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133 · Sep 2021
#244
A Friend Sep 2021
The ordeal of trust is mortifying
but I still give myself away within my words,
laying my heart bare
hoping it will be held gently
129 · Oct 2021
#268
A Friend Oct 2021
When I was young
I took on so much
That was never mine to carry.

Though I can set it down at any time,
I'm not sure how...
128 · Sep 2021
#251
A Friend Sep 2021
Tear it down brick by brick
Quickly before the ground caves in
Convince yourself it’s a chemical reaction
Manipulate each corner of your brain
Until it lacks passion
125 · Oct 2021
#263
A Friend Oct 2021
I do not fear intimacy
I fear being ripped open and found lacking
I fear the damage you might inflict,
And the damage you will find.
124 · Jun 2021
Untitled
A Friend Jun 2021
I’ve often been told I’m too uptight

Little do they know,

Each day I make a cup of coffee

A display of quiet anarchy,

For it too is an act of entropy
124 · Jun 2021
Untitled
A Friend Jun 2021
I find myself drawn to you,
Like the tide pulled by the moon
And I wonder if you too are lonely,
Carrying the weight of the night,
Alone
122 · Sep 2021
#235
A Friend Sep 2021
Do you think the moon waits the whole night
Just to see the sun?
To share their stories with each-other
In the few moments they have together?

They were made for each-other
They make the other complete
Two halves of the whole,
Each a part of the others soul

Even when the moon faded away
The sun did not lose its reason to shine
121 · Oct 2021
Ut Totum
A Friend Oct 2021
Who am I in other peoples stories?
Am I the ripped out page?
The crumpled drawing?
Thrown away after it didn’t turn out right.

To me, I keep the melancholy chapters
And leaf through the bittersweet and loss
Looking for the substance or lesson
Hidden between the rot and the rust.

A sad ending doesn’t make it unworthy of reading.
119 · Sep 2021
#246
A Friend Sep 2021
In the cold I have waited
For you to draw near
To once more feel your warmth  

If winter promises to give way
I shall endure my thirst
As I search for spring
118 · Jul 2021
Untitled
A Friend Jul 2021
People have always been people

I lived
I loved
I made something
I laughed
I cried

We’re exactly the same

Please do not forget me
116 · Sep 2021
Albatross
A Friend Sep 2021
So simple yet unknown
You weave stories
And try them on for size

You’ll seek a new story
Sculpt it with stars
Until you exit this plane
And its careless derision

Breaking all doubt
‘Til it’s born anew
Hooks in my heart
Howling in tune

You will always return
Bigger than before
116 · Sep 2021
#249
A Friend Sep 2021
To be looked at with love
To be spoken to with honey
I’ve never known this
114 · Sep 2021
#236
A Friend Sep 2021
I bleed
I pen poetry in that blood
I pen prose in that blood
No good without color
Never free from abuse
So relive it all
Weep for the pages
And write it for those who read
For them I bleed
Into the blank spaces I cannot mend
What a waste
112 · Sep 2021
Go At The World In Stone
A Friend Sep 2021
Let their words break upon you
as waves assault the cliffs
a foundation of bedrock
unbothered by the affairs below
iron-clad in will
112 · Sep 2021
#250
A Friend Sep 2021
Wading through shared history like a still sea
Ever searching for lies coated with honey,
Promising righteous love
Feigned Fantasies
111 · Jul 2021
Untitled
A Friend Jul 2021
I can’t convert this pain into something positive.
I refuse to pass it on.  
I grasp at it doggedly,
Like a rock that drags me to the ocean floor.
109 · Aug 2021
Untitled
A Friend Aug 2021
I compare you to an old injury
Like those maimed by war
Or survivors of natural disaster
Something to be endured

I struggle to reconcile the conflict in my heart
Because in both times of war and peace
Heartbreak is the same
109 · May 2021
Untitled
A Friend May 2021
It is a language I do not understand

Maybe we’ve met before, spent a lifetime together

An eternity passed under the sun

Isn't it remarkable, the way we can know ourselves by knowing others?

