Avoiding the bridal bouquet thrown my way
My legs feel poor in an unkind way
I don’t want to talk about anything
I don’t want to talk about anyone
Hoarseness will ingest lungs
Loss will be learnt from rot
I [will] have no eyes
I [will] have no tongue
I [will] have no heart
Mind's minute mirage may muffle,
But biding by blinding brings burns.
Severely she'll sunder, so scuffle,
'Til tomorrow, tomorrow turns.
Winds gust with forceful change
Our stubborn shields prove useless
The bell tolls a warning within range
We stall behind worn out excuses
Head high or chin down…undecided
We ride against the grain defiant
Our whims like arrows misguided
On silence we’ve become too reliant
Why does it feel so immense
This shift we knew was coming
Behind a mask of false pretense
We dance to a beat so numbing
Opportunity presented itself
I closed my eyes
Learning seemed hard
I closed my eyes
I pushed open a door to my new start
I closed my eyes
Nothing worked out
I closed my eyes
Facing my reality
I closed my eyes
Losing the worth for which I strived
Every waking moment my heart cried
However hard I tried
I couldn't close my eyes.
It starts with avoiding phone calls
pricks up into chills when
no more can be avoided
oozes into dreams of teeth
falling out by the dozens
stalks past awash in fear
nothing can be saved from
the gaze of Other
And why should you be saved
you who have not
earned the right to be sad when
others have known grief
deeper than the well
everyone must now drink from,
instead of putting confidence
in the clear waters that were
So nothing is to be done but
bash away at bystanders again and again
and again because
the darkness holds no fear now
it was and has always been
people that terrify
even when they hold out
the well-wishing well-waters to your lips
I see him
relentlessly busy
running in every which direction
scattered to the winds
anything to evade
the constant chatter of his mind
AP: 2nd place 2022, Honorable Mention 2025
No one needs complications in their life
Merely living is a puzzling ordeal,
Presenting more than enough strife
Or at least that’s how I feel.
I try to avoid conflict whenever possible
Going out of my way to please,
But then, I encounter the implausible
Those who cannot be appeased.
So, I use the only weapon at my disposal
Where I learned it, I do not know,
I turn away and walk the other direction
When I’ve nowhere else to go.
Written September 7, 2022
[a tip of the hat to Mike Gentile,
who regularly uses this pattern.]
I close my eyes as her knife pushes through me
For if I could see what she was doing, I could never forgive her.
I can’t stop thinking about you
How loving you were to me
The warmth that came across your face
To penetrate my eyes with your beautiful eyes
The smile and laughter that stole my heart
Our bodies together- our love
I can’t stop thinking about you
Taking all my time with you before it all goes away
The love I have for you is true
So I grabbed all the time I could have with you
Before the tide turned to gloom
I can’t stop thinking of you
I don’t want this to slip away
Hanging on to hope
My heart bleeds
Standing over myself
My heart bleeds
Red pools below
Like a finger painting gone wrong
Blood everywhere
Pictures lay out
Smiling couple sprawled out on the floor
Silent from below
I’m not moving
I’m alone now in this void
It’s not suicide from a broken heart
Your avoidance attachment
In such denial of it
Placing blame on everything else
Blaming me making feel like I’m not ever going to be enough
Slapping my love right in front of my face
Like the abuse-
you’re taking it out on me
I had nothing to do with it
I gave all my love and more
I was selfless in my heart to you
I held onto hope-
that’s just me
I prayed often for the pain to go away, for you
My love wasn’t enough to erase the traumas
I couldn’t control it
I could only Hope
I still have Hope
Hope is what I cling to
If you can’t see the pattern
PTSD from October
It’s not from Halloween
Go get ing Help
So Hope can survive
GOD, knows!
Save your soul
Enough living in pain
My Love, go get ing Help
Stop the cycle
Stop the cycle
It hurts to see it
It comes out viciously attacking and destroying the love
You had someone so beautifully special in your heart
You gave that all up
For-
Avoidance attachment style
Show me the love for yourself and me
Do crows carry the black hearts of souls
Is this were the light fades away from the heart that once burned so bright
Loss Love transforms what burned so bright to blackness
Fragility of the mind so torments the heart
In spirit we float seeking out those to love
Only to come across the sea of crows
There they pluck out the hearts that lay
Loss love in the sea of crows
Tormented
Tormented
Soul
The blackness I bare witness to
For I am tormented by the loss love
I can’t stop crying now!!!
Confused
Laying here in tears with no one near
My wailing in silent as my body trembles
I can’t stop crying now!!!
I’m so confused by those last messages
My heart breaks so hard
Shattering to the floor
Will you pick up my pieces-
To throw them or mend them
I’m not sure anymore
I love beyond love, unconditionally
What I wanted was just love, family, a partner to love-
All under one roof
You couldn’t handle that
My heart wasn’t welcome anymore
Now you made me so confused
Your last messages tug at my heart
Plucking my strings
I still see you when I sleep
Beautiful as before
Maybe I’ll sleep forever to be with you
Never have I love, the love like you
Painfully assaulted in a rhythm
Like clockwork
Comes in 3’s and 4’s
It came, slicing what love we had
To dismembered hearts we fall
If I had a shield to go back in time
I would go to protect you from the abuse
I wish there was a pill to dissolve away all the pain you endured
I’m so sorry there is no way to go back to have you grow up in a secure environment
To see that side of you, so loving and warm to succumb to the other side so quickly as it’s all you know
It’s my loss
It’s your loss
I’m secure you are not
Your disconnect
Your walls to hide behind
Your detachment that is flicked on like a light switch
The negative look on being with someone under one roof
I am sorry for you
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