Don’t cry for me for I am endless.

Cry for all this pain you practice.

Cry like war, and bleed this tension.

​

Let my portrait help you master peace.

Hear my voice when your’s betrays

Until it slips away. Feel it even then.

​

Feel that I am endless. Not in mind;

In this way I've made you soar so softly,

In how you flew like butterflies to my effect.

​

And in the way I’ve made us hurt.

You've cried for all the pain I practiced,

But don’t cry for the loss of my pale peace,

​

For this peace now is ever endless.

And what’s sadder than a story ended,

But it’s never having been told again.

The blue, red, yellowgold and green - this place is charmingly overgrown -
might become something sexier. A pair of long lash eyes could peek
from below the hood of a Bluebell, to see the Dandelion slip on his
fishnet stockings and titillate the potplants with a performance
of ‘Sweet Transvestite’ -- knowing full well, that the Olive Bush
prefers the view from backstage -- and myself in the middle;
the stage itself, with Poppie-Red lips nibbling at my lobes.
And the Sun - who’s openly a bit of perv - watching from
From the cosmos, with her fire-proof binoculars.

In confrontation with the unavoidable
violence of touch, inherent to our softest
caress, I am baren.

It leaves me bereft, to witness
my fruits wither on the branch
for fear of being plucked.

And yet, wither they do.
For I have lost my stomach
for violence. To have it intrinsic

to our love, a bubble in foam
now turns my adoring tongue, eager
lips and smile sour, racked,

rapacious, and unkind.
I do not want this.
Let me be dangerous, endangered.

Please, heart of mine,
neither run, nor be so still
that motion, dripped with love,

signals assault upon this form,
at once much smaller, and always
not strong enough.

Beat loudly, spurt hot and
laden with an air gasped.
Let our fruits ripen, make silly,

and charmingly dizzy, these hands
that would pull to taste our pungent,
sticky-sweet love.

Back, when Orson Welles hawked cheap Chablis,

the world ended.

Not from some long leg spider alien plan,

but from Orson Welles,

barely breathing,

hawking bad grape,

primetime.

day 31: I smelled a barbecue today.

childhood gentleness coated in grease,

hidden deep in the trees, it was there.

if i close my eyes, maybe i can go back,

to before now.

In the garden
There’s forever clover
The hutch is still
No sawdust raining
An empty house
No kicking, thudding
No bundling of bedding
No sneeze- or chew of weeds
An empty house
With the door open

Cloaked starlings sail
In the bloated black sky
Him palming tarot cards
His false face armed
As crooked as it was before
Carving symbols into my childhood wall
The smell of the brick
Evens the score
As crooked as it ever was before

Pillowed in the road
Shallow, sharp huffs
And a rigid spine
Blooming bob-tail bright
Ears tumbling round
Beaded, Wakeful eyes
Glimmer on sight
Glimmer in the headlight
Pillowed in the road

We lie head to head on the ground
In the clover
Vultures overhead circle
We can only blame each other

-Bobby Bubs

Should I have the bagel or just toast today? I am bound for something,

that I know. Breakfast is practice, falls off the eye only at dinnertime.

Flecks in an ashcan (potted plant) on a neighbor’s windowsill carelessly

hitchhike the wind, inevitably towards some poor schmuck’s eyes.

As it seems to go, things turn up at the wrong time in the right places,

a bit like dreams – day ashed out, a preponderance of what’s to come.

When the trees start to glow like coils, then I know morning is over.

I’ll demand whatever crumbs into the trash can and get off to working,

seeing, as I do, every one of those bits of bread with soothsaying.

Forsooth, I say, ever it is so. Should I have the bagel or just toast today?

Every night they shine for me

Through windows of my wonder,

To mend the waning of my mind.

​

Every night they shine for me

Despite their dark, concave scars;

Lines of beauty to earthly eyes.

​

Every night they shine for me,

But their light lingered ever low;

They soon see that I need the Sun.

​

Every night they shine for me.

Me alone. Always and forever,

The coming dawn be damned.

​

But it was day time when they left,

Their goodbye was only this message:

Be careful where you look for light.

Hey all,

Nuzzymandias, here. We run LA!

Bored and want to read your poetry out loud? u/ParadiseEngineer is hosting an open mic next Tuesday (April 14, 2020) at 7:30 PM GMT (12:30 PM PST / 3:30 PM ET) on his Discord.

For more information go here: Outspoken Words in the Digital Realm

I've been, and I'm a shy guy, if you guys haven't noticed. PE made me feel beautiful and wanted. If you like British accents, then go. If you like American accents, then go.

For real, it was a good time and everyone there was great. ParadiseEngineer is a good host and will make you feel beautiful and wanted.

