The air weighs so much more now.

Its compressing me.

I cant breathe it in..

its too dense.

I want to speak.

I want to yell.

My voice cant push through.

Why is my atmosphere crushing me?

We live on the same earth.

My world is perfect.

I have, perfect things.

Am I faulty?

I have withstood other elements that have tried to erase me.

The water that pleaded with me to drown.

The fire that screamed at my flesh.

I don’t want to be alone here.

But I fear my space would crush you too..

Yeah, I loved ya

And it hurts

I still like to get at ya

No apologies

Why was it yu

Out of all them

That I chose

Or was chosen - for me?

I loved ya poor

I loved ya rich

I loved ya sweet sixteen

I loved ya a bitch

I never stopped lovin’ ya

How many times have I said I have?

I did what men do

I moved on to better halves

But that thing drags me back

Its charcoal black still has red for ya

Like it beats with ya in it

The one dot that never leaves

I don’t want to take ya to the grave

I’d like to leave here and now

I know there ain’t any love to save

Just that dream of knowing how

Ya walked me the plank

Blinded and open eyed I choose

If one day all else just sank

It’s you I wouldn’t lose

There are days

When I wonder if

I should stop

Trying to find you

But with every opportunity

I continue to seek you

And one week apart rips

At my heart

So I continue to soak

In as much time as

I have and I can't

Find it in me to regret

Because everytime we part

Naturally

I am smiling

And I am singing

And my heart

Is ringing

Because I can't get enough

Even if I know

That you belong to

Someone else

It can't stop the

Burning

Hope that I just

Can't kill

Because it still feeds me

My happiness

It hurts

But how could I

Ever give you up

Do you remember the nights we spent filling each other up?

You, eating my sleep as a feast.

And me, filling with your exhaustion.

Draining and bursting.

Bite down on the flesh of my dreams one last time?

Let me dig my teeth into your late nights?

Swallow down your slumber as you inhale my evening repose.

I know you’re starving, love.

So am I.

All of my love,

your sleepless nights

The twinkling lights

of the city

stars outside my window

my dreams sent to

those heavens

awaiting my future

outside these walls

locked out

instead of in

since when do fantasies prevail

of the city

or else

mine shall be the first.

#fairytale#poetry#thecity

I’m drowning in his veins. His heart, twice the size it should be, pumping tainted blood through the labyrinth buried beneath his skin. I take refuge in his lungs. And it’s then that I see what’s creating the cataract of sludge. Great piles of charred mess building across the walls. Too hot, poisoned air launched at me and him with kamikaze apathy and sniper-like precision. And all the while he spits the scorched oxygen to his heart. Cranking out more pollution than his body can dispose of. And me with my gas mask, hell-bent on tearing down the filth. I shovel it out like a chimney sweep in a stack that’s still on fire. Until my energy is spent. Until the tears stream hot and sulfurous, only adding to the contaminated blood. And I hope that if I stay here, a living thing inside of him, that the air that falls in on me will somehow be clean. That I can breathe life back into him. But the sky above me is filled with explosions of darkness. And the bombs only continue to fall.

It’s the sunlight that pours through the window and fills the space around you. Other people call it an intrusion, you call it an embrace.

It’s thrilling. It makes you want to go and do everything, acheive the world. It’s the feeling of opportunity.

It’s addicting. Sometimes you go to sleep purely so you can experience the feeling of waking up all over again.

You still get groggy - you’re not superhuman. You still experience the thick pull of sleep on your brain, making thinking feel like trying to run with a ball and chain. But you forget all of that when it dawns on you that this is a new day, with endless possibilities. You can’t stay still, not when you know that the day is a fresh new canvass, the things you love to do waiting there for you and the people you love just on the other side of a wall - and you just can’t wait to irritate them to no avail with your morning explosion of energy.

When Gone

In life,

when you love someone,

you do all you can,

as often as you can.

Love has no boundaries.

When love has floated away,

be not sad or disillusioned;

rather remember the moments;

and embrace,

every second,

every minute,

every hour,

every day,

every week,

every month,

every year,

and all those years in between.

That’s love.

Now, and for all time.

