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Tiffany 5d
Your stem is crooked — your head will fall
without help.  Your neighbour crosses your path
but lends no support.

You must be the only broken thing.

Why?

What hurt you? Did anything hurt you at all? If I could look in the past
Read you like a story
Satisfy the curiosity
— Did you snap
under the weight of a visitor? Or
Is your crown too heavy? Was life too kind; It let you grow fat and happy.
Was life too harsh and you begged for everything on the chance you’d get something at all,
until you had enough, and suddenly found you didn’t know how to stop begging?

There’s no story to read.
I walk away
and don’t think of you

until I’m writing a poem about daisies, and I walk
the same road I’ve walked every day
before — in my mind, in the dark of
my room, with bare feet
wearing a comfortable day dress to bed
because I don’t want to do laundry — and I remember you
I remember spotting you because you were different and
Oh, what a shame: this one is broken
unlike all the others
I had no rush so I stopped and looked
But there was nothing else to see so I kept walking.

This time I do not walk away.
I stop and look
and I think of you,
The broken Shasta Daisy, taller than all the others digging through the pavement
— you will fall further than them all, and you were the only one worth knowing.
I like going on walks, and I was thinking about a daisy I passed the other day...
Never let someone who hasn't been in your shoes tell you how to tie your laces.
Laces are complicated, and they take time to figure out.
If you can't tie your laces, you'll figure it out eventually.
It's okay if you need help tying your laces, we all start somewhere.

Are your laces *****? We can clean them.
Too thin? It'll work out somehow.
Thick? We'll find a way.
If you have velcro instead, that's okay too.

You can't tie your laces in a normal way? We can find another one, even if it's more complex.
If you don't tie your laces, you'll fall in them.
If you do, you can keep walking, maybe even run,
and eventually forget you had laces in the first place.

In the end, you'll realise that,
your laces, messy or neat,
have always been yours,
and that's enough.
So I'm actually quite proud of this one, this poem talks about trauma recovery, it's not an easy journey, but at the end of the day, it's your journey. And you can choose where to "walk."
Consilius May 6
Your love burns with flame,
your touch warms even the coldest of hearts,
yet you walk alone.

You dance with the wind,
and mountains know when you walk,
you leave a trail, with silence you talk.

You weave the dreams
and stitch the time
you're what a rhythm is to a rhyme.

In your eyes secrets no one knows,
no one even dares to ask.

Yet you never hide and you never run.
You wake up with the moon and sleep with the sun.

You just are - in a way no one ever was.
Heidi Franke Apr 24
All this life sought
Was in my feet forward,
Backing into stumble on rocks
With no path, life is an S curve

It hurts to fall hard
Worse yet
Is to not know why
I walked at all

A cool spring morning
In the rain with my canine on lead
Rushes into the glade
Where a doe may rest unaware

Still at old age I know, nothing
Every morning in the dark
My eyes open, for what?
I have lost all meaning of why

Are the next rising suns
Teachers on the green that
Remain after the snow melts
A reason for standing up?

I lost track of my dog in the meadow
As I listen to a poet who says
That tomatoes do not bleed
Is my life a fruit I can eat

Through the spring branches
I see a home below, pale yellow
A white door and a pane of glass
Asking, will I come forward more

An unknown, will I care to find out
Where is the deer and my dog
The door seductively beckons,
Walk this way with strong shoulders

Every day is an opening
For planting new things
Or letting the past burn to ash
Stunned in body and bones my trips to the ground

The knees and hands ******
And worn, as the apple skin
Holds a hole from the worm
I am the fruit as much as the scar that shines, happening now
After you meet your marks, relationships, children, profession all done, no longer needed, just waiting as age wears my body down. What now? When? Once you get here you will know.
I'd walk &/or have
2 parked train cars
ready for your
drunk ***—

Your scant scabby lawn
made such a sight but
you're yet to see my bedroom
so I'm free of judgment
see

all clothes a mess or
clean myself up
I will there, sometime
&
that might be that

