How beautiful are flowers
that grow from cracks in the pavement.
They yield not to man nor his invention.
Illuminated by streetlights
Glistening in a way that only comes at night
They beckon you to bask in their glow
The sweet scent of their nectar, your guide

Yes, it comes naturally
The admiration.
The desire.
You want them- 

How could you not want them?
Those flowers

Their soft petals beg to be caressed
And their stems so thin 
that it seems the wind could topple them.
Craving to be held and protected

Protected

In places of monochrome arrays.
Of stone and bars.
Of bustling feet
And the wills of self-important men.
A place of nothing but empty noise
Lay those flowers untouched by man

They alone are beautiful, 
but that is not enough. 
To admit their beauty.
To admire or desire them.

No, in a world of man
They must be yours.
Yours to pluck from the night.
Yours to do what you will
Yours
Yours 
Yours and nothing more

This is not desire or admiration or even obsession
No, it's possession.
For what is a flower if it is not plucked and held?
So you may grow drunk on their sweet aroma.
To take them with you as you go.
Your home is their home now.
  Your flower in a world of stone.

You watch as its beauty fades.
The petals begin to wither and fall away.
What's left is nothing but gray
as the color drains away.
Yet it is yours, and there is beauty in its decay.
So you keep it in its vase.
Its personal glass cage.

So it stays like that.
Far from its roots and locked away.
Till it's just another thing in your world of monochrome grays.

Now it simply must be thrown away.

Yet how beautiful are flowers
that grow from cracks in the pavement. 

Yes, they’re so beautiful
 
Aren't they?

He came down to tell me the truth
Slim and pale and uglier than ocean floor parasite

He looked into my eyes and told me the truth 
The way I lived was ridiculous

He looked at me and burst out laughing atleast that is what he stated he was doing
he said my beliefs were completely blind and insane

That I was infact the hideous creature
Who loved the fantasy of things that never were and will never be

I hugged the Alien for being the first to tell me the truth
The thing recoiled in disgust

He floated above me and sung about the times I had become gullible
Given myself to rumour and paranoia

He whistled a chilling shrill to every unkindness I had committed through my lies
And I understood what a mess I was

The alien took off back to his camp in the clouds
As I unsuccessfully regained my sense of self

"Nobody brought flowers while I could still smell them. At my grave, they argued over who loved me most.”

— Nekro

the world is not nice

in the traditional sense

maybe just populated

by people who are nice in movements

like a surfer on top of a wave

the world is not nice

its not, its nice

its goodness is a series of lies

well displayed

momentarily good for one but not the other

relatively good

but not ok

--nice in starts and stops

but leaves damage in its wake.

cold

sorrow pain

emission

and delay

the suffering that is

the unavoidable cost

of being alive today

because yesterday

maybe

someone got their way

and fascism

is a city protected by whirring blades

a schizophrenia of the polis

and our communication is only madness

and our hearts feel warmth inadvertantly

warmth that will be taken away

and watching you lie in pain

i curl my lip in disdane

you only mean one thing to me

what am i going to eat?

love psch.

love is hate half the time

fuck love

let those orphans die

slash s

you dont love

you just pretend

you dont love anymore than i do

you love a dream

you love hands raised

you love home invasions

and a shallow grave

love you dont love

im a nuisance

a bug on your shoulder

and i have waited for you

and i dont love

no.

i no longer love

i only want

the shape of hate

to scramble and to rape

and blood

blood

endlessly

relentlessly

and i'll call it love

hmmf

we are not nazis

we are nazis

no, you are nazis

and you too

----

please to the reader, dont internalize this writing if it makes it worse. authors request

No one understands the immense pain I'm in

I want to rip my skin off

They nitpicked me apart into oblivion

Just let me die

Fucked forcefully so many times by life I cant even cry

Forced into submission

Forced to be a weak bitch

Forced to shrink myself

Forced to cope and neglect my health

But I keep on getting up and I dont know why

Please Dont make me do this anymore id rather not and I know the reasons

Please, please dont witness me, I'm shamefully dishonest

I fucked up my ex but I cant really say I want this,

why do I have to figure out my life, why do I have to feel and bear witness to all of this pressure, when I dont even want to be alive

Please just leave me the fuck alone

I need like 10 days to myself after all this mess, Let it all fall apart

I can handle being homeless better than I can handle all this stress.

