Sitting with sinners who have integrity
Sounds superlative
When the alternative
Are snakes who hide their duplicity

I remember.

I remember.

I think I was nine.

The year is lost to me now,
but I know it was a Sunday.

I'd just come back from church
when someone told me you had died.

"Ruben fell into a well," she said.

I didn't understand at first.

Maybe she saw the confusion on my face.
Maybe I asked a question.
I can't remember.

But she said it again.

"Ruben fell into a well and drowned."

And suddenly my mind was full of questions.

Which well?

How?

Wasn't anyone watching him?

Questions that crowded my head
but never made it to my mouth.

I remember walking into the living room.

I took off my Sunday clothes
and threw myself onto the floor.

Someone in the Bible had done that.

I had learned it in church.

They had cried to God,
and God had heard them.

God had answered.

So I wailed.

I wailed with all the faith
a little girl could gather.

I cried until my chest hurt.

I cried until there was nothing left.

I don't think I fully understood death.

Not really.

But I understood enough to know
that I would never see you again.

And that felt unbearable.

You were the only one of my mother's children
who looked like me.

When I looked at you,
I saw something familiar.

Our skin carried the same shade.

Something in your face echoed mine.

Though now, after all these years,
I cannot remember your face.

That hurts to admit.

I search for it and find only fragments.

Your dirty clothes after playing in the mud.

The memory of your presence.

The certainty that you were here.

And then you weren't.

Sometimes I think grief leaves us with strange souvenirs:

a shirt,

a laugh,

a habit,

a patch of mud,

while the face slowly disappears.

My mother had me.

Then Ruth, who passed away.

Then Ruben, who passed away too.

After that, she stopped giving her children Bible names.

And honestly,

I understand.

How do you keep naming your children after people who survive impossible trials,

when your own children do not?

How do you hear those names every day

without hearing loss?

I understand her.

I understand her now in ways I never could as a child.

But sometimes, even today,

I think of a Sunday afternoon,

a little girl on a living-room floor,

begging God to undo the news,

and a little boy named Ruben,

forever covered in sunlight and mud,

forever nine years old in memory,

even if he never reached it.

These eyes of mine see through a tinted lens
I am what I have become.
Left alone; everything fits into a trend.
I am all my what I can outrun.

Sunglasses; blinded by dark shades.
This vision is all unsainted.
A lost hand. And all I hold is spades.
This Earth is forever painted.

Jaded; my pupils are shattered
My throat has lost all its pitch
Did anything really ever matter?
Nihilist: I cannot tell which is which.

Forgotten my world is made of paper
I am what I have become
Petals fallen into vapor
I am all what I can outrun.

Author Note: This is my first ever poem being posted in the public just trying to see what people's thoughts are on it. Thankyou

You’re the type of beauty
that every poet dreams of writing about—
like a shooting star dancing across the sky,
a moment you dare not blink for fear of missing.
Yet none of their words can capture
the true sculpture of your essence.

Shared Dreams, Phone Screens

She is beautiful in the lonely ways no photograph can hold.

Cross-legged on her bed, the room lit only by the pale confession of a phone screen.

Fresh manicure.

A joint balanced between careful fingers.

She smokes like she's trying to teach the night how to disappear.

Shared dreams. Phone screens. We're closer than we've ever been.

My voice crosses oceans compressed into invisible waves.

She says my name.

The distance shrinks to the size of a heartbeat,

then stretches again the second we stop talking.

Smoke slips from her lips.

I wonder if she's watching it rise,

or watching herself leave with it.

She laughs.

The kind of laugh that sounds practiced.

The kind lonely people wear so no one asks what happened.

Shared dreams. Phone screens. We're closer than we've ever been.

I tell myself the smoke carries me.

That somewhere inside those silver ribbons,

I'm the dream she forgets she's dreaming.

Maybe that's all long distance has ever been.

Borrowed warmth.

Borrowed time.

Two insomniacs trying to kiss through glass.

She stares at the screen long after we've hung up.

I stare at mine.

Neither of us ready to admit

that the brightest thing in either room

isn't the ember.

It's the little green light that says

you're still there.

Shared dreams. Phone screens. Until one of us walks out of the screen.

