliberate.
    Her thumb brushes Jimmy’s lighter inside her sleeve.
    Click. No flame. Just memory.

    She studies him the way wolves study fences.

    “I am,” she says. “But not the kind you’re good at surviving.”

    He laughs—too loud, too fake—but steps back.
    She doesn’t flinch. She never does.

    Because she’s not here to be wanted.
    She’s here to remember who she is without being touched.

    She’s here to prove she can be in the world again—even if the world doesn’t deserve her.

    But even now, beneath the rhythm and neon and the low hum of everything she refuses to feel—

    Something stirs.

    A voice not extinguished.
    A hunger not silenced.

    That same voice that whispered in the stillness after Jimmy left her:

    Will anyone ever see the girl beneath the glass?
    Will anyone reach without pulling?
    Will anyone stay if she stops performing?

    And for the briefest breath, she considers it—what it might feel like to answer those questions with action.
    To peel the gloss. To set down the mask.
    To let someone see her without preparation.

    But not tonight.

    Tonight is for the performance.
    Tonight is for control.
    Tonight is armor masquerading as elegance.

    She lifts her glass—not to drink, but to steady her hand.
    And in the mirrored wall, she catches a glimpse.

    Not the reflection.
    Not the projection.

    Annabelle.

    Not a ghost. Not a brand.
    Not a wound in makeup.

    Just a woman.

    Too sharp to hold.
    Too real to forget.

    Too Soft to Survive

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    POETRY


    by the time they named her strong, she’d already lost everything else

    This is what she looked like before.

    Before the veil. Before the gloss. Before they praised her composure and confused it for peace.
    Before she turned herself into armor.

    Before the night Jimmy died.

    She was Annabelle then. Not a symbol. Not a survivor. Just a girl who still smiled with her whole face, even when it hurt.
    Who wore her softness without fear.
    Who believed in mornings, in second chances, in love that didn’t need explanation.

    Jimmy saw her.

    Not the projection, not the potential—just her.
    Hair tangled from sleep. Laugh like rebellion.
    Questions that didn’t need answers.
    He held her like she was real, and that was the most dangerous thing of all.

    Because real things break.

    And that night, something did.

    She didn’t cry at first. She didn’t scream.
    She went still.
    Still enough to make a decision.

    If softness got her here, she would bury it.
    If love made her reckless, she would starve it.
    If truth demanded grief, she would wear lies like couture.

    So she did what women like her are trained to do.

    She became someone else.

    The world met her later—painted, polished. They called her elegant. Formidable. Composed.
    They didn’t know she’d cut out parts of herself to fit that dress.
    They didn’t see the ghost she carried in her mouth.

    They just saw a woman who never cracked.

    But some nights, when her reflection forgets to lie—
    the voice inside her whispers:

    Did you ever wish you were someone else?
    Because I do.
    She don’t belong here. She doesn’t belong.

    She’s worn the mask so long, it’s started to feel like skin.
    It itched at first; now it bleeds beneath the scars.
    And she no longer knows where it ends, or where she begins.

    But underneath, that other girl—the before girl—isn’t gone. Just buried.

    And with her, the memory:

    She was selfless. He was a true friend.
    She should have been there for him.
    Slow dancing until the crying eased.
    Letting him collapse into her silence.
    Being the warmth when the cold got too loud.

    Now she speaks the unspeakable.

    Jimmy is gone.
    And she wasn’t there.

    Not the way he needed.
    Not the way he had been for her.
    She should’ve been someone he could come to.

    Jimmy’s watch ticks, ticks, ticks—a reminder that she is still alive.
    She wears it now, not for timekeeping, but as penance.
    It doesn’t tell time.
    It tells absence.

    She remembers who she was before they called her strong.
    Before she survived by silence.
    Before she was too bright to touch.
    Before the grief calcified into poise.

    She remembers Jimmy.

    And tonight, she doesn’t want to be worshipped, or applauded, or envied.
    She wants to be held.
    She wants someone to say her name like it means something.
    Annabelle.
    Like it’s not just a title she wears in his absence.

    Her thumb rubs his lighter—silver, worn smooth, still warm from her pocket.
    She exhales her words into the air like smoke, like prayer.

    “You saved me…
    You saved me.”

    Unspoken Notes

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    POETRY – MUSIC

    Sometimes I ask myself
    why jazz lives so deep in my skin.
    It’s not just music—
    it’s liquid neon on the inside,
    saxophone sighs bending like light
    across my bones.

    Every note a pulse of color
    I never learned to speak.
    It says things
    my mouth forgets how to form—
    silken grief, slow joy,
    that glimmer between ache and awe.

    Each time I listen to Miles, Parker, Monk,
    it takes me somewhere—
    touches me in a place I can’t describe.
    Like memory with no name,
    just feeling.

    Jazz glows like this:
    chrome-slick and intimate,
    as if someone turned emotion
    into a spectrum
    and let it dance across my soul.

    Oil & Jazz

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    POETRY – 3TC #MM44

    The spotlight didn’t just touch her—
    it carved her
    from shadow and breath,
    chiseling her presence
    into something holy,
    a gospel of flesh and color.

    She stood
    like a question no one dared ask,
    wrapped in the hush
    before a storm breaks.
    Every inch of her
    was painted tension—
    raw, unresolved.

    The mic—
    old as regret,
    bright as memory—
    caught the room’s breath
    and held it hostage.

    This wasn’t performance.
    This was ritual.
    And the format was fire.

    Her voice wasn’t smooth.
    It cracked like old vinyl,
    ran like rivers
    under skin that remembers.
    She didn’t reach for notes—
    she pulled them
    from places too deep for light.

    Each syllable
    was a wound opening slow.
    Each phrase
    a letter to the ones
    who never came home.

    She wasn’t singing.
    She was driving
    through the dark
    with no headlights,
    just instinct
    and that bruised kind of faith
    you only earn by surviving.

    Behind her, the world dissolved—
    a smear of color and motion,
    like God forgot to finish the painting.
    But she stayed in focus,
    a woman-shaped flame
    dancing at the edge of coming undone.

    Her intent was not to be heard—
    but to be felt.
    To set fire
    to the silence
    you carry in your chest
    and call it strength.

    And somewhere,
    between the grit of her voice
    and the way the air held its breath,
    you stopped being a listener.

    You became the echo.

    In Every Breath, There’s Poetry

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    PROSE – NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

    Today marks the end of National Poetry Month—a celebration we rarely celebrate yet live through daily. Every breath carries it. In a single line, past, present, and future meet. Poets give shape to that breath, making it something we can hold: a line that lingers, a memory that stirs, a feeling too deep for words but not for remembrance. And sometimes, it brings a smile—small, unspoken, but real.

