Beautiful Words

[intergalacticfop]

My naym is catte And wen the ball Is at an ende Or eve'ning fall I haf no tyme To be allure No one can se I monch the fleur

[justgarb]

[the-most-sublime-fool]

I Have a Time Machine

By Brenda Shaughnessy

But unfortunately it can only travel into the future at a rate of one second per second, which seems slow to the physicists and to the grant committees and even to me.

But I manage to get there, time after time, to the next moment and to the next.

Thing is, I can't turn it off. I keep zipping ahead— well not zipping—And if I try

to get out of this time machine, open the latch, I'll fall into space, unconscious,

then desiccated! And I'm pretty sure I'm afraid of that. So I stay inside.

There's a window, though. It shows the past. It's like a television or fish tank.

But it's never live; it's always over. The fish swim in backward circles.

Sometimes it's like a rearview mirror, another chance to see what I'm leaving behind,

and sometimes like blackout, all that time wasted sleeping.

[Excerpt—full poem here.]

[pollen]

Czeslaw Milosz, from "Ars Poetica?"

[ryebreadgf]

something something the poetry of science etc

[ryebreadgf]

woah

[dramaticwriter]

yeah

[softinvasions]

lesbianelle / my villanelle #myvillanelle / what if you were A¹ and i was A² and we were in love / what if i was in love with the villanelle / what if the villanelle was a lesbian and ambiguously in love with me / all that for "dykes" and that's how it came out? / cropped out of the screenshot is "alternate final line: how much i want to fuck a villanelle" • April 2026

[plasmapop]

09/04/2026 • every time @softinvasions writes a villanelle about how sonnets suck i write another suckful sonnet*. metrical malpractice!

*sonnets do not even have to have 14 lines if you are pure of heart and sonnetpilled enough

[aliasalias]

you're a creature like the rest of us

[aliasalias]

when i grow up i wanna be a dandelion

[aliasalias]

look, it revels, look, see what I can do!

[fleshst4r]

.

we're not going to make it

we will make it

it'll take too long to rebuild ourselves

we will make it

but what if we don't wake up in the morning

we will make it

i don't see a future with me in it

we will make it

we'll give up long before then

we will make it

im scared

i love you. we will make it

Voting ended onApr 11

[animnightmare]

The votes on this post. Oh. A poem in poll form, interactive art, the fact we can see how the other people reading it felt. im. this is really good.

[deviika]

Finja Brandenburg // unknown

[loveridden1999]

to the young who want to die by gwendolyn brooks

[loveridden1999]

to the young who want to die by gwendolyn brooks

[arthoesunshine]

i like to pretend i already died and asked god to send me back to earth so i can swim in lakes again and see mountains and get my heart broken and love my friends and cry so hard in the bathroom and go grocery shopping 1,000 more times. and that i promised i would never forget the miracle of being here

[arthoesunshine]

— our town, thornton wilder

[a-beautiful-word]

Poem by Elora Dodd

[violettesiren]

Here I am, Cassandra. And this is my city under ashes. And these are my prophet’s staff and ribbons. And this is my head full of doubts.

It’s true, I am triumphant. My prophetic words burn like fire in the sky. Only unacknowledged prophets are privy to such prospects. Only those who got off on the wrong foot, whose predictions turned to fact so quickly— it’s as if they’d never lived.

I remember it so clearly— how people, seeing me, would break off in midword. Laughter died. Lovers’ hands unclasped. Children ran to their mothers. I didn’t even know their short-lived names. And that song about a little green leaf— no one ever finished it near me.

I loved them. But I loved them haughtily. From heights beyond life. From the future. Where it’s always empty and nothing is easier than seeing death. I’m sorry that my voice was hard. Look down on yourselves from the stars, I cried, look down on yourselves from the stars. They heard me and lowered their eyes.

They lived within life. Pierced by that great wind. Condemned. Trapped from birth in departing bodies. But in them they bore a moist hope, a flame fuelled by its own flickering. They really knew what a moment means, oh any moment, any one at all before—

It turns out I was right. But nothing has come of it. And this is my robe, slightly singed. And this is my prophet’s junk. And this is my twisted face. A face that didn’t know it could be beautiful.

Soliloquy for Cassandra by Wisława Szymborska

[a-beautiful-word]

See some more poems by Loryn Brantz!