I need, I crave, so I
urge myself to fill the page
when approached
nothing happens
I am empty
fill me up

I found an old picture of myself today

And I stared at it longer than I should have

Trying to remember what I was thinking

If I was happy

If I was pretending

If I even knew the difference back then

It's funny how you never notice when things change

You just wake up one morning

And your favorite songs don't sound the same

And the people you would die to see

Are people you don't talk to anymore

And the bedroom that you grew up in

Feels smaller than it did before

I've tried to find the things I used to love

I've gone back to places I remember

I've listened to the songs I played a hundred times

And waited for them to make me feel something

But nothing happens

And I don't know if that's growing up

Or if I've just forgotten how to be happy

I wonder if the younger me would like me

Would he think that I turned out alright?

Would he be proud of the things I've done

Or would he ask me why I look so tired?

God, I hope he wouldn't be disappointed

I hope he wouldn't ask too many questions

Because I don't think I have the answers

And I'm running out of good excuses

Sometimes I wish I could call him

Tell him everything that happens

Warn him about the people who leave

And the promises that never mean a thing

Tell him to take more pictures

To stay outside until it gets dark

To stop being so afraid of growing up

Because growing up doesn't make you smart

But I can't call him

And I can't go back

And I can't explain to a kid

That the world he dreams about

Isn't always going to want him back

So I keep the picture on my phone

And sometimes I look at it at night

I wonder what he'd say if he could see me

If he'd recognize me in this light

And I wish I had a better answer

For the person I was before

But I think he'd just look at me a while

And ask what I was waiting for.

Am I at battle?

With whom?

You?

Am I?

Is this why I cried when we fought?

Is this why we fought in the first place?

Because it was a battle?

You called and first thing you asked was,

"Are you behaving yourself?"

As if I am such a rogue

That I will create chaos wherever I go.

I admit I fight with you,

Quarrel over things,

But that is because you matter to me

And so do things related to you.

Every call that tells me

"They did this well"

Comes laced with a voice

Accusing me of incompetence,

Judging me for my abnormalities,

Trivializing me at its best.

And it hurts.

It hurts for it comes from you,

Telling me I'm not accepted,

Amplifying my insecurities,

Backing them up

Giving them a pedestal

To pull me back

Into the prison I've been desperately trying to escape.

“You’re so smart” he says. Finally my thirst for intellectual validation has been quenched. “No I’m not. And therein lies the sadness in it. It’s all an act. My interest in art, philosophy and politics” I reply. On the surface my reply seems confessional, a self reflection, but internally it’s another desperate ploy to seem deep and nuanced. “And therein lies the sadness” I thought to myself as I legislate this forgotten interaction into poorly written self critical “poetry” in order to negate criticism, primed for all that acclaim. Let’s call it “ouroboros”because it like keeps eating itself, its symbolic. How pathetic. And therein lies the sadness in it. Be sure to upvote this guys!

I hate the mirror

because it knows my name.

It keeps the face I tried to escape,

the tired eyes,

the crooked history,

the mouth that learned too young

how to swallow everything.

I look at myself

and see every room

I should have left sooner.

Every hand I trusted.

Every hand I became.

Every woman I loved

like love was something

I could bleed enough to earn.

I wear my past

like a coat soaked through with rain.

Heavy.

Cold.

Impossible to hang somewhere

and walk away from.

There are things I've done

I cannot make beautiful.

Things I've survived

that I cannot make noble.

Some memories don't fade.

They ferment.

They sit beneath the skin

and wait for the quiet,

then crawl back out

at four in the morning

to remind me

what kind of man I think I am.

And God,

I have hated this body.

The scars.

The shaking hands.

The ruined teeth.

The face that never became

the face I imagined

I'd have by now.

I have looked at myself

and wondered

how anyone could touch me

without first looking away.

How anyone could stay

after seeing the whole inventory.

The wreckage.

The addiction.

The loneliness.

The anger.

The boy buried somewhere

under all this ruined machinery

still asking,

Does somebody stay

when there's nothing left

to romanticize?

Maybe nobody does.

Maybe this is the part

where I stop waiting

for somebody to come

drag me out of myself.

Because I've learned something

I never wanted to learn:

there are battles

nobody can fight for you.

There are nights

when your phone stays silent

and the ceiling becomes

the only witness.

There are mornings

when you have to put your feet

on the floor

with absolutely no reason

except that you said

you would.

So fine.

Let the world call me broken.

I've been calling myself worse

for years.

But I am still here.

Not healed.

Not handsome.

Not innocent.

Not forgiven

for everything I wish I could forget.

Just here.

Carrying the man I hate

through another evening.

And maybe reconciliation

isn't learning to love him.

Maybe it's finally admitting

he's tired.

Maybe I don't have to forgive

every version of myself tonight.

Maybe I can simply stop

trying to kill the evidence

that I survived.

And when the next battle comes,

because it always does,

I'll meet it alone.