    It occurs to me that people are connected because of the stories we carry inside. One can’t help but notice the familiarity of movement and thought. On the surface, they appear to have nothing in common, random even. Yet, one can never tell what the truth of a person is: their passions, their fears, their deepest secrets. We witness those who lose their way, those who rise from the ashes, or the calamity of those who need to prove themselves to people who don’t even know their names—the ones who, like me, are numb.

    Poetry

    I’ve discovered that it is an entity of its own, composed of laughter, sorrow, joy, tears, family, the before, the in-between, the undiscovered; everything—all of it.

    It’s a poem

    Only YOU can write.

    Perforated Silence

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    POETRY – FOWC & RDP

    Why do I bother to write?

    Each word drifts into the void—unanswered, unheard.
    They vanish like smoke—transparent. Gone.
    Not because they’re sacred or encrypted in G-14 code—
    but because no one’s looking. No one’s listening.

    There was a time when that silenced me.

    “Why speak?”
    “No one listens.”
    “Does it even matter?”

    Do you matter?

    Some days, that voice won.
    It slid into my bones, curled behind my ribs, and whispered me into silence.
    Told me I was just scribbling into darkness.
    That my pain was recycled. That I was nothing new. Nothing needed.

    But even then, something fought back.

    A flicker. A breath that refused to die.

    I had forgotten why I came here.
    Lost the thread. Lost myself in fog.

    But I remember now.

    I write because I must.
    To survive the war within.
    Not the loud, cinematic kind—
    but a silent, grinding, bloody war.
    Fought in mirrors. In 3 a.m. thoughts.
    In doubts that circle like vultures.
    In guilt that clings like wet ash.

    We don’t talk about it. Not really.
    But we all feel it.
    That private battlefield behind the eyes.
    The endless rummage through our own wreckage,
    hoping to find something still whole. Something still true.

    I’m not here to prove I exist.
    I’m here to understand why I keep breathing through the wreckage.
    Not seeking praise—seeking peace.

    To sift through ruins.
    To bleed on the page.
    To let the shards of memory cut me clean,
    and the embers of regret burn what no longer serves me.

    There is hope in the fire.

    And I have not walked alone.
    Some of you were there—watching, listening,
    fighting your own quiet wars beside me.
    We faced Lunacy like pilgrims, eyes wide, daring her to do her worst.

    You stayed.

    For that, I owe everything.

    So I write.
    Not because I’m whole—
    but because I’m becoming.

    Page after page.
    Sentence after sentence.
    Word after word.

    Until the silence breaks.

    And something holy rises
    from the blood.

    The Inheritance of Purple

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    POETRY – GROWTH

    They say purple was born
    from crushed murex shells—
    a thousand lives
    for a single thread
    worthy of gods.

    It was never meant for the ordinary.
    Worn by emperors,
    draped on deities,
    spoken only in whispers
    or prayers.

    But you—
    you carry it quiet
    in the marrow,
    like something ancient remembered
    not with words,
    but with ache.

    Growth, in purple,
    is not soft.
    It is ceremonial.
    A coronation no one sees—
    a crown of silence,
    not gold.

    It is the color of trials,
    of nights that stretch too long
    and still end in morning.
    Of scars turned sacred
    and stories no longer told
    for approval.

    You are not blooming.
    You are being
    enthroned.

    In every slow step,
    every time you chose stillness
    over spectacle,
    you stitched yourself
    in the lineage
    of the violet divine.

    And when you sit now,
    not reaching—
    just radiating—
    it is not peace you’ve found,
    but power
    disguised as peace.

    This piece was written for Eugi’s Moonwashed Weekly Prompts and Weekly Prompts Wednesday

    Swallowed, then Speak

    Posted in PoetryTagged , , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

    POETRY – DEFIANCE

    What is the moment when I scream into silence?

    But I’m silent, really—
    no sound, no voice,
    just a mouth stretched wide around something too big to name.
    My eyes glaze—not with calm, but with shock.
    A thin film of disbelief over everything.
    My heart races.
    I’m wrecked like a tsunami with no quarter,
    flung breathless against the shore.

    It’s not quiet.
    Not truly.
    It’s a silence that throbs,
    that undresses me,
    strips me down to the rawest nerve.

    Why?
    Am I afraid to speak what I feel?
    I push it down until I crack.
    Swallow the pain, the misery, the grief—
    like that’s what strength is.
    As if silence means control.

    But inside, it never stops screaming.

    I’ve built a prison with no walls.
    I’m both prisoner and warden.
    Every emotion I swallow—another brick.
    My tears, the mortar.
    The longer I hold on,
    the harder the mortar sets.

    Letting go should be simple.
    But I can’t.
    I won’t.
    I have to be strong.
    Another brick.

    The chains tear into me.
    I pull and pull,
    begging for clemency I know isn’t coming.
    Skin breaks.
    Something deeper frays.
    Still I pull.
    Still I scream.
    Another brick.
    How did I get here?

    I slump into the abyss of agony.
    Its waves strangely soft,
    almost soothing.
    The ghosts of my past wrap around me,
    pulling me under.

    Is this peace?
    Is this what I deserve?

    No.

    I scream NOOOOO!!!
    A final act of defiance.
    A rupture in the silence.
    A crack in the wall.

    I scream again—louder.
    Louder than the pain.
    Louder than the ghosts.
    Louder than everything that told me to stay quiet.

    The final word is no longer a whisper.
    The silence and I become one.
    And we finally—

    SPEAK.

    The Quiet Break

    Posted in PoetryTagged , , , 2 Comments

    POETRY – BARK OF THE DAY CHALLENGE

    A whispered secret crawls through alleyways, laced with smoke and static.
    Neon blinks like a warning.
    You turn the first page, not knowing what’s coming.
    This debut is the gateway to madness.

    Reach

    Posted in PoetryTagged , , , , , , , 15 Comments

    CHALLENGE RESPONSE – POETRY

    problems left behind you—
    ghosts with no mouths left to speak.
    you walked on,
    didn’t flinch.

    bare your soul.
    not for them.
    for you.
    because silence
    never saved anyone.

    whenever i look at the ocean,
    i see a version of myself
    that doesn’t need fixing.
    just space.
    just time.
    just tide.

    home—is
    a sound you remember,
    not a place you stand.
    it’s warm light on old walls.
    the echo of your name
    spoken like love,
    not demand.

    reach for infinity.
    not to conquer it,
    but to know
    you were never meant to fit in the lines.

