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Duck Oct 2012
Damaged people are dangerous because they know how to survive,
And if you've never been damaged you don't know how it feels to be alive,
See struggle is the sauce that gives success its flavour,
when life kicked you down it was doing you a favour.

Cos it's in your darkest hour, not in prosperity
that you will realise your true ability.
Life dunks you in deep waters not to drown you but to cleanse you.
And that's just the beginning of what it will put you through.
But it's chiselling you down, you won't deflate.
It's not wearing you thin, it's getting you to your fighting weight.
Prosperity makes monsters, adversity makes men.
I believe when you reach the top life will yank you back down again.

You didn't break down, you just had a flat tyre
so get back up and relight that fire.
keep it burning and churning at the pit of your heart
and keep on learning and yearning and never fall apart.

Stare life in the eyes
and say "no matter how many times
my spirit won't break if my drive never dies"
So throw me a burden I won't lose my composure,
It's for this very reason that life gave me shoulders.

Get better not bitter
This weather will wither
I'll turn wounds into wisdom
sadness into spirit
tears to tenacity
I will never quit it

Take a deep breath and concentrate your stare
because a road with no obstacles never took you anywhere.
Check out my YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/duckforpope
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Or just send me a good ol' fashioned email: [email protected]
Francie Lynch Nov 2015
If you've a writer's block,
Keep chiselling.
You'll get relief
When you release the piece.
Poetic T Nov 2014
I turn each off looking behind
For with each light extinguished
The darkness spreads forth
Obscured
Blackness
Dimness
Between the realms, one retreating
The other Greedily filling in,
I walk up the stairs, feeling its
Presence,
Imprint,
Impression
I feel it upon my back
For the light in front Darkness climbing,
Feeling its essence ascending
As it grasps my shoulders, to take me back,
But with a each chiselling upon me
There is just a feeling of presence
Faster I walk,
Cushioned
In
Light,
But as I turn the last essence of white,
Darkness encircles me as I lay quietly
Serenity,
Stillness,
Tranquillity,
I lay motionless, my heartbeat is the
Only presence of sound, my eyes perceiving
All around, and the final darkness I see
Is when my eyes close, and I fully embrace
The darkness, and all was consumed by the **night.
Polar Jul 2019
He carves words he has spoken
Of promises unbroken
whispering into the dark
Chiselling delicately into her bones
With tobacco juice to bring out the tones
Quietly engraving symbols and psalms
Living for the night
Working through to the light
Communing only through dreams
In daylight she's secure
Inside a white Alder tree
Protected and respected
Her spirit flies free
Tony Luxton Mar 2017
The poet's toolbox is
an onerous store for skills
with life and death
and words that ****.
Pandora's box with broken locks.

Hammering words,
chiselling words,
leaving the reader
nailed, *******, glued.

Pulsing phantoms through the brain,
playing tricks, memory ******.
But the writing keeps me sane.
RJVHorton Oct 2015
Shenanigans

Ridiculously unusual
This familiar face,
Peering out of a photograph
Into an empty space,
With the eyes of a child
Where my life began,
Yet with the aging skin
Of a dying man.

Grotesquely beautiful,
This gaping wound,
Oozing its mischief,
Honed and fine tuned,
Perfectly imperfect,
Crafted yet shoddy,
Just a few broken fragments
Where there should be a body.

Extraordinarily ordinary,
I am an unknown name,
Written on a stone
Where all stones look the same,
Where the dreams of strangers
Are too vivid to save,
Archived in a memory,
Concealed in a grave.

Unutterable shenanigans
Of lovers and old friends
Pretentious well-wishers
As my life-force ends,
And kneeling at a headstone
Between photographs aflame
Is me, as a child,
Chiselling my name.

© RJVHorton2015
b mafika Sep 2015
No-one wants your bruised heart. They
don't want your sinking eyes,
still sinking.
Don't go to them
with your hot-flaccid arms and legs, at the ready to melt - they
are not concerned with the currency of high-sloped waves.
Or the heavy part of the ocean that speaks
only to itself and the sky.

Realise that implosions, for them,
are silent
and boring - now, you are implosions:
your voice, your thoughts, your blockings, constantly
*******.