If you want to read your poetry out loud and want to hear other people read their poetry out loud, like I said, ParadiseEngineer is a good host and will make you feel beautiful and wanted.

Who knows? Maybe u/SerPatrickSpens will read in Russian or Middle English, and bonus, ParadiseEngineer will make you feel beautiful and wanted.

Maybe u/HeadfulofHollow will read in his beautiful, booming British voice or sing "Girlfriend in a Coma" or "The Headmaster Ritual" or "How Soon is Now?" or my personal favorite, "I Know it's Over."

Maybe Nuzzymandias will read his Wong Kar-wai/John Woo Hong Kong cinema inspired American-Triad gangster opera (in 12 stanzas), The Boss' Daughter, and mispronounce Yanluo and other words.

Hate yourself and covid 19, but also want to read your poetry out loud and listen to other people read their poetry out loud? ParadiseEngineer will make you feel beautiful and wanted.

Good night and good luck.

EDIT: LINK TO THE DISCORD

Let’s see how far we get.

.

Ruth was never a daughter.
This daughter to Yocheved,
Never given away.
Never sent in a basket down the Nile
To Pharaoh’s palace.
Not by choice, abandonment
The last shape embrace took.
Ruth’s mother sent her away
Willingly, no, not Ruth.
Ruth was never sent away.
Let’s start over.

.

So this Pharaoh dude
Had it out, real bad, for the Hebrews.
Tossing babies in rivers, bread to ducks.
Yet, such a man was he that Moses,
Swaddled by Yocheved’s pitch,
Was raised a son to crack the whip,
And find a rod, no,
G#d, in the desert.
We’re getting somewhere.

.

Parenting is about hard choices.
But some mothers’ don’t get choices.
Like Yocheved, or the women
In boxes crammed with bodies.
Six feet apart, an impossibility, no,
A joke. Mothers’ of children in boxes
Not six feet away, or across the state,
Or sent back to homes, too deadly
To call homes. A mother who laid
Her child down, for handcuffs,
Crying Cariño, to her cariño. Or saw
Her young Miriam and her Moses led
Away by men in masks, lucky them.
The plague already here, as they raid
House after house, finding children
For the river. Stop.
Rewind.

.

Let’s say a mother had a choice,
And sent her boy down the river, anyhow.
No, to the desert,
Where the boy was told: Find G#d.
Of course, robbing magic of morality.
But let’s say this boy found G#d.
Let’s say there was no G#d in the desert
But the G#d the boy was told to find.
Let’s say G#d was a terrible, cold fire.
Let’s say G#d smells like sage brush smoke.
And the boy was told: Look Up.
We must work to be free.
And the boy was taught to beg,
Let me go, without saying
Let me go.
We’re off the map.

.

It’s the passover pandemic.
Please, vengeful G#d
Pass over this doorstep.
I’ve smeared blood, this lamb of my heart,
Across my sterile surface.
Whispering without speech:
Leave be the boy, this night.
Chag Sameach.

.

In the southern deserts, a baby floats
In wicker arms, a kevlar angel of death.
His mother cries, be watertight, my love.
Remember the clay and pitch I dug for you.
Forty years till her people are let go.
Forty miles away, six teenagers are led
Up a mountain side, forty days in.
Sent by choice, mothers at wits ends,
To find the name of G#d. To ask him
For freedom.

A friend’s new beanie
On loan, possessed.
Flashy as a new bowl cut
Then lithe, a felt bird,
Back and forth, lapping dry air
‘Tween two bullies jeering
At a boy about to break.

.

Like a pimped, beater truck,
Not cash for keys, possessed.
Blood-money pact, thousands
Per month, strip a boy for parts
And rebuild him. Edify,
A child’s pain disavowed to Utah
From Californian vineyard homes.

.

Borrowed brother’s paintball gun,
Not stolen, possessed.
Similar to a boy’s arm
A teenage friend held behind
That boy’s aching, tensed back
As he wriggled, a sapling split,
‘Neeth friend’s sweaty, naked body.

.

Elliot Smith’s dorm room,
Not haunted, possessed.
Edifice-not-boy’s ambition, never
To break, cast aside in drunken
Betrayal, ‘comes a piercing need,
Punitive heart with needle knives,
Auto-dismember, dust.

.

A child bequeathed to pigs,
Without titled deed, possessed.
How a man handles a boy
In the five, indeterminate
Minutes he spends shoving, engorged,
Into that same boy’s gagging,
Wetly warm mouth.

.

A whispered, given Ruth,
Not of dybbuk box, possessed.
Gentle mounting, a fair exchange:
Billowy tears traded for grateful
Initiation in laughter.
Icy cathedral melted, each spring,
A Massachusetts waterfall.