    This piece was written for Reena’s Xploration Challenge #374. This week, she asked us to pick a blog or more to write something. I was surprised that I hadn’t written for her challenge before. I hope I got it right. Anyway, I chose the following:

    Eugenia’s Moonwashed Musings, and then I ran into her challenge, Moonwashed Weekly Prompts. I don’t participate often, but I always enjoy myself when I get over there. This week is no different. Her poem for this week struck a chord, so I scribbled a few notes. It served as the bones of this piece.

    Sadje’s KeepitAlive is another blog I read regularly when I decide to keep it out of my head. In her piece “Homecoming,” her line “home is” has quiet power and hits hard. As an old soldier, I remember the importance of “home.” So, I scribbled some more, and the bones got thicker.

    Melissa’s Mom With a Blog hosts these flash fiction challenges, which I enjoy. Often, I scribble pieces for them, but they are used in something else. Every now and again, I manage to finish one just for that challenge and post it. This week, I found her piece, “coming home” whose opening line pushed me over the edge. So, I started scribbling a little more. Her image inspired by the graphics for this piece. I love the feel of that image; I will probably write something for it. And we’ll see if it actually makes it out of my notebook.

    I haven’t written any new poetry in quite a while. My brain seems to be churning out the longer stuff. Thanks, ladies, for helping me find my way back.

    Eshe

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    POETRY – FREEVERSE

    She was the kind of woman you never really get over.
    Sure, you move on.
    Build a good life, one full of blessings by any measure.
    But somewhere beneath the memories—
    Woven into the joy and the pain,
    Tucked among the totems of a life well lived—
    She’s still there.
    Sitting quietly. Unmoved.

    Time shifts, and I have a moment of return.
    No warning, no ceremony.
    Just a scent, a song, a slant of light—
    And there I am again.
    Back where she was.
    Back where I was, too.

    The first time I noticed her,
    The room was buzzing with chatter and I was minding my own business.
    Then she turned—head tilted,
    Hair falling in that certain way—
    And looked straight at me.
    I held my breath.
    Years later, I exhale.

    Time shifts again.
    The room was dark,
    But dawn’s light peeked through the blinds and yawned.
    I watched her eyelids flutter,
    Saw the twitch at the corner of her mouth.
    She was lost in a dream.
    Was she dreaming of me?
    Was I good enough to deserve that?

    Time shifts again.
    The look in her eyes when she said the words—
    It told me she needed to hear them back.
    But that same look told me:
    If I said them,
    She’d never let me take them back.

    I knew she deserved better.
    Knew she had the kind of soul
    That life should greet with its best.
    And I wasn’t it.

    Time shifts back.
    Things aligned and proper.
    Decisions made—
    Whether wrong or right,
    You make them.
    You live with them.
    No regrets.

    Still Flying

    Posted in Poetry, The Daily'sTagged , , , , , , , , 13 Comments
    Daily writing prompt
    When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?
    View all responses

    DAILY PROMPT RESPONSE

    When you’re five, everything feels big.
    The world, your dreams, your backpack.

    But as you get older, you can’t always hold onto things without a little help.

    That’s what happened when I found it—
    a flash of memory caught in an old photo,
    a school project that somehow survived.
    Battered, scarred, but solid.
    Like the dreams taped inside it.

    I just wanted to fly.
    I couldn’t explain why, not then.
    I just did.

    To see the world.
    The wonders from our primers,
    the postcard places that looked too perfect to be real.

    Maybe I’d discover new lands,
    find cool toys, read comics in French.
    Were mummies scary? I needed to know.

    Was riding a motorcycle as cool as it looked in the movies?
    Could I jump cars like Evel Knievel?
    Would I one day ride with a girl on the back,
    smiling like it was the best thing ever?

    I knew I wasn’t old enough for that part.
    Maybe when I get big.

    Would I be able to sing and dance?
    Be cool like Elvis?
    Tough like G.I. Joe?
    Stretch like Stretch Armstrong?
    Or maybe I’d just build the wild stuff I made with my Legos.

    But mostly…
    Mostly, I wanted to make my mom proud.

    And now—
    I did fly.

    France, Italy, Spain, Japan—majestic in ways no book ever captured.
    There’s nothing like flying over treetops with the chopper doors open.
    Heart racing.
    Then pounding.
    Blood surging through my veins.
    I felt something I still can’t describe with words.

    I never jumped cars,
    but I had that girl on the back.
    Her arms around me,
    her heartbeat against mine,
    that sharp little yelp when things got wild.
    Yeah, that was something.

    I don’t sing, but boy, did I dance.
    And when I stopped… I got fat.

    Some say I was tougher than G.I. Joe.
    And somehow, my influence stretched across the globe.
    But no one will ever know my name.

    What I remember most—
    Mom’s smile as she talked about “the grands,”
    each one certain they were her favorite.
    Each one knowing they were loved.

    As for me…
    Did I make her proud?

    God, I hope so.

    Quo Vadis

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    Rarely have I collaborated with other poets. This was the first one I actually enjoyed working on.

    An Andy Scott/Mangus Khan Collaboration

    It was not suppose to be like this
    when we took our cries to the streets
    it was suppose to start a revelation for us all
    where we would give freedom’s wall a kiss
    living past the years of defeats
    lifting the smothering shawl

    I close my eyes to the truth
    Mesmerized by freedom’s illusion
    I close my eyes to the smoke
    From smoldering cinders of liberty

    I begin to choke …

    Begin to choke …

    Crying out, for my fears are becoming true
    Denial, such a lovely color for you
    Crying out, for my guilt is bleeding through
    As the lies just sit and glare at you

    How deep I don’t want to know…

    I feel the knife of greed scrape to my bone
    Grinding past where there is no more blood to bleed
    All of the meat is gone from underneath my skin

    Scream from my dried, chapped lips

    “How much more to be taken?”
    “There is nothing more to be taken!”

    On my knees with defeated independence
    a withered, empty body
    with belief of tomorrow that will not escape
    until, step by step, the embers rise again

    My Master’s grace I beckon …

    As I shudder, for I feel its warmth growing
    I feel it creeping through every fiber of my being
    Help me understand! What is this?
    This is not the way I want to live!

    Help me withstand this … Would you please?
    Give me the strength to stomp out Hatred’s fiery desires
    Give me the strength to stop this, before it
    seduces my soul and engulfs my heart

    Help me to stand with the courage of my beliefs
    May I have the wisdom to have the understanding,
    that the tomorrow I seek …Begins with me

    Lighthouse of Hope

    Posted in PoetryTagged , , , , 2 Comments

    POETRY – REFLECTION

    When the war moved in, not the day it started, but the day it became real.
    There are no bullets, no sound to remind you that you’re not home.
    It’s the silence that creeps into your pores; now you know what unsettling means.
    You taste the blood of the unhealed wounds, neath the scars you cleverly hide.

