Pulchritude,

An ugly word.

Yet beauty is not bound

To the sound that bears its name.

It speaks in higher dialects.

Humanity, beset by obfuscation,

Mistakes the utterance for the thing.

Perhaps existence is no different:

Perpetual paradox and irony,

A joke of God, a mere caprice of divinity,

This horrid orchestration,

Where anguish is met with absurdity.

A false wall casts its shadow

Over waters otherwise limpid.

Yet a pointed mind stands without regard.

Meaning a joke

A joke forsaken.

A silent truth:

Pulchritude.

I used to create until my hands ached.

Music rehearsals until my fingers went numb from aiming for perfection,

Painting until my eyes would burn and my wrists would get weak,

Sketched until the fumes of my alcohol ink markers burned their way into my brain.

I would sit at the piano in the front of my home and let the notes find their way out of my mind,

down through my arms,

Out the tips of my fingers,

until they decided we were finished.

I used to spend every spare moment of every spare minute trying to understand how I felt.

Who I was,

Where I would go.

I thought Music would heal me.

I thought art would bring vitality.

I thought putting pieces of myself on paper would make me feel real.

Sometimes it would.

One day I stopped believing it would.

I stopped wanting to create little tokens of my soul to look back at on a rainy day.

Instead of hours spent aiming for perfection of my art,

There are now only hours spent typing out reports,

For eyes who never want to read them.

Hours of wondering if this email found them well,

Or if my message came off too strong.

If my hands start to ache it is no longer out of a want for them to do so.

If my paint brushes find their way into my grasp it is only briefly.

Artistry became a waste of my dwindling energy,

My resources depleted,

My emotions no longer demanding to be understood.

I remember sitting in my backyard on sunny fall afternoons,

Trying to teach myself how to strum a ukulele,

As I absorbed the energy beaming down from the heavens.

The warmth radiated through the sleeves of my orange wool sweater as I would curve my fingers into seemingly impossible shapes,

Hoping if I just tried harder the notes would find their way out of my mind and into the air like they always did so many times before.

Now the notes in my mind are muffled and muted,

The air not as welcoming to their sound.

My contribution to this world was once rooted in my belief that art is essential to being.

That life revolved around the beauty we put into existence.

Where once there was desire to understand emotion,

Now is only the desire to stifle it.

First post here, trying something new I suppose 🤷‍♂️

From the start I knew it was special.
It was strong, it was warm, it made me feel like myself again.
She melted away my woes,
And I could tell she felt it too.

From the first date I knew it was special.
Talking felt like dancing
I couldn’t look away,
And I could tell she felt it too.

Her grip was soft yet sure as she took my shaky arm,
we regretted her train home was fast approaching.
I spun her round with one hand
and under the gentle glow of a street lamp kissed her for the first time.

I’d never known such bliss, never before been charmed like this.

From the second date I knew it was special
a picnic in the park, flowers in hand
We held each other under the sunset and the air began to cool
and through her eyes that made me putty in her hands,
I could tell she felt it too.

Days passed, calling more, falling more.
Just waiting for my phone to ring
And fighting off the butterflies she’d bring

The third date I hoped would be special
I’d planned, I’d prepared, I was excited.
Maybe next week instead we said
I could tell she was busy

Weeks passed, calling less, falling more.
She only seemed to drift away, leaving me to wonder why
Was I just too eager? Had this well gone dry? Every moment we shared, every kiss we stole replaying, praying it would change.

I’d never missed like this before - it should be alright, I’m sure.
I’d fallen.

It’s been months and still my heart whispers her name
How could I move on from a girl that enchanted me so,
A girl that helped find the ‘me’ I’d lost for so long.
These days you’ll find her, still picnicking under the sunset, her hair being gently stroked — but those hands aren’t mine.
So now I walk past the lonely lampposts, with my arm empty.
And that’s not special at all.

The pot calling the kettle black

this tekst isn’t meant to be morbid. just a train of thought I had yesterday.

I Keep Holding On
By Misti Pearson

I've buried the people who made me feel whole,
And each time I lost one, I lost part of my soul.
Now I'm terrified love will just leave me again,
So I cling to the people who soften the pain.
I long for a touch, for a heart that will stay,
For someone to hold me at the end of the day.
I keep holding on, though I know I should go,
To a man I still love, who won't love me so.
I've mistaken attention for love that is true,
And forgotten my worth in the things that I do.
I'm so scared of goodbye, of being alone,
Of walking through life with no heart to call home.
But maybe the love I've been searching to fine,
Begins with the woman I've left far behind.
And maybe someday I'll be strong enough to see,
I can’t keep losing others while I’m constantly losing me.