I have picked through my remains

And found pieces of you

I look at you and find myself.
108 · May 2021
Untitled
A Friend May 2021
You have been a teacher
Of passion and guilt
Quiet Rebellion
That resounds now still
And I,
Disobedient,
Followed and learned,
From you,
And of you
107 · Sep 2021
#234
A Friend Sep 2021
There will always be stories
With one saying to another:
This is what it feels like to me
Can you understand what I am saying?
Does it feel the same to you?
107 · May 2021
Untitled
A Friend May 2021
Frustrated
Confused
Everything comes to an end?
Too quick
Not enough time
106 · May 2021
Untitled
A Friend May 2021
We tend to ruin things
On purpose or not---
Including each other.
106 · May 2021
Untitled
A Friend May 2021
Is love made meaningless in impermanence?

No, no more than anything else

Still, the world is awash with reasons not to love

I am not convinced by a single one
105 · May 2021
Untitled
A Friend May 2021
Dear reader,

Will you sit with me in silence,

When my words no longer work?
105 · Mar 2021
Untitled
A Friend Mar 2021
You try to find beauty in everyone else, but I wonder if you have tried to find it in yourself. 

You are worth more than the tears that fell from your pained eyes at 3 AM

You are better than the nasty people who may have called you tragic and ugly.

You're better than the people who have laughed at you.

You are drastically better than the hate and sadness that eats at you everyday.

I understand how this hurt, this poison in your soul and how each day is a struggle to overcome it.

It may not mean anything to you right now but when you’re sitting at home old and grey I hope you look back at these days.

That's when you will have finally found out who you are and how strong you’ve become. So I know your world may sometimes cave in and you’re suffocating under the sea of hurt you find yourself in... but sometimes you need to create your own boat and find the high ground.

I hope you find it soon.
104 · May 2021
Untitled
A Friend May 2021
Pain had a sort of beauty until it became my own.

Pain was the material which became poetry when it was irrelevant to me.

Now I have pain stored in me that couldn’t be turned into poetry.

There was nothing poetic or beautiful about how I have endured.

Pain that is brutal and poisonous.

Pain that forces me to close my eyes and shut my ears in denial.

Pain that swallows my words and suffocates my silence.

Pain that strangles the ink and turns into blood on my paper.

Love had a sort of beauty until it became my own.
104 · May 2021
Untitled
A Friend May 2021
When we first met how did you describe me?
What did you say?

I could not stop talking about you.
I went on about you like you were the very stars.

Or at the very least,
How they were placed in the heavens for your express enjoyment.

I went on for hours,
about how when you touched me,
I could have melted in your hands.

You had me under a spell,
I would have done anything for you.
104 · Aug 2021
Untitled
A Friend Aug 2021
The intimate act of showing the one you love your unfinished art says to them:

“Like my unpolished heart, I trust you with this.”
104 · Jun 2021
Untitled
A Friend Jun 2021
It robs me of my words,
It is the mirror in which I look,
And no longer recognize what I see.
Who was it we were fighting all along?

Perhaps it was me?

Is forgiveness something that could be mine?
To very notion akin to trespassing,
This luxury which I seek.

Dear Reader,
You once promised
That we would sit in silence
When my words no longer worked.

I must go now.
102 · Aug 2021
Untitled
A Friend Aug 2021
So many words unsaid
Places never reached
Memories we wish to erase
101 · Jun 2021
Untitled
A Friend Jun 2021
Am I better today than I was yesterday?
Have I learned to be humble?
Do I take care of my thoughts when I am alone?
Do I mind my words when I am with others?

I must destroy the idea,
That I am better than anyone else
100 · Feb 2021
Untitled
A Friend Feb 2021
I can watch you from afar, because it doesn’t burn

You are as foreign to me as the stars

And just like them you have the insolence of setting me on fire when I get too close
100 · Feb 2021
Untitled
A Friend Feb 2021
I guess the worst thing you could steal is pieces of others lives.

You either hurt them or waste their time.

Definitely the worst thing you could steal is another's time. You just can't get that back and we're so insecure about the whole thing that people are convinced we have all the time in the world.

Still, even when we waste others time it's not as though we've made a clean getaway...that's the problem.

We never just take away from another, we always leave something in it's place. A vague feeling of emptiness. Black paint on a white canvas — nothingness that one can physically see.
100 · Aug 2021
Untitled
A Friend Aug 2021
Come see this menagerie
The traumas and fears which once steered me
Put on display and stored behind glass
Like wild beasts, for you dear reader to see
100 · May 2021
Untitled
A Friend May 2021
My single greatest fear,

Is that this has all been a series of mistakes,

I will never be able to unmake.