    Sunlight radiates against your skin. You’re hot to the touch, drenched with sweat.
    Yet, you stumble as you try to find your way through the darkness.
    Searching for that light of hope, that fairytale, that legend we were taught to believe.
    Something to cling to as we crash against the waves of uncertainty beating us into submission.

    Suddenly, in the distance, we see it …

    The Lighthouse of Hope

    Authors note:

    This piece was partially inspired by the opening line of Stacey C. Johnson’s piece called shelled.

    Splendor

    Posted in PoetryTagged , , , , 3 Comments

    CHALLENGE RESPONSE – POETRY – MOONWASHED WEEKLY PROMPT

    I traveled the world,
    looking, searching
    for the beauty promised
    to us all.

    The beauty often
    overlooked, under appreaciated
    perhaps, I don’t know
    take a moment

    To bask the beauty
    of it’s splendor

    Dancing in the Dark

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    POETRY – RELEASING

    My camel smolders between my index and forefingers
    I drink the last drop of Guinness. I close my eyes as its taste lingers.
    I order another, drinking it down, trying to drown my despair.
    However, it takes me nowhere.
    I stand up, trying my best to be cool.
    I swagger across the floor, looking like a complete fool.
    I cross the room, grabbing anything necessary
    Stopping when I needed to be stationary
    Finally, I reach the glow of the box.
    I hold it while my eyes slowly focus.
    I look for anything that rocks.
    I dig in my pocket and fish for some quarters
    while I try desperately to complete my order.
    I drop the coin in their slot,
    Clickity,
    Clickity,
    Clack
    metallic splash
    the coins reach their new home.
    I weave from side to side, waiting for the sounds of madness
    The guitar plays a power chord through my soul.
    My arms outstretched, and my fingers pop.
    My head and hips sway to the rhythm of its melody.
    Two steps forward, three steps back.
    My eyes squeezed tight as the sound soothed me just right.
    I danced by myself in the dark and didn’t give it another thought.

    Thank you for readng

    The Whisper Journal

    Posted in PoetryTagged , , , 3 Comments

    POETRY – JOURNAL ENTRY STYLE

    April 6,

    With the cleansing of spring, everyone has a sense of joy about them. Even on the gloomiest days, we listen to the perforated silence as the rain splatters against a shudder not quite fastened. That’s when you see her. For some unknown reason, you know to look. You stare in silence as the cool mist caresses your face. You remember that section of the park when the beauty and the path she walks weren’t born yet. You close your eyes, partaking in its wonder. You whisper a spell to the beauty, hoping it will last.

    Hollow Man

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    POETRY – INTROSPECTION

    ​How long will my words echo in an empty hall?
    How long will I sway to its melody alone?
    How will silence swallow my cries?
    How long will my essence seep from the cracks of my shattered shells? 

    Oh, how I long to be deafened by the screams
    How I long to be drenched in their pain
    To feel the passion of the tale, so eloquently crafted
    To soak the page with tears of a depicted sorrow

    ​I yearn for the warmth of the lover’s flame
    To be memorized by its dance
    To be enchanted by its unscripted ballad
    The uncontrollable churn of my soul to its mythic rhythm

    To feel the surge from the heartfelt turning into a pound
    The sensation of my chest tightening, the pause of that breathless gasp just before the pant
    The anticipation of the splash from the bead forged in the embers of the moment
    The feel of slickness on my palms right as I turn the page to the next chapter of my life

    To be filled with pride from your look of approval
    To be filled with passion from the same eyes but a different glance
    To know love to the core, standing firm in its goodness, as well as un-wavered by its pain
    To understand by knowing it, I will be the better for it

    For any man experiencing these and so many more…
    Of that man, I am envious.
    To feel any of these things, in that instant, I will cease being

    The

    Hollow Man

    RDP Friday – 03152024

    Posted in Photography, PoetryTagged , , , , , Leave a comment

    PHOTOGRAPHY – AI GENERATED ART

    Here is my response to Ragtag Daily Prompt – Kindness

    Justice

    Posted in PoetryTagged , , , , , 2 Comments

    POETRY – INTROSPECTION

    In this moment…
    the righteous
    simply
    wait …

    Transgressors
    plea their
    fate …

    Black robed, white wigged beaks
    decree…

    Which is which

    Shattering
    Souls …

    At the hammer’s fall

    Echo…

    JUSTICE!

    Ode to My Addiction

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    POETRY – RANDOM THOUGHTS

    Peering out from under the crevasses of my splintered psyche,
    Still riding a euphoric high from about That Night,
    Collaborative expressions have put my hypothalamus into overdrive.
    My serotonin overflowing

    Yeah… swaying to that lyrical grove, high on 1000cc of that poetic shit…

    Leaning back in my chair
    Pulling up my sleeve,
    Applying the tourniquet
    Tap, tap, tap, and then rub

    My vein is ready…

    Opening my works, a quill and a hypodermic
    I pull back the plunger slowly.
    Their ink seeps in

    Tap…Tap…tap…
    No bubbles …

    Just a quick push to fill in the gaps
    A squirt, then a single drop oozes…
    My mouth salivates in anticipation
    So close; it won’t be long now

    I feel the cold metal against my skin
    A quick prick and a sharp pain,
    Slowly, I push the plunger part of the way
    The ink is warm as it travels through my bloodstream.

    Shadows surround me
    As my head spins,
    A single drop of drool falls from my shuddering lips
    Yes…I feel it in my leg now…

    I shake from the chill.
    The bathroom floor tile is so cold.
    It is as if life is spilling out of me, but the floor is dry
    My body feels empty and hollow, like my heart

    If I am to live in loneliness
    There is no need to live anymore

    I push the plunger in a little further…

    I am warmth from the sight of the glistening sweat that painted her body
    I mimic her labored breathing
    The rigidness of her bosom tells the tale
    Her crossed legs and popping toes echo the sentiment.

    Her body trembles though she cannot see me
    But her quivering whimpers
    Her flow of nectar
    Confirms that I am near

    She swallows hard and then gasps.
    As I whisper the words she needs,

    I push the plunger to the hilt…

    Standing in front of a mirror
    I wonder who it is before me
    Baffled, for I am submerged in silence
    Closing my eyes for a moment

    Only to open to an image that hasn’t changed
    A single tear falls from my swollen eyes
    Realizing I didn’t recognize myself,
    Knowing I have stripped away my identity,

    The single tear is now a stream.
    Through my sadness, I find the courage to breathe my name.

    Mangus Khan

    RDP – Friday – Time

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    Here is my response to today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt – Time

    POETRY

    Time

    Sitting within the wondering of unknown destiny.
    Riding the waves of the abyss of sorrow.
    Like the sands of the hourglass, the moments of a promiseless
    tomorrow slip away

    But…

    Have you heard the news today?