My bowl grows at it is filled

Always to the brim

Yet continues to hold

More

I grow with the weight

My world expands with the bowl

I want to see more

I have to hold more

More

I have enough

But tomorrow I won't

Good thing I'll have more

More

Clearly, I dont write much. Im curious what people think about this. Criticism is wanted. Be mean. It’s experimental.

“Each day when he rides his mechanical conception of a horse to the field
The humming of power lines distort his sense of certainty that one day
He will wake up on his own accord
That one day
The song of the crows will swallow any sense of meaninglessness
It always gets wedged in the throat of the panic inducing song like a tortilla chip that you didn’t spend enough time chewing

Considering that
He still wants people to know
He still wants to walk through the field he once plowed for minimum wage and a few electrolyte beverages
So he plows through the dirt that he knows well
In search of an artifact that communicates the translation of a universal truth
To be held tightly in his hand
And eventually passed around to his peers
Similar to the vase his potter grandmother never finished making
Which they loved all the more

Only to be reminded by the taunting sun that people dont care enough about talking dogs to pay them any mind
And that the people around him are already aware”

Johnny sat right outside of base
His back pressed against the wall
Just inside, victorious chants went all around
“We did it!”
 
A battle won
“We did it!”
Another day secured
“We did it!”
 
Johnny’s voice broke out in a pained crack
“We did it!”
Tons upon tons kept him on the sand
“We did it!”
 
He had taken a man to the ground with his children in sight
“We did it!”
How they screamed and cried once they saw what he’d done
“We did it!”
 
Johnny clasped his hands around his eyes
“We did it!”
Anguish echoed from behind his hands
“We did it!”
 
He moved his hands down slowly
“We did it!”
Tears poured down his cheeks
“We did it!”
 
An infant still clinging to its lifeless mother
“We did it!”
How it cried in her lifeless arms
“We did it!”
 
Johnny managed a meek ‘no”
“We did it!”
The chanting grew louder
“We did it!”
 
A single doorframe left standing
“We did it!”
Rubble marked by tiny droplets of blood
“We did it!”
 
Johnny’s mouth opened—nothing came
The chanting stopped and “cheers!” went around
The sound was consuming, but it steadily grew silent
Johnny took his eyes from off the ground and re-entered base
 
 
As he entered, he was greeted by “we did it!” from the other perpetrators
It all drowned out as he went silent for moment, but their laughter brought him back
eventually, he parroted
“We did it.”

My only experience with writing poetry has been in some of my past classes like AP literature, and I’ve only ever read poetry. Honest feedback is appreciated, but please not too harsh lol.

i have never taken heroin

yet somehow it became my drug.

a drug not chosen;

learned.

learned through the passage of time,

the passing of love,

the past.

it taught me to hold on

to everything

and everyone,

so that i can feel something…

maybe just closeness,

closeness and longing.

they became the drug of choice.

to be close is to be warm,

safe and secure,

seemingly serenity.

i am steadfast in my bliss,

and somehow falling short;

parachuting an ignorant chemical

why wouldn’t you feed it to me?

i have dropped these bombs

through explosions of love and closeness.

i have destroyed each person

with the serenity of my longing.

blood drips from the needle

again and again and again;

it has become dirty.

i always have dared to try once more,

risk my veins and my future

until one day such an end showed itself.

perhaps it was the universe;

incarnation collapsing my perception,

hypnotic and filling my lungs.

it put me to sleep in its chaos.

but i am discovering

it was a chaotic sort of good.

still i trembled in fear of it,

and became like death.

perchance i did die in that moment,

vomiting out truth and fear.

be not afraid.

i would like to give thanks to the angel,

as it feels like i was saved by someone;

resuscitated and restless.

but i will not-

this time i thank no one.

no one is my savior

except my own exasperation.

so here i am resurrected,

still dirty and learning

to expel the last of toxicity.

i want to wake up clean every day.

people love to thank their deities

instead of seeking out truth;

there are better teachings than false gods.

won’t you teach me?