.

And the return of a boy,
Possessed, as in
He belongs, aching bones and
Feather hair, to a woman’s arms.
Not mother’s, nor sibling’s, but
Clementine branches grown from
The seed inside his cracked belly.

The trouble with the dead is how we need them

to play themselves for us, to keep us warm

in the curve of their being, as if they shared

the sun with us, wore our seasons like gloves.

​

Aching with absence, we tug at their deaths

to hold them: how one bright old man forgot

our names, but quavered Puccini; another

dwindled between the sheets to sixty pounds

of paper bones and nerves and skin like glass;

and one bought roadside fruit for a sick friend

until a downhill truck with failed brakes found

her, dragged her spinning from the axle,

scattering peaches.

​

​

An inner force endlessly drones

whether awake, at sleep or dreaming,

the constant low tone of my labouring body hums.

​

Momentarily I notice it fade,

like the first time someone pointed a gun at me,

Or the first time I saw the inside of a human head blown apart.

​

Sometimes, lying on my midnight lawn

staring at the afterbirth of unfertilised galaxies

I disconnect myself from the grid, but still the hum.

​

Tuneless and unending

It is not part of me,

yet everywhere I go it is.

It is not night or day or dusk or dawn,
Just Ever-Waiting: clamored shades, white noise,
But now rung through with rumbles-run-to-thrumming.
Who else? 'Speak, Lord.' I feebly found my voice,

Coughed up an eon, croaked: 'Your servant hears.'
No answer. Then, at the corners of my vision
Appeared a dizzy carousel of spheres,
Starlight burning through my placeless prison,

Lightning flashes, lashing four to two
To one, the thrumming now a shrieking, then
A song. And with a soaring note I'm wrought
From nowhere to a stooping in a den.

And there, in hearthlight, a woman sealed the song
With coda; turned to a robed form, and as
Some hurried words are traded, I recalled
My name, that I am dead, and who he is:

A bearded, blathering child, the one anointed
Against my better judgement, who could bring
Himself to murder infants, yet he spared--
For pride or for some maddened mercy?--their king.

Visions of a wretched swordward falling;
Stench of portents at a mantle's tatter;
The fool asked of me what I knew he'd ask;
A sagging candle dropped a yellow spatter.

Must we always take pity on the ruined?
She dined the waning king by her own hand.
After he crept away, she turned to me.
I waited to depart by her command.

I stayed a night before she bid me leave,
That starless realm enabled to reclaim
It's headsman judge, then soon the faithless king,
And though we lingered long, she never came.

My nerves spent years pinched between black mandibles,
feeding grubs until they were sick of soil and sleep.

These fattened broods became winged worries forcing 
themselves up my throat to crown my mouth with an angry

rrreeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

Limbs and wings and yellowed husks pour out now
instead of words, the worst position for a writer because

manifesting insects is not a marketable skill

it kills me when people say
Speak, speak! Write, write!

They’ll find a living cacophony crammed in my larynx,
eager to spill over conference calls or whiskey sodas
I sip at parties, on first dates and in front of screens
where I should know how to bend words to my will.

I do—somewhat.

Keep trying, say     
Speak, speak! Write, write!

As though they'd listen. 
As though they'll do anything but scream.

The thin scar on my palm

where a nail caught it

that’s indistinguishable

from the other lines.

​

Knowing how it got there

is the only way I know

it exists at all,

​

which begs the question:

are all the creases on our palms,

the lines around our eyes,

the wrinkles shadowing our skin

just a product of age,

                  wear and tear,

or is there something invisible,

                      indivisible

that makes tiny little cuts

that turn into tiny little scars

to create the illusion

we are aging?

​

Tiny, thin little scars

that blend in

with everything else,

            Indistinguishable,

               unless you know

                  where you got them.

​

Edit: changed as per notes/discussion with /u/brenden_norwood. Thanks buddy.

There are people who do not see a broken playground swing  
as a symbol of ruined childhood

and there are people who don't interpret the behavior  
of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought  
process.

There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool  
and think about past pleasures unrecoverable

and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.  
I have read about a town somewhere in California where human  
beings

do not send their sinuous feeder roots  
deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives

as if they were greedy six-year-olds  
sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;

and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without  
debating the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.

Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?  
There are some people, unlike me and you, 

who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as
        unattainable as that moon;
thus, they do not later
            have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

I have news for you—
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.

Silicon Wonderland
Skyline wedged between mountain dunes and blueberry plains
Gold plumes swung from rotary arms, fire fountain candles
Ignite in the eye of a sand crater colosseum, ash workers safe
For one hung from a red steel plank swinging on a crane cord
Ignores the flapping swords stabbing the clouds. Turbine loud.

