Long Rot Poems
Long Rot Poems. Below are the most popular long Rot by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Rot poems by poem length and keyword.
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You give into gravity
You need no compass
You endlessly go down
First goes your mind
It’s stuffed with gold and garbage until it bursts
Then your bleeding organs await maintenance
Then your gray heart and your dried up soul
Get caught in a wheel that is being continuously turned by you
But you have no control over it
And every voice that matters gets put on low low volume
So that you won’t be distracted from the deafening incoherent loop of nothingness and soul numbing diarrhea because your brain craves a reset and you run it low power til it dies
And you have so many tools and no supplies
And an inability to take truth from the lies
And when your cup overflows with poison it can seep into places of importance
And you use your brain as the sponge that guards your heart
That sits down at your stomach
And it drips and it soaks
And it leaks and it never stops and the noise
it never leaves
Maximum time for minimal attention
Nothing of note is worth a mention
It comes only by reflex and invitation
The truth was concealed with many branches. Countless
are the days I happily lingered in the comfort of your shade
before passionate winds revealed each of your limbs as too
weak to support natural, core growth. Your delusive roots
cannot grab substantial hold in earth while fertilized by
pretense’s charade. Only hollow echoes resound within your
skin of splintered bark and your shadows of nothingness grow
ever longer.
Under a warming sun, I joyously gave my heart in open palm
to you. At the time, I ignorantly embraced your breadth and
sum, for your apparent beauty preceded your tells of long
developed and craftily hidden inner rot, sure to disease all love
given in deep, steady, heartbreaking spurts. I can no longer
tarry beneath your deceptive branches and chose to depart with
no thought of ever returning, but I leave behind my tender pity to
witness your inevitable withering.
But innocence is fleeting in a world that feeds on pain,
And Lysander’s golden network was a fragile, human chain.
He built a bridge across the void for desperate minds to meet,
But forgot to wash the poison from the travelers' weary feet.
By the second year of weaving, all the currents turned to lead,
As all the old cruelties of the living and the dead
Came flooding through the cellular gates, a dark and violent slime,
The malice and the envy of a long-forgotten time.
The thread was far too delicate, the static far too loud,
The human ego would not bend, too arrogant and proud.
It did not heal them instantly; it made them all akin
To every dark and hidden sin that festered deep within.
Lysander sat paralyzed, a prisoner of his throne,
His crooked body shaking with a horror not his own.
He felt the phantom agony of ancient, iron wars,
The bitter fruit of minds that only dreamed of making scars.
He saw the floodgates he had opened, saw the dangerous sea,
And knew that he was drowning in their shared hypocrisy.
Yet as his long hands trembled with the planet's collective ache,
He refused to cut the living cord, he refused to let it break.
He knew that if he severed it, the dark would win the fight,
And damn Vaeloria to an eternal, separate night.
He held the connection open, through the madness and the grime—
The human fuse that burned toward the dawn of Fifty-Five.
Written: August 02, 2025, for contest Sponsored by: Crystol Woods
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In the slipshod cradle beneath the apple tree,
a bruised fruit folds ajar—
molten sweet sapidity pooling
through velvet skin.
Eviscerated grace, they say,
but I grasp the quiddity of life unmasked.
A burnt sienna kiss of aurora—
flesh undulating with fungal bloom,
wispy gossamer threads that stitch
the inevitable return to the earth.
It is not ruined.
It is a transformation:
a diaphanous ballet
between death and what dreams may grow.
We ogle brightness,
but rot is brighter still—iridescent with purpose,
alabaster spores pirouetting as sylphlike specters
on a sacred odyssey to placate
the starving soil.
It is seraphic.
It is a panacea.
It is quintessence made humble.
Rapture lies in this ineffable nexus—
decay whispers loud as a lullaby.
The rakish grubs maunder through
a velvet pyre of rind and memory,
and the loquacious beetle sermonizes
on endings as beginnings,
as though time had a gullet
And rot was its sweetest wine.
Call it grotesque.
Call it abhorrent.
But beauty—true, ineffable beauty—
wears many masks.
And in these nebulous throes of perishing,
I watch a face burnished by truth,
smiling with roots in its eyes.
The bed is soft, familiar.
Not comfort, not really, just known.
A sinking, a settling,
the weight of existing pressing down,
but not enough to break me.
The dishes stack in the sink,
a quiet monument to days slipping by.
My phone buzzes, I don’t check.
The world is moving, but I am not.
Not yet.
And still -
something in my chest tightens,
not in fear, not in regret,
but in recognition.
A shift, a stretch,
a thought that maybe I don’t have to
stay here forever.
I don’t throw off the duvet,
don’t leap into the light.
But I swing one foot over the edge.
A small rebellion,
a promise to the self I’m becoming.
Listen up, 'cause I'm about to spit some truth
About a disease that's eating our society from the root
Corruption, the silent killer, the thief in the night
Stealing our future, our justice, our right
Bribes exchanging hands, backdoor deals in the dark
While the common folk struggle, just trying to make their mark
Services meant for all, now reserved for a few
Tell me, is this the society we ever knew?
