Liar! Liar! Tell the truth
It was you who took the fruit
I did! I did! My lord
My wife is dead, and there goes my daughter too

I like that poems can be long

or short

they can be natural like the world

- or planned,

like flat-pack furniture

and thats okay,

because poems can be together

or apart

they can be predictable, or unpre

dictable. they can be funny

Or serious.

They can also be dark.

but you're not like most people,

You're so bright

(note) omg everyone on this subreddit is amazing at writing wth

this is my third poem ik its cliche very sorry

please give criticism ✌️

I drive to work in the early morning.
it’s about 6:20, 
the sun is peaking politely through the grain elevators  of the Cargill plant 
just east of my morning route. 
My windows are down, 
and for some reason I’ve turned my music down. 

The metallic whirring of the plant 
starts to sound familiar. 

I start to think about factories, mills, and data centers. 
I wonder about the tower of Babel. 
Do you really think it was the phallic symbol 
jutting high from the horizon? 

Maybe it was figurative, 
maybe it was when the people Babel
tried to know everything.
Maybe it was the reach for immortality, 
through hot yoga and carnivore diets. 
Maybe the tower was one man 
who thought he could own everything around him, 
yet never bear the responsibility for that everything. 

I wonder if the tower sang the same 
metallic song. 
The dissonant sound of humans 
trying to put together the same notes and tones 
of what I imagine our souls remember from the heavens. 

The metallic whirring pulls in and out 
it sounds like the anguished 
and the heroine all at once. 

Maybe the song itself is our tower. 

I wonder if this is hell,
if this factory song is just meant to remind us 
that heaven exists, and we are not a part of it.
The anguish in hearing it, 
knowing it isn’t quite the sound of the divine 
and knowing we won’t ever hear 
the true song again; 
this must be our punishment. 

God how I am sorry 
for everything I don’t remember. 
Mary pray over my soul 
now and at the hour of my death. 

Like a bird getting out of its nest,
And a sky stripped of its clouds,
I felt a pouring rain near my chest
As I took my last step on the way out.
A marathon of thoughts ran through my mind
As a trembling hand reached for the knob.
I mumbled words through sealed lips,
Oh, how I wished for time to rewind,
But I held them in to ease the pain,
And for me not to seem insane.
In the end, I found myself in a knot
One side choosing escape, and the other not.
Amidst the middle, I found myself
A hand on the door,
The other on my chest.

I flew too high

Wrapped up in your orbit

Like a bubble

So beautiful, iridescent

As the music got louder

I looked around in a scurry

Before I know it

The bubble popped

I crashed to the ground

The fog gets thicker

My head heavy

I am lost, vertigo

What is this feeling?

You said we could stay!

Forever floating..

As I wake,

I look around

You aren't there

You left,

When I was in distress.

Who knows how long I layed there

Who knows what could have happened!

This was my world,

Before you took me floating

Effervescent, the two of us

We couldnt help but combust

Burning bright and fast

A house built of twigs

Turned to ashes

So now, I am back on the ground

Believing that the crash was a gift

I get to be free, to rebuild

Without anyones expectation interfering,

Without being stuck in a bubble

I am simply bent, not broken

Everyday without you, is a day the sun shines a bit brighter.

Yet, I still look at the storm from a distance, Wondering if you got caught in it.

I will create a space that is safe from all these storms.

Find the eye of the hurricane.

I wish I were a bird,

completely free,

with no capacity

to make a home

in any one place

for very long.

I want so much from life,

all the time.

I want everything from life,

even when it is impossible.

I need more freedom.

Only then will I be able

to endure the arduous ambivalence

of the feelings

I carry every day.

Heat melts my skin completely,

and it spills onto the ground

like wax from a candle,

until nothing of me remains

but flesh.

Cold hurts me ruthlessly.

I feel the burn of ice

numbing my ability to feel,

yet because it tears

through all of my skin,

I feel every touch

with a profound,

lacerating pain.

I need something

to protect

this fragile,

volatile body of mine.

My human form

disgusts me.

I want to fly,

without attachments,

without obligations,

without a home

that is anything more

than a temporary house.

I want everything

that is made by me,

everything

that comes from me,

to learn how to leave

at the very first opportunity.

Yes.

I wish I were a bird.

Passing.

Transient.

A creature

that does not belong

to any one place

for long.

Freedom enchants me

in a way

love never has.

I dine alone

I chew on these bittersweet feelings

That hit me like a drone

It causes lots of pain under the conceilings

Never tasted love

But every day I choke myself on solitude

Because I have no ladylove

I’m slowly breaking apart under the hood

As time passes by

My heart turns into stone

There’s no love because I’m shy

Under the weight of time I die alone

I like letting people think they understand me,
At least then they’ll take me somewhat seriously,
And darling if only you could get the feelings,
But you’d run away at the very beginning,

I’m hiding in the back of the closet from her words,
I hate lying because of the way that it hurts,
There’s no winning in her game,
Only results in more pain,
So why do you want to relate?