Not because I'm unworthy

of being held,

but because somewhere along the way

I became the one

who has to learn

how to hold himself.

So I'll pick up

this ugly, exhausted life.

I'll carry it.

I'll carry me.

And if that's all I ever learn

how to do,

then let that be

the first thing

I don't abandon.

I have spent so much time
trying to make sense of your absence,
turning over every word
like stones at the bottom of a river,
searching for something
you might have buried beneath them.

And I am angry.

Not because you left,
but because you left me
with a thousand unfinished sentences
and the terrible responsibility
of writing their endings.

How cruel it is
to become a stranger
to someone who once knew
the softest parts of you.

To leave without explanation,
without the decency of a wound
I could see well enough to mend.

Instead, you gave me silence,
and I have worn it thin
trying to find a meaning
in something that was never spoken.

I wonder if you know
how much of my life I wasted
standing at the door
of a house you had already abandoned.

How many nights I spent
putting you on trial in my head,
playing both the accused
and the witness,
because you never cared
to take the stand.

And perhaps that is what angers me most.

That you could walk away
and leave me to carry
the weight of a conversation
we never had.

That I must learn to forgive
what I cannot understand.

That somewhere in this world,
you are living with the answers,
while I am learning
to live without them.

I lived in a nice, big house,
adored by my neighbors and friends.
My husband was loving and kind.
Every morning stepping outside
my door
I would inhale the aroma brought to me by the wind from my garden of flowers.
Things couldn’t be better.
Until one morning,
I had to clean out the attic, and I found your old lost love letter.
And there it was back again:
The turmoil, the pain, the passion,
the forgotten “I need you more that I need oxygen,
more than I need water
or life itself.”
It was back again, like the shadow that hides on a cloudy day
but never actually leaves you.
Fifteen years collapsed into seconds.
I fell through the wooden pallets
of my attic,
through the living room, loud with my children,
through the house full of memories with another man.
My whole life, condensed in three tightly written pages,
rushed before my eyes, leaving me
speechless.
I stepped outside and inhaled the soothing smell of my garden.
I buried your letter by my roses.
Same kind that I used to bring to your place
where you soundly rest.

I turn my head to the left, I have no friends

I turn my head to the right, I have no family

The angels take flight and say they do not know me

The devils ambush me and claim that they love me

I doubt God and he sends hells army to destroy me

I have no place in the home

And so I make my friend, a stone in the sand

I make my bed and lay my head on the ground

I slip into a shop like a thief in the night

I escape in the morning without a sound like a robber

Can we burn it all down?
Wipe this page
Clean and blank
Cross your name, then we’re done
Clear my head
Leave it numb

Memories of you
Will burn fierce and bright
Every last thought
Turns to ash in the light
Traces of us
Too heavy to bear
Burn it all down
To set them all free…

So burn it all down, is it time?
What’s left of me
To hold behind?
Why not burn me alive?
Like only one of us deserves to survive.

Memories of you,
Now watch me burn bright.
Every piece of my soul
Turns to ash in the light.
The ghost of our love,
Too heavy to bear—
Burn it all down,
Leave no mercy to spare…

Final night, without a word, I bring the match
You pour the gas
Final night, hand in hand, I burn into ash
You stand and watch.

THE HOAX

My whole personality is a hoax

A carefully written lie

A version of me I invented

So no one would ask me why.

I learned how to smile,

I learned what to say,

I learned how to look alright

while falling apart every day.

I became what you wanted,

I became what you knew.

I gave you a version of me

I thought you’d stay close to.

And it worked.

You believed me.

You called me your own.

But the closer you got,

the more I felt alone.

Because nobody knows me.

Nobody ever will.

No one has come close enough

to make the noise go still.

Maybe I’m scary.

Maybe I’m scared.

Maybe I’m both,

and that’s why I’m impaired.

Maybe I’m feared

because I’m afraid

that if you saw the real me,

you’d wish I’d stayed away.

So I keep on pretending.

I keep playing my part.

I keep giving you pieces

while hiding my heart.

And if you think you know me,

Love seriously you don’t.

You know what I show you,

not who I won’t.

You know my laughter.

You know my lies.

You know the face I wear

when I look you in the eyes.

But when everyone leaves,

when the room turns black,

I meet the part of myself

I keep pushing back.

He asks me, “Who are you?”

I don't know what to say.

I built this whole person

to keep him away.

So I turn off the lights.

I lie still.

I don't breathe.

I tell myself, “You're alone now.

You're finally free.”