&
that is too gooey good
for me.
How hot
Inside how
Much you
Feel not
Like much
AE Mar 2
there it was,
the whole world
at your fingertips
and yet you chose
all the roads of broken glass
and abandoned winds
to plant this pain
in places that ache
for new trees
right here in this home
in this silenced soul
in these tired bones
somehow you chose
to walk with me instead
of running ahead

there it was,
all that I know
about love
Laokos Feb 27
I’m not good enough to write
this poem. these ******* words
won’t come. here I am, feeling
like a dried **** on the grass—
all hard, white and shriveled
obstinately sitting there, surrounded
by all that lush green.
this resistance is a real *******,
sitting on me like a sumo wrestler,
smiling in its power over me.
looking down on me
and controlling me effortlessly.

“you can’t write poetry,
you’re a nobody.
a real lukewarm leftover special.
no one will ever love you.
no one will ever like you.
no one will ever see you.
no one wants you to succeed.
no one wants to read your poetry.
don’t waste your time doing
something you’ll never be good at.
you’re not good enough.
you’re not strong enough.
someone like you could never
be someone like that.
someone like you could never
do something like that.
someone like her would never
love someone like you.
you’re gross,
nobody wants to look at you.
stay home.
don’t do anything.
don’t even try.
give up.”


I mean, this guy’s got a million
of these bumper stickers
and he slaps them all over
the inside of my car
all day, every day—
that is, when he’s not using
my chest as a seat cushion.
it’s gotten to the point where
I now can’t see out of my windshield.
I just wanna go somewhere
but he won’t let me see
where I’m going.
he won’t stop talking.
I can’t hear the music anymore.
I don’t know where I am.
I can’t breathe.
I just know that this car feels
more like solitary confinement
than freedom and the a/c
stopped working a long time ago.

I think I need to stop the car.
I need to open the door
and step out into the light.
I don’t even need to take
off the bumper stickers,
I think I just need to walk
for a while—
move at my natural rhythm again.
like children do before
we start in on them.
before we start building their car
around them and teaching them
to believe in it.

this is you.
you are this car.
except when you’re alone,
then maybe you can leave
the car but never in public,
never in front of other people.
this car will protect you from
them, from the world—
from yourself.
hide in it.

well, I left my car
on the side of the road
some ways back
with the keys in it
and a full tank of gas.
the door’s open,
take it if you need it.
hell, take it if you want it,
I don’t give a ****—
just don’t try
to pick me up in it
if you ever catch up.

                      signed,
                                 ­ 
                               nobody


P.S. watch out for the fat guy in the diaper.
Ylzm Feb 20
I'm a ghost, an empty shell, a stranger amongst flesh
I walk the certain way, contrary, unseen and unheard
Flesh seems unaware of me and my way and walk away
My voice wordlessly soundless and my touch the wind
Spirit and flesh have no fellowship and union, futility

I see the sighted unseeing, stumbling, falling, smiling
Without truth confident the next step is never void
Every fall is knowledge every bone broken is growth
Till the last fall then to sleep eternal, life's done
Without fear, without regrets, for what else is life?
Tristan Corey Feb 13
You walk backwards into dusk,  
feet pressing softly into the sand,  
watching gold melt into violet,  
as if the sky itself were slipping  
into something more comfortable.  

I watch you, always watching,  
the way your hair catches the last light,  
how the wind tries to tangle you in its arms—  
but you are already held, already mine,  
moving toward me even as you walk away.  

You are beautiful like this—  
not just in the glow of the setting sun,  
but in every quiet moment in between,  
in the way your laughter lingers like seafoam,  
in the way your eyes hold the horizon,  
as if you could keep this moment from fading away.
To me, you are the sunset,  
the tide, the sky, its endless depth—  
and I could spend forever watching you.  

Isn’t love like this?  
Moving forward while looking back,  
trusting what’s ahead, knowing what’s behind—  
our footprints stretching side by side,  
even when the tide comes to claim them.  

We walk like this through life,  
not always seeing the road before us,  
but stepping in time, heart to heart,  
toward something we don’t need to name,  
because it is already ours.
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