why …
why do we careless creatures
hold on so tightly?
tears are not poisonous
they will not etch our face with the
afflictions they carry
but they WILL assuage its acidity -
why not let them roll?
we … are ambiguity’s toys
for love is a whipping post and
an altar, divine …
we allow its words to chain us, unseen
to one or the other
when, in all better judgement
we could allay the flogging and the
flames of infatuation
by simply … letting … go …
yet our fists remain clenched about it
the cable of needs and passions and the
price we pay for them,
firmly in our grip
as we slowly tie it into a gallows
of emotional greed and
committal hubris …
thus …
no matter how many moonrises we
watch trickle thru life’s sieve,
we continue to fall like children for
the hearts we hope to sway
and pay for the privilege with the
dearest of currency …
all the while finding ourselves back in
a purgatory of indecision
weighing love and its costs against loneliness
never knowing which …
is the most …
deadly.
I knocked on the door of limbo,
where the breathless rest,
neither damned nor divine,
but I was not even shadow enough
to be let in.
They saw my name
unwritten,
unwitnessed
and turned me away like a sin
never spoken aloud.
So I walked the earth
as half a ghost,
haunting the body
I was born into.
WAITING IN LIMBO
Sitting on the muddy banks
Of faded realities,
Lingering in the spaces of time,
Lost souls struggle:
Seeking another Dreamer.
Powering pawn brokers,
Tighten their mogering grasp
Beyond the setting sun;
Leaving frailed victories festering
And waning in winds of change:-
White opiates coagulate,
Flowing black dreams
Of mesmerized minds;
Oblivious to fading freedoms
Chained and rotting away:-
As time and life sag on,
Let’s not be as a drooping bosom
Sagging due to incised-bleeding;
Rather, let’s be as pregnant wombs
Breaking waters of liberating justice:-
Indeed, let’s scream renewed life,
Nourished keloid-ancestral-navels,
Waxed and hardened by sarcasm
Against the trumping-musky rhetoric
Streaming against democratic equity:-
I stand on a precipice
Eternal midnight shines above
As reflected below
Eden, steps back
Close enough to see
I am Tantalus
Step back
“Backward
And going backwards”
A flash and thunder
I appear before me
“If one had a genie, would he wish to love himself as others?
I feel contempt from you, of course I do”
I know I would
Because I love people
Sitting here
in igneous space
wrestling with naked thoughts
finds me face to face
with sad beauty:
the navel of time
is emblematic
that the poetic seed
must first fertilize the mind
that its womb may birth forth
yet another mused child of light
to shatter the unique ghost darkness
hidden within fibers of fading blank pages,
fading blank pages, awaiting poetic revival:-
In twilight's hollow, where shadows play,
I find myself lost, in a heart's gray day.
A soul once afire, with love's pure flame,
Now flickers faintly, in loneliness's cold frame.
In secret gardens, where memories reside,
Our laughter echoes, a haunting, mournful tide.
The ghosts of our whispers, the shadows of our past,
Torment my waking, and forever will last.
Like autumn's leaves, our love withered away,
Leaving me to wander, in a desolate gray.
No warmth of your touch, no gentle summer breeze,
Only the echoes of what we used to be.
In this limbo, I search for a way to escape,
From the prison of longing, the weight of heartache.
But like a migratory bird, lost in endless skies,
I'm left to navigate, the dark and lonely sighs.
So here I'll remain, suspended in time,
A heart forever trapped, between love and loneliness's chime.
Maybe I should put my mask back on,
Squeeze back in my mold.
I’m too loud, too colorful, too different;
At least that's what I’m told.
I tried so hard to blend into the crowd,
Whispered when I wanted to scream out loud.
But the mask is heavy, the mold too tight,
And shrinking myself doesn't feel right.
So maybe I’ll break the mold apart,
Peel back the mask and show my heart.
Maybe I’ll be loud, and maybe I’ll shine,
Because this life, this soul, is mine.
They may call me too much, too bright, too rough,
But I’d rather be too much than not enough.
Maybe I should put my mask back on, squeeze back in my mold.
I’m too loud, too colorful, too different; at least that's what I’m told.
I tried so hard to blend into the crowd,
Whispered when I wanted to scream out loud.
