woke at midnight,
As the clock struck right at two.
I felt the darkness of my room turn crimson red,
As dreadful thoughts grew heavy in my head.
I felt a shiver run down my spine,
And my blood turn cold as ice.
I felt ghosts lingering in the dark,
And my body go limp far too fast.
I felt myself losing control,
Even in my sleep.
I thought it was a dream,
But that eerie sound was far too deep.
And I found myself losing a game
I thought I had never lost.
As a shadow came far too close,
I felt my breath hitch in my throat.
Was all this fate,
Or a mystery begging to be solved?
Then I felt a ghost welcome itself into my room.
I got up, expecting only darkness,
But found...
A lingering mark.
Lost in love,
yet still in love.
Oh, my
I've tried more than enough.
So let the wind take me.
Let it carry what I cannot.
Let me flow
far from my worries,
somewhere
I am free.
Here I am slowing down again
fidgeting with things, tarrying, stalling out
Anything to put off that horrible moment
that near-catastrophic split second
O! I just can’t face the prospect
I can’t face the thought of it
I certainly can’t put it into MERE WORDS!
It’s too devastating to let it happen
So, I won’t. I’ll continue to procrastinate
to put it off forever, though no later…
Ease up, dear reader ~
I just tossed the best book ever into the incinerator
Departing
Dear my lovely friends,
If you are reading this, then please don’t fret over me
Knowing you guys, you're probably already panicking
But I advise you to continue reading, as I’m going to explain everything
But before I start, I owe everyone an apology
You see, I have been lying to you all this time
My job has been draining me emotionally and mentally every day
And I didn’t want to make you worried about me
As I know you already have much on your plate
And what kind of friend would I be if I added to it?
A terrible one on my end, so I had to fib
I hope that you can forgive me for it
When you are telling me about your exciting news
Or reading it on social media
I can’t deny that a part of me dies on the inside
Because you are building yourself a happy future
As for me, I was feeling trapped in my job that goes nowhere
And so out of the blue, I decided to venture on a journey
Where am I going? I haven’t gotten a clue about it
But that is the fun part of all this for me
As I get to discover things about myself I never knew
So with that being said
I wish you adieu
Wish me good luck!
The carpet used to be a plastic kingdom,
Where Barbie lived the lives I used to crave.
I hit the age I always dreamed of holding,
Expecting to be grown, and wise, and brave.
But looking in the mirror, nothing shifted.
I see the same kid staring at the glass.
The wisdom that I waited for evaporated,
While heavy, adult breaths begin to pass.
Sixteen is brushing closely down my shoulders.
The slack is gone; the childhood curtain falls
.I miss the days of crayons on the floorboards,
Before the stacks of textbooks built these walls.
I miss when dreams were wild and unattainable,
When being a princess felt so safely far.
Because today, the dream demands my labor,
And pressure guides the course of every star.
I pour my life into a future uniform.
I fight for perfect scores to bridge the gap
.But now I fear the sea of other perfections,
And losing my own map.
With burnt plastic you exhale
Soft hair and skin and small weight on dirty mattress
A paper weight pressing down
I split the wire and I stored the glass bottle in the cabinet beneath the sink.
Where I thought of kissing you.
In the room I put my fingers in your mouth,
Where she heard everything to the other wall,
Where we held each other.
With burnt plastic I exhale
And with a school-issued laptop.
From showering in clothes
From swimming in clothes
To a clinging
In the mouth and on the skin
I didn't bring a toothbrush
Will the floor welcome me
Where there is nowhere to put my weight?
"I can get through anything.
Through any night,"
I tell myself
And it is true.
When my heart felt like
A hopping cricket or
A feather falling or
A tire rolling or
A record skipping or
A ball being squeezed tightly by a fist,
It kept working and pumping blood.
When I feel it run in my neck
Or when I saw it open on my hip,
When I see it in the toilet too
It runs.
Unlike when I run
It is controlled.
Pump bump beating.
When my feet strike the ground I am not sure what they will do next.
Like I may fall upwards with a quick flip.
No, there are rules.
