Free Verse
Imaginary Ghosts. Imaginary Implosions.
the thunder was so loud at one point it boomed like the explosions inside of my head Violent, painful, searing, inevitable, altogether imaginary. Imagine running running running for days on end No Sleep only rests inbetween madness. You thought you saw a ghost, but you were also that spirit haunting the house. Darkness, wet footprints leading to the basement, cabinet doors gaping open and drawers of silverware left to hang at an angle over the kitchen floor. Silence, but in your head gas leaks and then the water leaping out of the shower head, the bathroom faucet vomiting into the tub and your clothes wet from the scalding water pummeling your back. still clothed and then Outside, nighttime running with wings Arms outstretched, beating against the ground trying trying trying always to gain altitude; to gain flight but running out of room within your lungs Strides shortening and then your breath punching out of your body in heaves, relatively stilled and panting under the one dim streetlamp holding back the dark. But it can't be held back within you
By Anna Cunninghamabout a year ago in Poets
Open Mic
I hear your words and I think, this is the place that poetry and stories arise from, then? Can I, with my shallow existence and my sheltered upbringing devoid of physical abuses, substance abuse, rape, imprisonment, or difficult choices offer anything worth saying that will reach up as high as you have had to reach? Who were these people who professed to love and care for you? I listen in amazement as you recount the dangers of the road that brought you here, your cloak of invisibility discarded, your endurance unmasked. What kind of cruel world would allow such things? What child could endure the suffering you have endured? Yet there you stand, apparently whole, triumphant over adversity a child should never have had to bear. I don’t want to hear any more and yet I turn a fascinated ear, I want to find the beauty where there can be none. If there is any to glean, it lies in your standing there, spotlit, reading your pain.
By Natalie Wilkinsonabout a year ago in Poets
"WE HAVE SEEN THE ENEMY. Content Warning.
I saw the picture of a little girl floating face down next to her father and it just broke me hard! Illegals trying to cross to a better life. Even now as I write this preface I cry. I can only comfort myself by repeating to myself they are no longer suffering...while I wonder at the cruelty of those that look down on them and I wrote this poem out of pain!
By Victor Mendezabout a year ago in Poets