    Our kinsmen…

    Our brethren…

    Has passed away

    Not of blood, but of spirit

    What is felt goes by many names
    yet the pain
    remains the same

    Remember…

    He has been called home
    to sit alongside our Master
    and his golden throne

    Boundfull
    dutiful
    we are
    to acknowledge his words of passion and grace

    for they have

    Lifted us…
    Caressed us…
    Consoled us…

    I wish to thank all those who have taken the time to read the ranting of a feeble mind.

    From my stoop, on my soapbox, I stare into the abyss, then begin reading my list.

    Life is short…

    So kiss it…
    taste it..
    Close your eyes and
    Savor it…

    But most of all

    LIVE IT !!!

    One minute at a time

    I wrote this piece years ago after the writing community had lost one of its brethren. To me, he was gentle, but wise soul with so much to offer. The writing community took a blow that day.

    It doesn’t matter about the existence of time, moments we spend with one another count. Make the moments we spend even with strangers matter. Humanity’s most precious gift to one another is their time.

    Safe

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    POETRY

    The message couldn’t have been clearer
    it was like a strobeing neon sign…
    or looped playback of an unwanted message

    The sulfur fills your nostrils and you’re mesmerized by the dancing flame

    Why did you foolishly believe in this?
    why where so easily taken in by its lure?
    why did you allow yourself to breath life into boyish fantasy?

    The amber light severed the darkness for a moment as you took a drag

    Shaking your head, you exhale…bathing in the realism of the moment
    You step back into the shadows…..step back into the known
    step back before you become a victim of the voracious nature of life

    You thump the ashes from your cigar in the darkness ….safe and free

    Glowing in the Sun

    Posted in PoetryTagged , , , , , , 6 Comments
    Photo by Johannes Plenio on Pexels.com

    POETRY – REFLECTION

    There is a silence in the room
    No words spoken, emotions so thick one could smother
    Fighting back the tears, as you look back at her face.
    She’s sitting on the steps, glowing in the sun.


    Your bag is packed, yet you search for a reason not to leave.
    Standing the final stance before departure…knowing too well it is time
    Feeling the tenderness of her touch
    Followed by the warmth of her lips.

    Exhaling in the moment, the next is unknown

    Walking out the door, never turning around
    Not wanting your tears to show.
    The ride to post was longer today than any others
    Your brothers and sisters in arms have the same upon their faces

    Equipment and manifest checks … moments away from destiny
    Chatter fills the room, but no one speaks of why we are here
    As if you speak its name, you give it power.
    To speak its name, the illusion would be over

    We muster on the flight line, trying to stay strong
    We look through the crowd, watching your brethren summoning the courage
    Moments away from fighting an unknown cause
    Fighting with undying zeal and without pause

    The plane is loaded, and slumber takes over
    Getting all we can get while we can
    Waken by the plane’s descent, our nerves on fire
    Knowing that the illusion is over and dues need to be paid

    We flick the switch ….

    Boom boom….boom boom ….boom boom
    Can you hear it?

    Boom boom…boom boom ….boom boom
    War drums sound off

    Boom boom…boom boom ….boom boom
    Our soul screams!!!!

    YEEEEAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!

    Now we embrace our beast and let them out

    Fighting relentlessly ….

    Stained with essence ….

    Innocence shattered ….

    Desperately searching for the next thing that is keeping you away
    Through bloodshot eyes, we see all the enemies have vanished
    No one else to fight … no more orphans caused
    At least no more today

    We flick off the switch ….

    Leaning in the doorway, standing there looking
    Looking at the most breathtaking thing that these eyes have seen
    In what seems to be a lifetime

    I see you ….

    Glowing in the sun

    ~thank you for reading~

    Six Word Story – 11042023

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    PROSE

    I always enjoy discovering new ways of pushing myself as a writer. Every sentence is an opportunity to redefine my limits. Often, I find myself struggling with who I’m becoming in the wake of my existence. There was a time when I felt certain who I was and my purpose. Now, with age and health issues, I wonder…

    What kind of man are you?

    Cries of Madness

    Posted in PoetryTagged , , , 4 Comments

    POETRY – FREEVERSE

    When I was young, I approached life without fear
    With hopes as bright as the sun
    When it came to worries, I had none
    I’d never thought I’d end up here

    Sitting here remembering what I saw in the mirror
    Realizing what I had become
    All the things I had done
    My soul and eyes fill with tears

    At me, I look
    Just one look
    And all my dreams

    Are scattered

    My head hangs low
    Despair has begun taking its toll
    I have no place left to go
    For it holding me here

    At me, I look
    Just one look
    And all my hope
    Is shattered

    Thunderous dreams on whispering wings
    That no one can hear
    These pages are soaked from the tears I cry
    I hope to survive this pain. I scribe

    As I scream

    AAAAAAAAAAA HHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

    At you, I look
    Just one look
    For I have lost

    The thing that matters

    Epiphany of Madness

    Posted in PoetryTagged , , , , 2 Comments

    POETRY – FREEVERSE

    Here, in the chambers of my madness, I am showered by my decadence. The weight of my arrogance bears heavily on my soul, dropping me to my knees, beaten and shallow.
    The eyes of my damnation have opened. From its lips, a howl is released that cringes the wicked.

    In a fleeting moment….

    I believed someone wanted to hear what I had to say.
    Believing I had something worthy of saying.

    For a moment….

    I believed my words could inspire and ignite,
    Yet they are daunt and douse.
    I believed my words could teleport you from drab and mundane,
    to the majestic and climatic

    For a moment….

    I believed I was good enough to defend the faith, which gives us breath
    I believed I was that breath, filling the lungs of the passionate.

    For a moment…
    I believed the faces of the slain would fade,
    Yet I drift deeper into a sea of their weeping souls.
    Believing I was strong enough to let go of the things that bind me.
    Though I await sadness to draw life that remains….leaving me hollow.

    Bound by lunacy’s chains, I am danging in its web, screaming…
    Liberating my sanity as I stare into the fright and pain.
    Knowing I can’t let go of the hope … of grace.

    For my fortitude must be unwavering.
    If I’m lucky, my courage will be limitless

    Yet, I must be careful, for I hope for….
    For it might destroy it all.

    Yes, I must be careful …
    For it might destroy me.

    In the twilight of this revelation, I slump, weakened…
    for I am dying.
    From my lifeless lips, I speak Passion’s name
    Breaking the chains, I rise untouched by the flames of Madness.

    holding on to the dream that I’m powerful enough
    Powerful enough to scribe in lines of the destined.
    Wise enough to scribe the words that will bring us home.
    Strong enough to wield the words that will bind our drifting souls.