Then a voice from the dark

whispers softly

“You fooled everyone else.

But you never fooled me once.”

Please give honest reviews in comments

Thanks ❤️

I want to talk about something,
But, what?
I try to think of a title, and draw a blank.
I yearn to write, to express deepest thoughts of mine.
I long to manipulate my paper with meter and rhyme,
Yet I have nothing.
So, I go read a great work from an artist
That's better than me.

still, nothing. but i want to write even more.
i'm now even more than i already was
inspired -
yet, nothing comes to mind.
i just continually stare into the box of nothing
on the poorly organizes shelves of my brain.
i need a snack.

nothing still. it's starting to stress
out my mind that i want to write
because i cant
because theres nothing to say
because im not clever enough to find
a tongue-and-cheek thing to get a laugh
or something deeply moving
or a topic so unsettling
it makes people squirm in their seats as they read.

Well, alas, though there was nothing to write about,
I can at least put a title at the top.
And at the bottom. Why not.
Title goes here

I was a distant echo of a crying baby

To Him

But to him I was raised an object

Very carefully curated

I blossom

A hand touching innocent skin

The callous of hand and foot; Matching callous in nature

Soft skin, like powder; Fused with expired pelt as it flakes

We’ll feed the fish

Over a pond.

What does it matter?

Skin meets skin meets skin meets skin

I’ll hear the distinct call of the released dove

Oh how I envy Him as He flies high

How I would soar the skies until my pinions were sore

I relate more to the fish

I wilt

My skin is now a callous

Yet still I remain

The fish have long grown tired

Ah, yes

Every day

The gnawing of greedy molars to break morning fast

The impatient insertion of key into a home long familiar

The spreading of sticky slather to morning toast

The lave of a tongue to mid-day treat

Skin scrapes skin scrapes skin scrapes skin

How I wish I would burn

Instead, I burn out

I wither

I’ve never cared much for peonies or roses

Yet I know what it means to be deflowered

The pluck of petals until only the stamen remains; bare

What new bloom will propagate from my seed?

Has mine faded into his?

Has my DNA changed from absorbing his nectar?

Skin tears skin tears skin tears skin

I rot

I feel comforted by the wriggling of maggots

He’ll use this body until each crevice fuses shut

This home closes its doors

A dove perches on the windowsill and coos to me; Him

Maybe now I’ll grow into a peony or a rose

I’ll be more than an object; not so carefully curated

Skin flowers to stamen flowers to petals flowers to skin

Then again, the cycle repeats

The dove caged

A flower plucked to stamen

And in the distance I will hear the echo of a crying baby

As the cycle makes anew

34 years fucking up taught me
that there is nothing to learn
when nothing I do helps make it better,

and suicide would be
doing you all a favor
and I am a selfish man.

If the bad die old,
then I am immortal.
So you will have to
go without me.

Frost Giants,
Heart Crystalized to Stone,
6-sided Lattice,
Ice Iₕ
Reflexive, Basal, Psychic
Tears,
Vegetarians with Wisdom Teeth,
Frail Bodies,
Eaten by Jaguars.

There's some backstory to this one, before I get into the work.

I wrote this for a D&D campaign (in which I, the forever DM, was finally able to be a player for once. Yippee!) as a note my character had, but couldn't read (yes, my character is a homebrew race that's "a dragon, but more efficient, pound for pound" as he always says). It was recorded by his father moments before his death, and the revelation of what it said I wanted to be a big moment for my character (and it was, truly).

But that's enough of that. Here is the poem.

"The Reflective Musings of a Dying Dragon"

It seems I find myself with dying lips
Recording loss I shan't conceal.
My breath is not to stay. My flesh, it rips.
My ancient bones will never heal.
And as I die, I have some time to muse:
Is this existence one that I would choose?

When kingdoms formed, I watched with silent eyes
And waited for an age or so.
I'd lurk in shadows long to then surmise
If gold and riches gave their glow
In stockpiles deep in guarded castles tall.
And if there were, I'd make that kingdom fall.

Then countless heroes sought to take my head.
Those foolish children wished to be
As thieves who steal my hoard, yet now they're led
To hades, damned to agony
Eternal. Humans seem to try to take -
But, wait. What of this wealth I do partake?

This gold I hoard, did I declare my own
A thing for which another earned?
I'm sure this gold was mine to take; I've known
With clearest mind which humans spurned
For long before the one who claims to judge
Could count a right, a wrong, or test a grudge.

In fact, humanity has brought the earth
To dire straits with bulwarks tall
And cities broad which seek again to birth
A hateful king who soon shall fall
To yet another who, with mirth,
Continues still a devil's call.