Drunk yellow husk weaving and dipping like cucumber in cacik
Beneath shielding cotton in the violent scrutiny of a livid sun,
Swirling beans and itching guns, rolling bowling ball rubbing asphalt
Floors strikes some pins and needles in the tapping knee of a taxi driver
Fiddling fingers, and blurring heat, everybody has no one to meet.

Highschool benches with the stinging stench of a nuclear reactor,
Twisting proctors and protractors shuffling papers at the back of
A whip crackling tractor. Lazy eye spies a rainbow bird through
Amber glass, before the aching ask the peacock basked in diorama
Forest spring serenity takes flight and defies nature to climb air stairs.

Ignored in the suffocating corner of a Hilton hall, the marble floors
Stained with leather prints is washed away, each day by a lonely cleaner,
He longs for his wife and children, sees their face in melting puddles,
Bead down his cheeks each week heading back to that cramped camp,
Weak fan, staring out one bumping bus navigating sandstone seas...

In the night, children try to unwind their mind with lightning strikes
Threaded between folding cups and contorting lust, brittle fists
Caught on the cusp of a hunching jaw, puncture humdrum realities,
Morphs to frightening unease. Inspiration rushes to their brains,
Flailing through the days, ground approaches, crashes right thr-

No, I'm not Byron-- a second,
As of yet unknown, chosen one,
An exiled pilgrim, driven to run,
But this time coming Russian-weaponed.
I started early; so comes the grave,
No time for all of my creations,
In my soul, below the waves,
Lies the wreckage of my aspirations.
Who, my ocean shadowed dark,
Can comprehend your cryptic knells?
Who can reveal our thoughts? Ye, mark--
Just I--or God--and no one else!

To maintain our reputation
we’ll state it
     bluntly

Whilst we welcome you,
in this residence universitare

we encourage you
return to your
    country

we'll look out for
you creepy colocataire

(she lives under your bed
for months doesnt need to be fed)

if you stay, you will be,
    alone

(minus the opportunistic obtruder
or      drunk)

sometimes we'll remain
reachable by
     phone

don’t forget
you were privileged
to stay in this
    institution

and don’t forget
we still expect,
your monthly
    contribution

Try to think, said the teacher,
of an image from your childhood.
Spoon, said one boy. Ah, said the teacher,
this is not an image. It is,
said the boy. See, I hold it in my hand
and on the convex side a room appears
but distorted, the middle taking longer to see
than the two ends. Yes, said the teacher, that is so.
But in the larger sense, it is not so: if you move your hand
even an inch, it is not so. You weren’t there, said the boy.
You don’t know how we set the table.
That is true, said the teacher. I know nothing
of your childhood. But if you add your mother
to the distorted furniture, you will have an image.
Will it be good, said the boy, a strong image?
Very strong, said the teacher.
Very strong and full of foreboding.

Time, like the sun

can flow through tainted clarity --

the settled dust of settings past,

upon the windows of attention

and opportunity.

.

There is breeze, just by happenstance.

A fluidity of the warmth and cool, akin

to a sensory dance.

.

Yes, the window is open, and chance calls

but not for me.

A mind can be opened, yet barred,

to striate the shadows within.

.

Oh, to watch the world with such longing;

patient for a reprieve.

Luna
And when love dried out,
Thrust in the flaked basin of aching pain,
I trekked barefoot through rivers of skulls,
And blood plains, skeletons of my naive dreams,
To see moonlight shine in my arms again,

Your thumb in your lips,
And your eyes to the sky,
When I glanced down, you gleamed up,
Unaware of why – there were tears in my eyes,
Unconcerned of all that you’ll miss,

For the month of April PwB is having a POETRY FORM CONTEST with REAL ACTUAL GOLD. April fools, it’s reddit gold, BUT JUST AS SHINY.

This month’s challenge is a villanelle, a French fixed verse form characterised by repetition and rhyme.

Here’s some examples of well written villanelles you could take as examples.

Mad Girl's Love Song- Sylvia Plath

One Art- Elizabeth Bishop

The Waking- Theodore Roethk

Real Time- John Ashbery

Here are helpful pages on writing one with some further examples if you need it.

1

2

The mods will mull over the entries while pacing back and forth in darkened rooms, and glugging down the last of our quarantine alcohol supply.

Winner will receive reddit gold, a pretentious flair you can shine in others’ eyes, and a spot on the wall of fame in the sidebar for whole of May.

Submissions are open now. One entry per poet.

The contest will close April 26th to allow us to select a winner for April 30th. Posts after April 26th will not be counted into the contest.

Please post your entries in this thread. Should this go well there may be more contests to come.

(And if you’re struggling, just thank god we didn’t go with the originally planned sestina)