    Bringing us to a place we all belong, united and strong
    A place where our words cast out the darkness that sometimes fills our hearts.

    Yet, I must be careful about what I long for….
    Careful for what I yearn for ….
    I might get things I don’t want

    Yet, I pray hear you my plea

    Just before the dawn of this …
    Epiphany of Madness

    Skywriting103020231900

    Posted in Poetry, ProseTagged , , , , , 2 Comments

    PROSE – RANDOM THOUGHTS

    I feel like writing today. There have been so many days where I didn’t feel it, but wrote anyway. I can’t explain or put my finger on the difference. I’m unsure if I need to or if it’s all that important. What’s important to me right now is that I’m feeling it. Today, I not going to fight it.

    Perhaps, it’s because

    I saw the Moon in a clear blue sky.
    So close I could touch it.
    It has magical powers, they say
    I believe them.

    Perhaps it’s because

    I saw the clouds glow when they were touched by the Sun.
    A bird chirped as it flew by
    A stray cat rubbed against my leg
    I had a meeting with a friend that didn’t suck

    I don’t know why today feels this way, but strap in.

    Missing You

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    POETRY – FREEVERSE

    I close my eyes to the darkness
    Inhaling the essence of you
    Without you, I write nothing
    Without you, I don’t know what to do

    Living life amongst the shadows
    Watching you depart, my heart just sank
    Plunging deep into sadness
    Imaging a world where you’re not there

    Missing you…
    Something I didn’t have a clue

    Missing you …
    How strange I didn’t have a clue

    Writers come alive slowly
    Writer’s heart is their home
    They put their souls on paper
    Each lines a heartbeat

    Missing you….
    How strange … I never knew

    The Muse

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    POETRY – FREEVERSE

    Along the coast of the isle, I await
    I’m awaiting the one who is heard but rarely seen.
    His guidance, his vision, is what soothes me.

    Thundering huffs of his steed surround me
    Through the mist, I catch a glimpse of his armor
    My heart pounds in anticipation of asking the question

    Opening my eyes, I am within the halls of my study
    An empty room with barren shelves, once full
    No remnants of its former purpose

    Except…

    An inkwell on my table
    Whispering …
    You’re the one I belong to…

    My soul began to shiver
    As it transformed into a mesmerizing beauty
    With enchanting eyes that spoke to me.

    I could barely take it
    My head was spinning around and around
    I didn’t know what to do
    As those eyes kept asking me
    Can you be the writer?
    That writes too silly to the profound
    Are you that writer?
    It is just a question to answer.

    The inkwell on my table…
    Was the caressing wind
    Of the blossoming trees
    Everything between hell and heaven

    Now I’m back along the coast
    In the presence of the rider
    As I looked at the face behind the visor

    I realized the answers

    I am the writer of the silly, perhaps the profound
    Yes, I have my answer
    I am the Muse

    Skywriting – 092820231118

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    POETRY – RANDOM THOUGHTS

    It’s foggy outside, but I’ve never been clearer
    I’ve failed you in the worst possible way
    I became something other than what I needed to be
    I felt I needed to be something other than who I am
    If the failure to you isn’t bad enough,
    the greatest failure of all is to myself .

    ~thank you for reading~

    Armonia

    Posted in PoetryTagged , , 2 Comments

    Will you remember me when your famous? 
    It is so lovely for you to say so, but I know that you wont. 
    To be honest, I would probably forget me too. 
    So experience, conquer, and live shamelessly. 

    You see I know that I am nothing more than….
    A whisper of a stranger 
    A smile from a fond memory 
    We all know that memories wither and fade 

    So I add another log onto the fire of life 
    Every so often I poke it 
    To see the spark, hear the pop, and feel the warmth 
    While I sit in admiration and silence …

    Cradled

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    POETRY – iNTROSPECTION

    Cradled within a chair,
    For I am soothed and warmed by life’s mystical treasures.
    As I turn the pages of time’s forgiving grace.

    Why Bother?

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    POETRY – INTROSPECTION

    Why do I bother to post in other groups?
    When my words are barely read at their home
    Perhaps it is an evolving disillusion of a boyhood dream
    To do something in life that makes a difference

    To touch someone’s soul with a glance
    To inspire a dream with a whisper
    When did the purity of an ideal dissolve into an institution
    Perhaps, the day you uttered another name, replacing your own

    Why do I read my work aloud?
    When it is obvious no one is moved
    The only thing mentioned is its length
    Nevermind anything about its strength

    Were you listening?

    There’s no need to lie to me.
    Perhaps it’s because my words lack the standard rhyme or mitre.
    Perhaps I have yet to say something that possesses some depth.

    One thing is clear.
    Their silence speaks louder than any word could

    I found this piece on an old folder … interesting

    ~thanks for reading~

    Whispers of the Dark #10

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    POETRY – HUMOR

    Assholes are a dime of a dozen
    Good people are rare
    Take it from me
    Another Asshole

    Skywriting – 07272023111132

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    POETRY – RANDOM THOUGHTS / RECOLLECTION

    During my daily reading this morning, I came across an opening line.
    It evokes a random memory
    It unearthed a forgotten emotion

    Kiss me without stopping …

    K. Hartless’ s Yard Sale of Thoughts

    Yes, I remember the first time I saw my beloved.
    I swallowed a delicious urge to kiss her

    Kiss me
    Yeesss!
    slow and deep
    in a serious manner

    Kiss me
    without boundaries
    Without pretense

    Surrender to hunger
    Give way to passion

    A knock on the door
    ”Mr. Khan, your 1 o’clock is here.”
    I have a perplexed look
    “I know she’s early, but she says it can’t wait.”
    I nod

    Now, I swallow a primal urge to shiver

    ~thank you for reading~

    Whispers of the Dark #9

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    POETRY – RANDOM THOUGHTS

    I’m losing hope
    but I know I can never give up

    I must maintain my faith
    in the Master and the ones I love

    I know they don’t have faith in me
    I understand why they have

    I pray to the Master that one day
    the one I love will gain faith in me

    ~thank you for reading~

    In the Wee Hours #6

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    POETRY – RANDOM THOUGHTS

    Last night I dreamt of the innocence of writing
    before the hoopla, deadlines, word counts, etc.,
    when we hurriedly crafted sentences
    in chalk on sidewalks before they got washed away in the rain.
    Good luck today;
    write clean, true, & honest ….it’s 5 am

    ~thank you for reading~

    In the Wee Hours #5

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    POETRY – RANDOM THOUGHTS

    I heard a whisper and chronicled its truth.
    It spoke of the space between; that pause, that moment.
    The blissful innocence, the delicious taste, the insatiable hunger,
    the… sigh. I open my notebook … it’s 4 am.

