If you don't wanna understand it, don't.
You're not held to comprehension.
If you don't want to agree, don't.
You're not held to a thing in discussion.
If you don't want to think, don't.
You're still liable for your actions.
If you don't want to speak, don't.
You're still liable for its consequences.

Personally? Don't have a fit,
I don't give a ****.
Smell the flowers!

Not a poem but an inquiry:

Has there ever been or will there be an update where we can add visual elements to our pieces? Sometimes I'll look at a piece of art or a photo and draw inspiration and it really makes more sense if there's that visual aid to go "oh I see what they did there".

I come from another poetry site where you can add photos and have contests based on image prompts, and think that for the majority of us here it could be of a benefit.

Also think this place could do with some contests, maybe not for any real cash value but perhaps some form of reward like being a featured poet for X-amount of time, or free membership perks for X-amount of time. (Don't want to say let's copy allpoetry and do a points system here, the points there don't mean anything anyway)

Just thinking and pondering out loud.

Without a soul
there is no life
only relentless churning
in a word machine
which has never seen
or sorrowed
or loved
or a thousand other things
for it is this that gives the poet's words their wings
it can but try
but with no heart
it cannot truly fly

Nothing there anymore
Everything good thrown out
Did not try to stop it
What is there to talk about?

Your roots run thousands of years deep
whether you’re proud or not, I haven’t heard it through the grapevine
but I see you sitting still on this rotating axis mid-bloom, rising to my height
rising with the Fahrenheit

Look across, I’m with the cacao trees
growing yet again, dying off yet again
resurrecting yet again, growing, again

on the same soil, we know the flavors of dust after biting worse
we are neighboring streets but parallel worlds
we are all closer than magnets can fathom with tempers of exploding atoms if ever pushed that far

What would it take for you to see through my eyes?

Well, could you race a maze the shape of brain creases and make it from start to finish in the time a fading wick will diminish

but I’ll show you the routes
put your heart in my compass and unlearn the pillars of your thoughts for a moment
I’ll lay a darker foundation for you to build on,
only for a moment, a sec, a yoctosecond
and you can return to yourself

Look me in the soul
spit your lies on the asphalt
exhale the truth and nothing but
even if it burns on the way out of you
it hurts me too

But it’s just the air I breathe. We adjust.

Like mother Earth, we adjust and keep growing, keep growing, keep growing, keep growing.