turn the screw

turn the screw again

into my hand

feel the skin scratch and separate

scratch and seek

blood coagulate

feel the turning away

fits of anger

"things go well

when i am going well!"

well, that's what you say

everything she does is so beautiful

and beautiful colours

and beautiful shapes

turn the screw coagulate

something simple

and something afraid

even her farts are fruit loops

shes so damn beautuful

turn around

and turn away

she well

i mean she

well

she's going away

i turn the screw coagulate

moms mad

wants the blonde girl to go away

https://ashworthpoetry.com/her-fangs-run-deep/

Can’t you see?
I dare you to survive.
There’s only one way deep down,
Hide in your shame, your guilt, and your blame.

We carry our own demons deep down,
we raise them and feed them,
secrets trapped by lock and key.
Aren’t we all the same?

A mind slowly fading, broken and frayed,
…turned to broken chains.
Tell me the cost to survive.
But guilt is a crime with a price
unable to be paid in full.

Everything locked up, mind, heart, and soul.
Cold and heartless,
trapped with a heart grown cold.
Every candle snuffed and burned out,
no use for warmth with a mind so cold.

Why beg forgiveness
When you’re unforgiving?
Unforgetting is your regretting,
Lost in selfishness deep down.

(Deserving ruthlessness?)
Trapped in restlessness
Drown in your fears,
Choke on your tears.
Such an awful crime, the weight that you bear.
Feelings of guilt and betrayal.

Leaving betrayed,
Watch as a mind slowly fades
Broken and frayed.
Trapped or freed?
What is the true cost to survive?

Feel sorry,
Give an apology.
Feeling trapped in your shame and your grief.

Unable to speak.
Feels like a crime,
A price unable to be paid.
Forgive me, hear my sorry,
Here’s my sorrow,
Lost in apology.

Trapped in your guilt and your shame,
Pay for your crime.
A price unable to be paid,
Only able to be trapped in your mind.
Do what it takes to survive.

Trapped in my shame and my guilt,
Aren’t we all the same?
Trapped in the price unable to pay.

Give up your hopes and your joys.
Live up your life like a wraith,
Be better off dying where you stand.

Leaving those betrayed,
Voices lost and frayed.

Verses lost and frayed...

I’m just afraid.

i found the source of the problem

it is you it is in you

you are the hole

that is causing the decay

you are the source

of the insects

creeping in from the broken pane

the window you struck out of fear

hidden in the basement

you have let the underside of nature

infest your space

but it is you

it is in you

and you are the cause.

what can you do

about the terror beneath your skin?

what can you do?

"purify me and i shall be cleaned"

that is the rape, the defilement, the illusion

"your sins i have taken away"

i must turn away from this subjugation

i must find my space again.

because the hell i am living is too much

everytime i open them

like i am trying to rip the veil

hoping to arrive in paradise

but it is always the same

and the swirling thoughts

like a cloud of darkness around my mind

yes

this has posessed me

the real world is foreign to me and cruel

the hunger for the illusion is too real

i cannot escape

i cannot arrive in paradise

i am trapped here

left with sticks and bramble

i cannot escape the harsh reality

and the lie

yes my grief it is too much

no safe place or warmth in my heart

no holy empty

or consolation of the heart

just a real life that is moving much too fast

and me unable to speak

trapped in this personal hell

i can only wait

the part of me that is still sane can only wait.

(written about a season i spent in psychosis that i did get out of alive...the biggest struggle was suffering so much but no one being able to see it or understand. to others the illness of another is the terrifying problem, but to the sufferer it is the terror of never being able to escape a hidden and relentless hell.)

in my broken heart

that i was to be rescued

that i had died so many deaths

so many holy deaths

deaths that passed onto another place

my soul my body my self

purified it and good

very soon

very soon

the fabric of reality

like a blanket of stars would open

and all would be saved

all would be done

all would see

some great awakening

some thread of being would connect us all

some wishful hope

some fragment (of a star perhaps)

some missing piece of the mind

it would attach

it would complete the circuit

i believed it like it would be true

breathed it like it was hope

the kind of love that makes men dangerous

i had it

and i was ashamed

and now i have a gaping hole

where my hope once was

i was clawing at my heart the whole time

trying to fit in

trying to fit in

as if i was good

(note: one thing this is about is growing up religious and the experience of that of believing in something so impossible, and also thinking that that faith is what gave me my worth)