    ~thank you for reading~

    Whispers of the Dark #8

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    POETRY – INTROSPECTION

    I loved her with all I had
    It wasn’t enough, not even close

    I thought I was good to her
    But I wasn’t

    If you want to know the truth of it?
    I was fully aware of who and what I am.

    I’ve been

    weighed

    measured

    and found

    wanting

    If this wasn’t enough

    I discovered I’m also cruel
    For wasting her time.

    ~thank you for reading~

    In the Wee Hours #4

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    POETRY-RANDOM THOUGHT

    Doubt casts a long shadow,
    I don’t know if I can escape.
    Paralyzed as he whispers lies in my ears.
    I recite the writer’s prayer until I feel its courage.
    Courage is all we need to hang on … it’s 4 am

    ~thank you for reading~

    Whispers of the Dark #7

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    POETRY – RANDOM THOUGHTS

    It’s like I can’t hear the rhythm or sway to the melody of a verse…
    yet somehow, my fingers begin to tap, and my pen moves…
    I sigh, then smile because I know the madness is flying again.

    ~thank you for reading~

    Whispers of the Dark #6

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    POETRY -RANDOM THOUGHTS

    In the silence,
    I hear the growl of the demon inside
    Come one all
    into the splinters of my remaining sanity

    ~thank you for reading~

    In the Wee Hours #3

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    POETRY – RANDOM THOUGHTS

    The lights flickered,
    and the room is chilled.
    I resist an urge to shiver.

    A wraith from the hollows appears.

    Wraith: “Come”
    Me:” Can we talk”
    A portal opens.
    Me:” Crap”
    Good luck, everyone!… I step through the portal … it’s 5 am

    ~thank you for reading~

    In the Wee Hours #2

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    POETRY – RANDOM THOUGHTS

    Churn is soothing.
    Crickets chirp,
    dancing by a nearby light,
    and the night air lingers on my lips.
    Slumber sits beside me, rocking.
    We’re together, yet so far apart.
    Together rocking and enjoying the stillness….it’s 2 am.

    ~thank you for reading~

    Whispers of the Dark #5

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    POETRY – HUMOR

    I’m tragically aware we are losing the war of self-absorption.
    A constant bombardment of the idea we need to bathe in vanity.
    Worn so tightly it rubs against our skin.
    A constant reminder we aren’t beautiful enough;
    we need beard dye, smoother skin, and ninja bullet.

    ~thank you for reading~

    In the Wee Hours #1

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    POETRY – INSOMNIA

    Slumber whispers in my ear
    as she runs her fingers through my whiskers.
    I love it when she does that.
    Sleep creeps in.
    The muse slaps my face, “Where are my words.”
    The shit just got real …. it’s 5 am.

    ~thank you for reading~

    The Blabbering Idiot

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    POETRY – HUMOR

    Allow me to introduce myself
    I’m a blabbering idiot
    it’s nice to meet you.
    Then I crack the mirror.

    ~thank you for reading~

    The Stories We Hide from

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    POETRY – INTROSPECTION

    Once, I wondered what journals were for
    What do we write in them..?
    We tell the stories of pain
    we can never speak.

    ~thank you for reading~

    Whispers of the Dark #4

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    POETRY –

    If I thought you could love me
    If I thought you really can
    I will tell you my secret
    I have always been your man

    ~thank you for reading~

    Whispers of the Dark #3

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    POETRY

    Is this what you wanted?
    A piece of me …
    You better get what you need.
    While I bleed

    ~thank you for reading~

    A Glance

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    POETRY – INTROSPECTION

    you spend a lifetime
    trying to be something
    a meaningful entity
    you lie to yourself
    you believe in those lies
    but the truth comes out
    it always does, no matter
    how you try to hide it.
    it hurts like hell, but you swallow it
    yum, may I have another, yum
    you are so damn disgusting to look at
    they can barely stomach a glance.

    ~thank you for reading~

    Tales of Winter

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    What is your favorite season of year? Why?

    There’s something of the winter

    Snowball fights and Snow Angels
    playing for hours, we never seemed
    to get tired. Never seemed to get cold.
    Our mothers told us to come inside
    and warm up.

    There’s something about the winter

    There’s a stillness that comes in the winter night
    the sir is crisp, it’s chill prickly
    Yet, there’s a peacefulness in the hush
    though we not know what lurks in the dark.

    There’s something about the winter

    ~thank you for reading~

    Get Back Here! I’m Not Done with You

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    POETRY – RANDOM THOUGHT – INSPIRED

    The perfect opening line seldom comes at the perfect time,
    You’re anything other than being prepared to write
    Hang on a second … Hang on!
    You’re ready now. Then just like that

    Poof

    Get back here! I’m not done with you, you shout!

    It’s a game we play; between them & us
    Such a cruel game

    But when it’s good; it’s damn good

    There we are, writing
    the words are flowing
    They fly above your head
    each one chirping like birds

    Each chirp a note in the unwritten
    symphony, and we are the composers

    ~thank you for reading~

    Thanks, Momoetry for the inspiring comment

    Let Me Tell You About

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    POETRY – INTROSPECTION

    Let me tell you about
    the man trapped inside
    the one residing in the bowels of madness

    His armor is rusted & dented
    but his sword remains sharp
    as he grips the hilt, he tastes
    the blood of the unhealed wounds
    beneath the scars

    He’s been in that life for so long
    he’s forgotten the other
    yet, he wonders, if there’s something else
    one day, I will tell him about peace.

    ~thank for you reading~

    So it goes…

    Posted in Challenges, PoetryTagged , , , , , 5 Comments

    What personal belongings do you hold most dear?

    The consequences of rum and bad decisions. These consequences are both endearing and fester. Their existence is personal, and they belong to me. I bear the weight of them alone. I’m happy to do it.

    Now that’s the end of it

    So it goes …

    What Time is it?

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    POETRY – REFLECTION

    Ladies and gentleman
    I’d like to thank you for coming

    In the next few moments,
    we will return to 40 years ago.
    Then I will speak in a language that
    hopefully everyone can easily understand

    From my ice cream castle
    I stared into the purple rain
    While I had starfish and coffee
    I saw a bird caught in an oak tree

    Prince said he was so confused.
    However, I sat chuckling, only slightly amused
    He was just another owner of a lonely heart
    That’s right; gigolos get lonely too

    From that ice cream castle
    I saw Judas Priest screaming for vengeance
    The death of Orion, some thought was a disposable hero
    Yet, Iron Maidens search for a piece of mind, while chanting the call to Ktulu

    Benatar chronicles the crimes of passion.
    Preparing us for that next anthem
    Billie Jean was on the scene and swore she was a thriller
    It turns out all she wanted was a little paradise by the dashboard lights

    Red leather jacket, a new edition
    It got me ready for the world
    Man..I was cool, I mean C-O-O-L!
    I know I could definitely stand the rain.