______

Other Things

Beginning February 1st, my new theme will kick in gear. We go from death, to love. After all it’s the Lover’s month. I will have a couple of challenges for this as well, one of which will included a repost of a piece I did many moons back.

Prepare thyselves, there will be much to say, much to do, for love shall be in the air for all of us in one way or another. After all, and this is just for the ladies ... love, love me do ... you know I love you and I’ll always be true, so ple-e-ease .... love me do.

***

Autumn’s splendour

slaughtered overnight—

the gold has lost its lustre;

orange, rusted over;

reds, exsanguinated.

No wonder why they call it Fall—

oh yes, this is dead season.

***

#poetry

#freeverse

It's hard to be a writer. Half the time nobody wants to read what it is you wrote. No matter how short or long. Ask a family member and you get looked at like you asked them to scrub the toilet with their tongue! Ask a friend and they will say, “yeah! I'll read that.” but they almost never do, or they skim it over and tell you how “good” it was.    

No writer in the world writes for their own convictions. We write to tell a story that will insight emotion into the reader. That will leave the receiver with deeper questions, or will fill a void in the person's heart. We write for the world to read our stories, and yet, we can't find a single person who wants to read what we wrote! So do we as writers (who have a need to put words together) stop writing?

No!

Do we stop begging people to read or works?

No!

Do we stop sending in our stories to publishers who will continue to reject it? No!    

We persevere, not because we know our writing is great and needs to be read! Because if we don't write, than we lose a piece of ourselves. We read what others have written and think, “I could have depicted that better.” We can't help but put to paper what is in our heads. And yes, we do it for the fulfillment of others. Not for us. I have never written something I deemed well written and said, “This is so good, I am going to keep it to myself so nobody will ever read it!” and I doubt any other writer, or published author has either.    Being a self proclaimed writer is even harder. Nobody takes your writing seriously. You either don't have a grasp on proper grammar, or your punctuation and formatting is all wrong. And you think to yourself, “that's okay that's what editors and proofreaders are for”, but you are wrong! They are there to help real authors who are published and have a grasp on proper grammar, punctuation placement, and the correct formatting, not for the newbies and the eager to learn.    As a new writer you are excited and quick to want to share and get feedback, so you join Facebook groups and sites like nanowrimo or Prose.com. You pour your heart out and into your work, but when you run it through Grammarly and Hemingwayediting.com, your disheartened to find your writing level is below average and your awesome “show don't tell”, words are looked at as mediocre. You get advice and critiquing like this:

“Don't use adverbs!”

“Don't use passive voices!”

“Don't use too many adjectives!”

“Don't attempt to write if you don't have the skills!”    

So those of us who don't have “it ”right, stop writing. Who is going to listen to what we have to say anyway? Especially when the libraries, book stores, and editorials are all filled with what others have already written. You can't help but wonder,

“Is there enough room for me on those shelves?”

The answer should be YES!

Yes, there is room, yes you are good enough, yes, yes, yes! But that's not the feedback you receive. Your rejections, and your lack of supporters begin to weigh heavily on you. Your goal of 1,000 words a day, get cut in half, and than in half again, until all you are doing is thinking about writing, instead of actually writing. All those short stories, prose’, and poems that you thought were going to get recognized don't. You begin to realize that the only person reading your work is you and that's not why you write!   

You join creative writing classes, and enroll in local authors clubs, but everyone there is in the same boat you are. They want their works published too! And of course if that means undermining your works to get theirs noticed, than so be it. It's better than being unknown.     

And so the unpublished, unrecognized, under- educated writers who write for the world, slowly start to retreat. They hide their notebooks of half finished ideas away. The delve into other talents they have or other hobbies to occupy their mind. They read books that they think are okay, but could've been written better. And they forget. They forget about all the rejections, the criticisms and the critics. They busy themselves and their minds until they have buried all the negativity and self doubts and they take out the notebooks, the half written and almost forgotten stories. They rewrite and re-word and revise and they send their work out into the world yet again, just to go through the same vicious cycle.    

Until one day, somebody reads what you wrote and gives you a simple thumbs up. On that day, you are a real writer! Who cares what everyone else said. Who cares about the rejections from the publishers, the critiques from the editors, and the looks from your family! Someone out there read something you wrote! And guess what? They liked it!