For every great artist with a closet full of bad paintings,

There is one with only skeletons.
97 · Feb 2021
Untitled
A Friend Feb 2021
It is the baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe.
The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release, the indifferent judge between the high and low.

How can I fight the tide when the deep water held a curse?

It has drowned my every waking thought; but in dreams I soar, breeze-limbed and light.

When I woke, tasting salt, the waves were all about me and darkest night had melted into water’s grave;

But I could not swim, nor move or call out for help.

So I must die a thousand times until I am borne upon the sea that rages within me.
97 · May 2021
Untitled
A Friend May 2021
I could tell you about how I write poems about you — like clockwork.

How every other one I would bitterly title as the last words I would give to you.

How easily I broke my own promises, and how satisfying it was to make you out as something sweeter than you are.

You wouldn’t want to hear about how caught I was in your eyes, in your laugh; in your smile and the words I always took the wrong way.

How delusional I was, how hopeful, how sad, but maybe that would explain the things I can’t find the voice to say.

I think sometimes we take silence for what it isn’t, because we get confused between what we need to be told and what we want to hear.
94 · Jul 2021
Untitled
A Friend Jul 2021
For love?
For love I would do anything
I love in the same way the oppressed go to war
It is never in half measures
94 · Aug 2021
Untitled
A Friend Aug 2021
I have never stopped writing for you
It has just become sadder over time
Lingering on your every word
Hanging myself on each labored breath
Look at what you’ve done
My captive heart still belongs to you
93 · Jun 2021
Untitled
A Friend Jun 2021
You’re no longer here,
But I still write you all these poems
A heartbreaker that breaks their own heart
Is that too a form of art?
Laid bare for your dissection,
Do you gain any form of satisfaction,
As to why I have never offered objection?
It too is a chain
93 · Sep 2021
Untitled
A Friend Sep 2021
We cling to loss
Not because we want them back
But because we drown in the emptiness
That comes with it.
93 · May 2021
Untitled
A Friend May 2021
In the end you were only predictable in your unpredictability
92 · May 2021
Untitled
A Friend May 2021
What is the secret to your rage?

How do you hold your grudge?

What do you tell yourself to commit to your hate?

I sit here and watch how harshly it divides and yet,

Can I learn it too?
92 · Jun 2021
Untitled
A Friend Jun 2021
The heart dies twice—

First when we realize the world is neither as kind nor good as we once believed

The second comes when we are incapable of believing it to be either

The first is borne from necessity

The second serves no further purpose than to illustrate tragedy…
92 · Jun 2021
Untitled
A Friend Jun 2021
I wish I had the words
To tell you I miss you
Rather,
I wish I were allowed
Without disturbing your peace

To tell you how much you mean to me,
Without expectation
91 · May 2021
no.77
A Friend May 2021
I bury you in the marrow of my bones

Forever to be carried in this wreckage

A derelict heart full of curses and portents

Salted wounds and blood in the water

Ships arriving on strange shores

Satellites in eternal free fall

Orbiting stars named for blasphemed gods

Their supplicants and shrines

Long since consumed by fire

Or in moorland, drowned and exhumed

A place once called home, become a tomb
90 · Jul 2021
Untitled
A Friend Jul 2021
I’ve been told each bad poem
Lays the foundation for the next
Each satisfactory one
Tracing its genealogy
Through myriad failures
90 · Jul 2021
Untitled
A Friend Jul 2021
It is the ancient, absent god, seldom spoken of in hushed whispers among certain literary circles.

Sustained by the fervent prayer of a single solemn supplicant.

Chapped palms raised with the melancholy and mettle of a man who has nothing left to lose.

When the sweet and sublime have passed, I still believe in love as though its existence would cease should I stop.
90 · Sep 2021
Untitled
A Friend Sep 2021
How do you expect me to stand on my feet when you keep striking at my ankles?
89 · May 2021
Untitled
A Friend May 2021
Possibly the worst feeling
Is to know you did your best
But even then, it was not enough

So I find myself becoming bitter
You might ask why
For if I were merely sweet,
This pain would have eaten me already
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