    I started wondering about that candy girl
    What’s her name? What’s her number?
    777-9311??? Jenny or 867-5309 ….Roxanne
    Oh!! That’s right, that’s right …Sheila.

    I left my ice cream castle in the summertime
    To meet a concrete blonde in the cold part of town
    She started spinning me right round like record
    And all I wanted was to find myself a brand new lover

    Sh-Sh –Shaking, I fell into a wall of voodoo
    Then woke up in Tijuana wanting some barbecue iguana
    The next thing I knew, there was a cheap trick
    Talking bout if you want my love, you got it

    I shook my head. NO!!
    Knowing she wasn’t ready for this jungle love
    So instead, we drank some brass monkey
    Listening to some Mexican radio

    Now, back in my ice cream castle
    Listening to watermelon man and sipping bitches brew
    Thinking they call it Stormy Monday
    And Tuesday is just as bad

    But

    God Bless the child

    That got their own….that got their own

    WHAT TIME IS IT?

    ~thank you for reading~

    Word Salad

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    POETRY – DAILY PROMPTS/WEEKLY PROMPTS TIED TOGETHER

    I’m prosecuted by an unknown authority
    I’m convicted on an assumption.
    A victim of irrational stereotype
    I’m housed in an asylum of tasty jello

    There’s no safe harbor, alone in a crowd.
    Like an enslaved extraterrestrial
    My freedom, My Existence
    Outlawed; off limits.

    Like a bite of the forbidden fruit
    I’m lost in a fog; its dampness feels like velvet.
    Hospitality is just as foreign as tranquility.

    Yet, I still wander while wondering what I’ll find.
    Perhaps, lush words are scattered in thick notebooks.
    stuck in old buckets, tucked away willy-nilly in rusty cabinets.

    Whew! What a polyoquent doozy!I guess I’ll shut up now.
    Has anyone got a beer? I need something to revive me.

    ~thank you for reading~

    The Essence of Morning

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    POETRY – WEEKLY PROMPT #141; RDP – FILM

    Slumber releases me as the glow of the serene sun caresses my face.
    Let us lay back for a while longer before we have to move.
    Gently, I stroke your hair, listening to the city’s awakening commotion
    Your head on my chest, your breathing lures me to the edge of slumber

    I’m careful not to move, not to wake you

    Your head falls to your favorite spot; the space between
    my chest and stomach as you pull the blanket tight.
    Your breathing shallows; Your sleep deepens
    I exhale this one of those moments you see in film.

    ~thank you for reading~

    Urksome

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    POETRY – WORD CHALLENGE – PASTIME

    She played with my emotions like it was a pastime
    a commercial-free game of the week

    She had begun to irk me …

    Poor child had no idea.
    I don’t do irksome

    ~thank you for reading~

    Desert Moon

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    POETRY – Memory from ANOTHER TIME

    As strangers, we sat there
    nervously seeking glances
    smiling so hard until our jaws ached

    At that moment, nothing was more real to me.
    Our hearts, souls, and breathing fell into unison
    We were aligned; we were one

    Under the Desert Moon

    ~thank you for reading~

    The longest goodbye; I will never say

    Posted in PoetryTagged , , , 1 Comment

    As it stands right now,
    I can’t be with you.
    I think too much of myself.
    I have too much pride in who worked to become

    In order to be with you, I must cease to be the man I am.
    I must allow myself to be disrespected.
    I must forget all that I know about; what it is to be a man
    I must forget all that I know about love; how it makes me feel

    I must cease to care about my well-being; for I no longer matter
    I must be willing to surrender my will to another; without question
    I will do all these things to prove my love.
    Willingly change who I am; because I love you that much.

    Hmm… You aren’t even willing to change a dress for me.
    So how much did you really love me?

    I don’t know

    So, I offer the longest goodbye to myself.

    ~thank you for reading~

    Sounding my poetic yelp!

    Posted in Challenges, PoetryTagged , , , , , Leave a comment

    How do you use social media?

    Lost within the traps of my mind
    Crazy, because I placed them
    to protect me from the madness

    running from trap to trap
    like, I’m hooked on pain
    my screams melodic

    Every line I write
    another attempt to release
    the pain coursing through me

    SO…

    I write the blues
    because I lived them
    facing the everlasting memories

    Don’t think less of me
    if all I can do is sit here and cry
    without you, who am I supposed to me

    My words come from my soul
    of all the things I do wrong
    this is the only thing you can’t deny

    Do you remember me,
    like I remember you?

    The night you came to me
    back when we were just friends
    back when all we were was an unspoken desire

    By the state of you
    I had no idea where you had been
    I had no idea what you needed

    You leaned into me and started to cry
    My love could comfort you
    all you had to do was let me try

    in Frustration

    I silently scream

    Now, I sound my poetic yelp!

    ~thank you for reading~

    Sleep

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    POETRY

    Can sleep wipe away the strain of the day?

    Take away the pain
    Press restart and start anew

    Fantasy and Reality are interchangeable
    neither one lasting
    it seems…

    Price check on Rolaids
    There’s a spill on aisle 14
    Paper or plastic?
    Did you double bag?
    Price on planter’s honey roasted

    Wait…

    Wait…

    I need more sleep

    ~thank you for reading~

    Polite

    Posted in PoetryTagged , , , , 3 Comments

    POETRY

    I’ve become painfully aware
    of something

    All this time
    I thought
    I knew
    I believed

    I was hilarious

    NOPE
    I’m not

    People were laughing
    by God

    All this time
    People laughing
    Were just being

    Polite

    There’s a Reason

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    POETRY – INTROSPECTIVE

    Every drop of a tear
    There’s a reason
    Whether you accept it
    or understand it

    Doesn’t Matter!

    There’s a reason

    Here’s the rub
    The one who from
    The tear falls

    May not
    Know or understand
    Why?

    But there’s a reason.

    lifestyle

    Posted in PoetryTagged , , , , 1 Comment

    POETRY – HUMOR

    I put a whole lot of effort into
    releasing the pain in my heart.
    It was supposed to

    Sooothe

    me

    I need to curb my addiction
    Google is not a lifestyle

    Disappointment

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    POETRY – DAY 14 – NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

    I know I turned out
    to be a disappointment
    I never intended to be

    Who Won?

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    POETRY – DAY 9 NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

    I wake up sweaty and sour
    Out of breath, like I’ve been fighting
    in my sleep

    I have…
    with myself

    I wonder who won?