But sweep it all under some dusty rug, for you
to trip on later, because they
don't want anything of you that is not happy.
Drain your being of all its depths.
Then continue every day as a sculptor: chiselling
  at yourself until you form a smile;
filling your sockets with sand.
Deception is the art they prefer.
A year of loneliness, and distance and idled youth
PYG's Whisper Apr 2019
I’ve been needing your lies
I’ve been craving your poison
I’ve been missing your demons
I’ve been loving your hater
While I was playing with death
While it was ******* me upside down
While I was freezing face to hell
I’ve been moaning your name
When my hands were trembling
When my soul was jumping
When my veins were twisting
I howled your April’s farewell
Once Azrael was invited
And the sky was open
Then my mind got naked
Your shadow was my only Savior
My voice was resonating
But from your ears was forbidden
My snow capped depth was on the summit of its alp
Pleading you to be its shield
That’s when you threw it into a dark swamp
Claiming that you were lost in a blinded place
Everything was mute and your bones were broke
But I saw you secretly radiating in a crystal ball
You thought I’m nowhere nearer
Was it amusing to fool a downcast lifer?
You were pushing my destiny to its sharp ending chapter
Below the belts freedom was dedicated to a shrewd sinner
Meanwhile I’ve been taken to where nothing left to catch
Failures over the time of my rotten life have built my forgotten grave
Gloomy butterflies surrounded my sick grove
No flowers to bloom no hope to ****
No words to draw no feelings to touch
No time to rush no remorse to scratch
The door of paradise was barely visible
But the clouds drove me to a fiery jungle
I begged life to be my sucker
One last elegiac parting with winter
But death was an invincible fighter
Loneliness was feeding my blur future
Chiselling out my anxiety within four blank walls
Then stirred up a wild storm of toxic fears
Moving on was the synonym of stuck in a rut
A sterile heart gave up on its darned patience
Charcoaled love erased its existence
Dry tears chained to these anorexic cheeks
You shutdown the light you once heated up
Now I’m sober yet drunk on my coma
Trying to perforate your karma
While cleaning up my ugly Fantasia.
Where I was your moon and you were my star
As a poet, I believe that my voice needs to be heard and my experiences need to be written, I used to write about the **** THEY went through, I used to care about THEM, I used to put THEM first and me last, I used to spend endless sleepless nights trying to comfort THEM, write for THEM, slam for THEM. but I never listened to myself, I never dared to say no to THEM in order to protect ME, that's why and how I ended up stuck in a wild war between LIFE AND DEATH. Where only ME left behind while THEY all escaped and enjoyed their victory 'cause simply they ****** all my energy and I wasn't a needy anymore. So I got lost and anxiety took advantage of me.
Many fans betrayed me, and made up stories about me just ‘because I wasn’t available to hear THEIR stories, to wipe THEIR tears and to be THEIR voice of hope, too many FAKE FRIENDS AND LOVERS finally got caught up and THEY shamelessly exposed their true nature and loneliness kept me company.
This poem is all about ME, is all about my battle with my illness last year, it was a result of many years of ups and down, many years of sadness, mental breakdown and depression, nothing is clear nothing is the same anymore and I don't know where am I going from here, the only reality that I can't cover up or deny is the fact that I’m still alive… miraculously..
I don't have anything else to say, I’ll let my poem talk about my biggest disappointments...
Thanks for everyone who still loves and supports PYG's Whisper, I came back 'cause of your prayers and yearnings, thanks for everything.
I can’t promise that I’ll come back the same, a part of me is already dead but I’ll let my pen mess with all the criminals who killed my vibe.
-PYG's Whisper
Andy N Dec 2016
Lost in gutter talk,
The history books
Suggest it was his two brothers
Who took him to the fair
At Longford Park
Boasting of dead fireflies
Instead of fish in little bags,

And follicles of lights
In the ghost house
Almost invisible from
The roller coasters
Descending from the sky
Like space rockets
Replacing sledges.  

Crossing the meadows
Blanked in snow
With echoing laughter
The reports stated
Then missing *****
At coconuts stall
Then footballs

Before proclaiming
It was fixed
And gave up wandering
Over to the roller coaster
Leaving Billy stood there
Protesting it wasn’t

******* cheap gobsuckers
Hiding his tears
Turning a perfect illustration
Into a pastoral scene
Of fireworks
Kissing the moon

Tying themselves up
In his mouth
As a attendant said
‘Six shots for two quid, son’
Accompanying over each shot
‘Lower, lower, lower’

Crossing shots over the tins
Like pennies in keyholes
Wrestling with uneven prayers
Chiselling his nerves
Over sweatshop erected fingertips
‘Lower, lower, lower’

Knifing through
His childhood
One shot after
The other
With each target
He shot through.
(According to the history books Billy the Kid was a known hitman in Stretford in the 1970s)
Mark Armstrong Feb 2018
Too old for a visa, too young for the farm
Too straight for the army, too gay for the guards
If you’ve got no calling, no fella, no wife
Have a bunk in the hall at Cape Christ

Walk a dowry down the aisle on a leash and a promise
Hand on holster handing over the hostage
On a dotted line date with a beard-slash-bride
And need a Roman ransom? Think Christ

If you’re sick of the same ***** giving you grief
Don’t lower yourself, turn the other cheek
And if he breaks your jaw, then my advice?
Don’t come running to me, blame Christ

Give the devil on your shoulder a little nibble
Every now and again to keep things civil
And before the tread’s worn off your conscience, right...
Draw a cross in the air and call Christ