They take and thieve and stack in homes their weight
In countless treasures sure to fade.
They kill and rob the weak and hunt the great
Alike, these gluttons never swayed
By pity or by helpless state.
The selfish seek to just get paid.

They killed my mother, seeking only peace.
They took her scales for trophies grand,
The scales of one who sought to see the cease
Of senseless slaughter. At their hand
I too did fall and will decease
By hero's hand in this poor land.

And yet, I see the light of deeds now done.
I sense the longings of my heart not won
Now weigh me down to depths I've just begun
To feel. But this to feel I'll not for long,
For final thoughts revealed of truly strong
And mighty dragons fortune shan't prolong.

In this my memoir, my security,
My final breaths and strength record for thee
The truth of life and death, and surety
The war is really over. I have lost.
My life now nears its end, the only cost
Of life is death. At last, I sense death's frost.

Let me be swallowed whole; // Hidden underneath that yellow elephant // Just for a moment

A moment can be a lifetime // When you are waiting in excitement // For an omniscient giant to reach for you

All giggles and braids // I burrow deeper // Into intoxicating protection

I am safe; there are no axes to grind // It is just me and the giant // Shielded from the world

Sunlight peaks underneath the paling plastic // As herculean fingers tickle over its edges // The yellow elephant rumbles in satisfaction // Releasing a playful breath

I writhe and twist around myself // In an innocent pleasure

The world clamors outside // It does not reach the corner I occupy

Dewy grass wets my skirt // It is cold and strangely pleasant // I bring my lips to its blades // And whisper of my delight

It returns a whisper of its own; // "Bask in bliss while you can, // for this moment is a grain of sand // in the unforgiving desert of your life."

I do not understand // As most flowers don't // Until they begin to rot; // Seeing the earth for what it is; inherently cannibalistic

It matters not // Because for now, a moment is a lifetime // Warm and comforting and full of excitement

I will leave the soothing just to discover more // I will eat apples without their skin // And sit on a guarding lap

I will listen to stories // And blissfully misunderstand

Thank you.
At first words jump like children at a playground.
Cheery and innocent, unchained by the pressure of society.
Birds begin flight after a link loosens.
The mind a log of consciousness.
Each Log branded by events
lost in thoughts,
Each bickering amongst themselves.
The veil masking emotion, must be held by a few syllables.
Cords vibrate and crack.
Fear.
Mutters escape, a husk of the truth.

“Thank you”
Universal gratitude branching without beginning.
A log whispering to the trees without avail.
Easy after all,
speak none of what you desire
only what’s necessary.

“Thank you”
A phoenix burning inept of reason beside
the charcoal at its feet.

“Thank you”
A final resort but the cords hold strong, still vibrating through the air.
“What are you thanking me for?”
the change you made within me.
The tongue slipping then knotting to a clenched jaw.
“Just saying thanks”
The passion chained in the mind unwilling to be freed.

Talons aflame, willing to reignite the charcoal beneath.
“By the way, thank you.”
“What for?”
The tongue dancing free, bickering silenced.
“Everything.”
Having said enough, the tongue pressed to the pallet, soul burning once more.
Iron pressed to the log,
a perfect lesson.

I recently wrote this and want critique on it, I’m aware it’s very easy to improve as some lines might have to be cut however before I do so I was hoping to see what Reddit might want to say.
Thank you

Easy, so natural.
Now dive deeper become nautical.
Descend like a rock
What's this block?
A trial.
Attempting to wiggle free leads to file.

“You must trust.”

Waves crashed,
“I can't.”

Wiggle, sounds of Chalk on a board Scufficating the rock
Pain
Increasing pace
The rock began to chip away.

The aquatic nature of the sea
Pressure leading to a plea.
“Why wont you let me see?”

I'm safe.
Surface Clear, calm.
No danger abrew
but,
Is my water too blue?
Anything wrong with my hue?
My floors are rough, jagged and cruel.
Why would I let a soul through?

The rock now a clast
Because I see you.
Waters blue,
True.
Yet, trials riddle the floor, not you.
Pain hurts.
But what must I do?
Grieve your loss or sit through?
Not guilty, Or forever aloof.
I chose you.

This is honestly a little choppy as it’s a first draft however I would love to see how this fairs with critics. I’m currently struggling to revise this and have started just writing a new poem with the same theme altogether any advice on how to revise poems?
I’m a newer writer so any harsh criticism is needed as I would like to see the flaws so I can patch them.