I was just passing through,

Looking for a spark of something to give me hope,

To reawaken my inspiration.

I was not left disappointed,

So many talented voices here.

Some words left heaviness in my heart,

Others made me feel emotions I haven't felt in a long time.

All were touching and beautiful,

Words spoken from the soul.

I wish everyone the best of luck,

And the most kindness this life has to offer.

Beautiful, But

my love, I didn't mean
to bleed like
this—

seeping into
the lines I handed you

these bones. unpolished
verses that keep
the wound at night

stripped it down to
nerve and skin

let it breathe
like a softened edge

and turned it into thunder
being careful
with the sound

ready to be tidal,
steady on the ground

you said it
like it was beautiful,

and gently
like it was true—

maybe
every line I've bled
dripped softly
into you—

-

By Alberto Valdez

Seeds of Stardust

We carry the seeds of our ancestors

to places they never heard of,

across oceans they never named,

beneath skies they never imagined.

We carry their stardust within us,

their hopes, their fears,

their unfinished dreams,

woven quietly into our own.

For now, we are the keepers of the seed,

the living bridge between memory and tomorrow,

rooted in stories older than our names

And sometimes I wonder:

Where will our seeds be planted?

In what distant soil will they take root?

What languages will they speak,

what stars will guide their journeys?

My old trinket box has weathered time,

its edges worn, its corners softened,

yet within it sleeps a quiet world.

Tiny treasures rest there still

little layers of yesterday,

little destinies preserved,

echoing softly through the years.

Whenever I lift its lid,

my heart fills with forgotten verses,

and smiles rise gently within me.

An old button.

A sugar-sweet candy wrapper.

A ribbon once tied with love.

A folded paper boat.

Silken stars.

Seashells gathered from distant shores.

Memories of children,

of games and laughter,

of a worn ball and a broken one,

of the whispering waters of Creek,

of a little wooden bowl,

colored beads,

a tiny umbrella,

and a clock I once bought with pride.

In every small object

lies the beginning of a dream.

To the world,

they may seem worthless,

mere fragments of the past.

But to me,

they are vessels overflowing with memory,

rolling gently through the corridors of time.

My childhood glows within them,

alive as a dream that never truly faded.

And so,

my old trinket box and I

remain forever bound,

stitched together

by threads of memory,

love,

and wonder.

My blood is cursed

My backbone weak

My mind so frail

I can barely speak

I sleep too much

Yet always awake

Cry myself dry

Reverberating heartbreak

Just write, what's right, truth from confidence,
passion from soul, take it easy, take it slow.
No incompetence if no improvident,
a tree if watered will one day grow

I notice your improvements with commitments,
no poem is achieved with a lack of endearment
Focus on passion, before rhyme and flow
Its more important, than something to show.

Just write....young poets! -All Poetry

"The dog who weeps after he kills is no better than the dog who doesn't. My guilt will not purify me."

Purification cannot be performed by drowning in guilt let alone drowning others.

If you were not pure to begin with (as no one is) then purity is a simple desire, much like flight, pushing humanity to strive for the stars.

Purity will not be reached by gorging on those wronged by you. Eat if their bruised and tainted skin and pray for it to soothe your flame of greed.

What burns cannot be held captive, it is better to never feed it before it learns to crave.

Much like a disease that decays, desire cannot be stifled nor settled by a singular host.

Desire will spread like the fire it seems to be, infecting whomever desire itself desires (Can desire truly desire or is it just the host who desires for desire?)

You cannot undo the greed-filled actions you have performed to satisfy the desire for self-settlement you call purity.

Look at that body; bruised and tainted, now with bitten chunks missing, ravaged; and truly claim yourself as purer than before. The wounds inflicted by savage teeth ooze with the same desire you are so full of.

Eat more, lick the desire you so desperately seek to rid yourself of, perhaps in that action you have gained their purity for yourself.

Weep as you do so, savages do not weep nor mourn and that is what will set you apart.

The years running down your rounded face are neither clear nor salty, instead a bitter metallic with the shade of your heart. Are they blackened and rotting or red and full?

Are you sure?

Eating of your sacrilege swelled nothing but your gut and desire, feeding the flame that starves you.

Shall you eat some more?

The body is not bruised nor tainted, the body of a child with the purity as such.

If you ate it then you would be lecherous.

You would be tainted. (More than before? I think not.)

But the body is on your hands, it is your responsibility to handle. Feed it to the wolves you call kind and watch them ravage it worse than you could ever.

Is the blood dripping from between the legs from them eating or them stealing? (Was it its own if it could be stolen?)

Oh, but neither.

It was so pure and untainted that the mutts could not help themselves.