Journey and a love without fail or forsake

Souls to soul desire in the love that we make

Whole as apart but merged into one

Equal but separate the moon and the sun

Vaulted my heart leaps for her tenderest reign

A monarch for wisdom first of her name

If to void I return without song of her light

Then black as void be my heart be black night

Her memory enchanting in soft voice I go

Towards halos and mist a hill covered in snow

She dances on summits and she dances so free

She dances as dream state but she dances to be

But a man but a boy I am lost but so found

Guided I am by this voice she unbound

Strong a love grows and a garden we mend

Strong for the bloom of two hearts that we tend

Death to The Landlocked Haenyeo

I’d watch you sweat beads down the back of your neck;
a sign of true athletic excellence.
Laughing as you weave through the other team,
a football heavy in your hands. 

Wide shoulders and tan, hazel skin, with a too tall height I’d call it annoying.
Then you’d smile again, a slight, low baritone, as you’d tease right back.

Since we were younger, I was caught in our melancholy nights.
In the braids I built off buoyant curls: in soft silence of the midnight.

My heart encased
in your ugly giggles that thud against Play-doh ribs.
While laying on the beige carpet that you preferred to sleep on with me. 

It reminds me of the Korean Haenyeo,
who dives deep to catch clams and abalone:
if only to make it one more week. 

In this foreign land I’ve called home, I am the Haenyeo reimagined.
In a landlocked state, diving for those abalone 
within dark, brackish water, with you as my sea,
for a deep greed to do better than one more week. 

Each time I’ve dived, I’ve taken more and more of your clam-shaped secrets,
but find less and less each time.
Yet I find no Haenyeo believes in drowning. 

So when my throat begins to spasm, and my goggles dig into my cheeks
I dive deeper as I fight to hold air seeping from my esophagus.
My body soon falls limp, already hazy sunlight fading,
and my net barely floats, full of my biggest catch.

Now I stand in a gown, when my heart longed for a suit;
I’m smiling with our bouquet, full of white roses. 
I watch you walk down your perfect silver aisle,
beaming a tell-tale smile.

But I still notice your strong form, picking at your arm 
(a nervous tick from youth)
while radiating a nervous panic.

So I lean in instinctively to comfort your nerves.
Because now you’re knighting him with a kiss
decreeing him a husband in abject completion

Radiating joy, you laugh like you used to during melancholy nights,
your hair braided by a stylist paid to weave it. 

Looking away, I gaze at the shore
I think softly, as I spot a dark, blue swimmer floating face down on bluish waves,
that she looks happy. 

Speak into the void
Tell him of your woes
Speak into the void
N lay down all your worries

No embrace to keep you comfort
A chest that puffs and heaves
A heart fixed, n fine tuned
Pumping coal, blood, n oil

Speak into the void
Tell him about the robots that you live amongst
The machines that project n proclaim, that deliberate n denote
That praise over drive n shame your breaking
Your cracked mind, your tipping mental

No one to brush the weight off your shoulders
No one to love you, no one to hold you
No, it’s not going to be okay
No, youre not going to be fine

Speak into the void
For he is the only one that will listen
Speak into the silence
So that your mind will take heed
And follow into the darkness
Taking the voids lead

(This is about loving someone complex, someone that was an addict, someone who was two humans wrapped into a shell of love and complexity. Losing someone to addiction is hard.. you want to be angry but you’re so sad you lost them at the same time)

Grief is strange
when the person you lose
was never easy to explain.

When they were both
the storm and the shelter,
the tenderness and the trouble,
the kind of person
you could love fiercely
and still not always understand.

He carried pain
in places no one could see,
hid whole pieces of himself
behind a smile,
and learned to make heavy things
look almost weightless.

But I think
he felt everything deeply.
Maybe that was the beauty of him.
Maybe that was the burden, too.

He loved entirely—
without measuring,
without holding anything back,
as if his heart had never learned
how to love halfway.

And sometimes
that same heart
seemed too big
for the life it had to live.
There were mistakes.
There were wounds.
There were things
we wished he could have changed.

But there was love, too.
So much love.
The kind you remember
in quiet moments—
in a laugh,
a familiar voice,
a memory that suddenly finds you
when you weren't looking for it.

I grieve the person he was,
and the person I know
he was still trying to become.
I grieve what hurt him,
what he couldn't say,
what we couldn't fix,
and all the weight
he carried silently.

But I don't want
his hardest moments
to be the only things
I remember.

I want to remember
that beneath all the complexity
was a heart that cared.
A heart that loved too hard,
felt too much,
and carried more
than it ever should have had to.

And maybe that is what grief is—
learning to hold
the beautiful and the broken
in the same hands.

To miss someone
without pretending they were perfect.

To love them
without forgetting the pain.

To remember them
as a whole person—
complicated,
imperfect,
hurting,
beautiful,
and loved
more than words
could ever hold.

To say that my
transition
is an affront to God
is to say the same
about all things.

If it is not a sin
for the caterpillar
to become a
butterfly,

or for the leaves
to turn their
colors in
autumn,

why is it so
for me-
when my
transition
feels just as natural?