only some children
can claim that life is easy
only some adults
have a life that is easy
for there are many whose dreams
shattered before their eyes
heartbreak and heartache
the sum of their existence
when what is spoken is not true
when deceit dominates
yet forgiveness is expected
escape to better living is excruciating
There’s such a raw feeling to this piece. River takes on a heavy subject and delivers its message so eloquently. It will leave you feeling heavy.
We don’t have boulevards to forget
Our dreams lie broken on dirty streets
Nicotine stained fingers prod for meaning
Calloused hands wring out the last
Drops of chance we believed were waiting
Don’t tell me about hope and the possibility
Of what may come
I see it, smell it all around me, the hope
It stares me in the face, around every corner
Hangs from light posts and street signs
Flows through the gutters like paper boats
Made from yesterday’s news
It’s been dropped, thrown, torn to pieces
Left, to drift on the wind
It’s stepped over, walked through, trampled on
Trapped in a cycle of rot and growth
Yes, there’s hope, it’s all around us
But how many are too tired to stop and pick it up
Too weak to carry it, along with everything else
That fills their arms, lives on their backs
Sometimes, we manage to tuck…
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Is restoration ever possible? This piece highlights the depths we go to and quite possibly never recover from.
Nothing has been the same since you left.
I am far from myself.
Trying to be things I feel I cannot.
It isn’t what you would want from me.
You knew the real me. You had accepted it with open arms & wanted me to stay that way. It was something that should have been so easy to do.
In fact it was.
But it was not easy for me somehow.
Incompetent I am for failing to do a simple task.
How I wish I could revert to that last time we spoke. Had I known it would be the final time, my words would be rearranged to keep you. To give myself a final chance to prove myself.
Every time I look back I that day, I consider it one of my biggest failures.
Because time after that has me filled with so much regret for all of my…
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20/20 doesn’t mean what it used to
hope was sucked out of our beings
drowning us in metaphorical waters
the despair vibrated in the gasps of the dying
can we recover…
politics, and the anger it fueled
climate change, and the natural disasters which ensued
sickness, and the devastation that followed
all of it ravaged the land, the body and the heart
i hope we can recover…
but there are stronger ones among us
survivors, come what may
we’ll need to lean on them
or forever lose our way
we can recover…
Thanks to my hubs for the title of this piece! I’d wanted to write one final piece about the year 2020 but hadn’t found what I would call an acceptable way to lead into it. Recently, while having a discussion, I misspoke trying to utter the word “situation.” Great discussion and a title was born!
Very profound thoughts. I was impressed with how the writer captured the emotions “feeding” on our misery. Well done micropoetry, IMO.
The pain is a parasite
The child of a bad experience.
From Beyond
I know what you want
Dark mysteries from beyond
Chills the blood within
Open your eyes to the void
The curtain lifts on your doom
Cycle of the Witch
Child of earth
Lives and learns
Wisdom grow’s
Woman’s Life
Grimoire’s verse
Imparts love
Come of age
Passed the test
Old Crone rests
Woman
Thine own eyes see all
She is of body and mind
Her beauty revered
Despair
What do you want when you see me?
Am I not good enough for thee?
No more can I stay
Now I must away
Your goodbye
I won’t cry
John’s a self-proclaimed poet and storyteller who writes for a hobby and professionally. He’s from the coastal city of Swansea in South Wales and has had a vivid imagination from a young age. A lover of mystery and conspiracy, little green men and things going bump in the night. You can read his work here – The Mush from the Hill
If you’d like to be featured on The Short of It,
click here for the submissions guidelines.
#TheShortofIt
It is dark now but the light will come back again. This piece so eloquently expresses we must proactively seek out hope. Reality will eventually catch up.
anxiety born to be hidden
just like everything else
except the mask
never the mask
for it serves as a shield
…
hope
followed with confusion
relapsing fear
breaking illusion
…
creation
limited distraction
but important factor
inevitable now
when I feel down.
