Penelope Fairchild,
Penelope bares!
Penelope bears child,
Penelope cares!
Penelope Fairchild,
Penelope fares!
Penelope's fair child,
Penelope stares!
Penelope Fairchild,
Penelope glares!
Penelope's fair child,
Penelope scares!
Population patterns in history line
A fold
That general Assembly
Has no peaceful minds hiding
Just as just a study
A must I interfere?
That's a head count happened.
Poor man's oath to wait it out and relay.
A 2 nd parallel beneath the 1st?
Since February of 2025 after the delay
for stated move in dates prior to Jan thru August 2024
Obstructing legislations passage in
California homekey qualifies a minimum
6 months of evidence in the willful
collection of bribes by employed Californians.
Rules as laws in reading legal headlines
defined by regulation of Republican policy shift
This shift in labor policy counters
Trial and error of time under Democratic policy
Zero Budget exists for grants of yesterday or salary
Suggested
No department transfers prepared
Then bribery is accounted for as precaution
To statement
Fact in science of math and letters from history
Let it be noted in speculation laws preventing
speculation that following private citizens
rights and manners is evidence against
When your wrong
You may not correct the truth
the past may be onerous
a burden that prevents you from living
~ the present is your future
Wordku: 5-7-5 words
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
the dark cloud ever present
holding a grudge was only hurting me
~ so i let it go
Wordku: 5-7-5 words
AP: 1st place 2025
The Burden of Youth
She was seventeen, and her boyfriend had left her
Life is more intense when you are young, she wanted to commit
Suicide so he could see how much he loved her.
Filled her rucksack with stones and waded into the bay, but
The water was low only to her chest when she reached the other side
Besides, she was glad to be alive.
She met a young man also unlucky in love, who took her rucksack
Filled more stones into it and waded into the sea, but now there was
High tide and the young man disappeared under the sea.
A few seagulls shrieked in the otherwise silent area as the girl waited for the bus.
To take her back to town, block out unpleasant thoughts, she said aloud.
My father is a communist, the bus driver who was a fascist stopped
Pulled out his gun and shot her dead, and the women on an outing clapped.
This was her father letting the red flag fly in the street of Utopia.
Freedom is documented,
When new page opens,
unwritten words await,
But It feels like wandering in the mist,
Walking in the tangles of sin,
Rules feel like destiny,
Yet we are caged,
The sky was never the limit,
Still not the limit,
But are we strong enough
To make our own choices?
To open a new page,
To write our own new peace?
Will our story be told?
If we roar, will we be heard
Or silenced, gunned down?
So, are we truly free?
Do we really have a choice?
Without fate, without faith,
Freedom is a dilemma.
Right or wrong
A choice must be made,
Even choosing nothing,
It still a choice,
In a flash,the Rubicon is crossed,
Are we really free?
Or still to be?.
Killick Poetry Contest // Sponsored by: Craig Cornish
Contest Judged: 9/5/2025 12:25:00 PM
( 7th Place )
Written: August 26, 2025
I never chose the burden
but life pressed stone and rope into my hands.
I lowered it into the unsettled sea,
and waited for balance to return.
The sea murmurs of leaving,
of slipping past every safe haven,
yet I stay, steady on hidden weight
gripped by the understated endurance.
Some may laugh at its rawness,
a patchwork anchor of scraps and stone
but I trust its unshaken clutch.
It does not shine,
it does not speak
yet it keeps me from dissolving.
The killick teaches me this:
strength is not perfection...
it is simply staying when all else pulls away.
You were never meant to be a vessel of sorrow,
Yet the world placed its trembling hands on you.
A child seen as an outcast has no place here, they said,
Treated like a beast than an actual human being.
A childhood of watching, listening, holding secrets like sharp stones in tender palms,
Smiles practiced, tears swallowed, the weight of others pressing on small shoulders.
Burden child, you've learnt to be strong before what strong actually means, to stand silent so others could rest to give warmth while shivering.
Learnt to be independent and caring, even letting others walk on you like a rug, with no absolute care in the world.
Burden child, you grow too quickly, carrying griefs that do not belong to,
You grew to become a kind- hearted person but it seems that reality labelled you as burden.