But the mask is heavy, the mold too tight,
And shrinking myself doesn't feel quite right.
So maybe I’ll break the mold apart,
Peel back the mask and show my heart.
Maybe I’ll be loud, and maybe I’ll shine,
Because this life, this soul, is mine.
They may call me too much, too bright, too rough,
But I’d rather be too much than not enough.
you can't turn me on and off
like a lightswitch
i don't work that way
you're hot you're cold
you're unpredictable
it's wearying to live in limbo
i'm the elastic that's been stretched
till it can give no more
my compass has lost its north
i no longer know what i feel
if anything at all
i'm the candle without a wick
i'm spent and empty
hollow and fake
i smile but my eyes don't lie
the eyes never lie
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
Step by step she lost every ounce of happiness in her,
This is not a suicide note it's a monologue,
Strangely every full moon the wolf got weaker,
She prayed that she wouldn't live long.
Couldn't put the knife to the wrist,
So she wrapped the pen with the fingers,
Bleed through the ink and watched the naivete wither,
Ink to paper was like blood on the dance floor,
The rhythm of the curves and strokes could tell that the dancer was in trance,
Limbo, in between life and death, one step away from her final destination, I saw it, I ran and now my own ghost is chasing me.
restless I stay
Stuck in Limbo
is Heaven above and Hell below
I can’t remember
I am stuck
to go either way I must take action
I must unravel the colorful cluster of yarn you left behind
but you left me in Limbo not knowing I was color blind
having to reckon with your symphony of inaction
so I turn to rational thinking
Charting the pros and cons
and yet I see that it not Heaven or Hell above and below
rather each direction is a mix of both
So here I stay in Limbo
forever restless
Limbo
I’m in a dark space
There are no edges
And the sides flex if I push
I am blind and deaf
The taste of doubt
In my mouth
The scent of fear
In my nostrils
I roll and kick
But I make no impact
I want to be free
But there’s no way out
I’m agonising
Worrying, uncertainty
Claustrophobia haunts me
Rules my mind.
Everybody hates me
I’m against the world
And the world’s against me
You enter the room
And I snap out of it
My senses return
I’m free once more
My mind has lost its grip.
David Cox 17/04/24
why …
why do we careless creatures
hold on so tightly?
tears are not poisonous
they will not etch our face with the
afflictions they carry
but they WILL assuage its acidity -
why not let them roll?
we … are ambiguity’s toys
for love is a whipping post and
an altar, divine …
we allow its words to chain us, unseen
to one or the other
when, in all better judgement
we could allay the flogging and the
flames of infatuation
by simply … letting … go …
yet our fists remain clenched about it
the cable of needs and passions and the
price we pay for them,
firmly in our grip
as we slowly tie it into a gallows
of emotional greed and
committal hubris …
thus …
no matter how many moonrises we
watch trickle thru life’s sieve,
we continue to fall like children for
the hearts we hope to sway
and pay for the privilege with the
dearest of currency …
all the while finding ourselves back in
a purgatory of indecision
weighing love and its costs against loneliness
never knowing which …
is the most …
deadly.
Copyright © Gregory Richard Barden, April 5, 2024
Limbo
Hunched over and holding a Zimmer frame
Limbo
Waiting for a call that is never - ever going to come
Limbo
The day draws nearer as the blinds on the window begin to shut sealed
Limbo
That's what they call it, hanging on every single word and action
Limbo
Bend over backwards. Don't bother in even trying. You're bent over now.
Limbo
Pull that duvet and run a bath and play some music
Limbo
Don't listen, just watch. Watch my lips move up and down in slow motion to the rhythm of this beat
Limbo
Don't bother in even trying. It is all done now. It has already gone by and it is told and told to whoever passes you by
Limbo
fascinated by the things
hovering in the punishing
sky. both the wicked and winged,
or the bare and featureless. pulled
along in a conveyor belt parade,
a silent march in the stratosphere.
floating forward to the place called
Limbo.
jagged horns pop the
clouds like balloons, withering skin
grazes the twilight. the softest
sky being cut into ribbons as
if it was a present that was
meant to be ripped open all along.
those foggy phantoms following
along. reaping the seeds they
sowed when they were more than
souls.
what a wonderful gift it must be
to hover over this hollow place.
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