…
making art
to let my pain out
determined to fight
to exit the dark
when I start to write
…
and in aftermath of all my crises
resilient hope still thrives
This piece will take you to the depths of sorrow and despair. Oof! It’s certainly one that hit home for me!
Originally published on Hijacked Amygdala 3/1/20
As it grows dark
As the corners of today’s page furl
Empty rooms, homes without windows, drugs without users, a body untouchable, growing cold
As if alight sparing flame
Never to relive
Nor consume nor nourish
This terrible emptiness
As she feels the pain that comes afterward
Inevitable. Old. Crushing. Familiar.
She wants to run to you
But you’re long gone, if ever present
Diminished and relinquished
Pouring medicine down the drain, till needful of no refreshment
Even beauty turns to stone
Even love robs itself destitute
As lovers hate the very thing that made them burn
The taste in her mouth of ashes
Written across her brow in heavy stroke
The cross, the lantern, the falsehood
This room loses light as she gradually declines
On her knees, so many years without touch; lies in place of comfort
Words growing smaller and smaller
A shadow book within a grace freshly dug, till she can see no more but the internal crush of loss
She was an addictive personality who couldn’t get out of her mould, it stuck like jello, that tendency toward
Melancholy and suicide
If you find her dead you can bet one of her vices is responsible
When she meets people who have not soaked their souls in cigarettes and vodka
Feeling more in the daytime bar than ever something clean and starched
Broken girl parts
Snapped in half before they knew how to stand up
Hers is a sickness, dances in pearls around her neck till pulled tight
Wanting the abyss of psychedelic music and dream of hashish
Intoxicate the pain, numb further urge to destroy what’s left
And push yourself inside me, join the sorrow dot by dot till we both burst
Such is the loveliness of sex in the fulment of grief
Replacing one pain with another small death
The telephone doesn’t ring
She doesn’t call or receive these days
The silence as palpable as the knife she carves her arms into ribbons with
They’ve danced this dance before
There are no rehearsals left, just curtain fall
Think of how it felt, long ago
Before the end, in the middle, lost now
The heaviness of her wanting is blunted by knowing
These people have only their irrevocable actions
Sparring with one another, the blood of first strike hitting white snow in masterpiece
Crimson against a hundred promises, a new form of murder
Sitting, watching herself go through the motions
Good girl who kisses her loved one, tucks in the bed sheets tight
Dreaming of broken glass down her throat, three grey birds and a fingerful of coke
The rage of impotence across flayed landscapes
That flesh and sinew long hung to cure, speaks nothing
Doesn’t forget the rebuke, even as forgiveness is yoked, chain on soft skin
To every ending
Time ticks down without mercy, and if she lives to your age
Just like you, setting the tableaux of your life, there’ll be nothing to say
But the horror of silence before deafening rain
Then she picks up her existing and leaves
Soon it seems, she was never there, just a handful of misspoken words and rage
Drinking clouds, the truth, spares the speaker
She has a generation of distillers and eyes that carry pain as if it were their child
Tonight she won’t be meeting you, she’ll keep on driving
There’s a drop off somewhere, she knows, a fateful road where the turn is sharp
And unexpected
Even for the most familiar driver
It takes a kind of control
She never ever possessed.
at the end of a rope
that society designed
couldn’t match the requirements
which it demands
laying in wait for a handout
that won’t cover rehabilitation
suffering on the streets
in garb not fit for a king
we allow this despair
watch it unfold
do nothing to stop it
and look appalled at the sight
of a human laying
sacrificed for the rest
walking on by
ignoring his despair
shame on a society which allows this to exist
land decimated
nature’s forces so brutal
scared people fleeing
The first thought in my head in response to this prompt is the havoc nature is playing with us in multiple states in the USA. I happen to live in Kansas where this season we have endured endless rain, severe flooding and thunderstorms, a few tornado watches and an actual warning of one approaching our area. Unfortunately, those turned devastating elsewhere in the state. Luckily, my family and friends haven’t been terribly affected, but some were not so fortunate. Nature can be so damn beautiful and expressive, then ravage you in an instant.