Burden child, your name will not be a burden, but a survivor, and even more than that... light
Dearest reader, I have many secrets
But I wont tell you now, I'll wait till you're older
Heavens know I have many regrets
But I wont tell you now, please wait till I'm bolder
There are many things about me you dont know yet
But I wont tell you niw as you rhetorically cry on my shoulder
There is a version of myself you havent met yet
But I wont show you now, for she's angry, much darker...colder
I dont know if I'll tell you when your tears have dried
Or when you no longer cry
I'll tell you my secrets but maybe when you're wiser
Though it might take a little longer
For I dont want to be a bother
Till then you can cry on my shoulder
While I pretend to be stronger
I carry a house upon my back,
A fragile frame of dreams and stone.
Its windows cracked, its timbers black,
But still I walk, and still alone.
Each wall is built from words unsaid,
From nights I stitched with fraying thread.
Its roof is shingled with the dread
Of all the tears I never shed.
I pass through valleys, rivers wide,
This house sways gently as I climb.
It holds the ones I left behind,
The echoes trapped in rooms of time.
It shelters me from bitter rain,
Yet weighs me down with silent years.
A monument to love and pain,
A quiet vault of hopes and fears.
I cannot leave it on the shore,
No matter how I long to flee.
It is my burden, evermore,
It is the marrow under me.
And still I rise, though shadows press,
And still I breathe beneath its beams.
I learn to walk with weight and mess,
To carve new roads from broken dreams.
For though I carry walls of glass,
I also carry seeds of spring.
And somewhere deep, beyond the past,
I carry hope. I carry wings.
The earth, the population's burden's beast -
we take its flesh, its skin, and blood and bones.
We fight for its spoils. Terror is unleashed.
We have graduated from throwing stones -
mankind, once a hope, soon to be deceased.
Can you hear the hot, fevered beast's last moans?
Beneath our planet's provident blue sky,
we'll kill ourselves before the beast can die.
Angie and Ruby, the Honky Tonk Women,
wanted to paint the honkytonk. Their heads started swimmin'
when I says, "Ruby, Tuesday's a good day to paint.
It should be sunny, but even if it ain't,
I'll have my radio blasting The Rolling Stones.
What kind of colors you want? What tones?"
"Paint it Black" says Ruby, but Angie, she says "white".
I says, "Tumblin' Dice can decide which is right."
Ruby said, "We got this old black paint from DuPont -
Angie, You Can't Always Get What You Want".
I painted up the honkytonk, nothing more to discuss.
I gazed at some Wild Horses, and picked a mean ol' cuss,
tired of all these women folks's bickering and fuss.
I had paint Under My Thumb, and my clothes were in a muss
as I saddled up the horse, thinking, Some Girls are pretty funny,
and I won't paint no more honkytonks for that kind of money.
when you feel isolated
don’t burden someone with the unwavering thought of loneliness
don’t ruin a persons peace for your own comfort
when you get to know a person deeper
don’t make a game of it
when they get comfortable
you’re quick to leave
all you needed was someone to talk to
not stay with
don’t trick someone into forever
when you know you don’t have that long
To be a burden means to not use the tools strewn about.
The rusty trowel and bucket filled with half-thoughts.
Be a burden.
Your words are just wailing and buzzing at us.
I can be a burden.
I can dig little holes all around the sand.
I can bury little toy soldiers.
But under the sand means nothing.
It just gets footprints, and litter, and walking over and over.
So what we bury will creep back.
We can be burdens.
Throw away our shovels, rakes, and nails.
Let them be as scrambled as we were.
As they pick up the resources scattered about.
There’s no such thing as support.
Nothing real.
Digging new holes everywhere.
But I can never bury any thought or idea.
Just scraps of my eternity.
I can be a real burden sometimes.
In this exacting and grueling way.
We can be real burdens some days.
I drove my car to the beach one summer day.
Wondering what the waves wanted this time.
Thickened and scarred, my mask bears the burden of time,
Torn, stained, this tough shell silently unravels,
And yet, somehow, it continues to keep me alive, to protect me from the world,
It was never a shining armor, just my mask,
Trying to compensate for all that I could not be.
Sensitivity and tenderness were sacrificed on the altar of necessity,
To become my shield against the sharp and merciless wind,
My mask has burned, boiled, swelled under the relentless sun,
I treated it harshly, underestimating its silent and constant value,
Wearing it reluctantly through this sad, often unforgiving life.
I made it suffer more than it should have, under my weight,
Never acknowledging its silent and priceless sacrifice,
It, my mask, was there when I was not,
Remaining behind me, a testament to all the battles fought,
A story written in scars and burns, in its trenches of pain and silence.
Will I ever learn to truly value it, to appreciate
This mask that has borne my burdens with dignity,
To understand that it is not just a covering, but part of who I am,
A testament to my resilience, a map of survival,
That continues to defend me, despite all my mistakes?
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