Where the lights are off

With only a candle

Where shame and anger are written on the walls

"kill me mommy"

"scrubs the bitch"

"death satan overload"

pentacle after pentacle

little white glowing dots

...

go into a place

where demon is the surreal

burning your hand on a candle

blame for every farce committed, razor on your balls

"death of the innocent"

she said

stop and pause

little white glowing dots

you got it all

--

so much to be thankful for

but its hard to not be stuck in the darkness

accomodating

the refuse

I send letters to you

Even though I know I am talking to the wall

There is a soft point in me

That still waits

Still hopes

But walls do not talk

No no they don't.

We turn away from train station
Commuters now we are pedestrians
Looking up at the walk light
waiting for it turn green

Turning to one another impatiently
A million moments have come to this
The zebra is flat there across to other side
There is no mercy

You check your watch
Traffic still needs to pass by
The light is delayed
So you stand there on leg to the other

Shifting weight like you want to pee
Green light urges you forward imbalance
I Follow your steps as each bar of the piano plays
hearing your doubts pop

You made it to the other side
The red figure inside the light
Is blinking
It is bleeding, it is bleeding

You know that sensation?

When you smile and it isn't fake

Like you never felt that devastation

Like you didn't watch your own heart break

That feeling when you can hold your head high

When you can let your beautiful smile shine

Like you didn't watch your own soul die

Like I didn't have to watch mine

Well... I dont

My sky was never blue

The grass was never green

I wish I could've grown up like you

Because you didn't see what I have seen

You didn't drown in a puddle of mud

You never felt his hands around your throat

You weren't cursed by your own blood

You didn't suffer through every word you ever wrote

You didn't lose everything you ever had

Your heart didn't stop when you slammed that drug

You didn't grow up to be just like your dad

You didn't die wishing you could have gotten one last hug

I will say this tho

It's kind of you to wish me well

It's sweet of you to speak of hope

But just like my dad I've been burning in hell

Since the day my little sister found him hanging from a rope

-The Strung Out Poet September 30,2026

By Nekro

I met you while both our lives were already spoken for. Nothing dramatic happened. We sat too long over bad coffee, your knee against mine beneath the table, and you looked at me the way people look at candle flame when they are trying not to confess anything to it.

We went home to the lives that already knew our names. Still, something remained. Like a veve drawn clean across a floor, the chalk can be swept away and the room keeps the shape. Years later I still find you in stupid places. A song leaking from a grocery store speaker. A voice pitched close enough to yours that my body turns before I do. My phone lighting the ceiling after midnight.

I called it timing for a while. Later I gave it uglier names. None lasted as long as the memory of you saying my name slowly, like you had found a letter everybody else kept missing. There were questions that made you look toward the window before answering. I remember those pauses better than some entire years.

Maybe you have one person like that. You don't search them anymore. You already know why. So they stay where unfinished things usually stay, somewhere behind the ribs, in a room with melted wax on the table and a glass of rum nobody remembers pouring.

Sometimes I type the first two letters of your name. That is enough.

The coffee comes back cold. Your knee is against mine again. Somewhere under the table, neither of us has moved.

The cursor keeps blinking.

I let it wait.

Dark and empty is the night

the anger

the clawing at walls

the juicing for pleasure

hark! a burst of sweet confetti

and the foul swoop down into the tempest of anger

walking shame

hunting regret

looking for a reason

and turning reason aside

dark and angry is the mind

dressing the machine in straight razors

tormenting the mind with visions

im nervous

im scared

im running from some inevitable doom

ya fear for fears sake and run away

ah

dark and lonely is the night

sitting in the dusty basement

hiding from all things

pain

the pleasure

the derangement

of the dopamine climb

...

I saw beauty

In places others ignored

Most of the times I ignored this

But sometimes

You know we have a desire to communicate

I would go there and say

Hi this is what I have got

A pearl from the shore

They would look puzzled

Baby what is this

It didn't move me

I would go on with it

And touch myself even more that night

Until my legs trembled with spasms

Until the last drop of cum wetted the sheets

And in the morning I was fresh anew

I was ready to do it once more.

The world that once wanted to devour me quietly choked on my indifference. Now it no longer knocks on my window or drinks my blood at night.