Plato's spinning in his grave, his ideal state in shambles
As the guardians of our republic take part in corrupt gambles
Aristotle's golden mean? More like a rusty scale
Tipped in favour of the rich, leaving the poor to wail
John Rawls cries out from behind his veil of ignorance
"Where's the fairness? The justice? This ain't what I meant!"
The social contract in tatters, Rousseau's dream undone
When public service becomes a race that can't be won
Corruption kills! It kills our schools, our hospitals, our streets
It kills our faith in leaders, in the cop on the beat
It kills our children's future, their chance to rise and shine
It kills our very soul, crossing every moral line
Kant would ask, "Is this universal? Could all act this way?"
If everyone was corrupt, society would decay
But here we are, watching it crumble day by day
As the corrupt few steal everyone else's say
So what do we do? How do we break this chain?
How do we wash away this deep, pervasive stain?
It starts with us, with you, with me, with all
Standing up, speaking out, refusing to fall
For every bribe refused, every whistleblower brave
We claw back our future from corruption's grave
It's time to rise, to fight, to make things right
To bring our society back into the light
Because justice ain't just a word, it's our lifeline
Fairness ain't a luxury, it should be yours and mine
Well-being ain't for sale, it's our birthright
So stand up, speak out, and join the fight!
Against corruption, against the rot
For the society we want, not the one we've got
The philosophers of old, showed us the way
Now it's up to us to seize a better day!
Red balloons with clowns attached
Lock your doors
Keep the windows latched
So many people
Knocking at the door
One, two, three, four,
Ten or twelve or maybe more
Disembodied voices
Screaming in my head
I found their bodies sleeping
Underneath my bed
Which I am now so far from
But still they haunt my head
There’s a man in the corner
There’s a child on the ceiling
I don’t know what’s over there
But still I hear it screaming
Howling echoes in my mind
Demons dance before my eyes
Seems I forgot my pills again
I search for them with hazy vision
Check the bottle once then twice
Then with horror I realize
Why it is that I’m so nervous
Why I appear so tense
The pills offset each other
So I’m not making sense
And then my head begins to spin
My vision darkens yet again
I fall to the floor
And the beasts dance no more
But still the voices loudly roar
Among the lot, before consciousness slips
“Leave him be. He's just drunk again.”
I don’t fade
I rot quietly
I am here so long
the world forgets I arrived
Eyes pass through me
not by accident
by practice
like I was trained into the background
a human-shaped absence
I learned early
that silence is safer
that wanting too much gets you erased faster
so I shrink
and shrink
until even my shadow gives up on me
People talk over my chest
laugh through my ribs
step where my heart should be
and never feel a thing
Being invisible isn’t peaceful
it’s violent
it’s being ignored so hard
it starts to feel intentional
like a punishment no one admits giving
I scream sometimes
inside my skull
until my thoughts bruise
but nothing leaks out
because even pain knows
I’m not worth announcing
If I vanished tonight
no ghosts would be made
no chairs left empty
no silence noticed
Just a gap
that was already there
And the worst part
is not that no one sees me
It’s that I’m starting
not to see myself either
We built it with soft hands,
stacked comfort upon convenience,
turned our backs to the gears turning in the dark.
Fed by silver screens and full stomachs,
we let the fire flicker,
too drunk on the warmth to notice the smoke.
They whispered,
“Don’t worry.”
And we believed them.
We traded vigilance for spectacle,
truth for something easier to swallow.
The cracks in the foundation widened,
but we called them character,
part of the charm of an aging empire.
When the first stones fell,
we laughed.
When the pillars trembled,
we turned up the music.
By the time we saw the beast,
it had already made a home in our halls.
And now, even the quiet places are waking up.
The ground hums with something unscripted,
a pulse beneath the broken roads,
a breath held too long.
Fists clench beneath dinner tables.
Voices sharpen in the night.
The forgotten, the overlooked, the ones who never raised their hands—
they are standing now.
The tide that carried us into sleep
has begun to pull back.
And in the silence left behind,
the storm begins to speak.
The Rot Gut Incident
Tumbleweeds blew into Town
Rolling two bearded cowpokes with them
Looking for some action and the sheriff
The Bloody Mary is the only saloon in Rot Gut
I reckon this is a proper place for the ornery
For a couple of horny no good clowns
They didn't come to sing a song or read the bible
Revenge was on their mind
Along with other assorted kinds of crime
They wanted ugly Molly for some nasty sport
And whiskey to wet their whistle
After a spell the drunken foe came down
From playing with their whore
Staggered on the stairs for lack of balance
Demanded me, Sheriff John, served up for their amusement
I killed their brother Bob last year in this here very bar
For starting troubles with the patrons
And stealing from the tip jar
I happened to be there with hat in hand
When they called me out
And made me take a stand
Then drew their guns to shoot me down
If they hadn't been such drunken boozers
Slower than molasses
I’d be telling a different kind of tale about these losers
And they wouldn't be planted six feet under ground
In the cemetery just outside of town
Used as fertilizer for the flowers
In Rot Gut that’s just how things go down
7/13/14 A Town Called “Rot Gut” contest