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Andy Mann May 3
There is an ache that folds
like paper
soaked through,
crumpled in the cold,
collapsing
centre
of me.

With nothing more than a whisper,
it returns,
as if just moments before
I suffered this mortal injury.

Its power unbound,
ready to consume me
if I let it.

Some days,
I beg this ache to vanish,
leave me hollow.

It guards me from healing,
a quiet, faithful dog,
licking old wounds
to keep them open.

I sink into this quicksand of memory,
then fossilize in grief’s amber,
trapped.

How can I let it go,
when its grip
is all I have known?

And yet, I breathe it still,
not by choice,
but because forgetting
would mean losing the last of it.

I move through sorrow’s veil,
a torn page curling on wind,
almost-free.
For anyone who’s ever found it hard to let go of what once was.
Gustavo G May 2
I am weird  
Born weird  
I am the only one who sees it?  
Can I fake it?  
Can I hide it?

Everyone wears a mask.

Some hide feelings,  
Others hide desires.

But mine...  
Mine is different.

It hides not what I feel,  
Not what I want...  
But who I am.

To hide who I am:  
Differently weird.
Gustavo G Apr 30
I am weird  
Born weird  
Since the first breath  
Since the first blink  
I knew it.  
I felt it.  
I was… weird.

And with the weirdness  
Came the pain  
The pain of knowing  
The pain of self conscious
The pain of being... weard

And in that pain  
A cold, cruel hope—  
To change.  
Change.  
Change…



Impossible.  
Change.
There was stillness, all was held in place.
Untouched beneath the world’s design.
Particles drifted in quantum space.
Slates unmarked by hand or time.

Trauma struck as it cracked, it would stir.
The mind betrayed and the self, unmade.
A tremor passed like my whispers slurred.
And from my depths, the void would invade.

fractured pulses spread and came apart.
The fixed quantum law began to bend.
Reality unravels, alongside the heart,
broken strands of thought began to descend.

Screamed echoes take a visual shape.
Waves collide in the fractured pulses.
What once was whole, begins breaking down.
Protections kept, now stripped from their holsters.  

Energies spin untethered, unbound.
The self just dissolves, with no grip to keep.
The sky starts crying with quantum sound.
as shadows stretch by a time growing deep.

The mind, a mirror, shattered and gold.
Reflecting a new empty void from within it.
Each thought disperses and shatters its mold.
Where once was trust, now grows resentment.

A field of force has been left unstable.
Blackening a heart that is no longer true.
Where once was love, now hate fragmented.
The self, adrift. Forced to weather through.

In my withering thought, the echoes still roam.
Their dreamscape heaven has been swept away.
The pulse of life now hardened to stone.
My silhouette dwells in the shades of gray.

And still when my skies cry with quantum sound,
The whimpers of essence frowning frail and thin.
The hope that was pure can no longer he found.
The self is restricted from all it might have been.

♦ Đerek Λbraxas ♦
You see what lies before,
Yet chase what could be more.
The simple stands concrete,
But ease eludes your feet.
No space to find complete.
Dreams shape what might unfold,
Yet quake where thoughts take hold.
You see, you know, you stall
A foe that builds a wall.
No fight can break its call.
Time bends, it carves, it breaks,
A paradox that takes.
In shadows, thoughts conceal
The paths you long to feel.
You row through waves unreal.
Infinity’s a trap,
A boundless, woeful map.
It twists what minds can know,
And kills where thoughts still grow.
Let ignorance bestow.
To stop, you must let go,
Release the undertow.
The void’s last kiss will miss
If will can break this bliss.
Step back from thought’s abyss.
Beyond the self, it lies
A truth no mind defines.
To name it is to bind,
To seek it is to grind.
The mystery’s unconfined.
Tucker Dobson Apr 26
Some of them say we were split at the start
Off I go stumbling, a half-cocked Cortes
After Venus who has part of my heart
"This gold is for God," my grinning mouth says

Some of these brothers were split right in two
By saw on the rawest end of the deal
Standing right next to that heavenbound crew
Of me does this old world quite worthy feel

Some of my feelings are split as of now
I want to stand, ask, and be justified
But as indignation pulses my brow
Holy teeth rake and scrape out the inside

Perhaps I'm just grinding salt into flesh
Trying by brute force to make the two mesh
Written in March 2024
Andy Mann Apr 25
A figure lurks in the shadows,
its gaze fixed on me,
expectant
hungry
lifeless.

As I walk on the narrow path
of life – unaware at first,
I feel its presence
slowing my steps with unseen weight
like stones filling my pockets underwater.
The sun dims when its near,
colours leaching from the world.
I want to run,
but the path narrows,
thins to a tightrope beneath me.

The figure waits
forever patient,
sometimes distant as mountains,
sometimes close as my own shadow.

It grabs the coattails
of my existence,
clawing its way closer
with each heartbeat,
each exhale,
each moment of forgetting.
Until I can feel
its breath
on my neck.

It whispers in the voice I know too well,
murmurs dressed as memory,
lullabies of failure,
groans of what might have been.

I do not turn,
But I know it waits.

A figure lurks in the shadows,
Still, I walk on.
I have places to go
Before it takes me.
This poem explores the quiet weight of mortality, regret, and inner resistance.
After a sprint for several years,
Amidst the din and bustle,
I sat one day, quiet… to think.
No phone, no plan, no subtle hustle.

The world kept spinning just the same,
But something in me asked to stay—
To watch the wind move through the trees,
To feel the weight of just one day.

I traced my steps in silent thought,
Each victory, each sleepless night.
Were all these miles I chased so far
Still burning with their promised light?

I didn’t judge, I didn’t grieve—
Just let the questions slowly land.
Had I been present as I ran?
Did I still know where I began?

There in that pause, I met myself—
Not the name or role I’d worn,
But something softer, more alive—
The part of me not built for scorn.

It whispered not of wrong or right,
But simply asked, with open grace:
Is this the path you meant to walk?
And do you know your truest place?

No thunder struck, no answer came,
Just stillness deep and strangely kind.
A quiet room, a steady breath—
The rarest peace: a quiet mind.

Somewhere beyond the ticking clocks,
A bird took flight without a sound.
The air grew light. The moment stretched.
Along the window rim, a star blinked.


Susanta Pattnayak
As cast into light,
a shadow appears–
a quiet figure, stitched our heels,
moving as we move,
never speaking,
never sleeping.

It doesn’t beg to be seen–
yet it is always there.

It holds what we bury–
fear, denial, and grief;
the voices of fallacy,
the weight of dreams deferred.
In its void,
It collects the pieces
of what we choose to ignore.
The past echoes there.
The burden breathes there.
The purpose waits there.
Still.
Watching.
Black, like every other.

Peace, legacy, desire, love,
life, time, power, freedom–
the purpose we carry,
even in the dark.

Some move through life unaware of its presence.
At times, the shadow devours us as it follows,
becoming the void itself,
the same void we long to escape.

Like the birds that flow within the sky.
Like the wind that goes where it must.
Like art that forgets its maker.
Like the planets, moving by their own will.
Like a name, whispered into time itself.
Like any form it follows, stone, trees, dust.

It does not leave us,
It becomes whole.
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