24 Hours of Poetry

March 28. [ spread the word. ] follow the hashtags: #24hr poetry day #april writers quest ****DFTBA****

[flotsamie]

If you wish to be a writer, write.

Epictetus (via writerniche)

[sixwordssayitall]

You fucked up and I apologized.

Insomniac’s Journal (via sixwordssayitall)

[thequotejournals]

How do you get so empty? Who takes it out of you?

Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451 (via stolenwine)

[suzyhazelwood]

[averno-averno]

It is always the same shade of night under which these words take shape. I hear a screaming inside of me that isn’t my own. 

[fantodsdhrit]

In the mellow drunken night, I kiss—her vespertine

Feet

And lie down…

Starry whispers escape our Warm breaths, swell

In silence;

Sparks fly as we— Get tangled.

[just-six]

Eye contact: how souls catch fire.

six word story // jomunengwa (via just-six)

[shentoncarrington-deactivated20]

If you were here ...

I would listen to your voice like I would listen to ebbing and sweet music.

[2000anhour]

Lessons on Loving a Prophet

One. You know how this ends. There’s nothing you can do to change it, so make peace with it now. Ready your hands for the callus, shred the cloth for bandages, prepare the rosaries. Two. When you meet him, outside the grocery, along the boardwalk, beneath the overpass, you will not know what he is. He will be neither be too charming nor too handsome, not thunder, not polish Three.  The day you fall in love, his mouth will spill your name. He will repeat and repeat. He will not touch you. He will watch your hips, study whatever ample you have, will ask to watch you dance. When you turn to leave, he will use your name like a choke chain. Four.  He will call you miracle. Your face will unravel. This is his magic. When he begs you promise, say yes. Five. When he offers his lips, take them. Take his arms, his throat, take his toes when he offers. Gorge. Swallow everything whole. Gag. Vomit. Swallow more. Do not hesitate. No time for polite, or coy. Take.  Six. When the minions call you whore, nod. Seven. He will tell you of the others. How they went crazy in their sleep awaiting his return. Do not flinch. Do not doubt your thickened fingertips. Stand upright. You promised. Eight.  When you find him in his room, thrashing the sheets, pressing his palms into the walls, howling, his face a river… close the door. This is how he makes wine. Leave him in his sorcery. Nine.  When he explains that he cannot love. That he will never be yours alone. When he tells how the meek, the gluttons, the tempted, the proud are his angels, do not mourn. Smile, feed him, wash his hair. Ten.  He is a king among thieves. The leeches will hollow his skin, the crows reduce him to bones. His own heart will empty him. Allow for the bleed. Be ready with tourniquet and prayer. Eleven. In the dry burn of dawn, after the last of the lashes, the thorns and the spittle, when his limp body is laid at your feet, remember the night you loved him, the ember of his eyes and the way the words came like honey. Twelve. You were made for this.

[2000anhour]

Jeanann Verlee

[crashinglybeautiful]

“I lost my way, I forgot to call on your name. The raw heart beat against the world, and the tears were for my lost victory. But you are here. You have always been here. The world is all forgetting, and the heart is a rage of directions, but your name unifies the heart, and the world is lifted into its place. Blessed is the one who waits in the traveller’s heart for his turning.”

—Leonard Cohen (September 21, 1934 – November 10, 2016), “Poem #50,” from The Book of Mercy, (McClelland & Stewart, 1984)

[mysharona1987]

[junkyard-rhapsody]

I feel pain for my neighbor as he Yanks out his baby teeth to pay For his sweetheart’s sweet tooth. Last week, he rubbed a pinch of salt On his gums, tied an incisor to a doorknob, And ran the opposite way toward her shadow. Three nights ago, he launched himself   Down the stairs, gathering a pile of teeth On the landing—he flashed a toothless grin at her. Today, he chased a black cat into the Legs of his father’s ladder and belted Out a bicuspid against the cold steel. Each night, he slept with a tooth Under his pillow just so he would wake up With a little spending money. He walked over to the corner store every Morning with his small fortune and blew   Each cent on penny candy. He never bothered to ask where each Piece of his body vanished as long as she Held his hand all the way down the block. He never thought about what would happen When their stomachs where empty and he had A mouth full of holes. Maybe he will sell his bones And buy her the whole store.

Christian Sammartino, Corner Store Romance (a poem from Keystones)

[smakkabagms]

all of these hands, 

grasping the void, finding no remedy

sky shy hesitant pale indifferent

yet we always look upwards for divinity

[theadventureto-be]

I don’t care, go away; I still love you and you want me again// x-repeat

sometimes, you come around and, always,

                 I say, “Hello”

      but it is static in my hands

trickling through my fingers like sand and

my heart bounces just once when it hits the ground.

Loving you is dirty. Loving you is

scabbed over 

scraped knees –

                            craving honey 

                            but eating bees.

I will love you with other words, but they will

cover your intentions like poison.

When my chemicals combine

and your flesh is burning, I imagine 

how much you will 

miss the shape of my heart before you 

                                    broke it.

[wordsnquotes]

I write only because there is a voice within me that will not be still.

Sylvia Plath,  Letters Home (via wordsnquotes)

[sarcolinedream-deactivated20181]

I feel the pull of autumn inside of me, like the melancholy of a golden-hazed dream.

— Excerpt #7, Michelle Tudor (41/52)

[megiddo]

Fire burns up the mountain

All night by the fire We drank copious amounts of nails In juggernauts of clay vases We laughed at dawn Set our fists down on the slate black table We arm wrestled ourselves Breaking bones for breakfast The agonizing hangovers turned us inside out Now we are donuts Now we are dust bunnies in mouthes Now we go home and fall apart alone

Michael Baumgart