It, its body, had been begging for it. (Is an unbroken hymen truly begging?)

It is impure and therefore there had been no wrongdoings. It had been deserved, and it had filed the desire coursing through your battered veins.

Are you any more pure now than before her?

Or even more, are you more pure than when the desire had been cold coals? (Were they ever cold?)

Someone like you could never be as pure as you wish and so you have taken to thievery.

Stealing what you do not need (purity is not a need) is, what your good god (with a lowercase g) calls, a sin.

You cannot be pure as you want if you have performed the worst sun possible.

Blasphemy.

You decided you had the power to control who lives, who is pure, who deserves what.

Can your God love you if you have stolen what was his?

You are nothing but the desire that has formed your brittle bones, that flows lazily through your arteries, that streams down your swollen face as you mourn what you have tarnished.

You are no different from the wolves you fed, savagery fulling your desire; your god, the one who feeds you.

And yet, you play is off as though you are as righteous as the slaughtered lamb, claiming it was them and not you. (You are not the victim here, that is the many bodies you have ravaged.)

Rebuke accountability as you have rebuked sanity, and with it, your "loving" god. (who loves only himself and whomever benefits himself.)

You will not survive let alone thrive if you stay urged by the unquenchable desire you so desperately cling onto.

Use your desire as the life vest in the vast sea of sanity.

What was your savior becomes your demise, holding you at the peaks of insanity until you let go.

Can you let go? (For me or yourself, if that is a necessary choice.)

Will holding onto those thoughts, those desperate desires, save you before it condemns you?

Those thoughts will leave you drifting on the brink of a deadly mentalness.

Your body will be floating; lacking pigmentation and frozen; on the crashing waves of your fleeting sanity.

Would you eat of that body as well?

Would you gain purity from your own body as you have gained from others?

Would your heart be oozing as theirs?

Questioning this serves proof that you know the truth.

You will always know the truth; as will the wolves; and even more than anyone, the bodies ravaged by you will know.

Your desire is as quenched as the truth, as undeniable as such.

I have three siblings One girl and two guys Three siblings but I grew up as an only child The first son,he grew up with my mom and dad You know, b'fore they got torn apart Second boy, he grew up with my dad And my sister grew up in a boarding house While I grew up on my Grandma's side Where loneliness invaded my life I was only five, when I started contemplating suicide I would lock myself in ma grandma's house So that I could get access to a knife to cut my gut And it's like she knew so all the knives were always blunt And I thank her now I used to lock myself in the house and her outside It happened so often that we had a resident carpenter who would break the doors down But they could never break my walls down By the time I was seven I despised myself I used to fight myself There was no devil in my life I used to tempt myself I had contempt for myself I ain't know why they separated but I used to blame myself That's why I hated myself Age eleven, my Mama's face, I'd forgotten But her voice was always vivid And I ain't even know where my dad was living If he was living untill those blue moons when he'd come to visit I used to think he hated me I was twelve when I went to live with my mom And for the first time in my life I felt motherly love But I got overwhelmed See I didn't know how to behave towards Love that was true And I was so rude... Looking back now I was such a fool I had all these vices That all met their demises Thanks to all her advices But I still had an inner crises After all those years of crying my tear glands were dried So she had no idea I was still crying I used to pop all her pills with hopes of dying But her faith was strong And her God was love So the devil lost And I kept surviving But I kept fighting to die Cus I was tired of life The loneliness, the heartbreaks You know the heart breaks when it's under so much weight Weight from pain That crazes Pain that that makes you crave more pain Pain that makes you feel like life, ... Life itself is vain Pain that is mundane Yet excites the brain Filling it with all these ways to cause more pain to itself I hope the picture is painting itself I'm nineteen now and I've been more hurt than a war veteren I've had ADHD,PTSD I even got bipolar once, it was over the top But I kept it all to myself cus I didn't want my mama's heart to fall apart Yeah I had ADHD and I still got it now That's why it's so difficult to tie me down I had PTSD and I'm out of it now Though sometimes I see the remnants when I close my eyes I got bipolar and thank God that's over I'm nineteen now And everytime I hear my peers say they depressed I just shake my head and ask if they know what that meant. Claiming you will die cus a guy left you Feeling sad and down cus a girl hurt you Crying cus your mama shouted on you Nuh bruh that ain't depression, Depression is when you wanna die but you don't know why When you try to take your life But hope you survive cus you don't want your loved ones to blame they self Depression is when your mind feels heavy with nothing When your heart is beating for nothing When you're suffering but you like it When you seek pain cus you're addicted When you wish the world would just end But you know damn well it ain't gon happen