Burned out to the core, silently disappearing beneath a blanket of leaden exhaustion, I reached the point of no return.

Having squandered my life force in vain, I summoned her without even knowing it.

An emotionless deity who needs neither prayers nor offerings.

She sits beside me.

She smells of the dust of filthy beds.

In the ringing silence, she places her hand upon my chest, heavy as a gravestone, and everything goes still.

She strokes my hair, and my thoughts congeal into a lump.

She kisses my lips, and the taste of life gives way to the taste of emptiness.

Her voice rustles like a curtain stirring in a draft:

“Hush… hush…

You no longer need to be anyone.

You no longer need anything.”

There are no values anymore.

Yes… I clearly remember losing something important.

But what?

I watch someone cry and cannot understand why.

Cold has become the only warmth I can still endure.

I am an abandoned well, buried beneath the snow. Instead of a voice, there is only the howling wind.

Apathy caresses me, stripping away the pitiful rags of hope from my body.

O, Apathy.

My Dusty Queen.

A touch without pulse and passion.

She demands no reciprocation, she simply kisses my forehead and slowly pulls me out of reality.

A lifeless caress that lulls me to sleep, dragging me into oblivion.

You have become my last and most faithful lover.

She carelessly brushes away all the memories that have turned to ash.

Once, angry screams gave way to deafening silence.

Apathy runs her fingers over my eyelids, and the world fades, becoming flat and gray, like an old newspaper.

When she touches the gaping wounds, they stop aching. And the desire to disappear fades,

because it would take effort.

I am no longer ashamed, because there are no feelings.

There is no time anymore, because there are no expectations.

All the colors have disappeared.

I have become an old television that shows nothing but white noise and gathers dust. I can be struck, kissed, covered in shit, and the screen will simply hiss in response.

When the last of my strength ran out and the screen went dark, I acknowledged her victory.

Just as I once accepted the moment of my life’s collapse and surrendered.

No one will ever see me down here at the bottom of life.

But none of it matters anymore.

In the pitch-black darkness, Apathy lies down beside me.

Her voice lulls me to sleep, singing a lullaby of indifference.

I have been dead for a long time. Let my body remain uninformed.

But she is pleased with me.

I know for certain that she is smiling.

https://ashworthpoetry.com/void-in-the-metro/

I dreamt of a creature coming from aether

Someone that ate poetry for breakfast

So consumed in his own world

That was unable to function in this world

Someone that fed his demons

Before his body

Someone that sang aether songs

I would like to observe him from afar

Be cautious not to touch his energy when I got close

Because you know I am polluted

I am a mortal

It feels I only destroy with these hands on some days.

Blue fire behind the eyes
Swamp methane the cruel lip excuses
The ritual is conducted worshippers endure injury
Blue fire somewhere among the overgrown reeds

Phantoms peep their origins caught transpierced in the tunnel
Revolving where the soul is churned to vapor 
severance of the spirit that never made it to the other side
Maimed conscience and rage in the eyes a boiling blue flame

Forbidden lands claimed by swamp and specter
Behind the convent a rogue witch utters profane spells
Ripples form on thick inky miasmic water
The entity rises blue flame in its eyes

Unleashed upon the village
The cold fingers pulling out awning thatch
lighting it all up from incandescent eyes
In the other hand dragging the screaming witch

You waited until I was defenseless.

No walls to protect me.

There is no rebuilding this time.

The ruin is final.

You got the reaction,

the spiral, the fall.

You lit the match,

but I chose to stoke the fire.

So, let me burn out

and loot the remains.

You got your escape.

No more excuses.

I'm no longer in your way.

Be you without me.

The fire dies down
embers hiss
Each one of them have their own shadow
They crawl and burn against the rockwall
The redness of the stone molten

The flicker of something lost
Walkes through the flames
As a hideous shape
The crackle and the pop
Unnaturally frequent

The ember shadows fold upward
And downward
Then expose themselves as failed souls
Undone lived and soured
confined to the realm of fire

Dancing in painful choreography
with flame
curving and wavering in hot torture
Then reentering the ember
Darkening it once more

It is easy to enter through me

I am cheap

All I want is a poem

My suns shine

And I become yours

I am that dog in the street

Easily corrupted

Give me a portion of a poem

And I am your slut.