The answers were scattered across the floor
like Scrabble letters, making perfectly formed words;
just waiting to be found by the keen observer.
All it took was for a good look around;
without that, they were just plastic spikes
waiting for stupid feet to learn truths through pain.
Torment storms turn light into darkness
A once-bustling steel city now drowns in feebleness
Meanwhile, data centers are on the rise
Yet, there is no power-only murky water, noisome refrigerators, and teary eyes
Looters punching the clock and going to work
Nights and days are frightening with lingering pain and hurt
Stirring echoes of Katrina making its way through the Midwest
Scary. Very scary tensions for all the residents of a city in unrest
So you have to accept someone else’s concerns
If you still care to go abroad
Are you corrupt, do you get the returns
Do you hide them as an experienced fraud
What they call a survey is an interrogation
There is no presumption of innocence
You are pledged guilty because your nation
Is all badly spoken which shortens the chance
To get anywhere you would want to fly
Because you, and not somebody else, just you
Must stop the war, so they'll decide
If you’re worthy to taste their national stew
Isn’t it quieter to take a bus ride
At home, with no worries about bank statements
About who are your parents, dead or alive
The driver won’t bother about their status
None of that humiliation is guaranteed
But isn’t it too clever that people get stressed
For intention to travel abroad, when they need
Just a fortnight break for a much deserved rest?
calm ocean waters
clears mind and soul of stresses
early morning walk
Sir Who
He's not a pastor
but he has a congregation
proves wicked
changing faces
His ploy, paint lives with gloom, judgement, ridicule and tragedy
but the crafter of this ill will wants his portrait kept out of those equations
They think they know, unaware and oblivious to the truth in burdensome weight of his misconstrued calculations.
The wheel is fast, and it never stops. There are many thoughts that are racing, some at the same time, some competing with each other.
Negative self talk always comes in first, with impending doom coming second.
Laying in bed trying to sleep, the thoughts don’t creep, they gyrate. Aggressively, impulsively, gyrate.
You can try to fight it, “you’re amazing, you’re awesome, don’t let these thoughts win”
But in the end the wheel never stops.
When will I learn, the wheel doesn’t ask for permission.
It just spins.
Clean up this mess.
I feel defeated once more, and get the clothes off the floor.
This order has now translated to, "You're a mess."
I feel the need to impress,
But also to rest.
My mind changes and shifts words.
I feel as if I will always be unheard,
But how must I be heard if I can't speak?
Children should be seen and not heard.
I feel defeated once more; shut my mouth and close my door.
I no longer feel like I want to be heard.
The only thing that seems to please is to be seen.
My looks shift and validate me through praise of those around me.
Maybe this is the only me worth seeing.
There's no need for the rest of me.
Simple phrases pan into endless thoughts.
Ideas and phrases leaving those and me distraught.
This writing may come as a shock,
But those whose minds are similar to mine are tortured by thoughts.
The Tracks of Forlorn
The gravel is new, freshly laid,
The boundaries bordered by fences we've made,
Walking along in my tarseled feet,
In the dark of the night and midsummer's heat,
I look at the tracks and feel the horn,
The world at my back and all of their scorn.
The train passes by on ridges of steel,
Shaking the ground and all I feel.
It rolls along as the ground surely shakes,
The peace is shattered as my mind itself quakes.
Stress of the mind feels like torrents of sin,
As the wind rushes by pushed from the lead engine.
Memories flash by as trains eat up steel,
Running through mind like an old movie reel.
I've lived and I've loved, but memories are torn,
Like the train of my mind on tracks of forlorn.
I've stood and I've felt,
Pondering now the cards I'd been dealt,
In the dead of the night and train's aftermath,
The silence is deaf'ning on the cold gravel path.
-Debra
How hard is my life?
Thorns minus any roses
The stings bring much pain
Stress Categories
Definition | What is Stress in Poetry?
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.
Related Poetry Forms
afflict, agony, anxiety, burden, crunch, expectancy, fear, force, hardship, hassle, heat, importance, intensity, nervousness, pressure, significance, strain, tension, trauma, urgency, weight, worry,