What do you sell the man who’s seen it all?
Ketamine, bath salts, Adam and Paul
If sir needle and pipes says he needs a new vice
Pull the spiritual card and play Christ

When you’ve just reconciled yourself with death
And they want a labrat for the time you’ve left
When the doctors too fond of his own **** voice
**** the medicine man, choose Christ

Have you been leading death on a wild goose chase?
Trying to buy some time to clean your slate?
Call a priest around, he’ll set things right
When you’re ready to croak it, plead Christ

The Word rattles in the chests of the last clergymen
Who drop dead like the devil overheard-ye-and
The women look willing while the men look bored
But they couldn’t trust women with the Word of the Lord

Unless the Eucharist feels like chiselling a nick
Off the philosophers stone and swigging it quick-ly
Down with a bottle of B
Then I guess it’s not for me
Chiselling away
through a mountain of clay
the mole of a man
lays his hand to creation

I'm watching the,
'if I can build it so can you'
show
on channel two of a faraway
Internet pay as you go station

it's something to do
until
my ship comes in
and come in it will
but until then
I'll be one of those men
who chisel away
and pray for the end
to be quick.
hellopoet Apr 2015
Etched in my heart, patterned chiselling emotion

Under foot the mossy down through forgotten paths

jolted by breath, your air reminds me of that time

now you have gone away into the sun and shade

playing and wandering in another clime and place

among countless souls all tucked neatly away

behind numerous stone markers, row upon row

like counting bits of sand too numerous to hold

whose gravelly grains have scattered in my mind

reflecting serenely what once was yours and mine
it's building itself and building up from the ground
the only sound is the sound of machines,

I have dreams within dreams of machines making machines,
a nightmare of spare parts within a nightmare of no living creatures,
machines chiselling features of machines which are the creatures inhabiting my dreams,
and sometimes, the screams of machines giving birth to machines in the worst of my dreams seems unbearable.
hellopoet Dec 2015
Etched in my heart, patterned chiselling emotion

Under foot the mossy down through forgotten paths

jolted by breath, your air reminds me of that time

now you have gone away into the sun and shade

playing and wandering in another clime and place

among countless souls all tucked neatly away

behind numerous stone markers, row upon row

like counting bits of sand too numerous to hold

whose gravelly grains have scattered in my mind

reflecting serenely what once was yours and mine*




_ _ __ ✏
○●
°
nivek Dec 2023
chiselling a moments randomness
to form from granite some act of love
in this ashen beating heart blood red
that will finally run dry, run dry
run dry until all loved out be dead.
Athos Jul 2
Music from another time
Begins to fill my ears,
And my mind gets flooded
With memories of then.

Memories of happiness,
Warm like a sunny day in April;
Memories of love,
Ever-consuming and euphoric;
Memories of agony,
Hollow lies and hollow heart;
Memories of confusion,
Fog flooding my mind at all times.

But there is one memory that stands out more than the others:
The memory of my death.
How I slowly lost my spark,
And was too aware of the cold.
How I slowly lost all meaning,
And just wished for an end that felt real.
How I slowly lost myself,
And I wasn’t sure if I was worth knowing anymore.
How I slowly died,
And I didn't even realize until I built myself up again.

I didn't die with a last breath.
I could feel my lungs inhale and exhale the air.
I didn't die knowing I was dying.
I thought I was getting better.
I didn't die, in my head —
I kept moving, too fast to notice.
But I died in my memories.
And realized only now.

But I was born again.
I'm not writing from my grave,
I'm writing from my pedestal.
Like a statue rising from cold stone,
I carved myself into someone new.
Painful, like sculpting pieces of myself out
From the block of marble I'm working on.
Slow, because I only have my own hands
And no other tools to work.
Strong, like the quartz
I chose to use and cherish.
Elegant, like the lines and curves
That I'm chiselling.

I died.
And when I tried living again,
I got killed.
But I already died twice.
This time, I'll grow wings
And be the strong phoenix,
Returning from the ashes.
We should be making a tapestry,
a bit like the Bayeux one
but perhaps one that shows
real history
or
painting on cave walls
as cities fall,
maybe
chiselling into stone
the names of all the boys
who won't come home,

we should be doing something.
What is left are the echoes rebounding in the scaffolding, in the crumbling of monuments, in the taking of the sacraments and they are ringing out Hosanna in my ears.

advancing years?
and that could be so,
but the years make
no
advances unto me.

I may be lost amongst the sages
chiselling words out from rock faces
or it could be just a dream.

If I have loved you and
not shown it
then
the blame is mine
I own it

this is me and
all I'll be
is all in
everything I see
and I see
everything I want
to be in me.
His eyes became brittle
spittle
running down his chin
he
wants to move on
but
doesn't know how
to begin,
so
he spends the day
chiselling away
at his memories
trying
to forget.

— The End —